Inexcusable

[unixronin]

A montage of 20 years of Australian Transport Accident Commission driver-safety videos.

I've never understood why people intentionally get drunk.  Personally, the few times I've drunk too much, I've found it rather unpleasant.  (I tend to find drunk people rather unpleasant on the whole, too.)

But for the people who get drunk and then knowingly go out on the roads and drive while drunk — let alone the ones who do so habitually — I have no words.

It's said Nature recognizes only three crimes — misdemeanour stupid, felony stupid, and capital stupid.  Now, if you want to go out and commit capital stupid, I figure that's up to you.  It's long been a principle of mine that any arguable "right to life" is close to meaningless without an equal right to end your life in the time, place and manner of your choosing — provided you don't take anyone else with you who didn't make a free and informed decision to join you in it.  But drunk drivers go out and make other people involuntary accomplices in their own capital stupid.

And that is inexcusable.

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, drunk driving doesn't impact the bottom line of our Corporate Masters, so it's not really an important crime evenif you kill someone (or someones). But copying an MP3 that they could have made ninety cents on ... multiply THAT by 300 million Americans, and pretty soon you're talking about serious money. :p

(Though I think the RIAA has decided it's more profitable to take music listeners to court for copying MP3s, than to offer to sell them the MP3s at a fair price in the first place...)

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

that reminds me, Alaric. I've been meaning to pass this story along to you....

It seems that a few Canadian musicians' estates have had enough of labels using music without paying royalties on them until forced. So Chet Baker's estate has opened a class action lawsuit against the Canadian branches Sony, EMI, Universal and Warner Music....currently looking at $300Bn in penalties on Baker's music alone.

Don't you just love it when the system works against the assholes for a change?

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

correction: $60Bn. Mixed up my numbers the first time.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yup, I heard about that. The amount of the penalties has gone up since I read about it, though.

Today, CRIA. Tomorrow, RIAA, with any luck — they've been robbing their artists blind for fifty years...