-----Original Message----- From: owner-cypherpunks@lne.com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@lne.com]On Behalf Of An Metet Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 7:10 PM To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: Gotti, evidence, case law, remailer practices, civil cases, civilit
Black Unicorn, esquire, wrote:
(Lesson for other posters- to get legal research for free out of Uni, just insult him a lot)...
...Seriously interested researchers will spend time at the library, look up statutes and learn to Shepardize. I happened to be at the law library for an unrelated matter so I wasted 90 minutes looking this silliness up for you and the list Mr. May. I herewith submit my invoice, payable on receipt, for more civil treatment, for services rendered.
Many people on and off this list have spent a lot more than 90 minutes researching things, writing posts, writing code, solving math problems, etc., etc. Tim May in particular has written thousands of pages of high quality or entertaining work.
I don't know you or how long you've been around cypherpunks but Mr. May and I have been bouncing discussions (of both a civil and uncivil nature depending on our respective moods) pretty much since the list started. People might claim many things about me, but a lack of respect for Mr. May is certainly not one of them. What astounds me, and is right in line with your point about people spending much more time than 90 minutes on research for this list, is that in an environment of such dedicated posters (and I totally agree with you- once on a node like lne.com that does a touch of filtering the content on this list is second to none- which is why I'm here) so many spend a disproportionately _minute_ amount of time in such work before making entirely wrong headed assertions about law and government and yet feel entirely justified conveying this advice as gospel to their fellows, who often take it at face value. (Revisit my IANAL discussion in posts a few days ago in which I wonder aloud why these posters are taken seriously while the "I am not a doctor, but" posters are not). If you've been here for any length of time I'm sure several of the most egregious examples will come to your mind immediately without my prompting. It hardly seems prudent to allow these errors go uncorrected. In fact, in my position, I would consider it irresponsible of me not to comment in some way that would permit designers of code and systems which actually see deployment (of which this list is uniquely populated) to write systems that have practical and legal grounding to actually proliferate anonymity and confidential communications capabilities world-wide without running afoul of our most esteemed attorney general. It would have been really nice if someone from e.g. Napster had been listening to discussions like this back when that company's founder began design work. I can think of many other examples in which millions (if not billions) could have been saved with a little sage and cautious legal advice properly deposited in the ears of the security or design "geeks" at the appropriate time. Do I consider myself _more_ valuable than "geeks" or those who write code? Don't be silly. I will constantly, however, assert that the legal issues that plague all the kinds of cutting edge technologies that consistently see discussion on this list 5 and even 10 years before they are ever even considered by the market or the real world, much less a courtroom, require addressing by someone who actually knows what they are talking about on the subject of legal process.
Your complaints about "free research" suggest that you have the sense that you are more valuable than or superior to other contributors.
I think that's quite a reach on your part if you are pointing it out generally. If you mean with specific reference to legal points regarding the production of documents and such- very much the focus of my early legal career- then I would submit to you that I would have to be awfully stupid _not_ to have more experience and expertise in these matters than anyone who had not spent the amount of time I had in the field. (I hope that's not a thinly veiled accusation on your part that I am somehow stupid). By the same token you will never, _never_ catch me second guessing, e.g., Mr. May on topics related to Physics. Look, I would like to play basketball as well as Michael Jordan. Is it somehow unfair of life that I cannot? Is Michael Jordan insulting someone when he comments about the game in a way that suggests he knows what he is talking about? Of course we recognize this as an absurd assertion. So why should anyone be offended by the proposition that "geeks" might not always have the best grip on the law and need a touch of advice on occasion? Does pointing that out somehow make me a snob? If so, fine. I'm a snob. Still, I readily admit that I don't always have the best grip on system design, nor do I claim to. I am more than happy to volunteer my expertise, and my research time, to try to focus discussions (or confuse discussions depending on your view) with respect to legal matters that impact system design. I am _not_ happy to do so just because someone wants to see me spew out a long list of citations which they are unlikely to ever read. (Mr. May is specifically excluded from this comment because I am pretty sure he actually reads my responses and checks up on me on occasion). I, after all, don't demand cites from C++ manuals, or physics texts when a fairly recognized expert in those fields posts on those topics here. If I were to make such requests they would be for my own edification and as requests for references to where I could learn about the topic, not just to try and prove a point. Most of the posters I end up citing major passages to have no, and never had any, interest in learning about law- whether they realize it or not- but rather putting as little effort into the consideration of it as possible, primarily out of the grossest of intellectual laziness, while still spouting off cliche legal errors that have long since been corrected on this list and elsewhere, like "all foreign embassies are technically foreign soil" or "you can't drive barefoot, it's illegal" or, one of my favorites, "if you ask and they don't tell you they are police, then you're safe from prosecution." Again, and I shouldn't have to keep pointing this out, I hardly mean this as a reference to _all_ posters on cypherpunks.
While this is couched in civility, one could conclude that this is an insult, something along the lines of "of course geeks should work for free, but I'm a lawyer!"
One concluding such might also be prone to conclude that geeks are overly sensitive to such matters because of an underdeveloped sense of the value of their own work. This conclusion would be just as much a reach as your own, above, and not in any way bear resemblance to my attitude about most of the coders on this list (but completely in line with my attitudes about armchair posters who are mostly typing the rubbish they purvey here merely to sound busy with keystrokes in their cube at work).
It's a free world, but it might work better not to insult people, even if the insult is slightly veiled.
I think if you review the posts on this topic over the last few days you might find that I've been perhaps the most civil of the authors, even in the face of some pretty caustic replies.
(Your spoliation posts have been interesting. Thank you for writing them.)
Oh, you read them? That will be $750.00 please.