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Victims' Rights Laws Being Abused To Hide The Identities Of Cops Involved In Use Of Force Incidents

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A law filled with good intentions and vague wording is, more often than not, a law named after the victim of a crime. So-called "Marsy's Laws" are being passed in states that grant crime victims extra rights, often at the expense of the accused's Constitutional rights. As Scott Greenfield explains, "Marsy's Laws" insert crime victims into a process that isn't theirs to be inserted into. Once a crime has been committed, the government takes over and it's between the prosecutor and the accused from that point forward. As harsh as it may sound, crime victims aren't in need of extra rights. Any effort made to "fix" this nonexistent problem only deprives others of their rights.

Prosecutors represent the government, not the victims or their families. The only party with rights in a criminal courtroom is the defendant, both because the Constitution provides it and because the defendant is the only person whose liberty is at stake.

It’s not that there is no way for a victim, or family, to obtain “justice.” They can sue civilly for their loss, in which case they will be a party to the proceeding, will be capable of choosing their own strategy and pursuing it as they deem fit. But the force of the state, the power of the police, the punishment of imprisonment or worse, is not there for the sake of the victims. It’s not theirs to use, and they get no say in the decisions that are ultimately made.

Most of these laws grant crime victims extra privacy. The laws block the release of identifying info about victims under the theory this will head off harassment of victims and their families. This privacy shield contains no exceptions for government employees, so of course it's being abused to protect people whose public service positions wouldn't normally allow them to keep their names out of the news. Scott Shackford has more details at Reason:

What on earth does a victim's rights law have to do with a police officer demanding to conceal his identity from the public? According to the Rapid City Journal, the officer in question shot 21-year-old Kuong Gatlauk following a confrontation during a traffic stop. According to the police report, Gatlauk made statements intending some sort of self-harm and fled from a police vehicle. In a confrontation, he apparently threw a beer can at the trooper and then tackled the trooper and tried to steal the trooper's gun, according to this report. The trooper was able to keep his gun and shot the suspect twice.

Because Gatlauk was subsequent charged with assaulting the trooper, the trooper is claiming the right under Marsy's Law to have his or her name kept confidential, even though this action happened in the course of public police work and much of the records involved are public records. The state's attorney general has agreed.

Considering how easy it is to "assault" an officer during the course of an arrest, this law could be used to hide the identities of officers accused of deploying excessive force or other unconstitutional policing. South Dakota's version of the law doesn't even require criminal charges to be officially filed by prosecutors for these protections to take effect. All it takes is being booked on charges, even if prosecutors decide not to move forward.

All the good intentions in the world won't undo the collateral damage. Police officers -- who already have access to a wealth of extra rights -- now have one more to use to further separate themselves from accountability. And it's all because tragedy tends to blind legislators to the possible negative side effects of feel-good legislation that grants one group special rights at the expense of everyone else.

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posted at: 12:52am on 26-Oct-2018
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The Craft Beer UK Market Saw A 20% Increase In Trademark Registrations In 2017

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Regular readers here will know that we have been sounding the alarm on how trademarks are being handled in the enormously explosive craft beer industries. With the explosion of trademark applications in the industry, it's no surprise that a cottage industry for legal intellectual property services specifically for beer brands has sprouted up. We've already begun to see the fallout from the a once-friendly and fraternal industry devolving into protectionism, but the only sane read on the data is that it's going to get a lot worse in short order.But, lest you think this is some uniquely American problem, a report out of the UK shows that things are going to be equally insane there, too. We have previously discussed UK intellectual property law firm RPC's noting that trademark applications in the UK had doubled over the past decade, with a 20% uptick in applications in 2017 alone. A new report puts some reason to those numbers and it's likely not what you're imagining. Far from this being a result purely of the growth in new breweries entering the market, this has more to do with established breweries looking to expand trademark portfolios for everything they produce.

Some major breweries are following the craft beer model of having a larger range of trademark protected products, not just buying craft brands through mergers and acquisitions, but launching more products under their own marque. One example of this is Diageo-owned Guinness, which now produces a range of lagers and pale ales. RPC said the UK craft beer industry has followed the explosive growth of the sector in the US.
You can think of language like real estate, with trademarks being houses built on that real estate. What is happening here is that property owners are buying up 10, 20, 30 parcels of land and holding on to them, preventing newcomers from using that land themselves. It's not so much a neighborhood of competing interests as it is a neighborhood of a few competitors busily locking everyone else out. This is legal, of course, but it is also purely anathema to the way the craft beer industry operated for decades.The end result is predictable. Language is something of a finite resource. Yes, we can create new words for brands from the ether, but the vast majority of brands are some combination of existing words and phrases. With a limited number of those, moneyed interests gobbling up that finite resource for itself is going to serve to either keep new players from easily entering the market, or subjecting those new players to the risks of litigious and jealous trademark rightsholders. Again, this is the opposite of how the craft beer industry got to be so healthy in the first place.And that outcome, of course, pushes everyone into the vicious cycle, as legal groups advocate protection from this ownership culture in the form of engaging in ownership culture.
The legal company also said the rise in the number of beer trademarks has inevitably led to a number of disputes in the sector and this has emphasised the need for businesses to protect their brands from the outset.
Or we could, you know, just go back to doing business the way it was done a mere ten years ago and all be more happy and successful. But, sure, let's trademark all the things instead.

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posted at: 12:52am on 26-Oct-2018
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