Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vector]

"Don't need to intervene" is different from "do not intervene," though, and Zimmerman was told the latter IIRC.

[Max White]

So Zimmerman most likely actually did do it. In all reality, it looks to me, filtered through the lens of second hand sources through which I have been able to gather what is going on, that he did it. And yet a jury remained unconvinced? Realistically, it could be more to do with a poorly executed case, rather than racism. Stupidity before malice, and all that. I'm not saying that there was no way they found twelve racists for the jury, or even it is incredibly improbable, but I do have to concede that isn't the only possible reason why things went the way they did. This 'reasonable doubt' thing is kind of important.

I'm not ok with how things played out, based on everything I have seen this certainly looks like something went wrong and I'm very, very doubtful it was Martin who was at fault, but that doesn't mean the only conclusion is that the outcome of this specific case was influenced by a racist jury.

[Vector]

The truth is that I think that the whole smirking in court and showing no signs of remorse thing is kind of gross and an indicator that he was probably guilty, whether or not all of the "hard" signs were there.

Not saying that, if you get down to the nitty-gritty, they should have found him guilty.  But if you're going "haha I killed a dude" then that makes me feel somewhat worse about it.

[Max White]

Well yea, like I said, he most likely did it, and the smugness about it just makes me emotionally despise this guy just a little more, but frankly, I would prefer a legal system where somebodies emotions are less relevant that the evidence presented, no matter how shitty the prosecution is at their job.

[Pnx]

Well yeah, he shot the guy in the chest, nobody has denied that part... It's to what degree it was "self defence" that's in argument. It should probably be said that in fairness he apparently did come out of the situation with a broken nose and severe bruising. So I think there might be something to be said for the self defence argument, but I'm not sure how persuasive an argument it is considering the circumstances.

[alway]

On an entirely unrelated note, Apple was found guilty of being part of a conspiracy of price-fixing in the e-book market.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-its-insane-that-no-one-cares-about-apples-price-fixing-conspiracy-2013-7

E-books increased in price by a full 50% due to a conspiracy between Apple and a variety of publishing companies.

The CEOs of the publishing houses had secret dinners in the back rooms of New York restaurants to figure out how to screw Amazon and its low prices. Hachette executives were told to delete emails in case they contained evidence of the conspiracy. Jobs and his staff wanted the deal done before he died. Murdoch was in on it. Apple's Eddy Cue pursued the deal monomaniacally, pausing only to eat and sleep. And then, at the iPad launch event, Jobs gave the game away: When asked why anyone would pay $15 for a book on the iPad when Amazon sold them for $9.99, he replied  "The price will be the same."

...

With their Apple pricing deals in hand, the publishers all renegotiated terms with Amazon — which is why all the top selling books on Amazon are now nearly $14, not $9.99.

Another source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/apple-calls-e-book-price-fixing-case-bizarre-says-doj-is-being-unfair/

Most telling image, from arstechnica:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/how-apple-led-an-e-book-price-conspiracy-in-the-judges-words/
(note: Cote was the judge presiding over the case)

The agency model (along with publisher-set but capped prices of $12.99 to $14.99) made it profitable enough for Apple to open its own e-book store—so long as Amazon's prices went up, too. Apple thus devised a Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause in its contracts with publishers which "guaranteed that the e-books in Apple’s e-bookstore would be sold for the lowest retail price available in the marketplace," Cote wrote. For the publishers to charge up to $14.99 for e-books on Apple's iBooks store, they had to raise prices on Amazon's Kindle store as well by collectively forcing Amazon to accept the agency model.

Agreeing to agency models still suited the publishers' long-term interests because they wanted to "shift their industry to higher e-book prices to protect the prices of their physical books and the brick and mortar stores that sold those physical books," Cote wrote, adding that "[t]o change the price of e-books across the industry ... the Publishers would have to raise Amazon’s prices."

Random House, the largest publisher, resisted Apple's call to adopt the agency model in 2010. But the company capitulated a year later in order to get its books on the iPad.

"Apple decided to pressure Random House to join the iBookstore," Cote wrote. "As Cue wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook, 'When we get Random House, it will be over for everyone.' Apple had its opportunity in the Fall of 2010, when Random House submitted some e-book apps to Apple’s App Store. Cue advised Random House that Apple was only interested in doing 'an overall deal' with Random House. By December, they had begun negotiations, and Random House executed an agency agreement with Apple in mid-January 2011. In an e-mail to [Steve] Jobs, Cue attributed Random House’s capitulation in part to 'the fact that I prevented an app from Random House from going live in the app store this week.'"

When asked by a reporter later that day why people would pay $14.99 in the iBookstore to purchase an e-book that was selling at Amazon for $9.99, Jobs told a reporter, “Well, that won’t be the case.” When the reporter sought to clarify, “You mean you won’t be $14.99 or they won’t be $9.99?” Jobs paused, and with a knowing nod responded, “The price will be the same” and explained that “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon because they are not happy.”

With that statement, Jobs acknowledged his understanding that the Publisher Defendants would now wrest control of pricing from Amazon and raise e-book prices, and that Apple would not have to face any competition from Amazon on price.

The import of Jobs’s statement was obvious. On January 29, the General Counsel of S&S [Simon & Schuster] wrote to [Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn] Reidy that she “cannot believe that Jobs made the statement” and considered it “ncredibly stupid.”

[Max White]

I thought we all knew they were doing this when they ditched pdf, a format Apple had fully backed right up until they released their tablets, that mysteriously didn't support pdf...

[Truean]

I dunno how I feel about the whole thing. I don't like Florida's "Stand your Ground" law, but on the other hand, this exactly what a defense lawyer is supposed to do. Also, quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Zimmerman became an OJ here. Specifically, he might be held civilly liable for wrongful death to the tune of who knows how much. Different burden of proof civilly and criminally.

In an ideal world, Zimmerman would've stayed a distance away and simply observed. If the guy did do anything illegal, then he could've just acted as a witness to whatever may have happened while directing police to the scene and describing the perpetrator. That's kinda why they call it a "neighborhood WATCH," cause ... you know ... watching and not acting. It was stupid to engage somebody in your area that you don't know like that.

And frankly, all those websites put up by gun supporters about castle and "stand your ground" laws don't realize what they're doing, or at least I hope they don't because that'd be worse. Forget for a second that people advising Zimmerman of Stand your Ground won't be considered infamous like he will be for the rest of his life. Forget for a second that those sites are completely ignorant of the law and all its complexities (Zimmerman, for example, could have a Federal Government Suit for Civil Rights Violation, or Wrongful Death Claim among other things brought against him). They're telling people it is ok to perhaps kill other people.... That is a hell of a piece of advice to give isn't it? I mean wow. R...Really? Woah. I don't even. That to me is just too much to even consider telling another person. Just.... What on earth are those people thinking?

[SalmonGod]

Agreeing to agency models still suited the publishers' long-term interests because they wanted to "shift their industry to higher e-book prices to protect the prices of their physical books and the brick and mortar stores that sold those physical books," Cote wrote, adding that "[t]o change the price of e-books across the industry ... the Publishers would have to raise Amazon’s prices."

Capitalism: nullifying the benefits of technological progress since always.

[Max White]

I wouldn't say nullifying the benefits, more along the lines of redirecting. They were telling the truth when they said the wealth would trickle down, what they didn't tell us is that in our socioeconomic strata you get wealthier the deeper and more greedily you dig.

[SalmonGod]

In this case, at least, it's straight-up nullification.  Books that have practically zero physical cost to copy/distribute are priced the same as books that do have a physical cost.  That's quite plain and simple nullification of technological progress.  Why?  Because the people in position to make this happen are behaving according to capitalist motives and principles.  No other reason whatsoever.

Thinking about it a bit more, I see what you mean by redirecting.  Lower production cost + same price = more profit.  So the benefit is redirected.  Still, from most people's perspective it's things just staying the same when they should be getting better.

[Max White]

But there is still huge benefits... Just not for the consumer. That is how capitalism works, everything is for the benefit of who ever can screw the most people over, so somebody benefits, just a minority of people who tend to already have large amounts of money.

[palsch]

The whole Apple situation is a good deal more complex and basically is a matter of several giants fighting it out to shape the future direction of ebook distribution.

There was (and largely still is) only one game in town; Amazon and the Kindle. The publishers joined forces with Apple to try to break that monopoly. To do so they broke anti-trust laws and, frankly, opted into a model that was at least no better for consumer, likely worse in the short term.

This piece (from an author) on Amazon's ebook strategy outlines why they tried to attack it. The short version (all terms defined at length in the piece);

And the peculiar evil genius of Amazon is that Amazon seems to be trying to simultaneously establish a wholesale monopsony and a retail monopoly in the ebook sector.

You're probably familiar with predatory pricing. A big box retailer moves into a small town with a variety of local grocery and supermarket stores. They stock a huge range of products and hold constant promotions, often dumping goods at or below their wholesale price. This draws customers away from the local incumbents, who can't compete and who go bust. Of course the big box retailer can't keep up the dumping forever, but if losing a few million dollars is the price of driving all the local competitors out of business, then they will have many years of profits drawn from a captive market to recoup the investment. (Meanwhile, helpful laws allow them to write down the losses on this store as a loss against tax, but that's just the icing on the cake.) Once the big box store has killed off every competiting mom'n'pop store within a 50-mile radius, where else are people going to shop?

Amazon has the potential to be like that predatory big box retailer on a global scale. And it's well on the way to doing so in the ebook sector.

Amazon had/has been treating ebooks and Kindles as a loss-leader for a while. All the while they had been including (publisher mandated) DRM on those books they sold, locking readers into their formats and their readers into the forseeable future. If you are already invested in one reader type, one file format, one library, when it comes time to upgrade your reader you can't really afford to shop around. Buying that awesome new B&N reader to replace a Kindle means being unable to use your Kindle books on it, surrendering the use of that collection you have been building (obviously DRM cracks not included).

This meant, when it came to ebooks, customers were getting locked into an Amazon monopoly while the sellers were effectively only selling ebooks to Amazon in a monopsony. Amazon could dictate everything about the market. They had started dictating terms that effectively made them a sub-publisher of the ebooks, sublicensing the book to be sold as a Kindle ebook rather than buying each ebook individually from the retailer. This basically pushed publishers out of the retail chain completely. They still made money from ebooks, but that market was fully dictated by Amazon's terms and they couldn't do a damned thing about it. This is ignoring the areas where Amazon have explicitly become a publisher themselves (most obvious being Audible for audio-books).

The Apple agreement was about an agency model of ebook sales. An older piece outlining the basics (worth noting that was two years before the piece linked above and interesting to watch how his views shifted somewhat). It was always about breaking Amazon's retail model. It did so in a grossly non-competitive manner. The four chains;

Traditional: author -> publisher -> wholesaler -> bookstore -> consumer
Amazon traditional: author -> publisher -> Amazon -> consumer
Kindle/Audible: author -> Amazon -> consumer
Agency: author -> publisher -> fixed-price distributor -> consumer

The Agency model kept the publishers in the supply chain, removed the traditional wholesaler/bookstore distinction while also denying the distributor the obscene power that Amazon was grabbing.

After the lawsuit and the publishers backed down (somewhat) on the non-competitive aspects more changes were announced. The biggest has been the steady move of Macmillan away from DRM. This one move helps simply by stopping Amazon from locking (non-DRM cracking) customers into their format and readers. Someone who has a massive Kindle library of non-DRMed books can simply convert those to a new format if someone offers them a better reader. Suddenly Amazon has to remain competitive into the future, not just lock people into their marketplace and then do what the fuck they like (we can call this the Microsoft model).

As far as the agency model being bad for consumers, it's probably worth noting that both theoretically and practically the agency model generates lower prices than the wholesale model. The Amazon lower prices were loss-leader discounted prices, not reflections of a more efficient model.

[DWC]

This Zimmerman caper has been a media goat rope. They are trying to race-bait people into challenging this legal concept of 'stand your ground' self defense and conceal carry rights in general. Another attempt by politicians to appeal to people's emotions over a sensational event to pursue a political agenda.

Anyways, I suspect Zimmerman and Treyvon both made bad decisions, but Zimmerman didn't break any laws and Treyvon was pounding his head into the pavement and got scuffed up pretty badly. Treyvon had some bruising on his knuckles, besides the gunshot wound to the chest. The media really tried to distort this as much as they could. All the evidence corresponded with Zimmerman's side of the story and the prosecution was aiming for too high a conviction, 2nd degree murder. Nobody can say 'racial profile' after the prosecution's star witness is up there with all the 'creepy ass cracker' business. The defense could argue Zimmerman was attacked in a hate crime with a comment like that.

[Nadaka]

Zimmerman side of the story is that he hunted this boy down and started a fight with him. He then started to lose that fight and so he shot his victim. "Self defense" requires (or should require) that you be the defender, not the aggressor.

I am in favor of the right to defend oneself. I am in favor of the right to use potentially lethal force to do so if defending against a clear and immediate mortal threat. I am in favor of the right to use a firearm in that capacity. But it is plainly evident to me that this case does not qualify.

if z didnt follow the boy, there wouldnt be an issue.
if z stayed in his car, there wouldnt be an issue.
if z didnt confront him, there wouldnt be an issue.
if z followed police instructions, there wouldnt be an issue.
if z followed neighborhood watch policy there wouldnt be an issue.
but he did.
he broke the rules.
he disregarded the police.
he hunted this boy (because i guess its a better word than stalked).
he disregarded his own safety.
he instigated a confrontation.