Boarding a ship =/= Illegally capturing a ship.

One is trespassing. The other is piracy.

On the point of using the word "joining" I was not in any way excusing the boarding of the boat or claiming that the action was not illegal. That was my point.

The other point's are simply disagreed on. Ultimately, we both think GreenPeace made a mistake in their strategy. On that we can agree, no?

That terroristic tactics have worked in the past does not excuse them in the grand context of civilized society, nor should I be ok with these protesters (who I don't agree with) because I agree with the motivations of the Boston Tea Party.

You're still not answering the question, will, no matter how illustrative your graphics are. I think these people ought to be CHARGED with piracy and Greenpeace made financially responsible for the losses sustained by the company. What do you think should happen to the PEOPLE who did something that we both agree was wrong?

The grey area, IL, is that they didn't just board the ship. They inhibited the ability of the ship to do its job. To some of us, that essentially constitutes taking control of the ship. In order to not hurt these people, the ship stopped moving and had to raise its security level and had to call the coast guard. That means it wasn't delivering its coal and it was sitting there not being useful. No they didn't drive the ship off, but they didn't board and offer the crew some beers, either.

Does no one read my posts?

1.) Trespassing isn't piracy, no matter what way you spin it.

2.) You can't sue for profit you haven't earned. If you could, no one would ever protest.

They should be charged with what they did - trespassing and vandalism.

I'm reading your posts, IL. :)

Those that boarded should be charged with any legal trespassing laws that might be in effect in US waters, and those that wrote no nukes (wtf?) should be charged with vandalism. There's absolutely no reason to consider this care piracy, as IL and I have both insisted all along.

BTW, what definition of terrorism are you using when you describe these people? If it involves violence, then I'll have to disagree there, too.

We're not talking about lost profits, but there are costs incurred that lucifer laid out very plainly in his posts. Why shouldn't the protesters be liable for those quantifiable costs?

Edit: I'll use extra-legal instead of terroristic. Happy?

Let me try this another way: Piracy typically involves theft. What, exactly, did the protestors steal? The most they're guilty of is trespassing and vandalism. They shouldn't be held accountable for anything else because there's nothing else they did.

$40,000 isn't the loss of revenue. That's the daily operating cost of running a bulk cargo ship, give or take a couple thousand either way. The cargo of coal was over a million.

The last two photos were by me, the others came courtesy of greenpeace.

I may be wrong here, but doesnt this apply?

http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multi/texts/BH825.txt
UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE LAW OF THE SEA


I bolded the word detention as this is certainly, to me anyway, what the protesters intended on and did.

I love these photos. I feel like I am there except I can't yell "WTF" at the top of my lungs.

I guess there's just no reasoning here. I hope you feel the same way when you lose time and money when your property rights are trampled by "peaceful protesters," because I simply can't fathom why this seems like such a benign intrusion to you.

Erm... Expenses are the result of normal business operations; You're going to incur them no matter what. I don't understand how you could sue someone for that.

Anyway, if I decide to sit outside Wal-Mart and protest, costing them around $10K in profits for day, should Wal-Mart be able to sue me?

wal-mart does what wal-mart wants.

For fuck's sake, yes! YOUR RIGHTS END WHERE ANOTHER'S RIGHTS BEGIN. You cannot deprive someone of the total value of their property without consequence. Not even the government gets to do that (go read the "takings" clause).

(Id really appreciate it if someone would read what I posted and tell me if Im misunderstanding what it says)

http://www.exceler8ion.com/wp-images/Chill-Pill.png
Please, take a few deep breaths. This thread is getting a bit heated.
If the act of stopping the boat itself was illegal, then it may constitute the legal term of piracy, but it would be easy to argue against that point in court as law cannot rewrite semantics. Any dictionary will tell you that piracy constitutes theft specifically and has nothing to do with detention. Based on the actual meaning of the term piracy, as opposed to the above description, GreenPeace is not guilty of piracy. And, as Frostbyte says, the piracy itself is when the private party profits.

Still, it's a good point.

Great way to totally not answer the question :rolleyes:

Well, then you don't understand the law (Nor business). You can't sue for loss of profits you haven't yet incurred. Why? Because there's no guarantee you would have made those profits.

The most the company can sue for is trespassing and vadalism and that's the way it should be. Otherwise, no one would ever protest as they could be sued the second the company takes a monetary hit.

The messy part comes later in the sentence where it says "for private ends" which would create a question of whether or not their action was for public ends (their argument) or private ends (the shipping company's argument). I think it'd cut towards the shipping company, personally, but that's obvious.

Edit: I'm sure I'm right about what I wrote in that sentence and would be happy to flood this thread with legal authority for it, if you want it. You keep talking about profits and we're talking about operating costs wasted because of third party actions. You either don't understand what we're writing or your blindly ignoring it. But if you're so sure, go build a wall in front of the doors to a store and see what happens.

the people who said the activists are pirates will agree that you understood it correctly, while the people who said the activists were not pirates will probably disagree.

i, as a neutral party, think that you understood the meaning just fine.

[QUOTE=Infinite_Loser]Great way to totally not answer the question :rolleyes:

:thumbsup:
only cause i don't see a high five smiley...

Your desk copy of Websters is NOT the definitive definition of what constitutes piracy, Will.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)
(article 101) defines piracy as follows:
“Piracy consists of any of the following acts:
(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for
private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft,
and directed:
(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property
on board such ship or aircraft;
(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of
any State;
(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with
knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;
(c) any act inciting or of intentionally facilitating an act described in sub-paragraph
(a) or (b).”

http://www.imo.org/includes/blastDat...D7430/1073.pdf

International Maritime Organization

um Lucifer dear...I already posted that and asked if I was misunderstanding it because of the word detention in it lol

Ummm... Yeah... If you were reading my posts you'd know that I already addressed the expense/operating cost issue. Those are costs incurred as per normal business operations. You can't 'waste' an expense.

If I tried to build a wall in front of the Wal-Mart stores I'd more than likely be arrested and sued for trespassing/vandalism. I never said that said protestors shouldn't be sued for trespassing/vandalism, but that they shouldn't be held liable for expenses/unearned revenue.

yes, shani, I realize that. My beef is with Wil's dictionary as a definitive legal source

I don't think this is what Mahatma Gandhi had in mind.

satan is tech savvy. i guess i'm not all that surprised.

excuse me, lucifer...is the blue part of your signature from a book by tolkien?

It's better than lighting yourself on fire.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they have a pretty good idea how much it costs them.

i still dont see what lucifer was arguing in the op.
so far from the thread, nothing has been explained.

the argument concerning piracy seems to me moot: the argument regarding losses to the shipping company trivial. two problems with the last argument: (a) no context.
factoids without context are worthless.
for example, what tonnage is being transferred, how many days did it take and what did the shipper pay? how much does the shipping company stand to make off this transfer? but even with that information, the claim is still trivial...

(b) map the defenses of private interests over political rights above onto the matter of principle...

it looks like is that a segment of the folk posting to this thread effectively oppose greenpeace's right to protest at all--but they wont say as much, so prefer to hide behind property claims.

but look at it this way: private property is a legal construct. as a legal construct, they are extensions of state power. as extension of state power, they are also political. as political, private property claims operate at the consent of the governed.

following from this the right of the public to protest overrides private property claims. they implicitly suspend the illusion of consent. they involve, then, the assertion of public interest over private interests. if that is the case, then the private property based arguments against the greepeace action are moot.

so if there is no principled basis for opposing what greenpeace did that can be rooted in a claim that private property supercedes the public's right to protest, then the claims above regarding the material losses sustained by the shipping line because of this action amount to arguments against the right to protest at all.
do you actually believe that private property obviates the right to political protest?
if you believe that, then you oppose the right to politial protest at all.
why?

Okay, then let's look at that law:
Do you understand what this means? This means that when a pirate does something, it's for personal gain. That speaks to intent, which has been the subject of my posts since the beginning. Did the protesters benefit privately from boarding or stopping the vessel, or were their acting on behalf of the public? I'd say it's pretty obvious they were acting on behalf of public good which exempts them from the "private ends" description.

There.

I dont get whats so hard to understand in Lucifer's question in the OP

he wants to know if this was or wasnt a peaceful protest

I don't know why I keep coming back to this trainwreck....

shani:

the answer to that question is self-evident. there is no complexity introduced by the story. there is nothing interesting about it on this score.

but there is interesting stuff raised by the story--just not by way of the question.

the debate has unfolded around these questions--and not in the main around the question itself.

the debate as i see it is about whether greenpeace has the right to protest at all. i dont think you or several others who have posted here believe that greenpeace has any such right. the usage of the piracy law indicates as much. if you consider the boarding of the ship to be an act of piracy, then you oppose the right of greenpeace to undertake political actions of this kind at all. you do this when you eliminate the self-evident differences in intent between a political action and piracy. (this last bit refers to your post above among others, but my argument is not directed primarily at you.)

i'd just prefer that folk say it outright.

whoa wait a minute.....I made no comments other than posting the maritime def of piracy because I felt Will had the def of what a ship in international waters incorrect, and saying that the way I read it they did indeed pirate the ship....I said nothing to indicate whether I agreed with it or not (oh and I asked who took the pictures)

i only react to what i read, shani, not to what isnt there.
if your position is more complicated, then please, by all means, lay it out.

please show me where I stated a position as to their right to protest

Protesters have the right to protest, but they also have the obligation to deal with logical consequences. Furthermore, their right to protest without consequences is limited by their tacit agreement to protest without infringing on the rights of others. That is to say, when you infringe the rights of others in a society, society punishes you for that action.

Protesters, simply because they have a political message, should not be free from having to take on the burdens caused by their protests where it infringes on the rights of other people. They should be willing to take responsibility for accidental deaths or property damage caused by the actions, they should be willing to take criminal consequences and they should be financially liable for the losses incurred by those on whose property rights they infringe. Like in contract law, this would be damages for sufficiently clear losses as opposed to the ambiguity of "future profits."

Protest all you want-but if you board a ship and someone dies trying to rescue you or the company has to pay to maintain a ship an extra, unnecessary day because of your actions or your die because you fell into the water, that's YOUR burden, not society's and not the person whose rights you invaded.

if you want to discuss this, then let's go that way.
if you dont, then we can stop here.
either way, this snarky little exchange is over.
so either make a move or dont.

============================
frosstbyte: i dont follow. so you're saying that private property claims do obviate the right to protest in that the former can impose prohibitive costs on protest actions. and that's ok with you.

so it would follow that greepeace may have the "right" to protest, but its empty. in other words, they can talk about protesting, but if they inconvience Trade, they're liable.

so trade obviates the right to protest.
that seems to follow logically from your position.
is that what you mean?

One does not necessarily have to exist to the total dissolution of the other. They could follow the ship all the way to port and protest the coal all the way to the factory and protest outside the factory as much as they wanted, but as soon as they INHIBIT the trade process, they become liable for any costs or consequences (criminal or civil) associated with that inhibition.

I don't think they shouldn't be allowed to protest, just that when protesting creates loss, the protesters should be liable for that loss which would not exist without their interference.

try again....me posting a definition to try to clear up the meaning of the word as it applies to maritime laws and NOT the dictionary and saying that the way I read thats what they did in NO way defines my stance on the rights of protesting. How does me posting a definition equal me saying they did or didnt have a right to protest?

And me asking you to show where I said that they did or didnt have a right to protest (which is NOT the same as defining what they did) is not snarky..trust me when Im snarky there is no doubt about it