Concerning Recent SCOTUS Decisions

When looking at recent decisions, I can come to no conclusion other than that the Supreme Court of the United States hates American Citizens that are not obscenely wealthy people who own large buisnesses. What drew me to this overtly cynical conclusion?

Case #1
The Decision: Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that local governments could seize private property from home owners and businesses, and give that property to corporate interests and private developers for the sake of generating more revenue.

The Effect: Everyday citizens lose their homes and businesses to corrupt officials and large corporate interests in the name of the Almighty Dollar.

Score: Big Business, 1; Average Citizen, 0.


Case #2
The Decision: Today, the Supreme Court ruled that large cable companies will not be compelled to lease the lines to smaller local competitors.

The Effect: Doing the exact opposite of what they did with telephone service (in which local carriers were required to lease their lines to long distance carriers, causing the cost of telephone service to drop due to increased competition), the Court has effectively slowed the spread of broadband to areas currently lacking it (Such as MINE) while simultaneously increasing the cost of said service to all areas. They've also made Time-Warner, SBC, etc, very happy.

Score: Big Business, 2; Average Citizen, 0.


Case #3
The Decision: Also today, the Supreme Court ruled that Peer-to-Peer file sharing services (Specifically, Grokster and Steamcast) could be sued because their services do not take active measures to prevent copyright infringement.

The Effect: Pandering to the MPAA and the RIAA, who are still going after P2P services despite the fact that taking down Napster did exactly jack shit, the Supreme Court has just cast doubt on any new emerging technology for sharing information, due to the fact they can be sued assuming that some over-paid corporate lawyer can convince a judge that the technology has shown "clear expression" to aid infringement. This has the net effect of slowing innovation due to fears of litigation, all because the entertainment industry is too stupid and slow on the uptake to provide a legal and comparable alternative service. (BitTorrent is probably next, by the way.) In today's atmosphere, the VCR would have never seen the light of day. (Also note: when the VCR and Betamax first came out, the MPAA also decried it as the downfall of the movie industry. Note, they're still here and have more money than ever, because they eventually embraced VHS rather than destroyed it.)

Score: Big Business, 3; Average Citizen, 0.


I could keep going. I really could, but I won't. I'll probably rant a little more about the Grokster decision tomorrow though.

---------------

But before I go, I have to talk about this:

The feeding frenzy begins. Freeport, TX officials have taken active steps to seize three pieces of waterfront property to build an $8 million private boat marina. The marina would be expected to attract hotels, restaurants, and retail establishments (which will likely be built through more Eminent Domain property seizures).

(Stupid part is, they're seizing the land from two seafood companies. One of the companies, Western Seafood, says that if they lost that tract of land, they would be forced to close the adjacent processing facility... The facility has been open since 1946 and makes $40 million annually... The city, of course, denies that the facility would have to close... but how is a seafood plant supposed to run without access to the waterfront?)

Slippery slope, folks, it's gonna get worse. I hope you don't live on a tasty morsel of land somewhere that someone with a lot of money wants.