[PLUG-TALK] Fair Use, etc.

Wil Cooley wcooley at nakedape.cc
Thu Mar 28 01:09:01 UTC 2002


Also Sprach Craighead, Scot D <craighead.scot at vectorscm.com> on Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 04:20:10PM PST
> >I'm impressed.  I've read it and still think there are
> >things I don't understand.
> 
> I didn't say I understand every last thing, but I got most of it, as I'm
> sure you do.

Sure.  But on closer examination, one finds questions or
points one didn't see previously.
 
> No.  I'm talking about CNN and FOX News.

Ew, Fox News?  LOL  I hope no one watches Fox for anything
but laughs, maybe a little fictional drama.

> Here is where I really disagree with you and hope you will consider what
> I am saying and not just dismiss it as an arguement to rebut.  Yes it
> has been more than 200 years and we have changed technologically.
> Does that mean that the constitution is out of date and no longer
> usable?  I say no.

I agree; I don't think it's unusable and completely out of date.

> The writers of the constitution wrote it so that it could be changed
> to meet with the times.  It is all in black and white how it should
> be changed.  What we have is people trying to use to courts to
> change it without doing what is spelled out in black and white.  Why?
> Because they are in the minority and could never get the changes they
> want to the right way.

But the example you gave in the previous message was a law passed
by the popularly-elected Congress, not the courts.  More often than
not, at least for cases that receive lots of attention, it seems the
courts are the ones who strike down a Congressionally instituted law,
based on its conflict with the constitution.

> I don't believe the constitution is out of date.  The idea of free
> speech means the same thing then as it does now.  Certainly, we
> have different ways to distribute our speech, but what has changed?
> Did the founding fathers understand what a firearm was?  I think so.
> I don't think they included the second amendment for sport hunting.
> The ideas they wrote down still apply just as well.

Quite a bit has changed that potentially affects free speech and
the right to bear arms.  With advertising and mass media, "free
speech" has been used to put a good amount of "speech" in our faces.
This sort of this just wasn't possible back then, or at least,
it wasn't really done.  Could you drop propaganda leaflets over
a city from an air plane?  I suppose people could have had huge
billboards advertising toothpaste or a political party, but I don't
recall any liturature before the turn of the 20th century where it
was really prolific.

And yes, the constitution allows "arms" (I won't even try to
argue the nature of the "well regulated militia").  It doesn't say
"small arms"; it says "arms"--"instruments or weapons of offense
or defense."  Does that mean you'd support private citizens owning
tanks or nuclear warheads?  But it wouldn't really make sense
to allow private citizens to have this sort of thing.  At least,
I'd be much quicker to find a new homeland if that were the case.

Just for the sake of argument, if not for sport hunting, what is
the purpose of second amendment?

Wil
-- 
Wil Cooley                                 wcooley at nakedape.cc
Naked Ape Consulting                        http://nakedape.cc
irc.linux.com                             #orlug,#pdxlug,#lnxs
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