I have a Bachelor's in Law and a Master's in Law (major criminal law, minor international and European law). Currently getting a second specialised Master's in IT and IP law, then hopefully a doctorate.

Quote from: Flee on October 02, 2015, 04:39:37 AM

I don't even want to go on B.net or any other forum and see the dozens of "but criminals don't follow laws"

Because they don't.

Well yeah, of course criminals per definition don't follow laws. A criminal is someone who has commited a crime and broke a penal law. No one in the right mind would argue that.

"Criminals don't follow laws" is a completely empty statement. It's about as useful of a contribution to this debate as "drivers are people who drive" or "pilots are people who fly airplanes".

The problem with that statement is the message that it's trying to convey. It's a hollow statement looking to appeal to people who get their political beliefs of a bumper sticker and fall for every seemingly powerful and deep message that is actually as shallow as they come and lacking in any nuance.

The idea behind this particularly poor argument is that criminals don't follow any of these laws to begin with, so having any sort of gun control would only hurt and affect the good law-abiding citizens who do follow them while criminals will just keep going at it, continuously commiting crimes that are now made even easier because there's no more good guys with guns to stop them.

In reality, as anyone with some knowledge on this subject would be able to tell you, this is absolutely not true. Looking at all the tons of available evidence on a global scale, gun reforms result in sharp declines in firearm deaths almost immediately afterwards. "Some criminals obey some laws of the time" is the whole premise of law enforcement and criminal law. It comes as no surprise that "even imperfect efforts to restrict gun availability to high-risk people can reduce illegal gun use on the margin, even if these regulatory barriers can be overcome in a number of ways by those who are determined to obtain a gun."

Your whole premise is a plain tautology that adds nothing to this discussion at all. You can use it to address any law. Why should we make rape, fraud or murder illegal? The good, law-abiding citizens who are sound of mind and have a prope rmoral compass are not going to commit those actions anyways, while the "evil" people or criminals will not follow the laws. Why limit others by having traffic regulations? The responsible people will drive responsibly and carefully anyways, while the rulebreakers will still speed and ignore traffic lights. It's just limiting the good people and would not stop anyone who wants to go 150mph down a local road from doing so in the first place.

It has been shown time and time again that laws work. They are the basis of our society. Even when some people don't, it both deters people from stepping into criminality and already existing criminals with prior facts from getting in even more trouble. It won't step everyone, of course, but it undeniably helps.

For some more sources and analysis of this issue, see: this, this, this and that.

"WeShouldBePlayingADecentGame"

Just a quick survey to see how many (if any) of you guys would be interested in me doing some general posts about law stuff.

The academic year has started again and I'm getting back into a more legal mindset after ignoring all this stuff over the summer. As such, I'm regaining interest in reading and writing about some of the stuff that I don't think is too boring. I had the idea of doing some informative posts on this before, but never really got around doing it due to a general lack of interest and time constraints.

So basically: would you people be interested in me doing some general threads talking about certain legal things and law stuff. Most of it would have to be pretty general or with an international focus as I doubt many here would be interested in me going over the details of Belgian law and because I'm not that into UK or US law, but there's still a bunch of rather interesting things to talk about.

Some of the things that came to mind are the differences between the main western legal systems (inquisitorial >< adversarial), judicial activism, international criminal law, cybercrime, the difference between copyright/trademark/patent and how they work, encryption and the law, human rights, criminal law, privacy and data protection, piracy, software and open source protection, international private/public law, diplomacy, space/sea law, the death penalty, international organizations and so forth.

tl;dr is anyone interested in me doing the occasional series on certain interesting topics of law as a general introduction or informative overview?

Seems like a strange place to put your maganize.

Quote from: Flee on October 01, 2015, 04:31:33 AM

Quote from: BaconShelf on October 01, 2015, 04:07:27 AM

bungie be like:

crashing this forum



with no survivors!

According to their (albeit pretty suspicious) stats, 99% of the active forum community has some time put into Destiny. If that's true, their activity won't change much.

I wouldn't really be surprised. They've spent almost three years now driving away their old community.

Yeah, I know. The 99% statistic just seems strange and randomly convenient.

Ver-BUH-tim.

bungie be like:

crashing this forum



with no survivors!

According to their (albeit pretty suspicious) stats, 99% of the active forum community has some time put into Destiny. If that's true, their activity won't change much.

Thank you for the extra perspective. I've decided to go ahead and speak with an advisor to change my concentration during registration for next semester.

The Bar Exam is the only thing that really scares me about a law degree, but it's reassuring to know that I would have other choices to fall back on.

Alright, best of luck to you. I hope you'll find your way. Feel free to hit me up if you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer what I can.

And yeah, plenty of people working good jobs with a law degree without ever taking the bar exam or becoming a full lawyer. It's one of the many perks of such a versatile degree.

Quote from: Flee on September 30, 2015, 05:04:34 PM

27.

What the fuck why?

Aren't you a black guy from Iran who travelled the deserts for a few decades before ending up stuck in London on a terrorist watch list while working for some company? Anything younger than 27 would just be unrealistic.

Yeah, I've seen you around. Welcome to Sep7agon. Give the rules a read and enjoy yourself. Also, bring some friends. The more the merrier.

When did they do this? I tried earlier to recreate an account and got that.

Earlier today.

But yeah, spreading the word on B.net now is a pretty good idea. Might be worth discussing a larger initiative, but you're all free (and as of now officially encouraged to too) to spread the word of salvation in these most troubling times.

I'm also going to take this opportunity to point out that serious harassment, especially that concerning legitimate personal information, is still against the rules and will be dealt with accordingly. Some jokes and jabs are fine, but genuine harassment will not be tolerated.

Do stay. You're a good guy to have around.