On Tue, 20 May 2014 09:15:39 -0400 The Wanderer <wande...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA512 > > On 05/20/2014 09:07 AM, Celejar wrote: > > > On Tue, 20 May 2014 21:47:57 +1000 Zenaan Harkness <z...@freedbms.net> > > wrote: > > > >> On 5/20/14, Celejar <cele...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >>> But this is precisely the problem with some of the dogmatic > >>> idealists here - by this logic, we should abolish criminal > >>> justice entirely, as it's virtually impossible to guarantee that > >>> "no one blameless" will ever be "persecuted": > >>> http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm > >> > >> I don't remember reading the words Slavko posted before, but the > >> way I read it is as: "we must make our best efforts to not > >> persecute blameless people" and "if blameless people are being > >> persecuted, we must make more efforts [eg with our criminal justice > >> system - to fix this problem]". > >> > >> So not abolish criminal justice, but make more efforts in this > >> system to reduce/minimize persecution/punishment of people who > >> should not be punished. > >> > >> Of course perfection cannot be achieved in reality, I agree. > > > > Of course. But while it's certainly not a zero-sum game, there's > > generally going to be a trade-off: increasing protections for > > defendants will save some innocents, at the expense of letting some > > guilty go free. The same goes for IP regulation: many of us at least > > believe that the law should balance the rights of the IP holders with > > the rights of the consumer, and insisting on absolute freedom for > > the consumer at the expense of the rights of the rights-holders is > > wrong. > > So is the other way around. > > There's a saying: > > "It is better for X guilty persons to go free than for Y innocent > persons to be punished." > > Traditionally, Y is 1 (with the accompanying change of "innocent > persons" to the singular), and I think X is something like 100 or 1000. > I present it in this form because I think it enables a valuable > question, particularly in context of the third level of quotation above: > > What numbers would you pick for X and Y, for you to accept this > statement as being true? If you take the trouble to follow the link I posted above, you'll see an entire paper - one of the most brilliantly erudite and funniest things I have ever read - devoted to that question. > I'd like to ask that question of every politician, and every police > officer, and so forth. I think it could be quite illuminating. Celejar -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20140520094500.d367f95db8860b83d6f33...@gmail.com
