Posted on 07/25/2009 6:54:32 PM PDT by LA Woman3
Early Friday morning, Barbara Frische said she woke up to the sound of glass breaking inside her East Austin home.
She called police but didn't learn what had shattered the double-paned window in her 4-year-old son's room until after police arrived. Officers showed her a brick with a note attached: "Keep Eastside Black. Keep Eastside Strong."
"It's the first time anything like this has ever happened to me," said Frische, who is white. She has lived in her house on 13th Street for about 10 years.
The incident doesn't fall under the hate crime category, which is a classification of a charge but not a charge itself, said Austin police Sgt. Richard Stresing. He said the charge probably would be criminal mischief and deadly conduct, both misdemeanors.
Crimes based on race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability or gender are flagged as hate crimes, Stresing said, so they can be referred to the Department of Justice. The note attached to the brick didn't include hate speech, he said.
Frische was featured in a Statesman Watch article in May in which she lobbied for action to be taken on a charred house that neighbors said had been a gathering place for drug dealers, prostitutes and squatters.
Frische said she received no negative feedback from area residents after the article ran and said she does not think this incident is connected to the article.
Nelson Linder, president of the Austin chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said incidents such as the one that happened to Frische are rare.
"Throwing a brick into somebody's home, that's a crime," Linder said. "It's a criminal act, and that's how it should be addressed."
Linder said this incident is linked to an undercurrent of racism that city leaders have yet to address in East Austin.
African American and Latino residents had been in the majority since the 1920s and '30s — a trend that is starting to change. Now, some of their descendants are selling their properties to a new wave of affluent investors and would-be residents. Property taxes have doubled, tripled or more since 2000, according to Travis Central Appraisal District records.
"I think it's a very sensitive time for a lot of people," Linder said. "Certainly as African Americans we're under a lot of pressure, but that's not an excuse."
Austin police reported five hate crime incidents in 2007, down from 13 in 2006, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. Two were based on race, two were based on ethnicity, and one was based on sexual orientation.
The state reported a total of 242 hate crime incidents in 2007, the most recent year for which statistics were available.
Do we not know what this is?
Nice piece of liberal Doublespeak.
Liars all.
“The incident doesn’t fall under the hate crime category, which is a classification of a charge but not a charge itself, said Austin police Sgt. Richard Stresing.”
That this sort of thing happens, and so often, demonstrates that the concept of the “hate crime” is fraudulent.
Instead of “hate crime,” they should be called “get revenge on whitey” laws, or “get revenge on the normal guy” laws.
Doesn’t anyone read “1984” any more?
The tipoff was the correct spelling and neat penmanship...
Do you think it was a setup?
“Doesn’t anyone read “1984” any more?”
Someone has said that Amazon banned/removed 4 books, including this and “Animal Farm.” Don’t know if it’s kindle or not, and don’t know the other 2. It was a story yesterday. Maybe “Catcher in the Rye”?
OMG, where is Henry Waxman? Where is Al Gore? This is obviously an attempt to send the Greenies a message of hate.
Oh the humanity. The Earth will be harmed for generations because of this heinous act, obviously carried out by a Deranged Right Wing Global Warming Denier.
Not quite. Amazon was selling the books in electronic version to owners of the Amazon Kindle bookreader device. But they weren’t properly licensed publishers and the copyright is still active on those books. Amazon had to erase all the downloads from Kindles and issue refunds.
The books are still available as books. See http://www.amazon.com/Animal-Farm-Centennial-George-Orwell/dp/0452284244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248574505&sr=8-1
If he did it would be something stupid. How do I know this? Because every time his lips move he says something stupid … unlike Joe Biden, his VP. ;-)
I’m open to the possibility. I generally don’t waste too much time with speculation when there are so few facts to work with...
Hard to say but we know he knows how it feels to be thick as brick.
They didn’t ban anything. They removed e-books at the request of the publisher as they were apparently “bootleg” or some-such. The big problem was they removed the books in question directly from customers’ (who had purchased the e-books) Kindles. So the digital equivalent of reaching into your study and pulling a book off the shelf and taking it back was what got people ticked off, even though they were refended the purchase price. They promised not to do that again. Yeah sure...lol
Great. Thanks.
I remember certain books being banned here in the US. I wonder if there are those here who do. Salinger, etc.
“Throwing a brick into somebody’s home, that’s a crime,” Linder said. “It’s a criminal act, and that’s how it should be addressed.”
That’s basically the argument conservatives have been using to stop so-called “hate” laws. Funny how suddenly the same argument is being used by the real racists when a white person has been attacked because of the color of her skin.
“Someone has said that Amazon banned/removed 4 books, including this and “Animal Farm.”
Just went over and checked, and Orwell’s books appear to be available. At least some are available for Kindle (The device for which I’ve been waiting my entire life).
Still, there are plenty of other reasons to boycott Amazon.
“the copyright is still active on those books”
On Orwell’s books?
Copyright is another area of American life that has been corrupted and befouled by the left.
I gurantee you that if she had been black it would have been a hate crime.
“gentrification”
Maybe the natives and yuppies could compromise: a Starbucks with a driveup crack window.
“The note attached to the brick didn’t include hate speech, he said.”
Must have missed the part about keeping a neighborhood “black”.
Not exactly the left. The leftist judges on on the Supreme Court voted against overturning the last major extension of copyright. The “conservative” judges were unwilling to give any meaning to the term “for limited Times”!
The “conservative” judges were unwilling to give any meaning to the term “for limited Times.”
There were only four conservative judges. How many of them voted the wrong way?
So is Obama going to declare the cops acted stupidly and invite everyone over for a beer?
Throwing a brick through a window is a minor crime however with the note attached and the wording on the note should have at the least been considered a “possible” hate crime.
On the other hand if the table was reversed, it would be
considered a hate crime due to the surrounding circumstances
and the local chapter of NAACP would have demand it. White people have no one to stand up for them and demand for such.
Besides, only whites can be charged with a hate crime. Dumb lady. /s
What would the note have to say to be considered a hate crime? I hate whitey?! This just proves 'hate crime' legislation was about getting even with whitey, AGAIN.
I'm so sick of being called a racist when we already KNOW who the racists are! Race hustlers in this country have been fueling the fire for YEARS so what the hell do they expect?!
Race politics just like abortion, gays, guns, etc. is a MONEY MAKER for the people who keep it in the NEWS. How do we think Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc. can live without a JOB!
“The note attached to the brick didn’t include hate speech, he said.”
So if the KKK hoots and hollers, jumps up and down, and throws bricks through a black fellow’s windows, but, and here’s the out for the KKK, it doesn’t include hate speech, it’s a trivial misdemeanor.
Austin police Sgt. Richard Stresing is an idiot, and further confirms my contention that unelected cops are a detriment to free citizens, while the elected sheriff is the only type of peace officer acceptable to free citizens because he and his deputies are accountable to the people via the ballot box.
Unelected, unaccountable cops are tools used by their Marxist masters to crush liberty.
Austin police Sgt. Richard Stresing should be thrown out on his ear. He should not be allowed a badge, a gun or a single doughnut. If a sheriff accountable to the people were in charge, he would be thrown out.
Amazon removed copies of Orwell’s books because they were published without authorization.
The books are still under copyright in the US, but not in some other countries. A company that distributes public domain books put them on the Kindle store through a third-party publishing system, but they did not have the rights to do this. The publisher of the authorized version complained and Amazon removed the books from the Kindles and refunded the purchase price (99 cents, IIRC).
They still have Orwell’s books available for the Kindle from the company that has the publishing rights in the US.
Why would she choose to live there?
So the police say this isn’t a hate crime? They now interpret the law and not a judge? Sure it’s a hate crime!
http://www.ohio.com/news/50172282.html
Similar reaction in the above case by the Akron police - but the Akron case represents a far more serious act of direct and unprovoked violence.
copyright exists for 75 years after the author’s death.
Orxwell died circa 1950.
“copyright exists for 75 years after the author’s death.”
And that is unreasonable. The copyright should expire with the originator, or at the latest upon the majority of his oldest child.
As a writer, I disagree strongly.
You probably have no idea of how often writers and their families live in abject poverty, even if the writer is “successful” — i.e., has books published. Why should a total staranger who makes the book into a movie or tv show ten years later be able to become a millionaire while the writer’s family has nothing —
That is the definition of philistinism.
As a writer, you should be more careful in choosing your words. Advocating the kind of copyright laws intended by the framers of our Constition in in no way indicates that a person is “lacking in or hostile to culture,” or “smugly commonplace or conventional.”
As a poster on Free Republic, you should be more careful in slinging calumny at people you don’t know: especially when you are wrong.
Your plaintive cry, “Why should a total staranger who makes the book into a movie or tv show ten years later be able to become a millionaire while the writer’s family has nothing,” is blatant, bleeding-heart socialism.
If people are paid more for making movies and TV than for writing books, that is because people are willing to pay more for movies and TV than for books. Allowing them to do so is the definition of liberty. Insisting that they must pay for their “philistinism” is tyranny.
In demanding that an author’s heirs be paid for the author’s work after his death you are seeking to use the power of the state to reverse the decision of the market — which is to say the millions of individual decisions made by those who decided to buy or not to buy, to watch or not to watch, a given book, TV show, or movie.
It’s the politics of envy, and that’s why the corruption of copyright has been the work of the left. That some who think themselves conservatives have bought in to the leftist position serves well to illustrate the depths of unreason to which we have sunk.
No, it is not socialism. It’s under socialism that authors are denied the rights to their intellectual property.
And I think you are both lacking in and very, very hostile to culture. The novel or play or poem or song is an intellectual property, just as a house or business that you build is material property. Just as you can leave your house or business to your heirs and they to their heirs forver, the creator of an intellectual property should have the same right.
You seem not to understand the basic principle here — that it can take years, or even a decade to write a book. Why should a total stranger be able to grab the book play, etc simply because the author has died — let’s say in a car accident or a plane crash — and make the play/novel into a movie without compensating the writer’s heirs — that’s stealing.
Bobby Darin died young of a heart condition — should his heirs be robbed of his copyright? Should anyone be able to come along and use his songs and make money from them?
You seem not to understand when you say that people are paid more for writing movies than for writing books that the person writing the movie is basing it the book that in your system would be stolen from the original writer.
Thank God we have copyright laws.
“It’s under socialism that authors are denied the rights to their intellectual property.”
Bam, you destroyed your own argument right out of the gate. My position is that the **authors** should have the rights to the fruits of their labors. You are arguing that other people should have the right to the fruits of those same labors after their creator has joined the choir invisible.
And if heirs can inherit those rights, then they can sell them. This means that people with no legitimate connection whatsoever to the author—publishers, record companies, Ted Turner, et cetera—will have “rights” to the work of long-dead authors.
“And I think you are both lacking in and very, very hostile to culture.”
Well, that’s just groundless malice. What happened, did I hit my head and wander into DU by mistake?
“The novel or play or poem or song is an intellectual property, just as a house or business that you build is material property.”
Road apples. Art is the property of all mankind. Copyright exists to protect the **author’s** chance to make some money from it. If he’s dead, those conditions no longer exist.
“Just as you can leave your house or business to your heirs and they to their heirs forver, the creator of an intellectual property should have the same right.”
Buncombe. To argue that is to argue that the wealthy should be able to purchase all art and hide it away in private collections. Great art belongs to the ages.
“You seem not to understand the basic principle here”
On the contrary, it is you who have drunk the socialist kool-aide.
“Why should a total stranger be able to grab the book play, etc simply because the author has died”
Why should a person who played no role in the creation of a work of art stand between that art and civilization with his hand out, demanding to be paid tribute for access to someone else’s work?
“that’s stealing.”
Lex mala, lex nulla.
“Bobby Darin died young of a heart condition — should his heirs be robbed of his copyright?”
Robbed? Gee, let’s not prejudice our arguments with loaded words, shall we?
Every single one of your arguments presumes the thing it is intended to demonstrate. It is only genuine robbery if the heirs have a moral right to control the singing of songs and playing of music. You assert this, but have advanced no argument that supports your assertion.
“Should anyone be able to come along and use his songs and make money from them?”
Yup. Although, if they are in the public domain, there will be no record-company executives jacking up the price of a CD to $25. People will be able to enjoy the music at a reasonable cost.
“You seem not to understand when you say that people are paid more for writing movies than for writing books that the person writing the movie is basing it (on) the book that in your system would be stolen from the original writer.”
1. Again with the loaded words. And again you tromp on your hooter with that bogus argument about “stealing from the writer.” If copyright extends throughout the writer’s life, then nothing is stolen from him. And, again, you have not made any coherent moral argument that anyone other than the writer has any legitimate moral right to control of the writer’s work product.
2. Why should people other than the author demand to be paid when a book is turned into something much more marketable and lucrative?
“Thank God we have copyright laws.”
I very much doubt that He finds our present system gratifying. It is mercantilism, wherein the power of the state is used to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Without corrupt copyright laws there are no huge record companies telling us that we must pay immense sums for the privilege of listening to garbage, while ripping off the actual musicians. All the parasites on the music industry perish and fall away like so many poisoned remoras.
Competition once again would energize the world of music, which is moribund to the degree that music from the 50s and 60s far outshines anything done since. And that is because copyright laws make large record companies inevitable, and in large record companies decisions are made by money-mad, cloth-eared yuppies.
An analogous phenomenon prevails in the publishing industry, although on a smaller scale.
Bring copyright laws back to constitutional limits, and many things will improve substantially.
OOOps, misaddressed this the first time. The worse my eyes get, the more this sort of thing happens.
“It’s under socialism that authors are denied the rights to their intellectual property.”
Bam, you destroyed your own argument right out of the gate. My position is that the **authors** should have the rights to the fruits of their labors. You are arguing that other people should have the right to the fruits of those same labors after their creator has joined the choir invisible.
And if heirs can inherit those rights, then they can sell them. This means that people with no legitimate connection whatsoever to the author—publishers, record companies, Ted Turner, et cetera—will have “rights” to the work of long-dead authors.
“And I think you are both lacking in and very, very hostile to culture.”
Well, that’s just groundless malice. What happened, did I hit my head and wander into DU by mistake?
“The novel or play or poem or song is an intellectual property, just as a house or business that you build is material property.”
Road apples. Art is the property of all mankind. Copyright exists to protect the **author’s** chance to make some money from it. If he’s dead, those conditions no longer exist.
“Just as you can leave your house or business to your heirs and they to their heirs forver, the creator of an intellectual property should have the same right.”
Buncombe. To argue that is to argue that the wealthy should be able to purchase all art and hide it away in private collections. Great art belongs to the ages.
“You seem not to understand the basic principle here”
On the contrary, it is you who have drunk the socialist kool-aide.
“Why should a total stranger be able to grab the book play, etc simply because the author has died”
Why should a person who played no role in the creation of a work of art stand between that art and civilization with his hand out, demanding to be paid tribute for access to someone else’s work?
“that’s stealing.”
Lex mala, lex nulla.
“Bobby Darin died young of a heart condition — should his heirs be robbed of his copyright?”
Robbed? Gee, let’s not prejudice our arguments with loaded words, shall we?
Every single one of your arguments presumes the thing it is intended to demonstrate. It is only genuine robbery if the heirs have a moral right to control the singing of songs and playing of music. You assert this, but have advanced no argument that supports your assertion.
“Should anyone be able to come along and use his songs and make money from them?”
Yup. Although, if they are in the public domain, there will be no record-company executives jacking up the price of a CD to $25. People will be able to enjoy the music at a reasonable cost.
“You seem not to understand when you say that people are paid more for writing movies than for writing books that the person writing the movie is basing it (on) the book that in your system would be stolen from the original writer.”
1. Again with the loaded words. And again you tromp on your hooter with that bogus argument about “stealing from the writer.” If copyright extends throughout the writer’s life, then nothing is stolen from him. And, again, you have not made any coherent moral argument that anyone other than the writer has any legitimate moral right to control of the writer’s work product.
2. Why should people other than the author demand to be paid when a book is turned into something much more marketable and lucrative?
“Thank God we have copyright laws.”
I very much doubt that He finds our present system gratifying. It is mercantilism, wherein the power of the state is used to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Without corrupt copyright laws there are no huge record companies telling us that we must pay immense sums for the privilege of listening to garbage, while ripping off the actual musicians. All the parasites on the music industry perish and fall away like so many poisoned remoras.
Competition would once again energize the world of music, which is moribund to the degree that music from the 50s and 60s far outshines anything done since. And that is because copyright laws make large record companies inevitable, and in large record companies decisions are made by money-mad, cloth-eared yuppies.
An analogous phenomenon prevails in the publishing industry, although on a smaller scale.
Bring copyright laws back to constitutional limits, and many things will improve substantially.
Art does not belong to mankind.It belongs to its creator. When you say that great art belongs to the ages — who is the steward of this great art through the ages? Comissars?
I think you are not informed about art at all. Most art has been generated and perserved because of private collections.
And just as you can leave your house and land to your son and he may at some point sell it to someone like Donald Trump, he may also pass it on through his heirs for generations. Whether the heir sells the coyright is beside the pount, just as it is besude the point if your great grandson sells the house that your grandfather, a great architect, built.
Fortunately artists and writers and composers don’t agree with you, who would leave their families to starve while strangers exploit their labor and creations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.