fatdog789

This is quite possibly the stupidest, most non-sensical article about "reforming" the legal system that I've ever read. And I've read some really stupid stuff.

The guy spends half the article saying why arbitration doesn't work...and then proposes a system based on arbitration as the solution to our woes.

It's not true in the legal field. Clients demand very specific breakdowns of hours worked, down to the specific issue researched/briefed/discussed, and will refuse to pay for fluff work. In the public sector end of the legal field, there's just too much work to take a break, especially in the DA and public defender offices.

Don't trust a CEO.

Collusion is always illegal when it's anti-competitive, whatever the size of the participants of the collusion. The key point to take away though, is that the authorities are unlikely to enforce antitrust laws against minor/negligible market participants. However, as little as 2% combined total market share has been enough to justify enforcement of antitrust laws for collusion.

You seem to be confusing state law with federal law, and how preemption applies.

Banks are governed first and foremost by state law. State banking laws are very easy to adhere to. State/local banks do not have to be FDIC insured.

HOWEVER, once the state tries to offer services over state lines (to out-of-state customers, or out-of-state locations), then federal laws kick in. (Federal laws automatically kick in if a bank reaches a certain size.) Federal laws also apply to transactions between banks, where either bank is subject to federal laws (or if one bank is in a different state from another).

Finally, you vastly overestimate the lobbying prowess of national banks. Local/state banks have significantly more influence with politicians b/c they are in-state institutions (i.e., profits get taxed by that state; their executives are local businessmen instead of New Yorkers).

They do have an existing, simple standard to transfer money. It's called ACH, and it's been around for decades. It works quite well.

ATM fees should not be run by separate companies -- then you'd have a company that would need to profit off ATM transactions, instead of using them as a loss leader, which means higher fees and more of them.

Credit cards can't be run by non-banks, b/c they are loans, and state and federal law limits the institutions that can issue variable-size loans.

Furthermore, the OAuth system would not work. Period. A customer being able to cut off the card issuer's access to their account? You would never get any card issuer to agree to use the system, because of the enormous potential for fraud (run up the bill, cancel the issuer's access before payment). BTW, you can already manage your card's limits -- just use the online portal, or call your company.

Finally, advertising is an overrated business model. Believe it or not, at some point, you need to make money off an actual valuable service or product. As mentioned above, transaction fees would need to be jacked up (for the institution to make money), eliminating any reduced costs benefit to consumers.

"Dr. Albert Schweitzer examined over 10,000 traditionally-living natives in Gabon (West Africa) in 1913 and did not find cancer. Later, it became common in the same population as they began "living more and more after the manner of the whites." "

Well, there's your problem. They didn't find a lot of things back in 1913, and the ability to detect cancer back then was about as advanced as their ability to detect neutrinos. All of the studies cited are more than 40 years old, with questionable methods or tools used.

No, they couldn't, without violating their fiduciary duties to the other members of the credit union.

It's not enough that the mixtapes "imply" free release. You actually have to get permission from the artists (and songwriter), or you're fucked. Statutory damages are in the hundreds -- per song.

BTW, grooveshark's model was not to pass liability onto the users. It charges premium subscriptions, and sells ads, and uses that money to pay the web-music license to the music licensing corporation.

Monetization is possible, using Amazon affiliate links. Just be aware that if you don't seek permission, you're liable for every penny you earn (regardless of costs), plus the above mentioned statutory damages.

EDIT: note that for songs distributed by a major label, the artist may not own the copyright, so you may have your work cut out for you. The easiest way to avoid the hassle of getting individual permission for each song is to sign a licensing agreement with the music licensing corporation. The most expensive way to go would be to do nothing at all, since the record labels will go after you if they think there's any money to be got.

No. Phone numbers are unique. Names are decidedly not unique. Every look in a phone book for John Smith?

A .tel domain may be great for the first person to get a popular .tel name, but it sucks for everyone else. And for that reason alone, it has no chance of replacing a telephone book.

Also, it is an expensive, proprietary, unscalable solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

It's generally applied where a 2/3/supermajority would normally be required for approval of organization-altering decisions -- a drag along allows a simple majority to force approval.

The concept is taken from partnership law, where dissolution can be forced upon all partners even if only a handful of partners vote for it -- the partnership assets are liquidated and the proceeds distributed.

A drag along basically forces the organization to liquidate if the majority shareholders want to -- and prevents the minority shareholders from taking any steps to challenge it.

Drag along provisions are generally unenforceable in America if they prevent the minority shareholders from filing court action to challenge the transaction, or otherwise prevent minority shareholders from exercising rights under the law or under the contract which are not expressly waived in the language of the drag-along provision itself.

It was tested on rats, so the type of fat probably doesn't matter (in regards to the effect on rats), since rats are more capable of handling and neutralizing the effects of bad fats than humans are.

EDIT (quoted from the comments by the author) "AND MORE INFO FROM DR. MURRAY:

This particular study didn’t look at any specific fat types, but used a fairly normal mix of saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, as well as long chain and medium chain fatty acids. The readers are absolutely right that not all are likely to be equal, so we are carrying out further studies to flush out the real culprits. My own feeling is that the long chain fats are the worst offenders when it comes to decreasing metabolic efficiency, with medium chain fatty acids (such as those in coconut oil) possibly being less detrimental."

You forget that the corporation usually pays for staffing costs of the workers who created this work, plus overhead, plus promotional expenses, and possibly even entered into contracts on the basis of the work.

A corporation spends more money to create a creative work, so its actual damages are significantly more -- why should it be forced to swallow those other costs? (Even staffing costs are damages b/c those costs could have gone into some other endeavor).

Furthermore, work created for profit receives greater protection precisely b/c of the money interest involved -- if the work was created for free, the presumption is that the creator didn't carry about money, and so is not harmed much by infringement.

IOUs are not currency, and so no government body is compelled to accept them as payment...including the government body which issued them.

Private entities are not regulated by the constitution, which is why you can have tokens and gaming chips as legal tender in arcades and casinos.

No, you can't.

The 5th amendment right to avoid self-incrimination only extends to testimony. A search warrant can compel you to furnish the contents of a safe (as property, it is governed by the 4th amendment -- due process is all that is required, and in this case, the process of getting a search warrant is all that the Constitution requires).

IE6 still has more market share than Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Conqueror combined...as measured amongst the population most likely to use alternative browsers. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

By federal law, they cannot prevent consumers from joining class actions. However, they can in some states.

Also, there's a difference between an illegal contract (which is a nullity and for which no remedies are available in case of a breach) and an unenforceable contract (which may still be enforceable under theories of unjust enrichment, promissory estoppel, etc). A contract to do something illegal is an illegal contract. A contract with unconscionable (per se unfair) terms is usually an unenforceable contract.

With apple products, it's more about what you can't do with the products that makes them special.

Not being able to use flash is a feature....somehow.

Inaccurate title, and most of the underlying article is disproven conjecture.

Flagged as FUD.

Case law is very rarely discrete; the point of case law is that the law is not and should not be mechanically applied.

Case law arises from the chancery courts of England, where the primary goal of the court was to do what was "fair", rather than simply what the law said.

Law cannot be inconsistent. If one law is inconsistent with another, one or both gets struck down.

Most of the problems with the law are in the ambiguous edge/border scenarios that were not foreseen at the time the law went into effect, for example, b/c the law has been extended by practice or case law.

Also, most law is applied more like fuzzy logic than like discrete logic -- a judge has a set of factors, each of which he may weigh separately, in reaching a decision.

Or you know, you could just change the law to eliminate their positions.

No blood, no mess, no silly truther-type calls for revolution.

The RC has been out for a few months now, and that problem hasn't shown up. The Beta has been out for almost a year now, and that problem has not shown up.

I believe he met domestic mass violence, i.e., riots.

The only major US riots of the past few years are the LA and Detroit race-riots, neither of which was related to overarching policy.

WorldMate is well-known for its WinMo/Blackberry application.

I'm surprised that they ported it to the iPhone, given the almost complete lack of business users on that platform.

"so that marginal black people could have those positions." In the first half of the 1900s, it was legal for government-funded schools to deny academic positions to qualified students based on race. Until the 1990s, it was legal for private institutions to bar students based on race.

Affirmative action isn't about giving up the bottom 10% to unqualified minorities. It's about giving qualified candidates an opportunity they would otherwise have been denied. If the institution chooses to waste those spots on unqualified minority applicants, it's the fault of the institution and not affirmative action in general.

BTW, you appear to be conflating welfare with affirmative action in #1, 2, and 3. They aren't even remotely the same thing.

Punitive damages are awarded for intentionally injurious behavior. They are not required to match up to actual harm -- they are intended to punish and to encourage the defendant to avoid future injurious behavior.

Punitive damage case law is inapplicable to compensatory damage cases (statutory damages are compensatory, not punitive).

It's like crime: if you commit a crime, you waive due process in regards to the formula used to determine what sentence you serve. Your only protection is what the people, via the legislature, has determined is a fair formula for determining sentencing.

BTW, you should check your case law. Statutory damages have always been upheld by the courts.

The more prepared you are, the less likely you will go to try. I spent a week preparing to depose the opposing party -- 15 minutes before it started, he offered us close to what we sued for.

You clearly don't understand what statutory damages are.

Statutory damages are not punitive damages. Statutory damages are compensatory damages, for when calculation of actual harm is impossible or practically so, though harm clearly exists. Here -- it's clear that the record company lost some money from the defendant's file sharing eating into sales, but how much?

Statutory damages are the only compensatory damages that are allowed to account for the legal costs of pursuing action. Attorney's fees are not awarded as part of compensatory damages, and are usually are only available for intentional torts. Finally, Statutory damages are in lieu of all other compensatory damages, and judges will rarely if ever grant punitive damages alongside a statutory election.

In response to your arguments above: Philip Morris is a punitive ("make an example of") damages case. It only applies to punitive damages. It does not apply to compensatory damages.

A Business Associate Agreement nothing to address the SOX requirements, which apply to more companies. "Google ate our documents" is not a defense to SOX filing and reporting requirements.