Quotations

Stop pointing fingers and take some blame,
Pull your future away from the flame
Open up your mind and start to live
Stop short changing your neighbors
Living off hand outs and favors, and maybe
Give a little bit more than you got to give...
-- Kid Rock

Boredom soon overcomes me when I am contemplating nature.
-- Edgar Degas

J'ai vraiment, un vrai bagage dans la tête. S'il y avait pour cela, comme il y a partout ici, des compagnies d'assurance, voilà un ballot je ferais assurer de suite.

[I really have some luggage in my head. If only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things here, there's a bale I should insure at once.]
-- Edgar Degas

Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.

-- Edgar Degas

I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament — temperament is the word — I know nothing.
-- Edgar Degas

À vous il faut la vie naturelle, à moi la vie factice.

[You need the natural life; I, the artificial.]
-- Edgar Degas

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience; but these women of mine are honest, simple folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their physical condition. Here is another; she is washing her feet. It is as if you looked through a key-hole.
-- Edgar Degas

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it’s charming.

-- Edgar Degas

Comme nous avons mal fait de nous laisser appeler Impressionistes.

[What a pity we allowed ourselves to be called Impressionists.]
-- Edgar Degas

I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.
-- Edgar Degas

A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.
-- Edgar Degas

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious — to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality — he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

-- Edgar Degas

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

-- Edgar Degas

There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic.
-- Edgar Degas

Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doir jamais être une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.

[A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.]
-- Edgar Degas

C'est très bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son mémoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingéniosité collabore avec la mémoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappé, c'est-à-dire le nécessaire.

-- Edgar Degas

Je voudrais être illustre et inconnu.

[I should like to be famous and unknown.]

-- Edgar Degas

I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself.

-- Edgar Degas

Visitor: Monsieur Degas, were there any of Monet's pictures at the Durand-Ruel exhibition?
Degas: Why, I met Monet himself there, and I said to him, "Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes!" His pictures were always too draughty for me. If it had been any worse I should have had to turn up my coat collar.

-- Edgar Degas

But it's true, isn't it Pauline, that people imagine that the artists and their models spend their time getting up to all sorts of obscenities? As far as work goes, well, they paint or sculpt when they are tired of enjoying themselves.
-- Edgar Degas

Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?
-- Edgar Degas

Damn, and just when I was starting to get it!
-- Edgar Degas

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.
-- Edgar Degas

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.
-- Edgar Degas

How awful it is not being able to see clearly any more! I have had to give up drawing and painting and for years now content myself with sculpture ... But if my eyesight continues to dim I won't even be able to model any more. What will I do with my days then?
-- Edgar Degas

I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.
-- Edgar Degas

I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.
-- Edgar Degas

If painting weren't so difficult, it wouldn't be fun.
-- Edgar Degas

The moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art... these dismal moods have very little compensation.
-- Edgar Degas

The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.
-- Edgar Degas

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs.
-- Edgar Degas

What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.
-- Edgar Degas

What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I am inside my studio, what use is my mind? I have my model, my pencil, my paints. My mind doesn't interest me.
-- Edgar Degas

The air you breathe in a picture is not necessarily the same as the air out of doors.

-- Edgar Degas

If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.
-- Edgar Degas

I, marry? Oh, I could never bring myself to do it. I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.
-- Edgar Degas

I'm glad to say I haven't found my style yet. I'd be bored to death.
-- Edgar Degas

People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.
-- Edgar Degas

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.
-- Edgar Degas

A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.
-- Edgar Degas

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.
-- Edgar Degas

Even working from nature you have to compose.
-- Edgar Degas

Drawing is not what you see but what you must make others see.
-- Edgar Degas

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.
-- Edgar Degas

You must do over the same subject ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must appear accidental, even a movement.
-- Edgar Degas

Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.
-- Edgar Degas

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.
-- Edgar Degas

Be sure to give the same expression to a person's face that you give to his body.
-- Edgar Degas

Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.
-- Edgar Degas

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.
-- Edgar Degas

Everybody has talent at twenty-five. The difficult thing is to have it at fifty.
-- Edgar Degas

He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He doesn't play for the respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

-- Sting

I know that the spades are the swords of a soldier
I know that the clubs are weapons of war
I know that diamonds mean money for this art
But that's not the shape of my heart

-- Sting

I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one
Those who speak know nothing
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who smile are lost

-- Sting

Fill my eyes
O Lithium sunset
And take this lonesome burden
Of worry from my mind
Take this heartache
Of obsidian darkness
And fold my darkness
Into your yellow light

Mercury Falling
-- Sting

I've been scattered I've been shattered
I've been knocked out of the race
But I'll get better
I feel your light upon my face

Mercury Falling
-- Sting

Heal my soul
O Lithium sunset
And I'll ride the turning world
Into another night
Into another night
Into another night
See mercury falling...

Mercury Falling
-- Sting

And every road I walked would take me down to the sea
With every broken promise in my sack
And every love would always send the ship of my heart
Over the rolling sea

Mercury Falling
-- Sting

I'm the present to your future
You're the wound and I'm the suture
You're the magnet to my pole
I'm the devil in your soul
You're the pupil I'm the teacher
You're the church and I'm the preacher
You're the flower I'm the rain
You're the tunnel I'm the train

Brand New Day: The Remixes
-- Sting

You're the crop to my rotation
You're the sum of my equation
I'm the answer to your question
If you follow my suggestion
We can turn this ship around
We'll go up instead of down
You're the pan and I'm the handle
You're the flame and I'm the candle

Brand New Day: The Remixes

-- Sting

When the world's gone crazy and it makes no sense
There's only one voice that comes to your defense
The jury's out and your eyes search the room
And one friendly face is all you need to see
If there's one guy, just one guy
Who'd lay down his life for you and die
It's hard to say it
I hate to say it, but it's probably me
I hate to say it
I hate to say it, but it's probably me

Fields of Gold: The Best of Sting 1984-1994 [Argentina Bonus Tracks]
-- Sting

I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities.
I failed history.
-- Sting

He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn't play for the money he wins
He doesn't play for respect
He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of a probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance

-- Sting

I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one

-- Sting

Trapped in the cage of the skeleton ship
All the workmen suspended like flies
Caught in the flare of acetylene light
A working man works till the industry dies.

-- Sting

What good is a used up world and how could it be worth having?

-- Sting

Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth
Better to be poor than a fat man in the eye of a needle.
And as these words were spoken I swore I hear
The old man laughing
'What good is a used up world and how could it be
Worth having?'

-- Sting

The teachers told us the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire
Garrison town,
They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled, 'til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found.

-- Sting

If human beings were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible... This does not mean, however, that humans are not, and do not have to be, something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at this point). There is in effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: It is the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality.
-- Giorgio Agamben

Today, in the era of the complete triumph of the spectacle, what can be reaped from the heritage of Debord? It is clear that the spectacle is language, the very communicativity or linguistic being of humans. This means that a fuller Marxian analysis should deal with the fact that capitalism (or any other name one wants to give the process that today dominated world history) was directed not only toward the expropriation of productive activity, but also and principally toward the alienation of language itself, of the very linguistic and communicative nature of humans, of that logos which one of Heraclitus' fragments identified as the Common. The extreme form of this expropriation of the Common is the spectacle, that is, the politics we live in. But this also means that in the spectacle of our own linguistic nature comes back to us inverted. This is why (precisely because what is being expropriated is the very possibility of common good) the violence of the spectacle is so destructive; but for the same reason the spectacle remains something like a positive possibility that can be used against it.
-- Giorgio Agamben

We are willing to make dramatic sacrifices to achieve greater speed because today our society pulses with new priorities and new demands. We've created a 24/7, CrackBerry, more-faster-now culture, and it is changing the way we work, relate, communicate and live. It's changing what makes an individual successful and what makes an organization viable. And it's changing key aspects of the basic human experience.

-- Vince Poscente

With the boom in technology enabling us to achieve speed in almost every imaginable way, speed is no longer a luxury - it's an expectation. And the more we get, the more we want.

-- Vince Poscente

When we are forced to slow down by an external agent, we are being robbed of the things that we could have accomplished in that time.

-- Vince Poscente

There is an increased demand for time but a virtually static supply of it. And the solution to that conflict is speed: if we cannot add more hours to the day, and the number of years in a lifetime is increasing only slightly, we have to move faster if we are to do everything we want to - and can - do.

-- Vince Poscente

We want to do big things, meaningful things, everything we dream of. We want the extensive education, the high powered career, the tight-knit family, the exciting social circles, the glamorous travel, the relaxed, introspective time for ourselves, and the ability to give back to our global community. And how much time do we have to cram that all into? Seventy years? Eighty? To do all that we want to do, to live as much as we want to live, we need speed - it's the only way to get more time, more life.

-- Vince Poscente

It's true that for some people, more does not necessarily mean better. Some are perfectly content not doing everything within their reach. They choose to limit the number of experiences they pursue - and they feel happier in doing so. There is even evidence to support the notion that more does not mean happier. But, for better or worse, if given the choice of doing less or doing more, most people feeling the effects of the Age of Speed choose more - more opportunities, more wealth, more connection to more people, more living.

-- Vince Poscente

Barring an economic catastrophe and a sudden halt in technological development, however, the number of options available to us will not decrease anytime soon. We can certainly choose not to pursue all the options available to us, but the number of options that exist will continue to grow regardless of our personal preferences. So ready or not, it's time to adapt to our new volume of options - and maybe even appreciate them as an opportunity to increase the amount of living we do, to increase our quantity of life.

-- Vince Poscente

Every time we speed up the time it takes to complete an unimportant task, we create the possibility of more time to spend doing what we feel is significant - whether it's building a business or watching the sunset. The lure of significance is a vital motivator in our rocket-powered lifestyles. We want to spend less time on things we deem inconsequential, so we devour every chance to speed up the minutiae in our lives.

-- Vince Poscente

When a Man Lies He Murders
Some Part of the World
These Are the Pale Deaths Which
Men Miscall Their Lives
All this I Cannot Bear
to Witness Any Longer
Cannot the Kingdom of Salvation
Take Me Home?

-- Metallica

Opposition...contradiction...premonition...compromise
Agitation...violation...mutilation...planet dies...

-- Metallica

Termination....expiration...cancellation...human race...
Expectation...liberation...population...lay to waste...

-- Metallica

In the exit of humanity
Color our world blackened.

-- Metallica

"Publishing" and its cognate words is also a term that gives rise to difficulty. As counsel for the interveners pointed out it may be useful, when considering where something is published to distinguish between the (publisher's) act of publication and the fact of publication (to a third party), but even that distinction may not suffice to reveal all the considerations relevant to locating the place of the tort of defamation.
-- High Court of Australia

In the course of argument much emphasis was given to the fact that the advent of the World Wide Web is a considerable technological advance. So it is. But the problem of widely disseminated communications is much older than the Internet and the World Wide Web. The law has had to grapple with such cases ever since newspapers and magazines came to be distributed to large numbers of people over wide geographic areas. Radio and television presented the same kind of problem as was presented by widespread dissemination of printed material, although international transmission of material was made easier by the advent of electronic means of communication.
-- High Court of Australia

One witness called by Dow Jones, Dr Clarke, described the Internet as "a telecommunications network that links other telecommunication networks". In his opinion, it is unlike any technology that has preceded it. The key differences identified by Dr Clarke included that the Internet "enables inter-communication using multiple data-formats ... among an unprecedented number of people using an unprecedented number of devices [and] among people and devices without geographic limitation".
-- High Court of Australia

The World Wide Web is but one particular service available over the Internet. It enables a document to be stored in such a way on one computer connected to the Internet that a person using another computer connected to the Internet can request and receive a copy of the document. As Dr Clarke said, the terms conventionally used to refer to the materials that are transmitted in this way are a "document" or a "web page" and a collection of web pages is usually referred to as a "web site". A computer that makes documents available runs software that is referred to as a "web server"; a computer that requests and receives documents runs software that is referred to as a "web browser".
-- High Court of Australia

The rule propounded by Dow Jones may have a greater appearance of certainty than it would have in fact. "Adventitious" and "opportunistic" are words likely to produce considerable debate. Does a publisher's decision to have a server in a country where the costs of operation are low, or the benefits offered for setting up business are high, warrant either of these descriptions? Does a publisher's decision to have servers in two, widely separated, states or even countries warrant either description, or is it simply a prudent business decision to provide security and continuity of service? How is the user to know which server dealt with a particular request? Is the fact that one rather than the other server met the request "adventitious"?
-- High Court of Australia

To the extent that the suggested rule would require reference only to the law of the place in which the server is located, it is a rule that would evidently be convenient to the party putting material on a web server. But that does not conclude debate. The convenience of one party is important to it, but how would such a rule fit with other, no less relevant, considerations? In particular, how would it fit with the nature of the competing rights and interests which an action for defamation must accommodate?
-- High Court of Australia

It is necessary to begin by making the obvious point that the law of defamation seeks to strike a balance between, on the one hand, society's interest in freedom of speech and the free exchange of information and ideas (whether or not that information and those ideas find favour with any particular part of society) and, on the other hand, an individual's interest in maintaining his or her reputation in society free from unwarranted slur or damage. The way in which those interests are balanced differs from society to society.
-- High Court of Australia

It follows that identifying the law which is to govern questions of substance, in an action for defamation where there is some foreign element, may have substantial consequences for the resolution of the proceeding. No less importantly, those who would seek to order their affairs in a way that will minimise the chance of being sued for defamation must be able to be confident in predicting what law will govern their conduct. But certainty does not necessarily mean singularity. What is important is that publishers can act with confidence, not that they be able to act according to a single legal system, even if that system might, in some sense, be described as their "home" legal system. Activities that have effects beyond the jurisdiction in which they are done may properly be the concern of the legal systems in each place. In considering where the tort of defamation occurs it is important to recognise the purposes served by the law regarding the conduct as tortious: purposes that are not confined to regulating publishers any more than they are confined to promoting free speech.
-- High Court of Australia

Harm to reputation is done when a defamatory publication is comprehended by the reader, the listener, or the observer. Until then, no harm is done by it. This being so it would be wrong to treat publication as if it were a unilateral act on the part of the publisher alone. It is not. It is a bilateral act - in which the publisher makes it available and a third party has it available for his or her comprehension.
-- High Court of Australia

To trace, comprehensively, the origins of the so-called single publication rule, as it has come to be understood in the United States, may neither be possible nor productive. It is, however, useful to notice some of the more important steps that have been taken in its development. Treating each sale of a defamatory book or newspaper as a separate publication giving rise to a separate cause of action might be thought to present difficulties of pleading and proof. Following early English authority holding that separate counts alleging each sale need not be pleaded in the declaration, American courts accepted that, where the defamatory matter was published in a book or newspaper, each publication need not be pleaded separately. Similarly, proof of general distribution of a newspaper was accepted as sufficient proof of there having been a number of separate publications. It was against this background that there emerged, at least in some American States by the late nineteenth century, the rule that a plaintiff could bring only one action against a defendant to recover damages for all the publications that had by then been made of an offending publication. The expression "one publication" or, later, "single publication" was first commonly used in this context.
-- High Court of Australia

Because publication is an act or event to which there are at least two parties, the publisher and a person to whom material is published, publication to numerous persons may have as many territorial connections as there are those to whom particular words are published. It is only if one starts from a premise that the publication of particular words is necessarily a singular event which is to be located by reference only to the conduct of the publisher that it would be right to attach no significance to the territorial connections provided by the several places in which the publication is available for comprehension.
-- High Court of Australia

It was not until the middle of the twentieth century and the advent of widely disseminated mass media of communication (radio and nationally distributed newspapers and magazines) that choice of law problems were identified. In some cases, the law of the forum was applied without any explicit recognition of the possible application of some other law. But then, by a process of what was understood as logical extension of the single publication rule, the choice of law to be applied came to be understood as largely affected by, perhaps even to be determined by, the proposition that only one action could be brought in respect of the alleged defamation, and that the place of publication was where the person publishing the words had acted.
-- High Court of Australia

It was suggested that the World Wide Web was different from radio and television because the radio or television broadcaster could decide how far the signal was to be broadcast. It must be recognised, however, that satellite broadcasting now permits very wide dissemination of radio and television and it may, therefore, be doubted that it is right to say that the World Wide Web has a uniquely broad reach. It is no more or less ubiquitous than some television services. In the end, pointing to the breadth or depth of reach of particular forms of communication may tend to obscure one basic fact. However broad may be the reach of any particular means of communication, those who make information accessible by a particular method do so knowing of the reach that their information may have. In particular, those who post information on the World Wide Web do so knowing that the information they make available is available to all and sundry without any geographic restriction.
-- High Court of Australia

However broad may be the reach of any particular means of communication, those who make information accessible by a particular method do so knowing of the reach that their information may have.
-- High Court of Australia

In defamation, the same considerations that require rejection of locating the tort by reference only to the publisher's conduct, lead to the conclusion that, ordinarily, defamation is to be located at the place where the damage to reputation occurs. Ordinarily that will be where the material which is alleged to be defamatory is available in comprehensible form assuming, of course, that the person defamed has in that place a reputation which is thereby damaged. It is only when the material is in comprehensible form that the damage to reputation is done and it is damage to reputation which is the principal focus of defamation, not any quality of the defendant's conduct. In the case of material on the World Wide Web, it is not available in comprehensible form until downloaded on to the computer of a person who has used a web browser to pull the material from the web server. It is where that person downloads the material that the damage to reputation may be done. Ordinarily then, that will be the place where the tort of defamation is committed.
-- High Court of Australia

It has been estimated that, by the end of 2002, the number of Internet users will reach 655 million. The number continues to grow exponentially. It is estimated that in some countries, the number of users doubles every six months. The Internet is essentially a decentralised, self-maintained telecommunications network. It is made up of inter-linking small networks from all parts of the world. It is ubiquitous, borderless, global and ambient in its nature. Hence the term "cyberspace". This is a word that recognises that the interrelationships created by the Internet exist outside conventional geographic boundaries and comprise a single interconnected body of data, potentially amounting to a single body of knowledge. The Internet is accessible in virtually all places on Earth where access can be obtained either by wire connection or by wireless (including satellite) links. Effectively, the only constraint on access to the Internet is possession of the means of securing connection to a telecommunications system and possession of the basic hardware.
-- High Court of Australia

The World Wide Web: The Web is a forum consisting of millions of individual "sites". Each site contains information provided by, or to, the creator of that site. When a publisher of information and opinion wishes to make its content available on the Web, it commonly does so by creating a "website" and "posting" information to that site. Such a website is a collection of electronic messages maintained on a type of computer known as a "web server". Typically, this is controlled either by the publisher concerned or by a third party contracted by the publisher to provide "web hosting" services.
-- High Court of Australia

By posting information on a website, the publisher makes the content available to anyone, anywhere, having access to the Web. However, accessibility will depend on whether there is open access (under which any web user can access the site); subscription access (under which only web users who register, and commonly pay, for the service can secure access); combination access (where only a portion of a site may be accessed after registration and/or payment of a fee) and restricted access (access limited to specified users authorised by the website operator to view the website, eg employees of a particular company).
-- High Court of Australia

Difficulty of controlling access: The nature of the Web makes it impossible to ensure with complete effectiveness the isolation of any geographic area on the Earth's surface from access to a particular website. Visitors to a website automatically reveal their Internet Provider ("IP") address. This is a numerical code that identifies every computer that logs onto the Internet. The visitor may also disclose certain information about the type of browser and computer that the visitor uses. The IP addresses of users are generally assigned to them by an Internet Service Provider ("ISP"). The user's IP address will remain the same whenever and wherever the user "surfs" the Web. But some ISPs do not assign a permanent IP address. Instead, they assign a new IP address every time a user logs onto the Web. Because of these features, there is presently no effective way for a website operator to determine, in every case, the geographic origin of the Internet user seeking access to the website.
-- High Court of Australia

For similar reasons, with respect to subscription accounts, checking the issuing location of a credit card provided by a user would not afford a universally reliable means of ascertaining the geographic location of a user seeking access to a website. Thus, even assuming that a geographic restriction could be introduced isolating Australia (and hence Victoria) by reference to the origin of the visitor's credit card, a resident of Australia with a credit card issued by a United States bank, would be able to access sites that might be denied to an Australian resident with an Australian credit card, although both users were physically located in Australia.
-- High Court of Australia

In addition to these difficulties of controlling access to a website by reference to geographic, national and subnational boundaries, the Internet has recently witnessed a rapid growth of technologies ("anonymising technologies") that enable Internet users to mask their identities (and locations). By reason of these developments, the provision of cost effective, practical and reliable identity verification systems, that could afford a universally reliable recognition of the point of origin of an Internet user, has not emerged. This is why the nature of Internet technology itself makes it virtually impossible, or prohibitively difficult, cumbersome and costly, to prevent the content of a given website from being accessed in specific legal jurisdictions when an Internet user in such jurisdictions seeks to do so. In effect, once information is posted on the Internet, it is usually accessible to all Internet users everywhere in the world. Even if the correct jurisdiction of an Internet user could be ascertained accurately, there is presently no adequate technology that would enable non-subscription content providers to isolate and exclude all access to all users in specified jurisdictions.
-- High Court of Australia

Novel features of the Web: The crucial attributes, so it was said, include the explosion in the availability of readily accessible information to hundreds of millions of people everywhere, with the consequent enhancement of human knowledge, and the beneficial contribution to human freedom and access to information about the world's peoples and their diverse lives and viewpoints that the Internet makes available, thereby contributing to human understanding. It was argued that the law should generally facilitate and encourage such advances, not attempt to restrict or impede them by inconsistent and ineffective, or only partly effective, interventions, for fear of interrupting the benefit that the Internet has already brought and the greater benefits that its continued expansion promises.
-- High Court of Australia

A court may have jurisdiction, but it may equally be bound by the applicable rules of private international law to exercise its jurisdiction by giving effect to the law of a foreign jurisdiction. Where necessary, this is done by receiving evidence to prove what that foreign law is. The mere fact that foreign law is applicable, and must be proved, does not, of itself, decide the third (convenient forum) issue.
-- High Court of Australia

A novel development: The fundamental premise of the appellant's arguments concerning the reformulation of the applicable rules of defamation depended on the technological features of the Internet. According to the appellant, those features were sufficiently different from pre-existing technology to demand a substantial reconsideration of the relevant law that had been stated in a different context in earlier times. If a more general revision were thought inappropriate or unnecessary, the task should at least be undertaken for any allegedly defamatory imputations published on the Internet.
-- High Court of Australia

The proposition cannot be answered by an enquiry limited to expressions of past law. When a radically new situation is presented to the law it is sometimes necessary to think outside the square.
-- High Court of Australia

First, the Internet is global. As such, it knows no geographic boundaries. Its basic lack of locality suggests the need for a formulation of new legal rules to address the absence of congruence between cyberspace and the boundaries and laws of any given jurisdiction. There are precedents for development of such new legal rules. The Law Merchant (lex mercatoria) arose in medieval times out of the general custom of the merchants of many nations in Europe. It emerged to respond to the growth of transnational trade. The rules of the common law of England adapted to the Law Merchant. They did so out of necessity and commonsense.
-- High Court of Australia

The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights also provides that "[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honour and reputation". And that "[e]veryone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks".
-- High Court of Australia

The law in different jurisdictions, reflecting local legal and cultural norms, commonly strikes different balances between rights to information and expression and the protection of individual reputation, honour and privacy. These disparities suggest the need for a clear and single rule to govern the conduct in question according to pre-established norms. If it is to be effective, such a rule must be readily ascertainable.
-- High Court of Australia

To tell a person uploading potentially defamatory material onto a website that such conduct will render that person potentially liable to proceedings in courts of every legal jurisdiction where the subject enjoys a reputation, may have undesirable consequences. Depending on the publisher and the place of its assets, it might freeze publication or censor it or try to restrict access to it in certain countries so as to comply with the most restrictive defamation laws that could apply. Or it could result in the adoption of locational stratagems in an attempt to avoid liability.
-- High Court of Australia

A new rule for a unique technology: In response to the suggestion that similar questions have existed at least since telegraph and international shortwave radio and that such potential liability is a commonplace in the world of global television distributed by satellite, the appellant pointed to the peculiarities of Internet publication. Viewed in one way, the Internet is not simply an extension of past communications technology. It is a new means of creating continuous relationships in a manner that could not previously have been contemplated. According to this view, the Internet is too flexible a structure to be controlled by a myriad of national laws, purportedly applied with no more justification than is provided by the content of such laws, usually devised long before the Internet arrived. For stored information, accessible in cyberspace, the new technology was said to demand a new approach. This would be true as much for the law of taxation, commercial transactions and other areas, as for the law of defamation.
-- High Court of Australia

The urgency of a new rule: To wait for legislatures or multilateral international agreement to provide solutions to the legal problems presented by the Internet would abandon those problems to "agonizingly slow" processes of lawmaking. Accordingly, courts throughout the world are urged to address the immediate need to piece together gradually a coherent transnational law appropriate to the "digital millennium". The alternative, in practice, could be an institutional failure to provide effective laws in harmony, as the Internet itself is, with contemporary civil society - national and international. The new laws would need to respect the entitlement of each legal regime not to enforce foreign legal rules contrary to binding local law or important elements of local public policy. But within such constraints, the common law would adapt itself to the central features of the Internet, namely its global, ubiquitous and reactive characteristics. In the face of such characteristics, simply to apply old rules, created on the assumptions of geographical boundaries, would encourage an inappropriate and usually ineffective grab for extra-territorial jurisdiction.
-- High Court of Australia

Enforceability of judgments: Any rule adopted with respect to publication of defamatory matter on the Internet must eventually face the practical question concerning the enforceability of a judgment recovered in such proceedings. The balance that is struck between freedom of expression and access to information and protection of individual reputation, honour and privacy tends to be a subject about which divergent views exist in the laws of different countries. Sometimes such laws are reinforced by domestic constitutional provisions. A judgment of a country's courts, recovered in defamation proceedings, may be enforced against any property of a foreign judgment debtor that exists within the jurisdiction. But if it is necessary to enforce the judgment in another jurisdiction, the difficulty or impossibility of such enforcement may amount to a practical reason for providing relief to the objecting foreign party on one or more of the grounds of objection raised in this case.
-- High Court of Australia

Rules should be technology-neutral: Whilst the Internet does indeed present many novel technological features, it also shares many characteristics with earlier technologies that have rapidly expanded the speed and quantity of information distribution throughout the world. I refer to newspapers distributed (and sometimes printed) internationally; syndicated telegraph and wire reports of news and opinion; newsreels and film distributed internationally; newspaper articles and photographs reproduced instantaneously by international telefacsimile; radio, including shortwave radio; syndicated television programmes; motion pictures; videos and digitalised images; television transmission; and cable television and satellite broadcasting. Generally speaking, it is undesirable to express a rule of the common law in terms of a particular technology. Doing so presents problems where that technology is itself overtaken by fresh developments. It can scarcely be supposed that the full potential of the Internet has yet been realised. The next phase in the global distribution of information cannot be predicted. A legal rule expressed in terms of the Internet might very soon be out of date.
-- High Court of Australia

Attractions of alternative formulations: A connected issue demands consideration. If the place of uploading were adopted as the place of publication which also governs the choice of applicable law, the consequence would often be, effectively, that the law would assign the place of the wrong for the tort of defamation to the United States. Because of the vastly disproportionate location of webservers in the United States when compared to virtually all other countries (including Australia) this would necessarily have the result, in many cases, of extending the application of a law of the United States (and possibly the jurisdiction and forum of its courts) to defamation proceedings brought by Australian and other foreign citizens in respect of local damage to their reputations by publication on the Internet. Because the purpose of the tort of defamation (as much in the United States as in Australia) is to provide vindication to redress the injury done to a person's reputation, it would be small comfort to the person wronged to subject him or her to the law (and possibly the jurisdiction of the courts) of a place of uploading, when any decision so made would depend upon a law reflecting different values and applied in courts unable to afford vindication in the place where it matters most.
-- High Court of Australia

A publisher, particularly one carrying on the business of publishing, does not act to put matter on the Internet in order for it to reach a small target. It is its ubiquity which is one of the main attractions to users of it. And any person who gains access to the Internet does so by taking an initiative to gain access to it in a manner analogous to the purchase or other acquisition of a newspaper, in order to read it.
-- High Court of Australia

The appellant contends that the Internet is not "pushed" into any particular jurisdiction. The contention ignores the commercial and social realities that greater publication produces both greater profit and broader persuasion. Indeed, the appellant's arguments would suggest that all of its objectives were exclusively high-minded. Revenues from increased advertising and circulation, and the word "profit" never passed the appellant's advocate's lips. It may well be that "firewalls" to deny access to the unintended or non-subscribing reader are at present perhaps imperfect. So be it. Publishers are not obliged to publish on the Internet. If the potential reach is uncontrollable then the greater the need to exercise care in publication.
-- High Court of Australia

The Court was much pressed with arguments about the ubiquity of the Internet. That ubiquity, it was said, distinguished the Internet from practically any other form of human endeavour. Implicit in the appellant's assertions was more than a suggestion that any attempt to control, regulate, or even inhibit its operation, no matter the irresponsibility or malevolence of a user, would be futile, and that therefore no jurisdiction should trouble to try to do so. I would reject these claims. Some brands of motor cars are ubiquitous but their manufacturers, if they wish to sell them in different jurisdictions must comply with the laws and standards of those jurisdictions. There is nothing unique about multinational business, and it is in that that this appellant chooses to be engaged. If people wish to do business in, or indeed travel to, or live in, or utilise the infrastructure of different countries, they can hardly expect to be absolved from compliance with the laws of those countries. The fact that publication might occur everywhere does not mean that it occurs nowhere. Multiple publication in different jurisdictions is certainly no novelty in a federation such as Australia.
-- High Court of Australia

I don't get no respect!!!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

You know my Doctor, Doctor Vinny BoomBots... I called and told him I had a bad case of diarrhea. - He put me on hold!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

A girl called me the other day and said "Come on over, there's nobody home." I went over. Nobody was home.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

A hooker told me "Not on the first date."
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Are you kiddin'? I know I'm ugly. My mother breast-fed me through a straw.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My mother didn't breast-feed me. She said she liked me as a friend.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

During sex, my girlfriend always wants to talk to me. Just the other night she called me from a hotel.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I drink too much. Way too much. I gave a urine sample, there was an olive in it.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I found there was only one way to look thin. Hang out with fat people.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I have good-looking kids. Thank goodness my wife cheats on me.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I joined Gambler`s Anonymous. They gave me two to one I don`t make it.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I said to the bartender "Surprise me." He pulled out a naked picture of my wife.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I told my doctor I wanted a vasectomy. He said, with a face like mine, I don't need one.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous— everyone hasn't met me yet.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I was so poor growing up, if I wasn't born a boy I'd have nothing to play with.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I was so ugly... When I was born, the doctor slapped my mother!"
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I was such an ugly kid— when I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My father never liked me, he'd tell me to go out and play "Hide and-go-fuck-yourself".
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I went to see my doctor. "Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror... I feel like throwing up; What's wrong with me?" He said..."I don't know but your eyesight is perfect."
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I went to the doctor because I'd swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. My doctor told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I'm taking Viagra and drinking prune juice— I don't know if I'm coming or going.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I'm ugly I'm tellin' ya. My proctologist, he stuck his finger in my mouth.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

If it wasn't for pick-pockets I'd have no sex life at all.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...
-- Rodney Dangerfield

It's not easy being me. When I was born the doctor told my mother, "I did all I could, but he pulled through anyway."
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Last night I was making love to my wife and nothing was happening, so I said to her, What's the matter, you can't think of anybody either?
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Life is just a bowl of pits.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My family was a bunch of drunks, when I was six I came up missing, they put my picture on a bottle of scotch.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you're ugly too.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My uncle's dying wish: he wanted me on his lap. He was in the electric chair.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My wife isn't too smart. She has to reach inside her bra to count to two.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My wife is ugly. She's so ugly that when you look up ugly in the dictionary, there's her picture.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

My wife was afraid of the dark. Then she saw me naked and now she's afraid of the light.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

That's the story of my life, no respect, ya know?
-- Rodney Dangerfield

The other night I told my kid "Someday, you'll have children of your own." He said "So will you."
-- Rodney Dangerfield

The other night I woke up and my wife was saying sexy things. I looked over and she was on the phone.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

When I tried to kiss my date goodnight she pushed me away. I said, "Is there someone else?" She said, "There must be."
-- Rodney Dangerfield

When I was a kid, I asked my Mother for a Bubble Bath, so she brought the water to a boil!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

When my wife has sex with me there's always a reason. The other night she used me to time an egg.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

With me, nothing goes right. My psychiatrist said my wife and I should have sex every night. Now, we'll never see each other!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

With my wife I don't get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to 'the best woman a man ever had.' The waiter joined me...
-- Rodney Dangerfield

With my wife, I've got no sex life. The dog keeps watching me in the bedroom so he can learn how to sit up and beg. I told him to watch my wife so he can learn how to roll over and play dead.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Yeah, I know I'm ugly. I said to a bartender, 'Make me a zombie.' He said 'God beat me to it.'
-- Rodney Dangerfield

You know the best part of having kids? ...making them.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I'm so ugly - My mother had morning sickness - After I was born.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I don't play hard to get... I play hard to want!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I love three girls at once...if I fall asleep, they got each other to talk to.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Don't worry honey, I didn't see a thing...you're perfect!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

You kiddin'? I know I'm ugly...last year at Halloween when I opened the door, kids gave me candy. Some little kid tried to pull my face off. When I drove down the street, I stuck my head out the window and got a ticket for mooning.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Every time I get into an elevator, the operator says the same thing: 'Basement?'
-- Rodney Dangerfield

I'll never forget the time I tried Cocaine. Horrible experience. Of course, I was on Acid at the time...
-- Rodney Dangerfield

The family's so ugly, in the photo album, they keep the negatives!
-- Rodney Dangerfield

One day I was driving home and saw a guy jogging naked. I asked why, he said, "'Cause you came home early!"
-- Rodney Dangerfield

There goes the neighborhood.
-- Rodney Dangerfield