Sunday, April 21, 2013
San Diego cop smashes phone & beats up suspect: "Phones can be converted to a weapon. Look it up online."
It all seemed pretty civil until the cop writing the citation told him to stop recording, which Pringle refused to do.He didn't get the cop's name, and the SDPD won't give it to him.
“Phones can be converted into weapons …. look it up online,” the cop told him.
Last month, a South Florida cop confiscated a man’s phone citing the same reason, so maybe this is a new trend.
When Pringle tried to talk sense into the cop, the cop slapped the phone out of his hand where it fell onto the boardwalk and broke apart.
The other cop then pounced on him, slamming him down on the boardwalk where he ended up with a laceration on his chin.
“Blood was everywhere,” Pringle said. “I was laying on my stomach and he had one knee on my back and the other knee on the side of my face.
“They kept telling me ‘to calm down,’ that ‘you’re making this worse for yourself,’ that ‘you have no right to record us.’”
BRB GOIN 2 JAIL
A 26-year-old man in Oregon found out the hard way that you're
not supposed to text during jury duty:When prosecutors were playing a video-taped interview with the defendant, Judge Dennis Graves suddenly halted the trial after noticing a light glow around juror Benjamin Kohler’s chest. The judge, who had previously instructed jurors to pay attention and not to use mobile phones, immediately halted the proceeding and ordered everybody to vacate the courtroom except Kohler, the Sheriff’s Department said.
The authorities said Kohler “had no explanation for his actions.”
The judge declared him in contempt, and ordered the juror jailed for two days at Marion County Jail. The judge said he wanted to teach Kohler a lesson.
Thieves chopped off woman's legs to steal ankle bracelets
A 35-year-old business woman was murdered and her legs chopped off by
two unknown assailants who stole the silver anklets she was wearing at
Kokapet, Hyderabad, India, on Tuesday.
The victim, identified as Shankaramma, was the wife of Balappa. The couple owned a scrap business and have a 12-year-old son. Balappa had gone to his friend's house at a nearby village and stayed there on the night the incident occurred.
At 2.30am on Tuesday, two men came to the shop and woke up Shankaramma claiming they had to urgently sell some scrap material. "As soon as Shankaramma opened the door, the duo throttled her and crushed her head with a boulder," Narsingi sub-inspector (SI) P Anjaiah said.
After murdering her, the duo chopped off her legs from below the knees using a sharp-edged stone. "After severing both the legs in this manner, the robbers escaped with her silver anklets," the SI said. The stolen property weighed about 50 tolas (500g).
The victim, identified as Shankaramma, was the wife of Balappa. The couple owned a scrap business and have a 12-year-old son. Balappa had gone to his friend's house at a nearby village and stayed there on the night the incident occurred.
At 2.30am on Tuesday, two men came to the shop and woke up Shankaramma claiming they had to urgently sell some scrap material. "As soon as Shankaramma opened the door, the duo throttled her and crushed her head with a boulder," Narsingi sub-inspector (SI) P Anjaiah said.
After murdering her, the duo chopped off her legs from below the knees using a sharp-edged stone. "After severing both the legs in this manner, the robbers escaped with her silver anklets," the SI said. The stolen property weighed about 50 tolas (500g).
Masked men stole rhino heads and horns from Irish museum
A gang of thieves have stolen rhino
heads and horns worth up to half a million euros (£428,000) from an Irish
museum. Three masked men entered the National Museum Archives building in Dublin at
about 22:40 BST on Wednesday and tied up a security guard.
The gang loaded the four heads, with eight horns, into a large white van. The security guard, who was not injured, managed to free himself and raise the alarm shortly after midnight.
A police spokesman said the building on Balheary Road, Swords, has been sealed off for forensic examination. An incident room has also been set up at Swords Garda (police) station and officers have appealed for information about the theft.
Nigel Monaghan, keeper of the museum's natural history division, said staff had taken the decision to remove its rhino horn collection from public display in 2011, following a spate of "smash and grab" thefts from museums across Europe. The artifacts had been placed in the museum's storage facility in Swords for safe keeping when the thieves struck.
The gang loaded the four heads, with eight horns, into a large white van. The security guard, who was not injured, managed to free himself and raise the alarm shortly after midnight.
A police spokesman said the building on Balheary Road, Swords, has been sealed off for forensic examination. An incident room has also been set up at Swords Garda (police) station and officers have appealed for information about the theft.
Nigel Monaghan, keeper of the museum's natural history division, said staff had taken the decision to remove its rhino horn collection from public display in 2011, following a spate of "smash and grab" thefts from museums across Europe. The artifacts had been placed in the museum's storage facility in Swords for safe keeping when the thieves struck.
Tanzanians see official hand in elephant poaching
Conservationists
have long warned of the existential danger that poachers pose to
Africa's elephants. And it's in Tanzania, home of the Serengeti game
reserve and one of the world's two largest elephant populations, that
the scale of the killings and the involvement of government employees
may be the most chilling.
The three elephant corpses seen by an Associated Press reporter eight weeks ago lay in a game park just a few miles from a busy junction outside Arusha, a city of 500,000 people.
"Twenty-four elephants were shot within 10 square miles over the last three months. Thirty miles from here there are another 26 carcasses," said Patel, a safari tour operator trying to raise the alarm about the country's dying elephants. "And this is just a teaser. If we go to southern Tanzania I can show you 70 carcasses in one day," he said, referring to the Selous, the world's largest game reserve.
The man tasked with saving Tanzania's elephants is Khamis Suedi Kagasheki, minister for natural resources and tourism. Patel believes Kagasheki, a former intelligence officer, is trying hard to beat the poachers, but is up against a government cabal unwilling to give up illegal profits.
Much of the demand for ivory is in Asia, especially China, luring poachers across Africa to slay the giants and cut out their tusks for rewards far beyond the daily wage. According to CITES, the international body that monitors endangered species, the illegal ivory trade has more than doubled since 2007.
Every week brings new reports of elephant deaths and the government workers alleged to have killed them - soldiers, game wardens, police, customs officials, all complicit in the killings of the top tourism treasure for this poor East African nation of 50 million people.
Botswana, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo and Kenya are also suffering from elephant poaching. But Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of the London-based nonprofit Save The Elephants, says he is most worried about Tanzania's because of its huge population - somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000.
Poaching here "is far bigger than is happening anywhere else in Africa," he said.
Accurate death tolls are nearly impossible to come by. Thirty a day, the government reported at the end of 2012. That's 10,000 a year. Double as much, some government leaders have suggested. The truth, conservationists say, is that the government doesn't know, and that many in the government don't want to know, given the suspicion of official connivance in the illegal trade.
Tour operators in Tanzania and neighboring Kenya, fearing for their livelihood, are increasing the pressure on the government to act. Kagasheki acknowledged to the AP that the poaching problem "is not a pleasant story to tell."
"It's a big problem, it's a huge problem," he said of government officials' complicity in the killing. "But I'm not saying it's beyond resolution. We are trying our best and we are getting there."
Too late for Jonathan Howells' family, however.
In February 2011, his father-in-law, Andre de Kock, a hunting guide for 35 years, was accompanying two clients in search of buffalo on the Maswa Game Reserve, a part of the Serengeti ecosystem.
At 8 a.m. they stopped their car to investigate a blue plastic bag across a river.
"Then 11 guys with AK-47s opened up. No warning. No shouting. They opened up, killing Andre with three shots. One in the foot, one in the belly and one in the temple, while he was sitting in his car," Howells said.
The gunmen - 11 by police count - fled. Help arrived five hours later. In the blue bag were more than a half dozen tusks, each 1 meter (3 feet) long or less - all from young bulls. Scattered in the grass by the river's edge were hundreds of shells from armor-piercing bullets, military-grade ammunition available only to government security forces.
A manhunt began, but within two days all the local police - the first responders - had been reassigned, because, Howells said, they had been tipping off the poachers.
Four people were eventually arrested, he said. More than two years later they are still in prison awaiting trial.
Motioning toward his wife, Howells said her father had died "for less than 18 kilos (40 pounds) of ivory, which two years ago had a street value of less than $1,800."
Today, according to the Born Free Foundation, an international wildlife charity, black market ivory sells in Asia for around $1,300 a pound (nearly $2,900 a kilogram). Poachers in Tanzania's bush get $100 for a pound ($220 per kilogram), Patel says.
In the region around Lake Manyara National Park and Tarangire National Park, where the three elephant carcasses lay, the elephant population is about 3,000 and falling.
Charles Bujiku runs a unit called Village Game Scouts, low-paid Maasai villagers trying to protect the animals on their communal land. Asked if government agents are involved in poaching, Bujiku flashes a big smile, and says: "I think I don't know."
But then he notes that the army, the Tanzania People's Defense Force, has a camp just up the hill, and he pulls out a recent poaching report.
On Jan. 20 an army sergeant was caught helping to transfer a tusk. The report shows a man in army fatigues sitting cuffed in the back of a truck. Beside him sits curved tusk.
"A lot of the junior game scouts in wildlife division and junior police officers are involved," said Patel, the safari operator.
"For elephants to be shot at the magnitude they are being shot at, being able to have the ivory transferred from game reserves to port, being shipped to the Far East - it's not the guy at the village level that has the capability. It goes all the way to customs, Tanzania Revenue Authority, Port Authority. It needs influence and influential people."
Anti-poaching units hired to patrol private reserves have found text messages between poachers' phones and government officials, Patel said. "Game scouts, poachers and security forces are all talking to each other. Orders were being placed. Orders were being fulfilled. Accomplices were brought in. The transport of the goods from the source to the city was being facilitated at a high level," Patel said.
At last month's gathering in Thailand of signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya were threatened with sanctions, along with Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and China. Those countries now must implement a detailed plan of action to stop ivory sales.
A CITES-led project that monitors about 40 percent of Africa's elephant population estimated that 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in 2011 and that the 2012 number was probably the same or more.
About 70 years ago, up to 5 million elephants are believed to have roamed sub-Saharan Africa. Today fewer than a million remain. Much of the harvested ivory ends up as small trinkets.
Kagasheki, the wildlife minister, said Tanzania is working to reverse the problem.
"I'm optimistic that we'll eventually get there," he said. But he worries "that we may get there when of course big damage has already happened to the wildlife, something we are desperately trying to avoid."
The three elephant corpses seen by an Associated Press reporter eight weeks ago lay in a game park just a few miles from a busy junction outside Arusha, a city of 500,000 people.
"Twenty-four elephants were shot within 10 square miles over the last three months. Thirty miles from here there are another 26 carcasses," said Patel, a safari tour operator trying to raise the alarm about the country's dying elephants. "And this is just a teaser. If we go to southern Tanzania I can show you 70 carcasses in one day," he said, referring to the Selous, the world's largest game reserve.
The man tasked with saving Tanzania's elephants is Khamis Suedi Kagasheki, minister for natural resources and tourism. Patel believes Kagasheki, a former intelligence officer, is trying hard to beat the poachers, but is up against a government cabal unwilling to give up illegal profits.
Much of the demand for ivory is in Asia, especially China, luring poachers across Africa to slay the giants and cut out their tusks for rewards far beyond the daily wage. According to CITES, the international body that monitors endangered species, the illegal ivory trade has more than doubled since 2007.
Every week brings new reports of elephant deaths and the government workers alleged to have killed them - soldiers, game wardens, police, customs officials, all complicit in the killings of the top tourism treasure for this poor East African nation of 50 million people.
Botswana, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo and Kenya are also suffering from elephant poaching. But Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of the London-based nonprofit Save The Elephants, says he is most worried about Tanzania's because of its huge population - somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000.
Poaching here "is far bigger than is happening anywhere else in Africa," he said.
Accurate death tolls are nearly impossible to come by. Thirty a day, the government reported at the end of 2012. That's 10,000 a year. Double as much, some government leaders have suggested. The truth, conservationists say, is that the government doesn't know, and that many in the government don't want to know, given the suspicion of official connivance in the illegal trade.
Tour operators in Tanzania and neighboring Kenya, fearing for their livelihood, are increasing the pressure on the government to act. Kagasheki acknowledged to the AP that the poaching problem "is not a pleasant story to tell."
"It's a big problem, it's a huge problem," he said of government officials' complicity in the killing. "But I'm not saying it's beyond resolution. We are trying our best and we are getting there."
Too late for Jonathan Howells' family, however.
In February 2011, his father-in-law, Andre de Kock, a hunting guide for 35 years, was accompanying two clients in search of buffalo on the Maswa Game Reserve, a part of the Serengeti ecosystem.
At 8 a.m. they stopped their car to investigate a blue plastic bag across a river.
"Then 11 guys with AK-47s opened up. No warning. No shouting. They opened up, killing Andre with three shots. One in the foot, one in the belly and one in the temple, while he was sitting in his car," Howells said.
The gunmen - 11 by police count - fled. Help arrived five hours later. In the blue bag were more than a half dozen tusks, each 1 meter (3 feet) long or less - all from young bulls. Scattered in the grass by the river's edge were hundreds of shells from armor-piercing bullets, military-grade ammunition available only to government security forces.
A manhunt began, but within two days all the local police - the first responders - had been reassigned, because, Howells said, they had been tipping off the poachers.
Four people were eventually arrested, he said. More than two years later they are still in prison awaiting trial.
Motioning toward his wife, Howells said her father had died "for less than 18 kilos (40 pounds) of ivory, which two years ago had a street value of less than $1,800."
Today, according to the Born Free Foundation, an international wildlife charity, black market ivory sells in Asia for around $1,300 a pound (nearly $2,900 a kilogram). Poachers in Tanzania's bush get $100 for a pound ($220 per kilogram), Patel says.
In the region around Lake Manyara National Park and Tarangire National Park, where the three elephant carcasses lay, the elephant population is about 3,000 and falling.
Charles Bujiku runs a unit called Village Game Scouts, low-paid Maasai villagers trying to protect the animals on their communal land. Asked if government agents are involved in poaching, Bujiku flashes a big smile, and says: "I think I don't know."
But then he notes that the army, the Tanzania People's Defense Force, has a camp just up the hill, and he pulls out a recent poaching report.
On Jan. 20 an army sergeant was caught helping to transfer a tusk. The report shows a man in army fatigues sitting cuffed in the back of a truck. Beside him sits curved tusk.
"A lot of the junior game scouts in wildlife division and junior police officers are involved," said Patel, the safari operator.
"For elephants to be shot at the magnitude they are being shot at, being able to have the ivory transferred from game reserves to port, being shipped to the Far East - it's not the guy at the village level that has the capability. It goes all the way to customs, Tanzania Revenue Authority, Port Authority. It needs influence and influential people."
Anti-poaching units hired to patrol private reserves have found text messages between poachers' phones and government officials, Patel said. "Game scouts, poachers and security forces are all talking to each other. Orders were being placed. Orders were being fulfilled. Accomplices were brought in. The transport of the goods from the source to the city was being facilitated at a high level," Patel said.
At last month's gathering in Thailand of signatories to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya were threatened with sanctions, along with Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and China. Those countries now must implement a detailed plan of action to stop ivory sales.
A CITES-led project that monitors about 40 percent of Africa's elephant population estimated that 17,000 elephants were illegally killed in 2011 and that the 2012 number was probably the same or more.
About 70 years ago, up to 5 million elephants are believed to have roamed sub-Saharan Africa. Today fewer than a million remain. Much of the harvested ivory ends up as small trinkets.
Kagasheki, the wildlife minister, said Tanzania is working to reverse the problem.
"I'm optimistic that we'll eventually get there," he said. But he worries "that we may get there when of course big damage has already happened to the wildlife, something we are desperately trying to avoid."
Chimps Communicate Like Passionate Italians
Eavesdropping on chimpanzees in captivity shows they
communicate through a mix of emphatic gestures and vocalizations.
Rejected lambs adopted by goat
Two lambs rejected by their mother
have been adopted by a female goat. The birth mother of the twin Manx sheep would not feed them when they were
born two and a half weeks ago.
But Geraldine the golden Guernsey goat treats the Manx sheep as her own offspring - even letting them drink her milk. The unusual family-of-three live at White Post Farm in Farnsfield, Nottinghamshire, where staff said they are a strange sight.
Anthony Moore, one of the farm managers, said: "It took a little while but it's amazing how well they have bonded. We were bottle feeding them but we were very keen for them to have a mum so thought we would give Geraldine a go at being a sheep. She's such a relaxed goat we thought we would give it a try."
The twins, which have not been named yet, are a girl and a boy and were introduced to Geraldine 12 days ago, for a few hours at a time to begin. Now the lambs even climb on top of Geraldine, as they would with a mother ewe. "It looks very strange seeing a little lamb on a golden Guernsey goat," said Mr Moore.
But Geraldine the golden Guernsey goat treats the Manx sheep as her own offspring - even letting them drink her milk. The unusual family-of-three live at White Post Farm in Farnsfield, Nottinghamshire, where staff said they are a strange sight.
Anthony Moore, one of the farm managers, said: "It took a little while but it's amazing how well they have bonded. We were bottle feeding them but we were very keen for them to have a mum so thought we would give Geraldine a go at being a sheep. She's such a relaxed goat we thought we would give it a try."
The twins, which have not been named yet, are a girl and a boy and were introduced to Geraldine 12 days ago, for a few hours at a time to begin. Now the lambs even climb on top of Geraldine, as they would with a mother ewe. "It looks very strange seeing a little lamb on a golden Guernsey goat," said Mr Moore.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
The Daily Drift
FYI
Carolina Naturally is read in 191 countries around the world daily.
Man, that's astronomical! ...
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
Today is Spring Astronomy Day
Don't forget to visit our sister blog!
Some of our readers today have been in:
Tbilisi, Georgia
Panama, Panama
Manila, Philippines
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Accra, Ghana
Jakarta, Indonesia
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Cairo, Egypt
Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Doha, Qatar
Tirana, Albania
Algiers, Algeria
Bangkok, Thailand
Skopje, Macedonia
Warsaw and Bialystok, Poland
Islamabad and Lahore, Pakistan
Rosebank and Cape Town South Africa
Dnipropetrovsk, Kiev and Kharkiv, Ukraine
Puchong, Kuala Lumpur, Taiping, Ipoh, Petaling Jaya and Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
Editor's Note: We're a wee bit late posted today - we spent the morning doing this:
Today in History
| 1139 | The Second Lateran Council opens in Rome. | |
| 1657 | English Admiral Robert Blake fights his last battle when he destroys the Spanish fleet in Santa Cruz Bay. | |
| 1769 | Ottawa Chief Pontiac is murdered by an Indian in Cahokia. | |
| 1770 | Captain Cook discovers Australia. | |
| 1775 | British troops begin the siege of Boston. | |
| 1792 | France declares war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia. | |
| 1809 | Napoleon defeats Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria. | |
| 1836 | The Territory of Wisconsin is created. | |
| 1841 | Edgar Allen Poe's first detective story is published. | |
| 1861 | Robert E. Lee resigns from the U.S. Army. | |
| 1879 | The first mobile home (horse-drawn) is used in a journey from London to Cyprus. | |
| 1916 | Wrigley Field opens in Chicago. | |
| 1919 | The Polish Army captures Vilno, Lithuania from the Soviets. | |
| 1940 | The first electron microscope is demonstrated. | |
| 1942 | Pierre Laval, the premier of Vichy France, in a radio broadcast, establishes a policy of "true reconciliation with Germany." | |
| 1945 | Soviet troops begin their attack on Berlin. | |
| 1951 | General MacArthur addresses a joint session of Congress after being relieved by President Truman. | |
| 1953 | Operation Little Switch begins in Korea, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war. | |
| 1962 | The New Orleans Citizens Committee gives free one-way ride to blacks to move North. | |
| 1967 | U.S. planes bomb Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War. | |
| 1999 | Two students enter Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and open fire with multiple firearms, killing 13 students and teachers, wounding 25 and eventually shooting themselves. |
Did you know ...
That Boston pols and business leaders create a fund to help victims of the marathon bombing. you can donate here
Here's one problem that goes unnoticed: suicide among the elderly
And here are the twitter handles of the senators who voted against the background check gun safety bill
About the growing threat of wingnut violence
About how Obama wants to prevent future Romneys from avoiding taxation
Did Alaskan newborns suffer repercussions from the Fukushima fallout?
Just maybe Reinholt and rogoff could use some help from Clippy to figure out how to use excel
That the fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas had no alarms, shut-off system or firewall
Here's one problem that goes unnoticed: suicide among the elderly
And here are the twitter handles of the senators who voted against the background check gun safety bill
About the growing threat of wingnut violence
About how Obama wants to prevent future Romneys from avoiding taxation
Did Alaskan newborns suffer repercussions from the Fukushima fallout?
Just maybe Reinholt and rogoff could use some help from Clippy to figure out how to use excel
That the fertilizer plant that exploded in Texas had no alarms, shut-off system or firewall
MIT student raises funds for young Boston bomb victim's family
Catherine says,
On Monday, the Boston Marathon was bombed. On Monday night I was feeling blessed and thankful to not know anyone directly affected by the bombs. But on Tuesday morning I woke up to an email from my colleague Chris Peterson at the MIT Center for Civic Media. Chris's family are friends with the family who lost their son Martin in the attack. He sent us photos of he and his brothers playing with their children and the reality was all too close. It is devastating. This family will have a long road of healing in front of them that most of us cannot even begin to imagine.
My friends at MIT and I have spent the past couple of days helping Chris build a site to raise money for the Richard family. We are coordinating with St Marks Area Main Street, a non-profit community organization based in Dorchester, MA, where the family lives. The site is made with the support of the family and their spokesperson. 100% of funds raised goes to the family. Please give what you can. It's the very least we can do to come together in solidarity with these innocent people and help them to rebuild their lives in the wake of senseless violence. In the photo on the site Martin is holding a sign he made in school that says "Peace". Let us spread that peace.
In the ultimate case of irony ...
Victims of Gun Violence Subjected to Background Checks by Senate
Message to you people from the corporate puppets of America. You can
watch the mostly repugican cowards spit in 90% of America’s faces but
calling the out will result in a background check. Don’t you dare
believe that the First Amendment applies to you, while sitting in the
Tea House or the NRA owned Senate.It’s okay to invade a woman’s privacy or personal autonomy, but hey, if you want to buy a military assault weapon your privacy matters.
After voting against expanded background checks to buy deadly weapons, our Senate added insulted to Patricia Maisch and Lori Haas, both VICTIMS of guns violence because they uttered 3 words: “Shame on you!”
Maisch and Haas, who said what sane America was thinking at the time, were promptly ushered out of the gallery. After that, they underwent more scrutiny for exercising their First Amendment rights than someone would undergo to buy a gun.
ThinkProgress reports,
As they left the Senate gallery, a police officer approached and asked them to follow him. The three walked downstairs to a public hallway, where they were peppered with questions: “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “What are your Social Security numbers?” The officer left to run a background check on the women, who were instructed to sit on a bench. Another uniformed officer watched over them, even escorted Haas to the bathroom and told her she couldn’t lock the stall door.This is reminiscent of Maria Meecham’s experience in the gallery of the House of Representatives, after two repugican Congressmen from her state high-fived, each other following a vote that denied a minor pay raise for the troops that repugicans like to use as props when professing how much they support our troops.
Words by victims of gun violence warranted a background check, but doing the same in the name of keeping deadly weapons out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have guns is seen to be an infringement on their Second Amendment rights. Corporate profits trump everything. The Second Amendment trumps the First Amendment and for that matter, our right to not be shot.
The irony wasn’t lost on Lori Haas, who told Think Progress:
“Very ironic that an hour and a half investigation into two women shouting in the Senate gallery takes place and yet real criminals and other prohibited purchasers get willy nilly access to fire arms.”In another Onionesque moment, the Voter (no)Integrity Project of North Carolina wants voters to be fingerprinted before they can exercise their franchise because it’s so much easier than voter ID and cheaper too. As for the idea that it would be an invasion of privacy (as the right wing argued against background checks to buy guns) here is their response. “ Since the name of the voter is already a matter of public record, that too would be a tough objection to deliver while keeping a straight face.”
So there it is, people. The freedom fighting corporatists think speaking warrants a background check, fingerprints should be mandatory for voting, but knowing anything about someone who wants to buy a military assault weapon – that’s treading corporate America’s freedom to profit from rapists, domestic abusers and violent criminals. In other words it’s guns over people, speech, voting, women’s personal autonomy and anything else resembling freedom for we, the people.
Viacom gets its ass handed to it again by a court in its YouTube lawsuit
For years, Viacom has been embroiled in a bizarre lawsuit
against Google, asserting that Google had a duty to figure out exactly
which videos uploaded by it users infringed on Viacom's copyrights and
stop them from showing (Viacom's internal memos showed that they
themselves had paid dozens of companies to secretly upload Viacom videos
disguised to look as leaked internal footage to YouTube, and that the
company's executives had viewed the suit as a way to seize control of
YouTube from Google and run it themselves).
Now, yet another court has told Viacom that its legal theory about the
duty of online service providers to proactively police its users'
uploads is totally, unequivocally WRONG. Viacom has pledged to appeal.
In a ruling released today, the court gave a total victory to Google/YouTube, granting it summary judgment, saying that YouTube was protected from claims of infringement via the DMCA's safe harbors, and mocking Viacom's legal theories at the same time. Might as well jump right in with some quotes, including the money quote that Viacom's legal theory is "extravagant." Elsewhere the judge calls it "ingenious."YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories
Viacom's argument that the volume of material and "the absence of record evidence that would allow a jury to decide which clips-in-suit were specifically known to senior YouTube executives" (Viacom Opp. pp. 9-10) combine to deprive YouTube of the statutory safe harbor, is extravagant. If, as plaintiffs assert, neither side can determine the presence or absence of specific infringements because of the volume of material, that merely demonstrates the wisdom of the legislative requirement that it be the owner of the copyright, or his agent, who identifies the infringement by giving the service provider notice. 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A). The system is entirely workable: in 2007 Viacom itself gave such notice to YouTube of infringements by some 100,000 videos, which were taken down by YouTube by the next business day. See 718 F. Supp. 2d 514 at 524.
Thus, the burden of showing that YouTube knew or was aware of the specific infringements of the works in suit cannot be shifted to YouTube to disprove. Congress has determined that the burden of identifying what must be taken down is to be on the copyright owner, a determination which has proven practicable in practice.
This was the crux of Viacom's argument. That because they could show a lot of infringement, and here and there point to some evidence that some people at YouTube might have known of general infringement, then the burden should be on YouTube. But the court clearly calls them on this, noting that's not what the law says, nor does it make sense. Instead, under the law, the burden is on Viacom and that makes sense.
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