Re: Canada issues levy on non-removable memory (for MP3 players)
On Jan 11, 2004, at 8:24 AM, Adam wrote: I know this story is quite a bit old, but I really have to wonder how legal this levy is. http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/news/c20032004nr-e.html The Board also sets for the first time a levy on non-removable memory permanently embedded in digital audio recorders (such as MP3 players) at $2 for each recorder with a memory capacity of up to 1 Gigabyte (Gb), $15 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 1 Gb and up to 10 Gbs, and $25 for each recorder with memory capacity of more than 10 GBs. It just seems to me to be a bit sketchy to tax intended illegal usage. I mean, that'd be like taxing condoms b/c of prostitution. Would something like this go over in the US? I wonder ... It already has, many times. Directly parallel to the Canadian tax is the tax on blank media for music recording, part of the Home Recording Act of 1991. (Or close to that year...Google for details if interested.) This tax was placed on blanks ostensibly to recompense recording artists for taped music. Less directly parallel, but certain sin taxes, are the various and very high taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, etc. And the exorbitant luxury taxes on various expensive things like certain kinds of jewelry, yachts, expensive cars, etc. And various shakedowns of casinos with special taxes, such as Schwarz nigger's demand that Indian casinos in California share their profits with the state to help with the deficit. And various collectivists and fascists have proposed taxes on ammunition, ostensibly to recompense victims for being shot. (Ignoring the fact that what it would do is penalize those who practice, shooting 200 or more rounds at a trip to the range, while having no effect on the typical gangsta negro or Mexican with less than one box of ammo to his name, but still using his piece to shoot several people. The recreational shooter ends up paying 99.9% of the tax, the gangsta pays a dollar or two per box.) The point is, the U.S. taxes what political animals call sin quite a bit. --Tim May
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
At 03:20 PM 1/11/2004, Jamie Lawrence wrote: A client/friend recently spent 9 hours in jail for failure to carry a wallet. He was doing something mildly suspicious, but not illegal. NYC has a very entrenched industry dealing with processing people the cops pick up. This has only gotten worse since Bloomberg and his quality of life racket. Breathing Without ID is essentially a crime that costs a day of your life, not less than ~$200, and a lot of humiliation. I thought the San Francisco cops were bad, before I moved here. (My friend was even told by the cops what to expect, and how best to optimize for getting out quickly. Kafka would have trouble doing better.) There was a mildly publicized incident in another part of Brooklyn recently where someone was ticketed after their child's balloon popped in public. A noise infraction. Quality of live, indeed. There are no quotas, but if you don't meet them, you're on report. This is one of the 'applications' for Zombie Patriots. Set up those practicing tyranny under color of the law for a quick trip to the coroner. Bring the fun of Hammas to New York. How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? --Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Steve Furlong wrote: I've occasionally handed out pamphlets on jury nullification outside the local county courthouse. Never been arrested for it, but I've caught a raft of shit from cops. Have you done this since 9/11? I know that in my [red]neck of the woods, I would without question be spending a few days in the system for this. Interestingly, the first nullification pamphlet I ever received was from a cop I know: he was also handing these out at one time (a lnggg time ago). Not all LEAs are without clue, just the vast majority of them :-( -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unbridled nationalism, as distinguished from a sane and legitimate patriotism, must give way to a wider loyalty, to the love of humanity as a whole. Bah'u'llh's statement is: The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. The Promise of World Peace http://www.us.bahai.org/interactive/pdaFiles/pwp.htm
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 14:18, Steve Schear wrote: Did you carry and present ID? No. Once it was requested (strongly requested, just short of a demand with threats), but when I demanded his justification he backed down. In NY, at least at the time, citizens were not required to carry or present ID, nor identify themselves on demand without cause. I believe that is no longer the case.
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
At 06:53 PM 1/10/2004, Steve Furlong wrote: On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 19:02, J.A. Terranson wrote: What good is a Jury when the judge can pick and choose which arguments and evidence you can provide in support of your case? I've occasionally handed out pamphlets on jury nullification outside the local county courthouse. Never been arrested for it, but I've caught a raft of shit from cops. The cops were acting, presumably, under direction from the judges or maybe the DA. Those guys just hate jurors thinking for themselves, you know. Did you carry and present ID? steve
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Jan 11, 2004, at 11:18 AM, Steve Schear wrote: At 06:53 PM 1/10/2004, Steve Furlong wrote: On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 19:02, J.A. Terranson wrote: What good is a Jury when the judge can pick and choose which arguments and evidence you can provide in support of your case? I've occasionally handed out pamphlets on jury nullification outside the local county courthouse. Never been arrested for it, but I've caught a raft of shit from cops. The cops were acting, presumably, under direction from the judges or maybe the DA. Those guys just hate jurors thinking for themselves, you know. Did you carry and present ID? steve I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery. When I was surrounded by some cops who accused me of planting a bomb to blow up Reichsminister Clinton and his family, I refuse to show them some ID. I also refused to let them look in my bag. Despite their bluster, they had no grounds for their belief, no grounds for a Terry stop search of my papers, and no grounds to arrest me. So they neither searched my papers forcibly nor arrested me. They did, however, order me to leave the grounds of Stanford University, almost making me late for a talk before Margaret Rader's cyberspace law class, scheduled long, long before the First Fascist scheduled _his_ trip to Stanford. --Tim May
Re: Canada issues levy on non-removable memory (for MP3 players)
Adam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would something like this go over in the US? I wonder ... We allow congress to tell us that we can't have VCRs that don't respect Macrovision. I'm sure the sheeple would have no problem paying reparations for imaginary theft of imaginary property. -- Riad Wahby [EMAIL PROTECTED] MIT VI-2 M.Eng
Re: US Finally Kills The 2nd Ammendment
On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 13:57, Tim May wrote: I don't know if he did, but of course there is no requirement in the U.S. that citizen-units either carry or present ID. Unless they are driving a car or operating a few selected classes of heavy machinery. Many states do have laws allowing the police to detain a person for a period of time (varies by state) to ascertain the identity of that person, if they have reasonable suspicion that they are involved in a a crime. I'm not aware of any laws that specifically require a person to actually carry ID, but when I was stopped in NV several years ago, walking back to my home from a nearby grocery store at about 3am, supposedly because a 7-11 nearby had just been robbed, I was told that if I did not present a valid state ID I would be arrested, taken to the precinct HQ, fingerprinted, and held until I could be positively ID'd. The constitutionality of these laws are being challenged. In Hiibel vs. NV, Hiibel refused 11 times to identify himself to police before he was arrested (illegal under NV statute). The NV Supreme Court has upheld the law, with a few dissents: The dissent then pointed out that the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court not only upholds the right to refuse to provide identification to an officer before arrest, but has specifically found Nev. Rev. Stat. B' 171.123(3) unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The dissent opinion criticized the majority for reflexively reasoning that the public interest in police safety outweighs Hiibel's interest in refusing to identify himself, noting that no evidence exists that an officer is safer for knowing a person's identity. What the majority fails to recognize, the dissenting opinion continued, is that it is the observable conduct, not the identity, of a person, upon which an officer must legally rely when investigating crimes and enforcing the law. The US Supreme Court has agreed to review and is scheduled to hear arguments this year. http://www.epic.org/privacy/hiibel/default.html --bgt
