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. Your complaints about "free research" suggest that you have the sense that you are more valuable than or superior to other contributors. 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!" It's a free world, but it might work better not to insult people, even if the insult is slightly veiled. (Your spoliation posts have been interesting. Thank you for writing them.)
-----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.
At 8:09 PM -0700 8/2/01, Black Unicorn wrote:
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).
Don't know where you've been reading the last 10 years, but it's the case all over the Internet that people give the most egregious medical advise (in one case a poster suggested someone break an "addiction" to ephedrine (taken as a diet aid/upper) with some ridiculous chinese herb that, you guessed it, contained ephedrine and caffine. (IIRC it was guarna). Similar nonsense abounds. At least most of the legal advice here will get you laughed at in court, not dead.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Petro wrote:
Don't know where you've been reading the last 10 years, but it's the case all over the Internet that people give the most egregious medical advise (in one case a poster suggested someone break an "addiction" to ephedrine (taken as a diet aid/upper) with some ridiculous chinese herb that, you guessed it, contained ephedrine and caffine. (IIRC it was guarna).
Similar nonsense abounds. At least most of the legal advice here will get you laughed at in court, not dead.
Actually this is a misrepresentation of the vast majority of legal exchange here, it's opinion or personal viewpoint - not advice. You'd think all you legal eagles would understand the distinction. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, An Metet wrote:
Your complaints about "free research" suggest that you have the sense that you are more valuable than or superior to other contributors.
He is not "superior" in any substantial way; however, his expertise in law, combined with a willingness to actually discuss it, are in short supply here. That same expertise is extremely valuable to people designing systems, and for the sake of such people, please do not discourage him in any way from sharing it. The discussion of legal spoilation has been particularly enlightening; Before this discussion started I knew that it was possible to get in trouble for destroying documents before charges were filed or a subpeona was served. But before an investigation is even under way? Before a complaint is even filed? The mind boggles. I'd never have known that without reading the caterpillar cite, and as one who is not of the Priveleged Caste in terms of access to legal information, (ie, willing to pay thousands of bucks to Westlaw or whoever each year) I am grateful to him for passing it on. A worthwhile question for Cypherpunks -- all of the court decisions and cites are, technically, public domain information. And yet access to that information, in terms of legal databases, remains either extremely expensive, or the province of a Priveleged Caste (to whom "extremely expensive" looks like "normal business expenses"). Westlaw owns some of the most expensive copyrights, per-copy, of any entity -- and all they've done is number the pages and paragraphs and provide an index on public domain information. I think that there is, or ought to be, a good cypherpunk solution to making legal cites available for everyone. A distributed law library, hosted on many servers? Legal cites on Freenet? After all, what good is crypto anarchy if we can't break a copyright monopoly (or at least a case of non-competitive pricing) imposed on public domain information? Bear
There was some discussion a while back (check the archives since I probably sent a URL) about how 'the law' was being buried in copyrighted archives that were unavailable to the 'common man'... Just another example of how fucked up the courts and law in general in this country is. On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Ray Dillinger wrote:
A worthwhile question for Cypherpunks -- all of the court decisions and cites are, technically, public domain information. And yet access to that information, in terms of legal databases, remains either extremely expensive, or the province of a Priveleged Caste (to whom "extremely expensive" looks like "normal business expenses").
Westlaw owns some of the most expensive copyrights, per-copy, of any entity -- and all they've done is number the pages and paragraphs and provide an index on public domain information.
I think that there is, or ought to be, a good cypherpunk solution to making legal cites available for everyone. A distributed law library, hosted on many servers? Legal cites on Freenet?
After all, what good is crypto anarchy if we can't break a copyright monopoly (or at least a case of non-competitive pricing) imposed on public domain information?
-- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
-- On 2 Aug 2001, at 20:53, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, An Metet wrote:
Your complaints about "free research" suggest that you have the sense that you are more valuable than or superior to other contributors.
He is not "superior" in any substantial way; however, his expertise in law, combined with a willingness to actually discuss it, are in short supply here.
He is a nym. We do not know his actual qualifications. From what he has posted here, I am not impressed. Perhaps he has expertise in some areas of laws. He lacks expertise on the topics that he has posted on. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG OMtuw8KyojUVkoSLXcaUr9jcdfS6Ex5qFnDM4AZa 4Wun79YkjX1Ca45FgxaO60zY96XH18ZqFCQKa3xH2
On Thu, 2 Aug 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
He is not "superior" in any substantial way; however, his expertise in law, combined with a willingness to actually discuss it, are in short supply here.
He is a nym. We do not know his actual qualifications. From what he has posted here, I am not impressed.
Perhaps he has expertise in some areas of laws. He lacks expertise on the topics that he has posted on.
You are wrong. I went and looked up the Caterpillar cite he gave. It is real. This stuff is happening in the courts and we wouldn't have known it otherwise. Bear
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 7:35, Ray Dillinger wrote:
You are wrong. I went and looked up the Caterpillar cite he gave. It is real.
I, and everyone else with half a brain, has long known that judges frequently say "Hey, we are about to seize a truckload of your documents looking for deep pockets^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hevidence, so don't start shredding. What we doubt is that it is compulsory to retain incriminating evidence, or to irretrievably publish material that might at some future time be declared a thought crime. We also doubt that anyone has been punished for such acts in recent centuries. The current state of the law is illustrated by the Nixon tapes, "The Wind Done Gone", and the DVD ripping code. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Lv4Or/aRW1ltIKBgGuJ1ievWlkgxLUG7tyjWay9n 4eKkwOU4Gi6P27UMPbRdhhRkcSn+Ig9HJV9ynm5SA
Ray wrote:
[...] as one who is not of the Priveleged Caste in terms of access to legal information, (ie, willing to pay thousands of bucks to Westlaw or whoever each year) I am grateful to him for passing it on.
There are Cypherpunks without a Westlaw or LEXIS login? The mind boggles... --Lucky
On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 12:20:47AM -0700, Lucky Green wrote: | Ray wrote: | | > [...] as one who | > is not of the Priveleged Caste in terms of access to legal information, | > (ie, willing to pay thousands of bucks to Westlaw or whoever each | > year) I am grateful to him for passing it on. | | There are Cypherpunks without a Westlaw or LEXIS login? The mind boggles... Clearly, one can no longer write code without such, at least if you want to stay out of jail. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
At 12:20 AM -0700 8/3/01, Lucky Green wrote:
Ray wrote:
[...] as one who is not of the Priveleged Caste in terms of access to legal information, (ie, willing to pay thousands of bucks to Westlaw or whoever each year) I am grateful to him for passing it on.
There are Cypherpunks without a Westlaw or LEXIS login? The mind boggles...
Many of us cannot write it off on our taxes as a business expense, and at least one of us isn't really sure he want's to give those thieving bastards any of his money. (Which if I do decide to go to law school, I guess I'll have to)
Petro wrote:
At 12:20 AM -0700 8/3/01, Lucky Green wrote:
... There are Cypherpunks without a Westlaw or LEXIS login? The mind boggles...
Many of us cannot write it off on our taxes as a business expense, and at least one of us isn't really sure he want's to give those thieving bastards any of his money.
Uh, I don't think Lucky said anything about PAYING. ;'D S a n d y
I think Uni was merely making a humorous note on Tim's prodding him to brief. I detected a sly grin. ~Aimee
-----Original Message----- From: owner-cypherpunks@lne.com [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@lne.com]On Behalf Of An Metet Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 9:10 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.
Your complaints about "free research" suggest that you have the sense that you are more valuable than or superior to other contributors. 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!" It's a free world, but it might work better not to insult people, even if the insult is slightly veiled.
(Your spoliation posts have been interesting. Thank you for writing them.)
participants (10)
-
Adam Shostack -
Aimee Farr -
An Metet -
Black Unicorn -
jamesd＠echeque.com -
Jim Choate -
Lucky Green -
Petro -
Ray Dillinger -
Sandy Sandfort