Australian Website Bans ... Australians 247
Nazlfrag writes "Earlier this month the blog and discussion forum ZGeek was sued for $42 million AUD over a user's comment. The plaintiffs are aspiring movie producers who claim to have lost a movie deal due to a 9/11 conspiracy discussion thread. Even though the initial lawsuit has been thrown out, and the company complied with lawyers' demands by taking down the offending posts, it is believed the plaintiffs will file suit again. In addition to suing the forum, in an Australian first they have been granted an injunction to force the ISPs to disclose the IP addresses of the two posters involved. Due to the risk of incurring even greater legal costs the company is closing its doors in Australia, and will ban their fellow countrymen from posting there again."
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does everyone keep treating them like a bunch of criminals?
The sad part is that it seems that only Aussies treat Aussies like a bunch of criminals. Yes, I get the joke, but considering the great firewall and more, it just seems less funny.
Sad to see you go. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to see you guys drop off the face of the Internet, but I guess that's what happens when you get a bunch of pricks in Parliament.
But I guess that the government will figure it out when no one wants to deal with Australia as far as the Internet goes.
Re:world screwing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude, lighten up a bit. Dude is a generic term and a filler word. This is a tech forum, let's not bring sexual (mis)identity into this.
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words.
By removing your urban legend portion your point is now lost. Unless, of course, we also remove the Gettysburg address since it isn't actually law of any sort, then we see a pattern forming; although you can't really make a good pattern based off of two occurrences.
This is all assuming that your "point" was that laws are using up more and more words, which wasn't very clearly stated at all; or possibly that laws are getting more and more specific. Which still, you gave four documents which range widely in purpose and use.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I prefer +5 Troll.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:2, Insightful)
First, Not. A. Dude. I'm a dyke, get it right.
You put too much emphasis on your gender and sexual orientation.
From your user profile:
"A geek like you, but who doesn't get the respect you do because I wear a skirt and you wear pants."
It seems that you have self-steem issues you need to sort out.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:4, Insightful)
That's an extremely starry eyed and naive idea of much primary production regulation.
The alternative and reality in most cases is that huge corporate interests, often the supermarkets and generally large agricultral management corps want to apply pressure on smaller and independant farmers. Large supermarkets don't like having to deal with small farmers and in many cases are in direct competition with smaller farms through their own holdings in large agricultural management firms. And obviously large agri-holdings have many reasons to want to shove the small old school independents out of business.
But you keep believing the government is acting primarily in the interests of the handful of small 100 - 2000 acre unorganized independent farmers remaining in the west rather than the large billion dollar agri-corps and supermarkets that give politicians hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds each year.
Re:Microsoft can sue Slashdot, or any other pro-Li (Score:3, Insightful)
.92% of windows sales would send slashdot broke and keep hundreds of lawyers in beer and skittles.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you just came up with a great idea on how to spend stimulus money!
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:3, Insightful)
Lobbyists, duh.
Does the GP ACTUALLY think that the massive and powerfull aggricultural lobbies exist to keep corporations from "winning"? Large "family" farms (usually a corporate operation privately owned at that size), very large family farms, and non-family farms (8 percent of all farms) account for 68% of production in the US. Who do you think is benefiting most from a price floor? Cut prices by 3/4 and eliminate the competition or make twice as much with a price floor. Hmmm... USDA stats on the matter are here. [usda.gov]
Not too many high paid lobbyists schmoozing politicians for the guy who works but can't afford a decent meal. The fact that the corporations can make more money ripping off their customers via the US government than they can by killing off small family farms is just a happy side effect for the little guys.
The food price stability argument is bullshit. If the government were really concerned about food shortages in times of crisis they would set up emergency food supply stores across the country. You would only need to store things like grains, which last for a very long time and provide enough nutrition to live on until the crisis has passed. This would cost the US citizen significantly less per year than the farm subsidies do.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:3, Insightful)
If prices rises, farmers will likely try to increase their yields leading to eventually lower prices, or more farms will open. If the price falls, then that would almost certainly be due to supply. You say that farmers would go bankrupt and supply would diminish if prices fell too much, but you fail to ask why prices would fall--it would almost certainly be due to an overproduction of any particular foodstuff to begin with, so farms going out of businesses would be a corrective measure. The reason small farms are subsidized is because some people find that way of life fanciful and want to protect it, and for political capital first and foremost. Price controls and farm subisides are political largesse, period.
Anyway, there is no free market, and never has been, and you both are portraying extremely unlikely and overly paranoid scenarios that are not applicable in today's economy to apologize for populist political measures. And not to mention that Americans eat too much to begin with...!
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:3, Insightful)
Farms would certainly go under, but this would be a corrective measure. Populist farm measures were implemented to keep farmers in business, not to prevent starvation--there are too many chefs in the pot already, and instead of letting the market correct itself (who wants poor ol' farmers to have to feel the pinch?) it's more politically expedient to prop up the excess farms and get votes.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:3, Insightful)
In this case it represents the difference in slander laws. You can be sued for slander if you make a statement of fact about someone that you cannot prove to be factual in a court of law, rather than only having to demonstrate that you believed that fact to be true. The simple solution is to couch statements as opinions rather than as facts or where you manage a forum ensure that all users are informed that 'all' postings regardless of content are the 'opinions' of the poster and should not be construed as statements of fact, include an agreement to this in the sign up that no one reads.
So opinion is not suppressed only false statements of facts. Would it be better if they took on similar laws in the US, probably, especially when politicians, lawyers, PR executives, lobbyists, corporate executives purposefully lie to you and when you go to the trouble to prove that lie false, without any shame, conscience or, remorse they look you straight in the eye and repeat the exact same lie again and again and again, even when those lies are personal attacks and attacks against organisations, hiding behind the deceit that they believed them to be true at the time.
Re:Poor Aussies (Score:5, Insightful)