Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> That's how it looked to me - you started with a topic about how not being 
> allowed to post materials you don't have rights to is "censorship"

  I must have early dementia because I don't remember that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:17:13 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> That's how it looked to me - you started with a topic about how not
>> being allowed to post materials you don't have rights to is
>> "censorship"
> 
>   I must have early dementia because I don't remember that.

Just go back and read the earlier parts of the thread, that's what I did.

Jim

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Warp wrote:
>   What I really don't understand is that China is *supposed* to have some
> kind of communist (or similar) government, yet you couldn't see that there
> *at all*.

Well, they went from feudalism to communism. They no longer bind women's 
feet, nor do they disallow women from learning to read. Taxi drivers all 
have little statues of Mao where Americans would be putting St Christopher.

> enormous amounts of beggars living in underway passages (literally!) which
> didn't look like they owned anything else than the rags they were wearing.

I didn't see any of that in the cities. Indeed, I noticed that there 
were *no* homeless or beggars.  (I lie. I think I was once in six weeks 
asked for some money by a little old lady outside a temple in center 
city.)  Out of curiousity, where and when was this that you saw it?

A fair amount of poverty, and a large number of people fighting to make 
enough money at what I'd call menial jobs (selling produce in the open 
markets, etc), but I didn't see anyone that looked like they had no 
place to call home.

I saw a number of communities where jobs consisted of (for example) 
picking the usable bricks out of a demolished building's rubble, or 
washing clothes on rocks, while the city a couple miles away had a 
half-billion-dollar tourist attraction being built (which one could 
argue is a good allocation of funds, anyway). A few places where the 
people didn't have glass in the windows.  So yeah, there's still a lot 
of poverty around outside the cities.

I'm pretty sure I heard the government goes out of its way to make sure 
everyone has a home. You might wind up in a city you didn't want to be 
in, but you'll have a roof over your head. Again, whether it's true or 
not, successful or not, I couldn't say.

>   If China is supposed to be some kind of communist nation, from what
> I saw it doesn't work at all.

My understanding is that it's vastly superior to what it was (say) 75 
years ago, and steadily improving. Whether the people I know who live 
there really have a 100% grasp on this, given the government control of 
the media, is another question. It certainly seems like the government 
is trying to do a good job, unlike some of the other places where it's 
clear the government couldn't care less if everyone died, as long as the 
cronies get theirs.

Of course, the problem with a benevolent dictatorship is that it turns 
into the other type all too easily, and then you're pretty well screwed. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > enormous amounts of beggars living in underway passages (literally!) which
> > didn't look like they owned anything else than the rags they were wearing.

> I didn't see any of that in the cities. Indeed, I noticed that there 
> were *no* homeless or beggars.

  It seemed to depend on which part of the city you were. Beggars seemed
to frequent only some parts of the city.

> Out of curiousity, where and when was this that you saw it?

  A couple of years ago we went to Beijing. There were many places which
were full of beggars who were very persistent and wouldn't leave you alone.
For example outside the gates of the Forbidden City was one such place
(although not the worst).

  But there were people living in underway passages etc.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   It seemed to depend on which part of the city you were. Beggars seemed
> to frequent only some parts of the city.

I can believe that. Maybe they get in more trouble if they hang out 
where the tourists are, which is usually where the beggars get more 
money in this country.

>   A couple of years ago we went to Beijing. There were many places which
> were full of beggars who were very persistent and wouldn't leave you alone.

Huh. I was there for a couple weeks, including all around center city, 
and I didn't see anything like that. Mind, I wouldn't be surprised if 
they were arrested and taken somewhere else so they'd stop bothering the 
tourists. :-)

I'll ask relatives if they run into such.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Am Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:23:12 -0800 schrieb Darren New:

> scott wrote:
>>>> Publishing derogatory comments, especially when generalising about a
>>>> certain group of people is a very dangerous thing to do,
>>>
>>> No it's not.  It's *words*.
>> 
>> Try telling that to a newspaper editor!  They can't go publishing
>> things like I suggested without risking being sued or having some fine.
> 
> Well, if you lie about someone in a way that damages their reputation,
> yes. But that's not we're talking about. Certainly newspaper editors can
> (for example)
> 
> In theory, you're allowed to say anything that's true. "It's my opinion
> that ..." is true, since you've stated it as your opinion. Even if it's
> "It's my opinion fascism is good" or "it's my opinion that God hates
> you" or "I don't believe the holocaust ever happened." Which is some of
> the stuff that (for example) Germany and France don't like to hear.

Just to clarify a bit. The law in this case (§130 StGB) is against 
"Volksverhetzung" and the paragraph relating to that is:

 (3) Mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe wird 
bestraft, wer eine unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus begangene 
Handlung der in § 6 Abs. 1 des Völkerstrafgesetzbuches bezeichneten Art 
in einer Weise, die geeignet ist, den öffentlichen Frieden zu stören, 
öffentlich oder in einer Versammlung billigt, leugnet oder verharmlost. 

which translates to

(3) One will be put in jail for up to five years or get some fine if one 
publicaly or on a convention approves, denies or plays down a crime 
commited during the national socialism according to §6, 1 of the 
Völkerstrafgesetzbuch in a way, which is likely to disturb the public 
peace.

So it has to be public *and* it has to be dangerous to the public peace. 
While this may sound quite arbitrary I'm sure all terms are well (and 
probably reasonable) defined in lawyers terms.

The intention of the law is to prevent someone like Hitler ever gaining 
power again in germany by extremists positions (remember, he was 
elected). That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

> 
> The problem with suppressing such things is that people wind up not
> being able to discuss it in public, and in private people use the
> censorship as an argument that they're right.

While it is true, that Germans in generally don't like to hear it, it is 
certainly possible to state the most ridicoulus positions, if you word 
them carefully. In fact, that's what the right extremists parties (which 
are thankfully not in power) in Germany do.

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Am Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:40:37 -0500 schrieb Warp:

>> It's rational. Not what I'd think is a good idea, but rational.
> 
>   Yeah, I see how history books advocate nazism and thus should be
>   banned.
> Very rational.

They are not actually. Symbols of organisations which work against the 
constitution (and particular against freedom and democracy) are banned 
(And it has to be determined by the highest court in germany, that an 
organization is working against the constitution). However there are 
exceptions to that ban, namely §86 StGB

(3) Absatz 1 gilt nicht, wenn das Propagandamittel oder die Handlung der 
staatsbürgerlichen Aufklärung, der Abwehr verfassungswidriger 
Bestrebungen, der Kunst oder der Wissenschaft, der Forschung oder der 
Lehre, der Berichterstattung über Vorgänge des Zeitgeschehens oder der 
Geschichte oder ähnlichen Zwecken dient.

which translates to

(3) Section 1 is not valid, if the propaganda or the action is used to 
educate citizens, to defend against unconstitutional tendencies, is used 
for the art or the science, the research or the teaching, the reporting 
over processes of the events of the day or similar purposes.

History books clearly don't fall under this, if there is not a different 
problem with the book, or the judge didn't follow the law (which would a 
scandal on its own). Do you remember which case you are refering to? 
Maybe I could figure out, what was the real reasoning in that case.

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Am Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:14:55 -0500 schrieb Florian Pesth:

> Am Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:40:37 -0500 schrieb Warp:
> 
>>> It's rational. Not what I'd think is a good idea, but rational.
>> 
>>   Yeah, I see how history books advocate nazism and thus should be
>>   banned.
>> Very rational.

Actually reading the german article on that on wikipedia, it seems, that 
even the most ridiculous rulings of a judge, that was a case where 
someone printed shirts *against* national socialism (depicted on it was a 
garbage can and a swastika above it) was overruled by the next higher 
court on the grounds of that law. So all in all the law system in germany 
still seems to work ;).

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Florian Pesth wrote:
> History books clearly don't fall under this, if there is not a different 
> problem with the book, or the judge didn't follow the law (which would a 
> scandal on its own). Do you remember which case you are refering to? 

The problem is that when you let censorship go on in restricted ways, it 
gets applied in increasingly less restricted ways.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071207-german-politician-sues-unsues-wikipedia-over-nazi-symbols.html

Granted, he shouldn't have done that:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071211-german-politician-may-be-charged-over-wikipedia-nazi-dustup.html

But that doesn't help if you're already spending your money defending 
against the rancor of some politician that doesn't like you.


-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Florian Pesth wrote:
> Just to clarify a bit. The law in this case (§130 StGB) is against
 
> "Volksverhetzung" and the paragraph relating to that is:

I think there are a number of laws related, not just this. For example, 
France tried to sue Yahoo for hosting auctions of Nazi memorabilia too.
(Oh, there, see the other post.)

> The intention of the law is to prevent someone like Hitler ever gaining
 
> power again in germany by extremists positions (remember, he was 
> elected). That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Ah, so, because Hitler was bad, we're going to make sure you're not 
allowed to advocate a political leader from a similar party? In spite of 

  it being a democracy? :-)

The problem with all these sorts of things is the slippery slope, and 
the application in ways that the original authors didn't intend. That 
always happens here: the politicians pass some overly broad law, 
everyone complains it's overly broad, the politicians say "it would 
never be used in that way, that makes no sense."  And then you get 
regular people being shipped off to foreign countries because they might 

be terrorists.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Am Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:46:46 -0800 schrieb Darren New:
> The problem is that when you let censorship go on in restricted ways, it
> gets applied in increasingly less restricted ways.
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071207-german-politician-sues-
unsues-wikipedia-over-nazi-symbols.html

Well, yes, they try.

> 
> Granted, he shouldn't have done that:
> 
> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071211-german-politician-may-be-
charged-over-wikipedia-nazi-dustup.html
> 

It seemed to me, that the public in general in germany thought in that 
case, that it was ridicoulous and that it wouldn't go through - at least 
not the higher levels in the german law system. It looked like a PR stunt.

> But that doesn't help if you're already spending your money defending
> against the rancor of some politician that doesn't like you.

It's hard to compare directly to the US, because our law system is quite 
different. But in principle you don't have to spend any money if you win 
the case. AFAIK the loosing party and the state pay for your legal costs 
(including costs for taking free days of your job). The state even 
provides you with the money in advance to pay a lawyer if you can't pay 
it yourself (of course it would be claimed back, if you loose the case). 
What I mean to write is, it seems highly unlikely, that someone sues you 
out of existance as it seems it is possible in the US (Is it? You 
probably have other protections against that? Maybe on law firms, which 
specialise on that cases? I think I read that in some liability cases it 
is a real legal business and this law firms will take your case for free, 
if it is likely that it can be won.)
I don't know how well it works, but in principle it should.

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Florian Pesth wrote:
> So all in all the law system in germany still seems to work ;).

Yeah. I think I'll just stick with a place where it's OK to advocate 
what you believe in as long as you're just talking. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Florian Pesth wrote:
> It's hard to compare directly to the US, because our law system is quite 
> different. But in principle you don't have to spend any money if you win 
> the case. AFAIK the loosing party and the state pay for your legal costs 
> (including costs for taking free days of your job).

That sounds like a better system. Ours seems to encourage people getting 
their way by filing lawsuits they know they'd lose if the other side had 
the money up front to fight it.

> The state even 
> provides you with the money in advance to pay a lawyer if you can't pay 
> it yourself (of course it would be claimed back, if you loose the case). 

We do get that, even if you lose the case. Or rather, the government 
assigns a lawyer to you, which is similar but not as good.

> What I mean to write is, it seems highly unlikely, that someone sues you 
> out of existance as it seems it is possible in the US 

Yep. That's sadly possible. I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea 
on a personal level, altho of course large companies like it.

You don't get that as much with criminal cases, because the government 
has to supply a lawyer in those cases. Most people think those lawyers 
aren't as good as the ones you pay for yourself, tho.

> I think I read that in some liability cases it 
> is a real legal business and this law firms will take your case for free, 
> if it is likely that it can be won.)

This is more "we'll countersue them for sueing you, and we'll take some 
of the money you win if you win" sort of thing.

Some lawyer do "pro bono" work, which means they spend some of their 
time for free helping those who need it.

But it's by no means cheap here to defend against any sort of civil or 
criminal case that you win.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Am Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:51:13 -0800 schrieb Darren New:
> Ah, so, because Hitler was bad, we're going to make sure you're not
> allowed to advocate a political leader from a similar party? In spite of
>   it being a democracy? :-)

No, no, no ;). Basically it's just forbidden to organize a mob randomly 
murdering other people. If you lead a party which includes peoples of 
mobs randomly murdering other people, but you don't tell this people 
explicitly to murder, nothing prevents you of becoming Bundeskanzler (if 
you get elected). The NPD exists and everyone knows, that there are Nacis 
in it (and they are the mobs in Germany murdering randomly people). But 
despite the failure to forbid this party was mainly due to other reasons 
(german secret service had to many people in it) it is highly doubtable, 
if the NPD could be forbidden on grounds of that law. Actually the 
majority of current politicians right now are against forbidding them, on 
the grounds, that it would legally not go through.

> 
> The problem with all these sorts of things is the slippery slope, and
> the application in ways that the original authors didn't intend. That
> always happens here: the politicians pass some overly broad law,
> everyone complains it's overly broad, the politicians say "it would
> never be used in that way, that makes no sense."  And then you get
> regular people being shipped off to foreign countries because they might
> be terrorists.

Well, the judges in germany are very independent and if they think the 
law is overly broad and unconstitutional, they don't apply it (Ok, don't 
quote me on the technical process of that - but in practice it means 
going back to the drawing board for the politicians). If the politicians 
make unconstitutional laws they will be sacked at some point (sometimes 
it takes the highest court - but independence of that court is taken very 
seriously. While I agree, that slippery slope is a problem in a lot of 
cases (surveillance laws for example are going overboard right now) in 
general it levels out after some time if people notice that they went 
over board. BTW, I found that blog of an american law professor living in 
germany quite interesting (he also writes about general stuff, but the 
posts about the law made some differences clearer to me - for a german 
the american law system looks ridiculous at first sight. However I think 
that has mostly to do with a lack of knowledge of the details. Maybe it 
is the same vice versa.):

http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/

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Am Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:20:04 -0800 schrieb Darren New:

> Florian Pesth wrote:
>> So all in all the law system in germany still seems to work ;).
> 
> Yeah. I think I'll just stick with a place where it's OK to advocate
> what you believe in as long as you're just talking. :-)

It is here, just think how to say it first and you can express 
everything :)

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Florian Pesth wrote:
> No, no, no ;). Basically it's just forbidden to organize a mob randomly 
> murdering other people. 

Oh, same here. I don't think anyone thinks that organizing a lynch party 
should be legal. Arguing that organizing a lynch party should be legal 
is what is leagl.

> Well, the judges in germany are very independent and if they think the 
> law is overly broad and unconstitutional, they don't apply it 

They're supposed to do that here too. It winds up costing someone a lot 
of money, and everyone without money who gets involved before the law is 
overturned winds up being screwed.  Sounds like Germany has a better system.

> http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/

I'll check it out. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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