Why do you assume that anyone who wants to have sex will be seeking out not only contraception, but an experimental, first-of-its-kind contraceptive?
I want to (and do) have sex and I never use contraceptives. Were I interested in curtailing the birth of my children, even before I was married, I would absolutely NOT use a drug that is brand new.
Ultimately this needs to be recognized as a convenience thing. Condoms are a very effective, extremely low-risk option. They require no modifications to your biological system and reliably prevent pregnancy (not to mention STDs).
Even drugs like "the pill", now old-school, put people at risk for scary complications that sometimes happen and significant undesirable side effects that frequently happen.
We all love science and technology and that's great, but drugs are risky, and effects are often not visible until they've been in public use for some years. There are a lot of really sad examples of this, where some widely-prescribed drug has a little-known side effect or misunderstood risk profile for some patients, and it can, and literally has, resulted in death.
One should consider the risk involved when weighing "Would I rather take five seconds to slip on a condom, or inject myself with this experimental and/or brand new drug?"
I'm sure there will be early adopters, but as someone who wants to have sex, there is no way I will be among them.
Your comment misses the point of much of the dissent revolving around the Supreme Court's decision. Aereo may very well have secondary liability for copyright infringement enabled by its services, but that was not the question brought before the court.
The question brought to the court was whether or not Aero has direct liability for copyright infringement. This direct liability is only found if Aero "volitionally" "performs" copyrighted material.
The opinion of the court uses a "looks-like-cable-TV" justification for its treatment of Aero, as Scalia (dissenting) notes:
>"The injury claimed is not violation of a law that says operations similar to cable TV are subject to copyright liability, but violation of §106(4) of the Copyright Act. And whatever soothing reasoning the Court uses to reach its result (“this looks like cable TV”), the consequence of its holding is that someone who implements this technology “perform[s]” under that provision. That greatly disrupts settled jurisprudence which, before today, applied the straightforward, bright-line test of volitional conduct directed at the copyrighted work."
Whether or not Aero has secondary liability does not matter; the Supreme Court's vague ruling destabilizes existing jurisprudence and eliminates a concrete test in favour of the immaterial "looks-like-cable-TV" criterion.
All P problems are in NP. If you can solve a problem in polynomial time, you could simply "check" the problem on an input by solving the problem and seeing if the test input were in the set of solutions. It will clearly take P time to perform that "check" (because you can solve the problem in P time). This means all problem in P must be in NP.
The error is that not all problems in NP are "extremely difficult for computers to solve". The difficulty of solving problems in NP varies drastically between particular problems.
The notion that scale is irrelevant in terms of surveillance operations fails to recognize serious issues raised by the advent of new technologies.
In the past, actual manpower has been a meaningful limit on the size of surveillance operations. The government simply cannot have every person in the country be monitored and watched. Instead - theoretically - the government only has enough resources to surveil those who it actually suspects of a crime.
These quotes, in particular, are extremely releveant.
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"And because GPS monitoring is cheap in comparison to conventional surveillance techniques and, by design, proceeds surreptitiously, it evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: 'limited police resources and community hostility.'"
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"The net result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may 'alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.'"
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In my view, this opinion sheds much needed light on how the perception that technology and scale does not influence the legality and constitutionality of government practice fails.
As a footnote, Sotomayor also discusses privacy in a digital age, and she provides a refreshing outlook on how new technologies can force a society to re-think its beliefs on the expectation of privacy.
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"More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties . . . This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks."
I guess the difference I see is this: are the drones monitoring a person watching for them to commit a crime OR are they monitoring a road looking for anyone committing a crime? I think this distinction is important and you may not. That is fine.
The cultural acceptability and effectiveness of the asking for consent is incidental to the issue at stake.
I honestly find it shocking that so many people on HN are having such difficulty accepting the principal of expressly verbalized consent. Surely we can move on from the notion that men need to "be dominant" and "force her to rebuff your advances".
While a particular culture may call for certain shifts in attitude, that does not mean verbalized consent is not important.
>I think Neil Gaiman's thoughts "Why defend freedom of icky speech" is particularly relevant here.
I think a key distinction between the subject of Gaiman's thoughts and the material at hand is that "Above the Game" purports to offer advice applicable to real word scenarios. This advice, however, will, unquestionably, lead to sexual assault if followed (not in every case, but in some).
I would certainly find it dubious for the United States Government to condemn the book, but I feel that Kickstarter's stance is defensible from the position of not wanting to be associated with such dangerous and callous material.
"While a particular culture may call for certain shifts in
attitude, that does not mean verbalized consent is not
important."
Nor does it mean that verbalized consent is important or necessary. Not all human communication is verbal.
"but I feel that Kickstarter's stance is defensible from
the position of not wanting to be associated with such
dangerous and callous material."
Do you find the financial embargo of Wikileaks by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Amex to be acceptable?
With centralized electronic payments and centralized crowdfunding platforms we've lost the neutrality of money and that is a threat to a free and open society.
Good god this. Until these guys can explain why we must suddenly ignore a million years of hardwired non-verbal communication, their argument is completely moot.
> In fact, every woman I've talked to about the subject has told me that it's specifically unwanted.
Is it so hard to believe that a woman (or man) may be uncomfortable expressly saying "No" in a given circumstance? Just because you have anecdotal evidence about woman you have talked to does not mean that we should adopt practices that those woman would like the most.
If 1 in 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 people do not like forward advances and feel paralyzed to say no in such circumstances, we should ask for consent because otherwise 1 in however many thousand times it would be rape or assault.
Shockingly, the correct course of action may not actually optimize people's chances of picking up women or men. Yet a culture of rape is a far greater price to pay than having a little more trouble getting dates or having sex. You might, in fact, actually have to ask someone, before touching them or 'shoving your penis in their vagina'.
My experience is that women tend to communicate non-verbally much more than men do. For instance, if a women doesn’t like you, you probably won’t be sitting on her couch on a Friday night after having taken her out to dinner.
Also: in that scenario, trying to touch your date’s shoulder or leg, or approaching to kiss her, isn’t rape. It’s an opportunity for her to let you know whether you’ve interpreted her signals correctly.
Isn't a culture where rape and sexual assault happens a pretty steep price to pay for the allure and romantic nature of non-verbal communication?
Most of the time, nothing bad will happen if you depend on non-verbal cues, but in the minority of times your advances may unwanted, and the person feels uncomfortably verbally rebuffing them. In these instances, assault or even rape can and_does_happen.
Simply asking for consent is hardly difficult and the insurance it provides that your partner does in fact like your advances is very valuable.
>Also: in that scenario, trying to touch your date’s shoulder or leg, or approaching to kiss her, isn’t rape. It’s an opportunity for her to let you know whether you’ve interpreted her signals correctly.
How do you know it is not rape (or assault in this circumstance)? Non-verbal queues are not infallible; without asking, you must trust your judgment. While you probably judged correctly, that does not mean it is advisable behavior to proceed without asking.
Even using one of the most ridiculous straw-man arguments I have ever seen, you still fail to make your point. Surely the benefits of being able to participate in the immense amount of activities that exist outside your house is worth the risk. In other words, the benefits outweigh the costs. Asking consent comes at negligible cost. Correct me if I am wrong, but I tend to think rape and assault is worse than opening my mouth.
Furthermore, the risk of being struck by lightning is one you accept when you exit the house. The same is not true in the actual object of the discussion because the victim of your actions will primarily be your would-be partner.
Finally, I find it extremely offense that you assert that the amount of sexual assaults that can be attributed to failure to obtain adequate consent to the chances of being struck by lightning upon exiting your house.
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Assuming that you do not present the best arguments for your side (at this point, I feel very safe in this assumption), I will acknowledge that, in a committed and well established relationship, it is possible to have sex without first asking for consent. Still, I am reluctant to encourage people to do so, and many sexual assaults occur in committed relationships. It is so easy to ask; I cannot see why someone would refrain from doing so.
EDIT: On further thought, I feel comfortable saying that after having asked consent each time a relationship progresses, that, in a committed relationship,it is safe to rely on non-verbal cues.
In all the scenarios I’ve provided, the girl will have given dozens of non-verbal cues for the guy to act. If the guy then still feels he needs to ask, there’s a real possibility that the girl gets turned off.
If the girl didn’t want to make out, she wouldn't have repeatedly have gone on dates with you, she wouldn't have invited you to her place, she wouldn't have lit candles, she wouldn't have sat on the couch with you, she wouldn't have asked you whether you like the perfume she's wearing, etc etc.
And on the off chance that all these things did happen but she doesn't want to make out, she will have told you by then. She knows way better than you what kind of signals she's giving off.
And lastly, if you misinterpreted her signals and you reach for a kiss, all she has to do is not lean into it. This can happen if you think you’re on a date, while she thinks you're just good friends (she may have thought you were gay). Trying to kiss her clears all that up, and it's better done sooner than later. The longer you wait to kiss her, chances increase she thinks you're not into her.
