Posts by Moz
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Up Front: In Committee, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Snort, we are talking about a political party being ... embarrassed??????
Anthropomorphicistically speaking, yes.
Although picturing the National Party as a person does make my head hurt, I admit. Especially trying to think of it as the sort of person who could be embarrassed.
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Up Front: In Committee, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Lacking the courage of one’s nastiness does not make one nice.
I think that's a great summary, as well as a good response to make on the spot.
I do find that summarising someone's remarks back to them can be a useful way to point out the problem. The usual response is "no, no, that's hateful, that's not what I said"... "well no, I don't disagree with the content of the summary, but I don't like the tone". Which is when I break out the nasty. The refine, polite nasty, but the nasty all the same.
I am so grateful that there are polite and reasonable people pushing this on my behalf. The days when I could just suck up the awful seem to have gone, these days I find that I get really stressed and unhappy dealing with it. Must be time to send a thank you card to Kevin, I think.
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Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Graeme, the charge is normally producing it, not showing to an under-18. Although that would be one of the alternative charges available. You'd get laughed at, I suspect. Convicted of showing a photo of yourself undressed...
Just to make it clear: I said child porn because R18 material is normally called porn, and there's not a clear legal boundary AFAIK between "porn featuring people under 18" and "child porn".. But whatever you want to call it, legally it's frowned on.
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Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
If a bus driver gets disciplined and it doesn't end up at the employment tribunal or in criminal proceedings, then it's a confidential employment matter with the bus company, right?
Depends very much on the situation. It's definitely not a firing offence for the driver to tell her spouse that she's been disciplined at work.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'd be more likely to subscribe here than click an ad, I find that even the affiliate links on author sites are usually something I notice after I buy their book, rather than something that I either see and click or seek out. The ones that work for me are the "my new book is now available _here_" ones. Or, more usefully, when I'm shopping for books I get to the end stage and go "what haven't I looked for" and that's when the Stross and Scalzi blogs pop up in my head and I type their names into the search thing. Which, incidentally, is largely because the publishers are still struggling with the idea that people outside the US should be permitted to buy their books (I know the reasons, I just think they're stupid).
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The Victorian situation is mildly convoluted but I think worth describing. Few politicians are silly enough to come right out and say "I want a lifetime ban from being on school grounds for any teenager who takes a photo of her breast", but somehow they have built that legal arrangement.
The deal is this: it is an offence to produce or disseminate photos of people under 18 when those photos would be classified as R18 by the censor. Obvious enough. The maximum penalty for that is 5 years jail, because bulk distribution of child pron is bad. Also obvious. There's a register of sex offenders, because if we have a list it's easier to check that people applying to work in schools are not on it. Anyone convicted of a sexual crime that has a max sentence of two or more years goes on the register. You can't get off the register, obviously.
Victoria has a police check system that's used for mildly-sensitive roles, called the "working with children check" (http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/workingwithchildren/ ). It covers more than you'd expect, specifically anyone who volunteers at an event where school kids go as part of their school activities (ScienceWorks, for example). So there have been times when I have refused to volunteer because I object to that system - paying the police for a half-arsed check, so I can volunteer for an afternoon? Shove that.
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Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
To be fair Moz is from Australia, now I look, so I’m being a bit devious in my restatement.
Necessarily so, in this case. There is indeed a register in Victoria at least, and there are a number of teenage sexters on it who are trying to get off. The stupid consequences of some of these laws are under active attack, partly because it's hard to get the average person to accept that a: the law is that silly; and b: anyone cares. The answers are of course it is and yes they are required by law to care. One recent example is a gentleman who was convicted in the 1950's of having consensual gay sex and has spent much of his life trying to avoid being put in a position where he has to disclose that he is consequently a registered sex offender. Sucks to be him, yes?
I suspect but don't know that there are similarly stupid laws in NZ (sex offenders working in schools strikes me as something there's likely to be laws against, for example, and I'm not certain that all past offences that are now considered unreasonable have been spent). I haven't lived in NZ for ~15 years. I do occasionally spend long enough in the country to qualify as a voter, however. I suspect I am a known letter writer in a number of MP's offices, and submit on bills occasionally. If there's a campaign to allow overseas-resident citizens to vote, or overseas electorates I'll support it.
It's not common for a bill legalising something to also say "and past convictions are retroactively annulled".
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Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I don't think argument-from-Daily-Mail is exactly the best way of establishing a broad social consensus for renegotiating privacy and openness.
I don't think is a good way to proceed either. I thought your objection was that people do actually value privacy much more than their behaviour indicates. In which case, I think you're wrong, and how people behave is exactly how we should discover their values. Doing otherwise leads to stupid outcomes, like removing speed limits because people say they never drive too fast for the conditions.
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Hard News: MegaBox: From f**k-all to zero, in reply to Russell Brown,
Try not to get too high and mighty about it. Ad-bloacking's not exactly a highly-committed form of protest.
It's not a protest against you, it's a protest against Kim DotCom and his ilk. I assume you don't see yourself in that camp. But then, I also assume you look at what the common ad-blockers block and actively work around them. Or at least, I see the "ads by scoop" text and "Onya's" image on this page.
And it's not a particularly committed form of protest, no. I've done the latter, and arguably still do - every time I ride my bike as transport I'm putting my life on the line for what I believe is right. But just because not spending time consuming advertising isn't a huge impost (it's a benefit) does not mean it's not worth while, or that I shouldn't do it.
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Legal Beagle: The hopeful disallowance…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
I think the idea that the public is on board with radical openness / lack of privacy (however you want to put it) is pretty far ahead of the facts
I suggest looking at what people do rather than what they say puts the lie to that. TV programs that advertise privacy violating content find more viewers, social media postings that do the same are widely echoed, people hand over huge volumes of personal information in return for trivial benefits, and so on. People mostly become concerned with privacy when they want it for themselves, and even then their desires are extremely narrow.
One blatant example s the laws about pron. In theory it's illegal to publish sexually explicit photos of a person under the age of 18. It leads automatically to registration as a sexual offender. Which is pretty awful when schoolkids are found sharing sexts... almost as though the law is wildly out of step with social expectations.