What currently illegal things would you do if they were legal?

[xiphias]

A bunch of people hither and yon on LJ and elsewhere are discussing this question -- I saw it on nancylebov's LJ.

It's an interesting question. I mean, I can think of several things which are illegal which I would like to see legalized, either for the sake of friends of mine, or on general principles, but, for myself? What is there that I personally want to do that the law prevents me from doing?

Oh, and you're not allowed to say, "not pay taxes," because that's too easy.

I mean, I speed sometimes. So the law doesn't actually prevent me from doing that. So that doesn't count. I've got no desire to steal, murder, fight, or break any of those Big Laws.

I remember, when I was a teenager, my mother (rebmommy) and I said that, if marijuana was legalized, we'd get baked together once. Just to have done it. But, since then, both she and I have developed allergies which, through extrapolation, would probably include cannabis. So that one's out.

The one thing that I think I'd do if it were legal would be to use the first floor of our house as a bar/private club. 'Course, right now, vonbeck is living there, so he'd have to find another apartment first, but, if it weren't for zoning laws, public accommodation laws, liquor licensing and serving laws, health code inspection regulations, and food service laws, I'd do that.

And, frankly, I'm generally in favor of all of those categories of ordinance and regulation.

How about you?

Comments

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

The only illegal thing I can think of that I really want to do is keep chickens. I'd really like to have a couple, for the eggs and for the fertilizer. It's not illegal in Sharon to hang out laundry, but it is in some places, and that's something I don't intend on stopping doing.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's illegal in Sharon to keep chickens? Can you get permission from town hall or something?

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I think it's illegal to keep Sharon in a chicken as well. Or at least a bit uncomfortable.

[cheshyre]

Sharon is a town in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has quite a few interesting town names, which inspired a quite entertaining song on the subject, "Entering Marion" (lyrics)

[msdaisy.livejournal.com]

I'd like to marry my girlfriend.
But, you say, it's legal in Massachusetts.
But, I say in return, I'd like to marry my girlfriend, remain married to my husband, and have my husband marry my girlfriend as well.

That's still illegal even here.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yes; you guys were among the people I was thinking of in "for the sake of friends of mine".

[msdaisy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for thinking of us. :)
Being unable to marry a long-term partner, with whom I own a house and raise a child, has actually made it a little awkward for me when I go to weddings. Don't get me wrong: I love weddings and I am still happy for the couple. And I would like to be able to have public recognition of my family, with all that that entails both socially and legally. But weddings no longer feel like a semi-magic joining together. In so many ways I feel equally wed to Tessa as I do to Spike, although he and I did get married 10 or 11 years ago and she and I cannot do the same. And if we can feel that way without the ceremony (and presents! don't forget the presents! or the fancy clothes!) then it's difficult for me to get all excited about the ceremony.

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I was in a six-year relationship that I thought was similarly long-term and committed. I wanted to marry my other SO, and we talked about having a commitment party or somesuch. Sadly, he became a real asshole in our relationship over the past year, and I broke up with him. But I agree with the premise that the government should keep the fuck out of our interpersonal relationships, so long as everything occurring is mutually and knowingly consented to.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I'd take up pot smoking (again) in a heartbeat. Because sometimes I like a little buzz, and it's far less harsh on the body than alcohol. Never mind the fact that I've been living with "early-stage" glaucoma for two decades.

On the small illegalities front, I'd like to be able to open a tiny restaurant in my home - the sort with just one table, serving what I feel like preparing, on the nights when I want to. It's not illegal, precisely, but I'd have to upgrade to a commercial kitchen and that's beyond my means.

On the larger front: I'd like to be able to travel freely across international borders without messing with passports and visas and all that crap.

[ron_newman]

I'd take my bicycle on the subway and commuter rail at rush hours, and on the Green Line.

[ron_newman]

and, while I'm at it, I'd ride across each of these at least once (though only at some quiet time like 5 am on a Sunday): the Tobin Bridge, the Zakim Bridge, the Ted Williams Tunnel, the Callahan Tunnel, and the Sumner Tunnel.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

I'd smoke in a bar.

I agree with the NY law against it; it's healtier for everyone. But I'd still do it if it were legal.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I would like to be able to build my house without having to come up with approved plans covered in engineer stamps. The county zoning codes are really something where I live. And meanwhile, I sit in the house my grandfather built, 80 years ago, with no codes. Sigh.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Park in my own frickin' driveway. *grump*

Host a play party or sex party.

I might try smoking weed again. (The last time I smoked it was when the last Bush was in office.)

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I can't think of anything really to add to this list - I'm disgustingly law-abiding in general.

But - please, for the sake of the clueless Brit - explain this:

Park in my own frickin' driveway. *grump*

Do you have to park in someone else's drive?

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I live in a rented apartment in a two-family house. The driveway is shaped like an "L", with the widest part of the "L" nearest the street. You can fit three cars nose-to-tail in the vertical part of the "L", with a fourth to one side so that there are two cars side-by-side at the end of the drive nearest the street.

I had been in the habit of parking in that fourth spot.

The town went to my landlord and claimed that that fourth spot, which is paved contiguously with the rest of the driveway, which I had been using for three years, and which tenants before me had presumably been using as well, constitutes an "illegal driveway expansion" and that no one may park there.

I have thus gone from a driveway spot from which I may come and go at will, to one from which I can only come and go with leave of my neighbor because our cars need to block each other in.

If not for my town's stupid zoning laws, all would be well.

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

That's horrible. No chance of arguing that people have been parking there for long enough that it's an established place I assume - there's some laws like that here, if you've been doing it fo X number of years then even if it's technically not allowed then you can carry on anyway. (A squatter became the owner of a house that way because he'd been living there for many years without being evicted. Obviously this doesn't work on 'really' illegal things like murder and such like...)

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I seee you're in the UK. What you're describing is called "adverse possession," and it does exist here in the US, but only in terms of *occupancy* of the property by someone other than the legal owner. It doesn't refer to use of the property by the legal owner or tenant in a way that doesn't conform to zoning law.

Honestly, I like the UK idea. Zoning laws are intended to prevent use of your property in a way that might be objectionable to the neighbors--e.g., by creating an eyesore, or bad odors, or objectionable traffic or parking problems. If what you're doing doesn't give rise to cause for complaint, then there's no reason to zone against it, is there?

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I don't think that the UK really has much that's comparable to the US zoning laws. We have various and complicated restrictions on use in various areas and for various buildings, but the zoning thing seems designed to make places fragmented.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

How do you mean, "fragmented"?

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Just seems to me, where you have zoning type laws - and we get the similar effect in new housing estates - you get houses here, and shops here, and offices here, and pubs here... So each in its separate area whereas if places are allowed to grow organically you get things in the pattern that people need, with a corner shop and a local pub and an insurance office just down the road from where you live.

I could be wrong, but that's the way I percieve it sometimes.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. Up here around the neighborhood in which I live, we're mainly zoned "Mixed Residential/Commerical." It means that you can't open a factory around here, and my town does not allow any pubs whatsoever, although one can have restaurants which serve alcohol. But you can have certain types of professional offices (lawyer's office, CPA office, doctor's office) in your home; you can have a mixed-use building (several of the buildings on my block have ground-floor shop space, and apartments above -- the ground floors have things like a barber, dry cleaner, a dentist's office, an antique store, massage therapist, fitness trainer, oriental rug store, diners, laundromats, and so forth).

So zoning need not lead to the "suburban wasteland" of housing developments with no grocery stores or drugstores within walking distance. Although, yes, it can lead to that when done poorly.

[rosefox]

It's interesting to see this on the same page as this entry.

There really isn't anything I frequently refrain from doing because it's illegal. The closest I get is not participating in Critical Mass; although I think the law is on the cyclists' sides, the mayor and NYPD are strongly opposed to it, and it always turns into a battle between cyclists and cops. I am not inclined to get in the middle of such a situation, and would prefer to support the people who are fighting it in the courts.

[yardlong.livejournal.com]

About the only thing I can think of is that I would ignore any summons to jury duty. They come with the threat of fine or imprisonment for failure to respond, which forces me to respond and really puts me out. Other than that, I am happy to be a law-abiding citizen.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Hunh. That's interesting. Because, for me, I'm happy to get a jury summons -- being Jewish, I'm very aware that, for thousands of years, my people weren't allowed to be part of the legal system in our countries.

I don't have a problem with people not wanting to be on juries, but it always makes me a little confused. Because, to me, a jury summons is one of the good things about this country.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The problem is that in the past, jury service was almost always a hardship on the person called and it still is, in general, a PITA.

The hardship element has been greatly reduced by laws requiring employers to pay the difference in wages between jury-duty pay and what you normally receive from your job. It also helps that many states have gone to a "one-day, one-trial" system, where if you are not empaneled on a jury your first day, your service is done. In many states you had to show up every day for a week. (NJ IIRC was two weeks.) Jury sequestration has also largely been done away with, except for trials that receive a lot of media attention.

In many places, jury service itself is an experience in dealing with Soviet-style bureaucracy. It's like spending all day at the RMV. Not a pleasant experience.

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

I'd drive a *lot* faster when I'm going from LA to SF and back. It's not like it's a safety concern when I-5 is 300 miles of straight, flat, nothing. My car can easily do 100 mph on that road, but that's a *big* ticket.

I'd probably try marijuana again. I tried it once or twice in college, but didn't get much from it. At least partially because I was smoking in a bathroom, with like three other people, and I only got two hits. I like the sensation and experience of smoking, sometimes, but I'm violently allergic to most cigarettes.

I'd hire an escort for a night. I'm not 100% sure it's illegal here, but it's grey enough that I'm iffy on the whole thing. Since I can't seem to get or keep any relationships, and sex is a nice thing to have once in a while.

[lazy-boring-man.livejournal.com]

Illegalities don't really stop me from smoking cannabis, because it's still easy enough to do. What I'd really like to see become legal is LSD. I want the experience of an acid trip at least once, but it's really ultra-hard to find. If it was legal I could just drive to the supermarket and go down the psychedelics aisle.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Have you found the question being discussed in more places than what was listed in my post?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Nope; just tracked back from you.

[the-editor.livejournal.com]

it might be fun to kill someone...

after all, pretty much every other law is of no consequence to most people...

but murder really pisses some folks off.

Just pondering the question... not really ambitious about it.

[momomom.livejournal.com]

Well, first all consensual adult sex laws should be banned and most paraphilias should not be listed as illnesses.

Many more drugs should be over the counter or at least available OTC as refills after a medical diagnosis is established.

Import of prescription drugs should allowed (fair market).

Home owner associations that operate as little fiefdoms should have mandatory mediation.

Cannabis should be regulated like alcohol.

Tobacco farming subsidies should stop.

and now I'm just rambling.

I did smoke pot once with my mom as a teenager. It was great. ++ for no allergies.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Good points, all.

Most paraphilias are not listed as illnesses in DSM-IV, and are not treatable as such unless the paraphilia is causing significant distress, e.g. with one's partner. The only paraphilias commonly treated by the psych profession without other indicators that it's causing distress in someone's life are those that involve nonconsenting others and/or possible arrest for criminal activity.

The concept of "fair market" in prescription drugs gets interesting. In Canada, for instance, the government acts as a monoposony buyer for prescription medications, which means that that country does not have a free market in prescription medications. The drug companies simply consider the reduced revenue from selling to the Canadian health care system to be worthwhile so they can sell in Canada at all. So buying drugs from Canada is less about taking advantage of a "free market" than it is about taking advantage of a neighboring country's distortion of the local market.

I'd go further than you on HOAs. IMO they should be forced to operate like town governments, because essentially that's what they are. Free and fair elections, and business required to be conducted at public meetings open to all who are bound by the HOA's rules.

I'd stop *all* farming subsidies, not just tobacco.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I would probably try pot (probably ingested rather than inhaled). I might try LSD, but maybe not.

I actually don't exceed the speed limit very often; I don't think I'm a good enough driver to get away with it. The exception is Alcoa Highway, where if I didn't drive as fast as the rest of the traffic, I'd get knocked all to hell and gone.

I'm in favor of eliminating most "consensual crimes", but not interested in committing most of them.

I'm very much in favor of maintaining or even strengthening most health and safety codes, and many but not all zoning regulations.

[kiya]

Do a great deal more of exploration of chemically altered consciousness than I do.

Legally marry arawen, should we get to a point at which I am able to ask the question and he is able to answer.

Possibly sell some fragment of the stuff I brew, as if I made everything I wanted to try out I'd never be able drink it all, and the balance struck by what we drink and give away and how much I make is fairly low on the explorational scale.

I'm not sure whether building codes or zonings would have isues with the sort of house I'd like to live in or my really random desire to keep goats or any of tat, but if so, that.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Use (more) drugs, drive faster more places... that's mostly it for stuff I personally would do. Other than something those I might do on principle if they were legalized, but would be unlikely to if they'd never had the stigma of being illegal in the first place, like hiring a prostitute.

There aren't many minor ordinance laws that hinder me regularly... I might not carry car insurance.

[holyhippie]

Some thoughts:

* Travel on a plane, paying cash, without showing ID. Freedom of movement and association is very restricted by the need to show ID when travelling.

* Buy a region-free DVD player. This is an item where the legality is somewhat murky - but the DMCA and such makes it difficult for people to sell reverse-engineered region-free DVD players here, because they can be sued or prosecuted out of existence.

* Walk around naked when I feel like it. I'm not the biggest naturist or exhibitionist out there, but it would be nice to be able to be naked, or a little sloppy about getting dressed, without fearing prosecution as a sex criminal.

* This isn't something for me personally, but for my kids in the future - I'd like to see marijuana decriminalized. I don't particularly want my kids to become potheads or otherwise drug addicted - but if they do happen to occasionaly get stoned during their teen years, and get caught; I'd like to see them treated as minor offenders, rather than raked over the coals as major offenders.

* I'd like to get DSL service from the provider of my choice, rather than the local monopoly. This isn't so much the case of me trying to do something that is currently illegal - but changing the local landscape to force the telcos to act as neutral carriers, rather than monopolistic greedheads.

* I'd like to download a free copy of the original Star Wars movie, and to use clips in my own projects. See, this is currently prohibited by copyright laws. Copyright laws that in the past, said that copyright expired after a fixed number of years, and after that the copyrighted work was made public domain. Copyright laws that were changed by the corporate greedheads running the media industries to have effectively permanent copyrights, so work would never enter the public domain. Damn it, some things like Star Wars should be public domain by now!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I could accept copyrights that:
1. Lasted 50 years from first publication or the life of the copyright holder + 10 years, whichever is longer -- if the copyright holder is a human being
OR
2. Lasted a flat 70 years if the copyright holder was a corporation.

That's as long a period as I feel I could accept, though.

[phantom_wolfboy]

That's about as short as I could accept, personally.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

And that's why I mention those particular time periods. They tend to be long enough to let creators make their money off of it, plus long enough to make people who have deep personal connections to their works not have to live to see fanfics of them, if they don't want to, yet are short enough to allow people to make derivative works in vaguely-reasonable time.

[holyhippie]

I disagree that these are reasonable - but then again, I am not a lawyer, writer, artist, or otherwise very connected with the creation of media.

As far as software releases go, I think that in the current era, copyright protections of 10 years would be more than sufficent. Pretty much, after 5 years, the computer environment around the software release has changed enough so that the software is obsolete and no more value can be extracted from it anyway. You notice that software that doesn't release new versions every couple of years pretty much withers away and dies.

For creative creations (books, music, movies), I think copyright should expire under 30 years, probably 20 years. The period of time on which you really can capitalize and monetize a particular version of a book or a movie isn't that long - just a few years. After that, returns dwindle.

With a '50 years from first publication' rule, stuff produced in the 50's would be going into public domain now. People who were around in the fifties to participate in that content being part of the culture of the time are old. Most are gone. I think that is too long - it puts too much distance between the original creation of the content, and being able to reuse it in public domain.

According to Wikipedia, the original laws in the US had 14 year terms for copyright, renewable for 14 years. That seems reasonable to me.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'd be happier with those periods -- but I also know people who are authors who feel a deep emotional connection to their characters, and would feel quite hurt to live to see other people use them without their permission.

That's the reason for a "life of the copyright holder (+ N years, N >= 0), if the copyright holder is a person."

The other numbers, as I said, are simply the largest numbers I could live with.

[(Anonymous)]

I miss LSD.

I'd also probably do a bit more experimenting on whether stimulants other than caffeine would help me.

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

Lots of people want to smoke pot, some people don't realize that things like building codes are there to protect them. Both from their own stupidity, and from hiring people who will do shoddy work and injure them.

[dancing-kiralee.livejournal.com]

1) Marry the people (plural) I want to marry (assuming they would want to marry me... but, as we have been together over 10-20 years now, that might not be too much of a problem).

2) I'd like to try pot, once.

3) I'd like to become a prostitute or courtesan... but, mind you, only if it were legal and, um, regulated. Things like, the guy has to wear a condom, and a good definition of rape when money is involved.

4) More choice in what insurance I buy... mostly, actually, health insurance, which is a pretty new law. And I wouldn't drop my current coverage; but there was a time in my life when I was uninsured, and, I'd still want to have that choice if I was ever in that circumstance again (not that I want to be there again, but I want the option, and might, personally, use it).

5) Not pay social security taxes... I'm fine with paying real estate and income tax, at both the federal and state levels. I'm even OK with an increase - I personally think the government doesn't have enough money; but I really don't want to pay taxes for a benefit I will never receive.

6) If the law were changed so that psychologists etc. didn't have to report it if they thought I was showing symptoms of suicide / depression, I would go see one.

Kiralee

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

After some thought, I'll go with "offer/receive cash rewards for games of skill or chance." A few years back, there might have been an additional one, but time has cleared that up.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question. I'm not really sure. Maybe try pot, but maybe not; even if it were legal, stereotypes would still exist and I'd still be Jamaican.

The copyright question led to an interesting discussion. As a fanfic writer, I care a lot more about whether the creators disapprove or not than I do about whether or not it's legal, because I've seen how fanfic not only doesn't lure people away from canon works but can induce them to purchase canon works they might otherwise not have. So maybe it's something illegal I'm doing anyway.

[temima.livejournal.com]

This is hard for me because a lot of things I might do if legal are a lot more fun to think about than do, break at least one hard and fast rule of lots of religions, and may entail considerable expense even if legal. I'm also uncomfortable writing about them in an unlocked post.