[At-Large] [lac-discuss-en] GigaOM article : Louis Vuitton asks for SOPA-like seizure of hundreds of websites

Karl Auerbach karl at cavebear.com
Tue May 15 01:25:02 UTC 2012


On 05/14/2012 03:13 PM, John R. Levine wrote:
>> I thought a criminal was someone convicted of a crime by a court.
>
> No, a criminal is someone who has committed a crime.  A convicted criminal
> is someone who's been convicted by a court.
>
> Or are you saying that if I beat you to death with a rock, then ran away
> leaving insufficient clues for law enforcement to catch me, I wouldn't be
> a criminal?

That's leaping to a conclusion...

Perhaps you had justification or you are incompetent or there was a war 
going on - in which case there would have been no crime committed.

Until there has been an accusation supported by sufficient concrete 
evidence to form "probably cause" as measured by an independent and 
disinterested third party the accused should enjoy full liberty of action.

And until there has been a prompt and fair trial with due process the 
accused is merely an accused and should have full rights and protections.

Otherwise we are just laying the first bricks of iGuantanamo Bay.

What I am hearing here is that some people want a mere and naked 
accusation to cause the accused to suffer instantaneous loss of rights 
and privileges.

Yes, there have been systems of governance built that way.

But I tend to find those kinds of 
accuse-execute-and-let-god-sort-out-the-innocent systems to be somewhat 
mediaeval.

I prefer systems in which those who chose to accuse and prosecute should 
have to work to gather evidence and prove their cases *before* the 
accused is condemned and handed over to the secular branch.

	--karl--





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