Gotti, evidence, case law, remailer practices, civil cases, civilit

[Ray Dillinger]

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