Print

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

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I'm going to grow facial hair and start wearing a beret, just in case. You can never be too sure.

[Muz]

Well, that's how law works. Turn a blind eye until you find that the lawbreaking is causing problems. Then you evoke the law. If they were evoking the law to shoo protesters then it's the protester's fault for breaking enough laws to allow them to be attacked.

Then again, you can blame the govt for giving them such a shitty economy and overpriced software that they resorted to piracy

This is barely human rights violation, because the protesters themselves have committed crimes. But it's still corruption in that they're not raiding people who support them.

[Zangi]

Selective enforcement. 
Make everyone a lawbreaker and then cherrypick by whatever criteria as you please.  Recommended by Dictators and Tyrants.

Disclaimer: Criteria may change without notice at the whim of anyone with 'authority'.

[Leafsnail]

Well, that's how law works. Turn a blind eye until you find that the lawbreaking is causing problems. Then you evoke the law. If they were evoking the law to shoo protesters then it's the protester's fault for breaking enough laws to allow them to be attacked.

Would you still have this view if you were, I dunno, arrested for jaywalking?

[Sergius]

On other news: Tetris creator thinks Open-Source is ruining the world forever!

Must be because he didn't see a cent from it. Frickin' commie.

[Zangi]

On other news: Tetris creator thinks Open-Source is ruining the world forever!

Must be because he didn't see a cent from it. Frickin' commiecapitalist.

fixed

[Sergius]

On other news: Tetris creator thinks Open-Source is ruining the world forever!

Must be because he didn't see a cent from it. Frickin' commiecapitalist.

fixed

Haven't you heard? Commies are the new capitalists. And capitalists are the new socialists.

[nenjin]

And socialists are actually now conservatives.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

This is barely human rights violation, because the protesters themselves have committed crimes. But it's still corruption in that they're not raiding people who support them.

Except of course in the cases where they didn't. Which hardly stops the government from having them raided, with microsoft's lawyers playing along.

[Muz]

Well, that's how law works. Turn a blind eye until you find that the lawbreaking is causing problems. Then you evoke the law. If they were evoking the law to shoo protesters then it's the protester's fault for breaking enough laws to allow them to be attacked.

Would you still have this view if you were, I dunno, arrested for jaywalking?

Yes, because I don't jaywalk Actually, I don't really break any laws, except maybe the occasional littering and looking at porn when I wasn't 18. But as it is, if you don't have a clean record, you shouldn't do anything political, whether it's protesting or running for office. Both politicians and non-politicians have affairs all the time, but when a politician does it, they get attacked for years even when it's violating their personal lives. A politician can't say the word 'nigger' without getting fired. There's all this BS about everyone having the right privacy and free speech, but the public isn't willing to give their leaders and idols their privacy and free speech.

A friend of mine was fined $100+ for throwing a cigarette at an undercover cop in Australia. People generally don't get fined for littering, but it was personal. I wouldn't call that human rights violation, it's breaking the law at the wrong time and place.

[Soadreqm]

if you don't have a clean record, you shouldn't do anything political, whether it's protesting or running for office.

Well, in this case, the political activists had purchased legitimate copies of Windows just in case they were raided. And presented paperwork documenting the legality of of their software to the police officers seizing the machines. The police was nonetheless able to discover illegal software on the computers, apparently without even searching them. The Russian police force is very efficient.

Also, it's kind of an unspoken (and frequently broken) rule that governments aren't supposed to harass their citizens. The police might occasionally arrest someone because he's annoying the government, or because of a personal vendetta, but it certainly isn't supposed to happen. Russia isn't winning itself any Liberty Points with these shenanigans.

[Leafsnail]

Yes, because I don't jaywalk Actually, I don't really break any laws, except maybe the occasional littering and looking at porn when I wasn't 18.

Well, there you go.  The police produce an old CCTV of you littering and decide to arrest you for it.

But as it is, if you don't have a clean record, you shouldn't do anything political, whether it's protesting or running for office. Both politicians and non-politicians have affairs all the time, but when a politician does it, they get attacked for years even when it's violating their personal lives. A politician can't say the word 'nigger' without getting fired. There's all this BS about everyone having the right privacy and free speech, but the public isn't willing to give their leaders and idols their privacy and free speech.

So, basically, if you aren't perfection incarnate, you have no right to criticise the government?

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Microsoft's response: give out free licenses to activist groups.

To prevent non-government organizations from falling victim to nefarious actions taken in the guise of anti-piracy enforcement, Microsoft will create a new unilateral software license for NGOs that will ensure they have free, legal copies of our products.

[Jackrabbit]

That's pretty funny.

[Muz]

Microsoft's response: give out free licenses to activist groups.

To prevent non-government organizations from falling victim to nefarious actions taken in the guise of anti-piracy enforcement, Microsoft will create a new unilateral software license for NGOs that will ensure they have free, legal copies of our products.

-1 Evil points for Microsoft. That's pretty cool, really. Most companies would be happy to sit around and rake in the anti-piracy money.

But as it is, if you don't have a clean record, you shouldn't do anything political, whether it's protesting or running for office. Both politicians and non-politicians have affairs all the time, but when a politician does it, they get attacked for years even when it's violating their personal lives. A politician can't say the word 'nigger' without getting fired. There's all this BS about everyone having the right privacy and free speech, but the public isn't willing to give their leaders and idols their privacy and free speech.

So, basically, if you aren't perfection incarnate, you have no right to criticise the government?

It's not that you don't have the right. You should just be prepared to get attacked below the belt. Anyway, any government realizes that doing it makes them look bad. It's just another double edged sword in the political arsenal.

But hey, I come from a country where the government accuses leading opposition politicians of sodomy, then arrests them for threatening national security (by surprise buttseksing Parliment, I assume). And where they delay compensations for decades, but pay them right before an election. What Russia is doing seems a lot more just by comparison