At 1:26 PM -0700 4/12/01, David Honig wrote:

At 02:21 PM 4/12/01 -0400, Sunder wrote:

...

While he can't really enforce what people do with the emails that they receive from him, if he sees his posts printed in full in the next issue of WIRED, he could sue.

Quite salient coming after Tim's post about the vulnerability of centralized, publicized spaces/assets. Its precisely this that would make it practical to sue a copyright infringing entity.

Except when the centralized entity its a state selling your DMV records, of course.

"Sovereign immunity" is their salvation. Fact is, we as a nation have done several things to make it a great place for lawyers: -- nearly everything can be sued over. If Alice doesn't like a book that Borders sells, finding it "offensive" in some way, she sues. (It usually helps her case move through the system, generate publicity, collect contingency fee lawyers) if she claims the book in question belittles her aspirations as minority, or contains sexist terms, or caused her to suffer post-bookstore traumatic shock syndrome (PBTSS). -- deep pockets. Damages are not awarded based on objective standards (such as they are) but on how much money Borders, for example, might have in its coffers. McDonald's has a lot of money, so award an old lady a lot of money for trying to drive her car with a hot cup of coffee between her legs. The hospital is a Giant Corporation, thinks the jury, so award a woman a bunch of money when she says a CAT scan caused her to lose her psychic powers. -- a massively complicated legal system that requires expensive lawyers just to act as special scribes and priests who can interpret the Latinisms and complicated precedents. Those who act "pro se" (a la Parker, Henson, Bell, etc.) often find themselves chewed up and crushed by the machine. And those who rely on the "ditch diggers" of the legal industry, the court-paid shysters and hacks, find this is all part of the Plan. I once heard that a leading chip company was no longer pushing to reform the legal system, as they once had in the 1970s. Seems that by getting very big and having the resources to hire several hundred lawyers and entire floors of people to fill out required forms, permits, documentation, requests, etc., they were well-equipped to simply *outlast* the new chip companies which tried to be nimble--as Giant Chip Corp had once been--and to wait until the upstarts found themselves roadblocked by not having properly completed Permit Request 466-571 A, "Determination of Sufficient Burritos and Other Frozen Items in Company Break Rooms, pursuant to Fair Labor Standards Act, Sub-part B, revised 11/99." In other words, legal red tape helped those who had invested earliest in lawyers and hurt those trying to innovate. (By "rules" and "forms" I included taxes and accounting rules as well. Giant Chip Corp had more accountants and CPAs filling out endless mounds of paper required by local towns, counties, Regional Water Districts, Southern District MUDs, states, Feds, and international agencies and jurisdictions than it had design engineers working on its chips. And it came to _like_ the welter of laws and forms, as it raised the bar for upstart competitors.) This is all part of the rent-seeking process. Thugs shaking down those they can. Transactions by coercion. I would not be willing to set up any kind of on-line business. I would know that busybodies would be suing, lawyers would be sniffing around looking for "rent-seeking" (shakedown) opportunities, and hundreds of state and federal regulators and watchdogs would be searching for ways to either make a name for themselves or to finagle a way to be guaranteed a lobbying job after leaving government service. And then there are the "aggrieved" groups, the Holocaust Lobby being only the most vocal at the present time. It seems that every time I see a press release from ZKS they have added to their payroll or Board more lobbyists, more ombudsmen, more former Canadian government "privacy experts." Sure looks like they're being shaken down. Doesn't seem likely to me that all of these privacy czars and Ottawa Privacy Commission guys are going to be pushing for FreedomNet to be used for liberating communications from all traceability and accountability, does it? --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns