Techies vs. Laywers & Judges 328
sl3xd asks: "With all the recent controversy about laws being passed about/with relation to current technologies, I've seen many, many postings about various members of out law establishments not understanding the technology. While there is some substance to this argument, my observation is that many of the 'Techies' posting have an even more incorrect view of what the laws involved are than the Lawyers/Judges can possibly have with technology. Do the lawyers know more about the technologies we love than we understand about the laws they fuss over? Or do we techies understand the realm of law on a level higher than the lawyer's understanding of technology?"
"The lawyers at least are told (in court) what the issues are, what the technology does, etc. They honestly do understand a great more than they are given credit for. They may not be guru's- but they (generally) require the case to be made plainly enough to them that they CAN make an informed decision before they actually do make a decision. They learn about the technologies involved.
Forgive me for bashing us techies (being one myself), but honestly, I believe that there is FAR more to understand within the various laws lawyers understand than in the technology we techies know."
Ah! A good, controversial question. I'll leave you all to discuss this one a bit further. There is quite a bit of food for thought here.
Good question. (Score:5)
Technology changes fast enough that we can't etch a law into stone before the technology makes the law obsolete (not to mention the technology!).
My views (Score:1)
Hehe (Score:2)
Of course, I'm just as guilty :)
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
a matter of interest (Score:1)
perhaps it is the same with lawyers. if they want to learn about laws, it will be easier for them than me. if they want to learn all there is to know about the technology involved in whatever case, it will be easier than for joe-blow who is proud of not-knowing about tech "stuff".
Lawyers vs. Techies (Score:1)
Law Makers understand nothing (Score:2)
If they appear to know so little about their own field, how can they know anything about tech?
Lawyer/Judge != Stupid. (Score:4)
However, they also know how to manipulate them to let them win their case. The DVD lawyers really do not have a case to the majority of the world, but for the lawyers arguing the case for DVD, if they can stretch a little bit of law here and there they can win the case.
Most lawyers also that we see taking cases like eToys vrs eToy and DVD vrs us, do not care if they win or lose either. Remember the old quote about lawyers that goes:
"You win some, You lose some, But You get PAID for all of them"
Anyways, if what we here about smart people taking well paying jobs, then lawyers and judges aren't dumb, they are just interested in $$$. (Or re-election if your a judge). They may not know how to use Linux, but they sure as hell understand its legal status...
Re:Lawyers vs. Techies (Score:2)
Not a fair statement? Of course it's not. But you've seen how many people will make it, simply because they don't see things from another persons point of view. Try looking at it from their perspective.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Hubris? (Score:2)
It's all about humility with us techies, isn't it?
jpowers
What is the law? (Score:3)
Technology, however, is a set of facts that are learned and calculated. Lawyers don't have the advantage of intuition to help them the same way that techies have for law.
What we see as simple usage of the net or any medium, lawyers and non-techies in general see as whole new frontiers. Example: ftp vs www. For us, it's basically the same thing at the end of the day: a stream of bits coming & going from our machine. To them, 'files' and 'web pages' are two separate entities!
One large issue that comes to mind is mindset between the two entities: techies think of things in computer science terms: performance, scalability, robustness, etc. lawyers think of things in legal terms, that is, in terms of interhuman interactions: fair, reasonable, etc. Imagine looking at the current domain name squatting issue. first-come first-serve seems good 'nuff for many techies (myself included), but now lawyers want to bring in trademark law? Oh come on! That's a whole other namespace altogether!
Ah well, enough ranting. As long as people would rather wait 30 minutes holding for a customer support representative instead of 3 minutes reading their system manuals, the world is screwed.
--
How do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Tell him the next version of Windows will be faster, more reliable, and easier to use!
Hang all lawyers! (Score:5)
I think lawyers understand perfectly, on a layman level, the technologies and their potential implications. I think they deserve credit for that.
On the other hand, it's true that geeks and techies have opinions on the technology they use that differs from the common man or the desires and needs of a large corporation. The typical geek has (and I apologise for the generalisation) a tendency to libertarianism, and a strong belief in the sacrosanct quality of freedom of speech and anonymity, at the cost of a few criminals getting away with it.
Now, this is certainly not the Government or the multinationals' point of view. To them, a more middle-right wing approach is preferable, where proper methods of control are put in place in order to fight crime, including crimes against the State. Multinationals also thrive on a society with a Right-wing approach, as they wish for less reglementation as possible in the Public sector.
Where am I going with this? Why, it's quite simple. It's this approach, and not the technology itself, which is the fundamental difference between lawyers and geeks. Lawyers are dominated and work for a world of Governments and large business interests. They have to legislate for a practical business world and not for technological utopias and moral principles in application.
I think we both understand the technology perfectly. What we want to do with it, on the other hand, is the huge difference.
Different realms of thought (Score:1)
Remember, it takes almost no intelligence to be a lawyer. It takes a great deal of scholarship, it takes the ability to absorb mind-numbing amounts of information in the form of cases and laws and procedures, it takes the willingness to do whatever is desired by the people who pay you. It doesn't take a serious amount of brainpower.
This being the case, why should we expect lawyers to have a deep understanding of technical issues? Most have neither the time nor the inclination to under these issues, and I suspect a considerable minority of them simply aren't smart enough to grasp the implications of new technologies.
On the flip side, most techs aren't interested enough to study the law deeply. We more or less expect it to follow our version of "common sense", and dismiss it as irrelevant when it differs. I think that the mindset/personality type/whatever that leads one to become a tech is very different from that which leads one to being a lawyer.
The Law (Score:5)
Putting together a strong legal case is something that takes an extrodinary amount of research into existing rulings (precidents), or constructing a case convincing enough to throw out existing precident. This is why the EFF and other watchdog groups are so terribly important.
I think the larger concern is how to change existing law to allow for new technology. Most laws today seem to be passed on lobbying dollars and the ignorance of elected officials. (e.g. That communications law (? don't recall the name offhand ?) that was overturned by the Supreme Court about a year ago.
As the judicial system seems to be fairly strong against technical "hoodwinking" I think the danger exists of these large groups/companies using legislative coersion to achieve thier means. (Which will tie up the courts all over again, ad nauseum...)
Re:Good question. (Score:3)
Perhaps this is a problem with the specific laws, and not the concept of law? After all, the Constitution hasn't been made obsolete by technology. Too often, however, laws are written as if current technology is the end of development. The trick, I think, is for the laws to be written broadly enough to apply to future technology, without being restrictive enough to choke off the development of that technology.
technical or social? (Score:5)
Educated Techies (Score:1)
Logical thinking can usually create good decisions, but it doesn't help non-techies understand concepts way above their head.
Us vs. them (Score:1)
As to whether we understand more about law than do lawyers and judges understand about computers, that's a tossup. I'd have to say that, like anything else, it varies by individual.
--
Morality != legality (Score:3)
Of course, there is a place for arguing about whether a particular law is good or bad. But I see too many people who don't even realise there's a question about what the law actually is, and who seem to want to argue about what should happen on a case-by-case basis, with no concept of the overall structure of the law.
Lawyers can be Techies but no Vice Versa (Score:4)
I hate to hold myself out for criticism, but I think that the majority of slashdot posters have no understanding of the legal profession.
Lawyers are professionals who provide a service. They have to represent their clients in their clients best interests. They might not be the best for society, but so be it. Lawyers generally are not in a position to take the higher ground. Most of the remarks hurled at lawyers should truly be redirected at the companies that they represent, because in reality they are calling the shots.
As for my thoughts on slashdotters knowledge of the laws, it is spotty at best. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Since I have been in law school I have been reading the law type articles, and it is plainly obvious to me when the author of a post is a lawyer of just some geek.
And believe me, I'm not antigeek. I was an EECS major at Berkeley, so I spent four years living with a major that rhymes with GEEKS.
law is not rocket science. (Score:2)
*Anybody* can walk into law school straight out of college with no background in law and succeed. The same cannot be said for science-related post graduate programs.
A whole lot of lawyers don't major in law as an undergrad, and some lawyers don't even go to law school. They just hit the bar exam and get their certification. (Not that I'm saying it's an easy task but a lot of former paralegals go this route....)
If we ever do get to the point where law is so complex, that bright people with an interest cannot understand the laws they read, we need to scrap our laws and create new ones that make sense.
Techies vs. Lawyers (Score:2)
Personally, I am applying to law school right now so that I can do something within technology law. While I will probably take the patent bar exam, I do not want to be a patent lawyer. Hopefully I can work on the corporate side with some of these new tech. companies.
I also think that we need to do what we can about getting a group together to provide legal help and advice to open source programmers. It would probably need to be done on a pro bono basis. I have heard many people say this, but I don't think any action has been taken on it. If you are interested in working on such a group give me an email. Also, if you are interested in becoming a lawyer and want some advice on the application process feel free to send me some mail.
Re:Law Makers understand nothing (Score:2)
The legislator will pass laws that they think will keep the sheopole happy. It's not Thier fault that the law that the people really want is found unconstitutional.
Really, this is a good thing. If we had a true democracy, it would be basically mob rule. Get 51% of the people to vote in a certain election to back a stupid idea, and it's unrevocable law??? Not in a republic with checks and balences in place thank you.
A must read. (Score:2)
Where the problem really is. (Score:2)
The role of a judge is to interpret law and apply it to the concrete case that is shown before him. The role of lawyers is to take advantage of whatever provision there may be in the law, to their client's benefit.
The problem seems to be that no matter how well informed a judge or lawyer may be, the decisions must be in harmony with the legal system. Laws are not prepared to deal with things so unmaterial and fast-changing as internet, cookie technology, linking to copyrighted material, port scanning, GPL, ad caching and so on.
Given the slow nature of the legislative process my bet is that this mess will remain for a while. And no matter how well intentioned a judge can be. Law makers are the ones who can make a difference.
-------------------------
Wow - this is a tough question (Score:2)
Anyway, I think that in some cases the judges have a very hard time grasping the situation - the etoy case is a perfect example. If there is nothing as lame brained as this in the world, I don't know what can possibly be.
But, on the other hand, what did the etoy lawyers do? From what I can tell - not much. I don't think they really had a clue what was going on, else the case never would have gotten this far.
Look at the lawyers for Microsoft in the current battle - yes they are loosing - but they are not the ones running around spouting marketing jargon at every chance. MS is doing that themselves. And Judge Jackson seems pretty tech savvy.
But, idiocy in the justice system does not even start with tech stuff - think back to some of the really boneheaded cases that have come up. The CDA was not a tech case, and the judge there tossed it. The lady who spilled coffee on her lap - that was a boneheaded justice system there.
But, if I was going to start pointing fingers and waving them about, then yes, I think there is a problem with the justice system when it comes to laws, and I do not think that it has to do with the speed of laws being made and then outdated. I think it has more to do with the age of the people doing this stuff. They don't have a firm grasp on the clue stick. I don't think I would even want to try to explain to an 80 year old guy how to use a computer, which I think is a lot of what goes on in some of these tech cases when the judge is trying to learn the tech stuff. I mean think about it. Would you want to be the guy to teach Judge Woppner to use the fsck command?
Yes, but... (Score:5)
The complaints haven't been about judges/lawyers getting the law wrong, but rather about them getting the technology wrong, which is something we *do* know about.
The complaints about the windowing patent, or the one-click patent aren't about the intricasies of patent law. The complaint is that the "advances" were obvious in their field, or that much prior art existed. That's a technological question, not a legal one.
Much of the DVD brouhaha focused on questions of fact, not questions of law. And we're quite right to complain when the facts are mis-stated by lawyers and judges.
There's also a larger issue brewing: the desire of large companies and their lobbyists (in the US at least) to institute laws and make decisions that go directly against the ideas that built the Net in the first place. This is where the real fight is going to be, and the question isn't "what is the law?", but rather "what law should we create/adapt for this situation".
Interpreting law is what lawyers and judges do; but making law is the right of citizens (at least in a democracy), and the responsibility of informed citizens. In the tech field, those informed citizens are us.
Law Is A Zero Sum Game (Score:2)
Technology, on the other hand, is a positive sum game. If I write a useful program and release it to the world under the GPL or similar license, everybody wins. Even if I sell my program for more than it cost me to write, but less than it would cost the buyer to write an equivalent program, the sum of the game is still positive. This also governs the way techies like me look at the overall game.
What Makes Things So Complicated? (Score:3)
When technology is complicated, it's because somebody screwed up or because the Universe requires many precise steps to achieve the desired effect.
When law is complicated, it's because somebody screwed up or because somebody is hiding a special-interest advantage behind blue smoke and mirrors.
In the former case, it's simply a matter of correcting screwups, which is inherent to the human condition in all fields of endeavor.
As for the latter case, denouncing the Universe is pointless, whereas denouncing special-interest advantage is the first step toward abolishing it. Thus, complaints about the complexity of technology and complaints about the complexity of law are neither logically nor morally equivalent.
/.
Root cause: adversarial legal system. (Score:5)
It follows from this that the lawyers responsible for presenting cases and the judges responsible for understanding the legal arguments presented are incapable - by definition - of keeping pace with technological development.
But the other problem is the adversarial nature of our legal system: "My lawyer can beat up your lawyer" and the notion of the lawyer as hired gun - a lawyer isn't paid to argue what's right vs. what's wrong; determining who's right is the judge's job. The lawyer has a very serious legal responsibility to represent the client's case as strongly as he can, regardless of its strength or weakness. (It is for this reason that a good lawyer will not take a weak case - but if the money's big enough, everyone's got his or her price.)
Unfortunately, what this means is that very intelligent people - and most lawyers are smart cookies - end up making insanely stupid arguments, building factual houses of cards with beautiful rhetorical facades. If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, you have no alternative but to boggle 'em with bullshit.
Trial by judge puts you at the mercy of someone who knows the law, but hasn't a clue about technology. Trial by jury (with the present jury selection process and minimal pay for jury duty) is arguably worse - you're at the mercy of drones who know neither law nor technology.
For trial by judge, you need someone who can make a strong legal argument to the judge. For trial by jury, you need someone who can gain the jury's emotional sympathies; a showman or huckster.
But either way, it still comes down to "My lawyer can beat up your lawyer". Until the legal system rises to anything more than medieval "trial by combat", with lawyers filling the roles of the armed combatants, we're doomed to be stuck in this quagmire for the forseeable future.
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
I often hear people express the sentiment that technology changes too fast to be properly regulated, but I've never heard any evidence for this that I've found convincing.
I agree that bad laws can be rendered obsolete by increases in technology. The classic example is export controls that make it illegal to export processors above a certain fixed number of MIPS, or crypto with more than a fixed number of bits. But the problem here is not with the concept of regulation; the problem is that these laws are written with the assumption that the environment is static, and this problem is not just limited to regulations related to technology. These export controls are no more stupid than the US campaign finance laws, in which the maximum donations are not indexed for inflation.
Look at anti-trust law --- it is over 100 years old and, despite the protestations of those with a vested interest, it still seems very well suited to the current situation.
The "technology moves too fast to be regulated" argument seems to me to just be a rather poorly thought out rationalization for a libertarianism. (Which isn't a terrible thing, IMHO, but certainly much better arguments can made for it than this.)
Can anyone produce a non-specious example of some part of technology that is really inherently beyond any regulation, even if that regulation was to be crafted by knowledgeable hackers?
Re:Hehe (Score:2)
Lots of reactions to IP issues are completly knee-jerk. Still, there's a huge gap between the current legal trend in IP matters and what was proved effective and working in high-tech for the last 40 years.
Lawers and others SIGs are pushing for a wider and wider interpretation of patent and copyright laws. They're trying to push a complete privatization of intellectual property. Control freaks and extortionist banding together. See the DeCSS lawsuit, the software/business model patent controversy, the attempt to grab control of DNA sequences, etc.
This trend doesn't sustain any examination in regard of the public good. Patents and copyrights were always design as a trade-off : disclose information for the public goodand the law will grant you protection and control. But there's no inherent natural right to own ideas, concepts and designs.
It also goes against the experience of those last decades when the computer and electronic industries flourished on complete public disclosure and free availibilty, thanks to the academic roots of those industries and to some companies like IBM that disclosed EVERY idea or design they had to create prior art and explicitly foil the patent system.
Many people are very angry and reactive to IP issues and promote extreme opinions on that subject. But there are very good reasons for that.
Broad IP ownership is a fatal clutch to innovation and progress.
Re:My views (Score:2)
A techie's job is to come up with ideas and build stuff. That's what they're paid to do. A judge's job or a politician's job is (supposed to be, anyway) geared more towards serving society or a community, and making decisions on behalf large groups.
Saying that the techies should be making the decisions in the world because the world is more complex these days is dangerous. Rather, the judges and lawyers and politicians should be further educated.
Re:My problem isn't necessarily Lawyers (Score:2)
They have no jurisdiction for that anywhere, unless the words "Congress Shall Make No Law", like the word "is", have a range of alternative meanings known only to politicians.
/.
Re:Good question. (Score:5)
Since then, there has been a tectonic shift. Law is no longer the expression of foundational, non-arbitrary principles known to all, but the product of increasingly vague legislation and a superstructure of bizarre court decisions. The lawyers have metamorphosed into priests, (or druids, maybe?) guarding the arcana of stare decisis.
As the law becomes more rootless and arbitrary (read: power-based), it necessarily becomes more detailed. It follows no easily-grasped principle, and the particulars need to be spelled out for every situation.
Well, that might have been marginally workable 150 years ago, today it's hopeless. The DR-DOS case is still working its way through the court today--but for why?
Geek snobbery (Score:2)
Of course, I could say the same thing about programming as opposed to analysis or computer science. Most geeks are intellectual prima donnas - of course, I'm a geek, too, and I can hardly claim innocence.
The problem with law is that it is rarely clean cut. Both sides bring convincing (or at least not ludicrous) arguments to the table, and then to trial. Both are consistent, even in matters of new law, with existing statute and case law. Geeks, who tend to be more mathematically and technically oriented, rarely find themselves in such conundrums - where both sides are "right" (or at least as right as possible) but one must win despite that.
Very few laws are made with the cynical knowledge that they will be immediately overturned. The CDA, of course, was one of those - a law written into the books entirely for political brownie points. However, the Supreme Court of any nation may have a different idea of the relative importance of different priorities, or different applications of law. It's inevitable that many laws be overturned on constitutional grounds (both in the US and in Canada) in such a situation. This is a sign that the system works, not that it's broken.
Hard to deal with, of course, if you're a geek and given to common sense. Common sense, however, has nothing to do with the law; what the law seeks is internal consistency. The eventual implications of any individual case rarely matter.
This isn't to say I disagree with you that geeks and lawyers have different mind-sets. I agree wholeheartedly - look at any psychometric study of professions, for example. But to demean the character of lawyers is unnecessary. Shakespeare might have said "First, kill all the lawyers", but he meant that as being the first step towards anarchy. Lawyers may be slimy characters in general (and I know quite a few) but the wheels of any state need ample lubrication with such slime.
--
Lawyers & Technology v. Politicians (Score:3)
As a bit of background, I am a Canadian articling student with a technical background, and will be called to the bar in about a year. I worked as a mechanical engineer, designing industrial robotics and sensors prior to getting my law degree. I have been a proficient user and minor sysadmin for many years. I grew up on the BBS scene and have been using the internet ever since my university days. I am by no means a guru, and have only a minor knowledge of unix/linux. However, I understand most of the technology behind the internet, and know who to call when I need real gurus.
I work at a law firm of approximately 400 lawyers across Canada, and am specializing in IP (e.g. patents, trade-marks etc.) My department files patents and litigates technology issues every day.
Very few of the lawyers here, less than 10 of them I would say, have any idea at all about how computers or the internet work. They may be able to use the internet to send e-mail, and browse, but the technology is a mystery to them. Certain specialists may understand e-commerce issues, such as verification and cryptography and so forth, but only as ideas, not as practicalities.
When it comes to copyright issues, many lawyers will understand the basics, but will not understand the technology of the internet for example, or even the technology of a hard drive. For example, lawyers won't know how packets work, and how "copies" of packets are made by each router or whatever on their way to their destination.
And I work at a very technology-friendly law firm.
When we litigate, of course, we get experts to tell us what's what. In court, it's all about the duelling experts. It is these experts who teach the lawyers what they need to know before the court appearances, and who also educate the judge during the trial. If you're a personable guru with people skills and can tell a good story, you can make big bucks being an expert witness, let me tell you. All this to say that during a trial, the lawyers will be informed and up to speed as best they can be, as they will be prepped by the experts.
The big problem, of course, are the politicians. These are the people who make the laws. The politicians may also have experts who advise them on policy, but it isn't the same as an adversarial court case. The politicians will make decisions based on popular perception of technology, rather than on what technology actually is. Think of the V-Chip disaster or the Communications Decency Act fiasco. These measures were put into place to prevent an "evil" which is relatively impossible to police. However, even if the politicians understood the technology side of things, their consitituency would still demand that they "do something". On the other hand, if the politicians did understand the technology, they might have been able to come up with a more practical "solution".
At any rate, I know from experience there is a lot of technological ignorance, and fear of technology, with lawyers. This fear is probably ten times worse with politicians.
Just my 2 cents worth. I hope it sheds some light on my side of the fence. My apologies for the length.
Ken
Re:Good question. (Score:3)
These laws may still be on the books, but in the not-too-distant future they'll be about as meaningful as Maryland's laws against adultery and swearing.
Rather than trying to enforce the unforcable (see what a success that's been in our War on (Some) Drugs?) we should step back, recall what the intent of the law was, and try to find a means (legal or social) of accomplishing that goal in the context of new technology.
Re:Law Makers understand nothing (Score:2)
What number of laws is that? Even with the high-profile, politically motivated, we-have-to-save-the-children-and-the-hell-with-th
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
Actually it does change a whole lot, in terms of laws. If the law doesn't specifically state data packets as a medium that the activity is illegal on, then its allowed. While most people don't like the fact the law, and by extension laywers, are very picky about small details like this, without them our system of law would just not work. While it would be nice to believe we could work more on "common sense", it will be abused eventually, and less then common sense things will happen.
What we need, is the laws dealing with predators to be updated to include the internet, and technology as a whole, as an unacceptable medium for this type of activty.
WHICH lawers? (Score:3)
Frankly, I don't extend my distrust of lawers/judges to (for instance) the supreme court. They might make a bad (imo) descision, but I trust them to be relatively reasonable.
I do think there are some serious problems, though. Under-representation in the courts is one of them. The typical stupid court descision is often a case of the big guy against the little guy. The little guy isn't going to know the ropes, may not have a lawyer in the same league as the corp. types, and so is likely to lose.
And yes, part of the problem is knowledge of technical issues. But it's they're not simple issues. And I don't care how philanthropic a small-time lawyer may be, they're simply not going to be motivated to take the time to understand the technical stuff as well as they do the law. This means that, in such cases, it's up to the defendant to know what's relevant, and explain it to his lawer. And he may not do a very good job at explaining the issues in language the lawyer can understand.
Add to the above mix a generaly different ideology (criminal behavior/porn/whatever is the greatest of evils vs. freedom is the greatest of goods -- oversimplified of course), and a background of laws enacted by clueless, poll-driven politicians, and you have an extremely difficult situation.
Problem #1 ... (Score:4)
... is that the legal system isn't about justice or fairness. That's a common misapprehension on the part of most non-lawyers, and including most techies. Heck, it's a shock to many first-year law students too.
Now there's an issue: Should the legal system be about justice and fairness?
I tend to say yes. And in fact, in Common Law (evolved since the English Magna Carta, and the original basis of US law) had a much stronger emphasis on justice. Particularly after they finally got rid of King and Church as being above the law. (Gee, those were significant issues in the US revolution too!)
As a pointed example, in the US many juries are instructed by judges that their job is only to evaluate facts. Whereas the founders of this country, and everyone else at the time of the American Revolution, understood that an "impartial jury" was also intended to protect against governmental abuses including passage of unjust laws. Check out the history. Did you ever wonder why jurors may only be registered voters? It's because voters have two kinds of votes: for representatives in elections, and for justice in court cases. Yes, that's a plug for the Fully Informed Jury Asociation [fija.org]. Read that site BEFORE you need to act as a juror, and of course make your own decisions.
That's only one example; there are many others, and surely there's one you'll believe even if you don't like the notion that the checks'n'balances against the US government include direct action by the citizenry, not just (as you were likely taught in school, by government-approved texts) (a) elections (choice between wings of the republicrat party), (b) representatives (who have long been more beholden to corporate interests than to voters, and note the poor choices most of us get due to the republicrat oligarchy), (c) other parts of the government (rather circular, that is!), (d) suing the government ("You can't fight City Hall"), and of course (e) violent overthrow of corrupt regimes (the option the founders were forced to use, and which is explicitly preserved in the Bill Of Rights).
Point being: in the US today, the legal system is a self-perpetuating bureaucracy which is fleeing not only its roots, but the remaining remnants of justice. It denies that justice is the intent of law, and enforces law not justice.
It's no wonder that members of professions that pride themselves on logic ("techies", in a broad way) don't much understand lawyers. No different from most citizens.
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
I don't think this is as big a problem as some make it out to be. There are lawmakers out there demanding laws to protect children from Internet predators and things like that. There are already laws on the books governing what is and what is not allowed through postal mail, on the phone etc. Just because it's data packets instead of ink or sound being sent doesn't change a whole lot.
That depends on what you're talking about. If you're just looking at whether certain content is or isn't acceptable, the medium doesn't matter. But it's another matter when talking about the low cost of reproducing copyrighted material or having unprecedented abilities to gather and share information about private individuals. Technology can impact the landscape. Not every law need be affected by these impacts, but some are.
-Jennifer
Re:Hang all lawyers! (Score:2)
interests. They have to legislate for a practical business world and not for technological utopias and moral principles in
application.
A great many of the liberties you cherish today have been fought for and won by idealistic lawyers guided by moral principles in seeking utopia.
Visit any law school and you'll find a lot more people who want to fight before the supreme court for truth and justice than you might suspect.
Most lawyers don't dream about serving giant corporations any more than most techies dream about working 3rd-shift network support. But sometimes putting food on the table gets in the way of your idealistic dreams, regardless of your profession.
Coffee = case in point (Score:2)
Yes, the woman did something wrong.
Yes, the award was large.
But the award had a purpose. The purpose of that award was to force McDonalds to reconsider the temperature of its coffee. McDonalds produced coffee that was considerably hotter than the other fast food chains. They knew that the result was that normal accidents and spills caused serious injuries, while the same accidents did not injure customers of other chains. For instance hot coffee spilled in the lap of an elderly woman. With other chains that would have been unpleasant, or a mild scald. Instead she had third degree burns.
Given this the award was made very large. And as a result McDonalds reconsidered their policy and now their coffee is the same temperature as the coffee that other chains make. The result? Fewer injuries.
Now, with these additional facts about the purpose of the settlement, was it wrong to give the woman a large settlement?
Regards,
Ben Tilly
Language and context (Score:2)
I think many of the law-tech disputes boil down to issues of terminology and context. While both sides may be guilty of underestimating the competence of the other, comparing the faults of each is hardly meaningful. Lawyers being ignorant of technology is no excuse for hackers being ignorant of the legal profession.
For one thing, many (if not all) of the laws under dispute today emanate from the business sector, where things like million-dollar trademark lawsuits are well-known and accepted. If someone is indeed making money off somebody else's trademark, be it on the Internet or elsewhere, the trademark owner is justified to sue. However, if the trademark is used in a non-commercial context, any lawsuit would appear to be a mistake.
It used to be easy to tell commercial operations apart from non-commercial ones, since the latter seldom could afford to pay for visibility. The Internet has drastically cut the cost of visibility, though this may be a temporary state of things as the commercial players find new ways of exposing themselves in proportion to their wallets. In the meantime, we routinely find not-for-profit operations outperforming commercial namesakes by mere accident or ingenuity. Depending on your legal system, you now have to either teach the lawyers new criteria for differing between the two, or you may have to change the law itself. Complaining that trademarks are unfair to you isn't going to get you anywhere, as long as you haven't made your point that they shouldn't apply in your particular sector of life at all, while they may well apply in other sectors.
To take a more specific example, consider the word "use" in a copyright context: How does the phrase "to use a photo for a book" relate to "to use a computer program for fun"? In the first phrase, "use" implies reproduction and publication in a legal sense, while the same word in the latter phrase has a more earthly and commonly understood meaning. To "use" a photo or a novel in the latter sense would mean simply enjoying a copy of it, not making numerous copies of it for distribution. Copyright law isn't concerned with people reading novels, but with people using novels and other works of art for (usually) commercial gain. Now, how many lawyers will consider that running a computer program may be equivalent to reading a book, when even the hackers consistently refer to their loading and running of programs as "using software"? Thus we have "end-user license agreements".
Legal terminology can be tricky. When the prosecutor asks whether you knowingly "accessed" the "device", you'd better request an interpreter who speaks your native tongue.
lawyers v. techies (Score:2)
Don't blame the lawyers. (Score:2)
The constitution is a wonderful document because it mostly sticks to principles avoids the details. This is good law, and works because it is mostly fair and is deliberately hard to change.
So why does a country with a very good constitution regularly create such stupidly detailed (and thus bad) statutory laws? My theory, for what its worth, is that most americans deeply value the rule of law (and rightly so, in my view) but mistakenly think that detailed regulation is necessary for this.
This is partly a matter of seeking balance between desirable goals that are mutually contradictory. Clarity in law is very desirable, as the clearer a law is, the less discretion the legal establishment has and so the less room there is for corruption and petty oppression there is. Few laws are clearer than detailed regulations. On the other hand, laws are better if they deal with abiding principles rather than changeable details. This calls for a degree of abstraction and abstraction tend to be fuzzy. These two goals are necessarily in tension.
Americans appear to have a far greater appetite, in general, for clarity than they do for principle, as if the constitution has fully satisfied their demand. The result is a very heavy status book and a constant conflict between law and reality. There are periodic attempts to reign in the problem, but there is little point in trying to "cut the red-tape" with the red-tape machine still producing more at full throttle.
So long as the American public continue to demand regulated solutions to real and percieved problems, the law will be "a ass, a idiot". If you don't think you are part of the problem, ask yourself when was the last time that you criticized a politician for having too much detail in his/her legislation rather than having the details wrong.
Lawmakers, not Lawyers, are the problem. (Score:2)
Patent lawyers are required to have technical degrees (or equivalent). Presumably they understand the technologies. Looking at recent embarassing laws and trials, I think:
--SwiftOne--
P.S. It's true, MOST people know little about the law, even the educated ones. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent and educated person, but what I'm seeing my wife study says that the law works fundamentally differently than I thought. Not necessarily more complicated, but different.
honest lawyer, unicorn, dragon... (Score:2)
Actually, in reality they usually ask the lawyers: "What can we do in this situation?" If lawyers responded with things like "we don't have a case, that would be legal thuggery, completely unethical" and "let's be reasonable, a lawsuit is just going to cost everyone involved a lot of money", the world would be a better place (and people would swerve to avoid hitting a lawyer in the street).
Instead they say things like "well, we can sue; we won't win but it will probably bankrupt them to defend" and privately think "the more of a legal mess this becomes, the more I get paid."
Corporate lawyers do not, as a rule, act in the best interests of the client (criminal lawyers generally do; they have a lot less room to persuade people to take the more lucrative route). First priority: cover own ass. Second priority: rake in as many fees as possible. Third priority: client's best interest (actually, lawyer's reputation, but they work out about the same). Non-priority: benefit of (or damage to) society as a whole. Absolute non-consideration: damage done to the people at the other end of the legal troubles.
It's true that people hire lawyers that fit their intention, but that doesn't make the lawyers any closer to innocent.
Re:Good question. (Score:3)
The root being that the laws can't keep up with the technology.
Or perhaps it's that our political and economic system can't keep up with technology. Or, at least, apply common sense to new technology, or allow it to flourish (technology like mp3's). I realize the author of the question in this article probably isn't refering directly to what I'm saying here but this is part of the issue as well. Keep in mind that technology over time usually leads to a greater possibility of freedom for the common man. The book 1984 comes to mind for some insight into this. This usually meets resisitance by those in power.
Now, I can't directly claim that lawyers represent "power" and geeks represent the "common man", but when you see that either the government or corporations are usually behind lawyers (almost always in any case the poster is referring to), it becomes a bit more understandable.
So when a "geek" comes up with some invention that is either cool/fun, leads to more efficiency in some process, or allows more freedom for people, the geek won't see any reason not to implement it if it's better than what is currently out there. I don't think lawyers have a tough time understanding technology. As far as the law goes all you really have to know is what it does. Sometimes it gets a lot more complicated, as in the microsoft case, but usually, like with any mp3 lawsuit, there isn't much to know. I think the main problem is the power issue. Institutions want to retain their power, corporations want to retain their profits.
Lawyers aren't dumb, and neither are geeks. I think they just have different goals.
I really *want* to disagree with this... (Score:2)
Then I thought about it for a while. And remembered an ex-roommate's father. You see, he has a BSEE and MSEE, and then got his law degree. He is now a patent lawyer. In fact, my former roomie, a fellow BSEE, used to proofread the draft patent aplications for her father's firm (a good way to make some $$$ during the semester).
So now I'm not so sure. On the one hand, technology moves at a lightning fast pace, and even people in the industry need to work to keep abreast of current issues. On the other hand, I'm sure that many lawyers out there have similar backgrounds as that of my roomie's dad, and are more than up to the task.
Overall, I've got to go with the lawyers. I think they are more likely to end up with a better balance of understanding with regards to both technological and legal subtleties. And I think that techies are more likely to have a myopic view of the issues, being so passionate about them.
Or maybe we should all leave and establish a technocratic utopia somewhere else. Let's use all the IPO money to form the "Army of the Red Hats" or something and take over a small island, like Australia. Besides, it seems that those Aussies could use some governmental reform.
Re:Lawyers can be Techies but no Vice Versa (Score:2)
International law must come into the mainstream. (Score:3)
Enter the internet.
Here data is freely imported and exported. There are no ports. Data is not stopped for inspection, taxation, regulation, verification that the import/export does not violate laws, etc. And it cannot be stopped for examination. It's not humanly possible and stopping data would grind the net to a halt and destroy its usefulness.
What it comws down to is that every machine connected to the 'net is an international port of entry. A shipment of pirated DVDs from Singapore would get stopped and siezed by customs as it tried to enter the country. A .vob file transferred via FTP from Singapore to a user in Butte, Montana, gets through unchecked.
The internet brings everyone, all nations, all people, the world, together in a single "place" where lots of trade and exchange of data, words, copyrighted works, ideas, etc. ,happens. This flies in the face of how trade and exchange has traditionally happened.
What's the solution. I'm not sure there is one. Close all internation 'net links and destroy the net or declare the net to be a worldwide neutral zone. Either way means ruffling some feathers, but on the whole, I think free, unhindered, instantaneous, world communication will be a good thing. The DVD Consortium's and RIAA's lawyers may disagree though. The mighty dinosurs will die once again though as tech marches on.
Perspectives. Lawyers backed by corporations are.. (Score:2)
For example, while we see a single-page "Table of Contents" in literature as something completely unpatentable, would it have been so cut and dry if the printing press was recently invented. To take it a step further, imagine people patenting "Footnotes" in a book like they patent "Single-Click Ordering" nowadays.
Whereas mega-corporations see this as an oppritunity, everyone else sees it as exploitation of a good idea that should not be owned. Not that I'm trying to be self righteous, as I might even do the same things if I was in Jeff Bezos' shoes, but I hope I would be more of a man than that.
The sadest part is that these processes are belittleing (sp) the best damn Judicial system in the world (US, in my not-so-humble opinion), and even if techies can't get people to draw parallels on how much computer-related technology resembles every other industry, the ridicuolous exploitation is going to continue.
Re:Moderate this upward please! Socialize (Score:2)
Lawyers don't litigate, their clients do (Score:2)
Lawyers, etc. versus techies: the real difference (Score:2)
As someone who has been interested and involved in technological things pretty much all my life, there is one thing that seems to be consistent among most of the really good practitioners in the technology field: the recognition of purpose and the application of first principles.
In the technology field, we often question the very purpose of something, because in doing so we are able to determine for ourselves whether or not that something is necessary. This process makes our designs more efficient and more applicable to the problem being solved. We despise feature-richness and bloat because they are the results of attempts to apply a tool to something it wasn't designed for.
We apply the same methods when looking at laws. We ask ourselves whether or not a law that others are attempting to apply to something should apply. We always fall back to the age-old question "what is the purpose of this law?" when evaluating the law's effectiveness.
It would appear that many (perhaps most?) lawyers don't do this. To them, the law itself is the final answer. To them, it seems that there is no difference between right/wrong and legal/illegal: they are the same thing. Many judges appear to operate the same way.
This is why precedence is so important to lawyers and judges: because precedence is the way lawyers and judges decide how a law "should" be applied to a situation. Lawyers and judges "need" this because they do not know how (or do not care) to fall back to first principles when applying law. They don't know how or do not care to ask what the purpose of a law is and use that to make the decision. If the purpose of a law were used to decide how to rule in a case, then precedence would be irrelevant and would therefore not have the status in law that it has.
These two approaches are almost diametrically opposed, but this much can be said of the lawyers' approach: it is arbitrary, and therefore wide open to manipulation. For when a tool is allowed to be applied without regard to its purpose, then that tool can and will be misapplied. As is shown time and time again.
That is what we techies find abhorrent about lawyers and the law. To us the argument that "we should do it this way because it's always been done this way" (i.e., precedence) is specious on its face because it ignores the reason, or purpose, of doing something a certain way.
To us, laws are tools to be used in meeting the needs of the society which creates them. Each law, as a tool, has a purpose, and we recognize that it should not be applied when it doesn't serve that purpose. This is something that is very obviously lost on many (perhaps most) lawyers and judges.
--
Re:Law Makers understand nothing (Score:2)
>> democracy, it would be basically mob rule.
>So your argument is that having a system which
>is set up in a way that it litterally breeds
>corrupt officals and all but garauntees no
>voice to those who arn't "Playing Ball" is >better than "Mob Rule".
Yep! That's what I'm saying. I'd rather have all the corruption and inefficency (with adequate checks and balances) than pure democracy any day of the week and twice on Sunday!
You see, if America was a pure democracy (mob rule), I doubt that technology would be an issue at all, because it would all belong to the landowners. (they werte the only ones that originally allowed to vote. And you bet that they would not let one iota of control slip from their hands if they could.
So, while this method of government is not perfect, it sure beats democracy.
Back to reality...
I heartily agree that the more local the government is, the more power it should have over my life. My municipal government should have more impact on me than my state government, which has more impact than the federal government. However, the federal and state governments are important. There are a few key governmental related things that each level does well.
The problem comes when the larger levels of government get into things that should belong to the smaller levels.
Re:Law Is A Zero Sum Game (Score:2)
loser. This is the fundamental property of a court decision, and it governs how everyone involved thinks about the law.
I disagree completely. Unless you are referring to money only. If technology that is generally "good" is suppressed by a minorty (think mp3), almost everyone loses. If it is accepted, almost everyone wins. I don't see that as a zero sum.
Re:No YOU don't (Score:2)
Nope. Common law always preserved for Juries the right to acquit in cases brought using un-just laws ... Justice in its classic sense is about fairness. It's the bureacratic "uphold laws as written" notion which is revisionist.
William Penn (yes, founder of Penn's Woods, AKA Pennsylvania) was tried in London for making a Quaker sermon. Jury acquitted, since the law was unjust. (England was in final stages of abolishing the notion of a state Church.)
Alexander Hamilton (you should know that name if you're vaguely literate in the history of the early US) tried a libel case in New York. The journalist (whose name I forget, sorry) was on trial for Libel. He'd published true facts about the King -- all agreed. Prosecution said that "truth is no defense, because truth is even more likely to cause insurrection". Jury said "hey, that's an unjust English Law", acquitted.
Know what you're flaming about. And also go read the Fully Informed Jury Asociation [fija.org] web site before you become a juror. (Not that, as a programmer, you're likely to be on a Jury. People who think for a living are rarely empaneled; on both sides of the case, lawyers want someone who's used to believing what they're told. So much for an "impartial jury of peers".)
The core problem is that the US legal system is unjust. It's enforcing unjust laws, and is no longer serving its original role of letting them be rejected before they do much damage. Only professional legalist bureacrats are now permitted to make such decisions ... and you know that it takes years (often a decade) to appeal. Not a "prompt" of "fair" system.
Re:honest lawyer, unicorn, dragon... (Score:2)
I once told one of my (then) law firm's client that it ought not to press an intellectual property-related claim against a former employee. The legal action the company wanted to take was based on vindictiveness and had very little (i.e. no) legal basis. I think the company did not, in fact, pursue its plan. I do know that the partner who "owned" this client (and who was on vacation when I provided my ill-advised opinion) was furious. It was not too long afterwards that I was looking for a new job.
I now work for a government agency that actually pays me to tell it has screwed up when it has, in fact, done so.
Michael Kerpan
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
Is this really true, or is it an example of needing to have a legal solution to a technological problem? Copyright law wasn't needed when copying a work was prohibitively expensive, so "content producers" could make a living by selling copies of their work, or by performing it. As the cost of copying a work decreased, the need for legal means of controlling the copying increased, hence the development of copyright law.
As the cost of copying a work is rapidly approaching zero, the need for fair and rational copyright laws are more imperative. The person(s) who creates, or pays for the creation of, a work has the right to charge what they feel to be a fair price for the distribution of their work, although it's certainly be nice when people make it available for free. At the same time, it needs to be forcefully impressed on these people that copies of a work made for the purposes of personal use at a more convenient time, in a more convenient format, or on a more convenient system are legitimate, and that a certain amount of technically illegitimate copying and distribution among friends needs to be accepted as one of the costs of doing business.
The actions of RIAA against MP3 are certainly distasteful, and the deceptive recasting of the threat DeCSS poses to the licensing fees that the DVD CCA charges to player manufacturers as a copyright control issue is wholly repugnant, but we shouldn't toss copyright law out based upon excesses of this nature.
Lawyers as subsitutes for law and custom (Score:2)
While one may sympathize with the viewpoints of the individual lawyers, this sort of thing only serves to show how far the idea of a law-governed society has degenerated. A law-governed society does not attempt to legally determine every action: rather, it attempts to make public the common-sense customs governing society. It's the customs, not the laws, which are important: the laws are there to provide an objective, public check on the ability of the state, or of individuals, to subvert the common-sense customs and conventions.
When you subsitute legalese for law (understood as formally stated common-sense), and you then attempt the impossible, which is to make that legalese define all behavior, the underpinnings of society (the rule of law) as a whole are undercut and perverted.
Re:What Makes Things So Complicated? (Score:2)
When something is complicated (in either technology or law), it's because somebody screwed it up, because somebody is blowing smoke, or because the desired result inherently requires lots of nit-picking detail to achieve the desired effect.
The difference is that techies are more likely to encounter the blown-smoke alternative in the field of law (e.g. the obviously bogus arguments in support of crypto regs) than the reverse (while techies do blow their share of smoke, it's generally targeted at PHBs, not lawyers or politicians).
/.
wrong! (Score:3)
The complaints about the windowing patent, or the one-click patent aren't about the intricasies of patent law. The complaint is that the "advances" were obvious in their field, or that much prior art existed. That's a technological question, not a legal one.
Wrong, grasshopper.
"Obviousness" has a legal definition. The definition does not include /.'ers screaming, in hindsight, "that's obvious!". I refer you to Steven Young's excellent /. article, "Basic Patent Law for Programmers" (http://slashdot.org/features/99/10/19/1032254.sht ml):
When a new patent is announced, one of the most common criticisms is that the patent is invalid because the patented invention is merely an obvious extension of something that is already done. Theoretically, this is a valid criticism. Two requirements for a valid patent are that it is novel (the inventor was the first (sort of) to invent that particular thing or method), and non-obviousness (that the invention is not an obvious extension of something that is already known).
In practice, the level of inventiveness required for patentability is vanishingly small. It is relatively easy to show that a patent claim is invalid for a lack of novelty: you simply find something in the prior art (prior art is typically something that was published more than a year before the patent was applied for, although there are many exceptions) that includes all of the elements of the claim. Showing that a patent claim is invalid because of obviousness is considerably more difficult. First, you have to find examples in the prior art that, when taken together, add up to the patented invention. That is not enough, however. You also have to find something in the prior art that suggests putting these prior art pieces together. That is often difficult to find, even where a modification does seem obvious.
I suggest that everyone re-read this article before complaining about the patents of Amazon and others.
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
Maybe not obsolete, but certain issues which were once moot are now not. For instance, do we have any right to privacy? Well at the time the constitution was written, it wasn't really practical to do any serious invading of others' privacy. Even systematically snooping through all of their written correspondance was much more trouble than tapping a phone line, or sniffing packets.
Society is fundamentally changing as treatment intellectual property becomes far more important than physical assets. And our 225 year old constitution only hints at these issues rather than addressing them out right.
I do agree with you that much of the general framework of the constitution is still valid today, if often ignored.
Got a better idea? (Score:2)
I certainly don't believe that such a system is perfect, but I personally believe that the basic trial by judge/trial by jury system is the best we know how to do today. Obviously there are some flaws in how certain countries (like my own USA) implement the process, and there are cases where the whole idea is spectacularly bad, but what is better?
legislators have an incentive to pass vague laws (Score:2)
Furthermore, if the legislature lets people sort out important public problems through the courts, they don't have to allocate tax money for solving the problems. Case in point: silly computer-related patents. The Patent Office doesn't have enough examiners who know computer science, so applications for patents on computer-related technology don't get the scrutiny they deserve before the patent is filed. Instead, overworked examiners err or the side of granting patents.
(Disclaimer: IANAL.)
--
"But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
The government with or without the backing of a significant amount of people will do its best to control x technology. Its in their best interests to not let everyone have incredible encryption and to regulate speech on the net.
Its the history-old agenda of maintaining the status quo and lets admit it, there aren't enough protests to even lack of ignorance on the 'leave us be with our electronic toys' front.
The 'law lag' is just enough time for the right people to notice to see a threat to the morals, ideals, balance of power of society and pass the next law.
It may not be terribly efficient but its slowly getting the job done and I'm sure in a few scant years the net will be as heavily regulated as network tv is today, at least in Amerika.
Austrailia here we come!
It depends (Score:2)
It is hard to stay on the cutting edge of one's own specialty. A few very bright, very energetic people can stay on the cutting edge of broader fields or two fields. People with lives outside work are more limited. If you need to maintain competence in another field, it is better to maintain an overview. That, coupled with a good knowledge of where the best experts and resources can be found, and an understanding of the limits of your own knowledge is good enough.
The harm arises from people who don't know their own limitations or the limitations of their sources. There are any number of "experts" who are afraid to use the words "I don't know" for fear of being found out as charlatans. They talk a good game and can completely convince people outside their field, all the while passing off superficial understanding as expertise.
I suspect that the root of this is simple. It is a heady experience to be the expert that someone relies on. It is easy enough to take small steps outside of one's actual area of expertise. And it is horribly difficult to retract one of the expert statements. That would tend to discourage research that might uncover information that would contradict one's earlier pronouncements. In the end fame can undermine the very qualities that earned it in the first place.
Of course, there is also the simple case often described by the saying, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." A superficial understanding of a subject is a good way to become acquainted with only one side of a controversy. Since law is really only a set of societal rules for handling controversial situations, it is obvious enough that superficial knowledge has more potential for damage here than anywhere else.
My advice both for lawyers needed technical knowledge and techies needing legal knowledge is to acquire a broad overview personally. Be familiar with enough of the jargon and body of knowledge that you aren't easily snowed. Then find reliable experts and/or good resources for acquiring in depth knowledge as needed.
I can relate. (Score:2)
Finally I got fed up and found a nice cave to curl up in. Every once in a while I wake up and give the folks upstairs a good shake to let them know I'm still here, but I've learned that they attribute it to some nonsense about the rocks moving themselves.
Re:Hang all lawyers! (Score:2)
What i was trying to say earlier is that while many in the "techie" world have an idealistic view of things, so do many lawyers. And while many lawyers have been subjugated by the top dollars of giant megacorps, others are perfectly happy to work for the DA's office or the local poverty law group.
Seriously, how many techies/geeks do you really think will turn down a million dollars to work for megacorp? is being technically inclined any more inherently altruistic than being legally inclined?
For every hacker who toils away in the basement working on a kernel patch for free, I can show you a lawyer who advises low-income people on how to start their own company for free. And given the recent IPO-madness, I'll bet the lawyer has a lesser chance of ever capitalizing on that donation.
However, given that the best money buys the best lawyer
Where is this written in stone? Surely the ACLU has a few good lawyers, considering the number of cases they win. And they sure don't pay as well as Smith-Barney.
And the Justice department seems to be doing okay with the small amount they're paying to fight Microsoft, especially considering that MS's legal costs have been estimated to be over a hundred million.
And, given that you generally CAN buy a better lawyer for more money, isn't the same true of techies? if Sun offers you more than Netscape, isn't the average geek gonna jump ship for the money? That's what I've seen in most of the companies I've been at (and in my own behavior *cough*).
We're even bigger sluts than lawyers or doctors nowadays -- offer us a few dollars more and we'll jump ship in a heartbeat...
Re:Got a better idea? (Score:2)
Another poster made an interesting point regarding the notion of lawmaking as the responsibility of an informed citizenry, and the problem with Congress being that very few of its members are informed in anything other than how to get re-elected.
The problem is that there are very few "informed citizens" around.
One "solution" would be to change the definition of "citizen" from "has a pulse" to "has a pulse, can read and write English at a college level, can demonstrate to a jury of other "citizens" a suitable understanding of how our society works, the ethical and moral bases for property rights and community rights, and can come up with a cogent argument for balancing the rights of the individual versus the right of the collective.
Any answer more sophisticated than "huh?" or "when's Oprah on?" would probably qualify one for citizenship... but I suspect there'd be a massive backlash anyways. How dare you deny the drooling masses their vote? (Which really means "How dare you deny the 0.0001% of the population which makes the rules their right to manipulate the emotions of the drooling morons because their votes are easier to acquire than the votes of the clued-in people?)
What we really need is a way of voting "I'm clueless". Imagine if 500 representatives voted on NASA's funding of SETI - but 450 said "I haven't a clue what a radio is, let alone a radio telescope, so I abstain". The other 50 could squabble for a few hours over what evidence was available for which factors in the Drake Equation, and say "We support/oppose the project because most of us believe there's a high/low probability of success using presently-available technology."
Since nobody with the power to vote can be expected to reliably admit their cluelessness on an issue, nor can they be trusted with the responsibility of judging it on their own, the vote of a representative could be declared clueless.
The process of assigning a value to a representative's clue-flag on any given vote, ("an electronic vote of confidence from 5% of the drooling morons who pressed the 'up-moderate' button on their remote controls during the sound bite!", "endorsement from a PAC!") would likely end up just as flawed as the present system.
Doling this power out to the population in a /.-esque karma system won't help. For every ESR or RMS we geeks can declare as "clued and worthy to speak for us on the clue of the Congresscritters voting for XYZ", there's a Jim Bakker or Jerry Falwell.
Taking the vote away from the clueless would be a start, but once you throw out democracy, you'll end up with either a utopia or a totalitarian nightmare. My bet, knowing human nature, is that the clued-in 10% are just as capable of corruption as the 0.0001% and just as capable of stupidity as the bottom 90%.
Re:Coffee = case in point (Score:2)
the woman didn't ask for that money in the first place. The jury was so appaled by McD's behavior in and out of the courtroom that they awarded the punitive damages.
The award wasn't made -- the judge reduced it on appeal, as most large awars are. This is the real efficiency of the justice system -- the jury got to show how pissed off the "common man" was, and the judge got to put in some judicial restraint.
And if you want coffee so hot that its physically impossible to drink without burning yourself (which was the case with McD's) I guess you'll have to make it yourself. Similarly, if you want a car that blows up, the pinto isn't available. And if you want a plane that falls out of the sky unexpectedly, you'll have to look away from those that have already done so. It's truly a shame how the courts take away such fundamental choices...
Hitmen (Score:3)
Re:Perspectives. Lawyers backed by corporations ar (Score:2)
Only in retrospect.
It took over a hundred years for the Table of Contents to catch on as a standard part of a book.
It was very clearly one of those truly ingenious, useful, and wholly inventive ideas that change the world.
Next you'll tell us that the wheel was obvious and not novel, too?...
Re:Different realms of thought (Score:2)
See another thread for more info on the mcdonalds coffee suit -- I'll only say that you don't seem to know anything about it beyond what you heard on the 11 oclock news or from a "friend of a friend".
But regardless, it is only these anecdotal examples, and not the tens of thousands of legal cases that are conducted without fanfare, that folks here are relying on to condemn the legal profession.
By the tone of these discussions, you would think that every tech project was successful, on time, and under budget...
Re:Law Is A Zero Sum Game (Score:2)
From the standpoint of purely Darwinian social evolution, a zero-sum game with nontrivial costs just wouldn't last, and certainly not become as universal as it has.
Seen another way, there are plenty of examples of positive-sum law. Imagine what the cost to society would be of a total lack of traffic laws -- half the cars driving on the left, half on the right, some stopping on red, some on green, some drunk, etc.
We all recognize that conventions are necessary in technical applications (there's no real reason why we shouldn't run ftp on port 71 instead, or for that matter use different CRC polynomials) Law serves the same function in society that standards do in technical communities: they allow us to coexist, which has benefits greater than the costs they impose.
Re:Root cause: adversarial legal system. (Score:2)
So, if you please, why are adversary proceedings good enough for science, standards, and open-source software but not for the mechanics of the larger societies that we live in?
A Techie view of law (Score:2)
If likened to a piece of source code it would be some gigantic, hard to maintain, monstrous program with mends and kludges all over the place to cover for all kinds of strange situations, and even so (or maybe because it is so) it occasionally fails to do what it is intended to do.
When i program i don't like my code that way, i like clean, elegant code. Thus i dislike law for it's (apparent) lack of elegance, especially in cases where the outcomes are counterintuitive (in my eyes). Obviously my intuitive approach to law ('that would be a fair solution, so it should come out in the end') is wrong.
The resulting discomfort with questions concerning law makes me avoid them and sometimes results in knee-jerk reactions. Knowing this, i consult a lawyer whenever i really need such questions resolved.
OTOH law works, most of the time, and it has to cover a lot of subjects noone even thought of a few years ago (while i still think it could work better, if it where less subject to the influence of lobbyists)! Probably in most cases it's apparent 'complicatedness' just reflects that life isn't always simple.
Re:Good laws don't have to keep up (Score:2)
The reason good law doesn't have to keep up with technology is that law is supposed to be about people, not things. As an obvious grotesque example, there were no laws against owning nuclear weapons prior to the 1950's. However, there were scads of laws against murder, mass murder, mayhem, public endangerment, to name a few, all of which are relevent to the private ownership of nuclear weapons. A trivial example of a "bad" law is that which permits only one local telephone provider to do business in my locale. This may have made sense when it was written, but by being geared towards a specific group of companies, it is now seriously obsolete.
One side effect of "good" law is that one need not be a lawyer to understand it, and can let experience be their guide. If it is okay for your neighbor to perform an action under "good" law, then it is okay for you to do the same. But you never know where you stand under "bad" law.
If there's problems applying a law to new technology, rest assured that it's because it is not a "good" law. All the more reason to change it.
Re:Serious flaw (Score:2)
Deeper problem: Techies practice metalaw (Score:2)
Techies are, in effect, resolving legal questions with the technologes they build -- and doing so without the aid of prefessionals in law, politics, etc. We are in effect practicing law every time we create a new algorithm to avoid an existing legal "problem".
Technology is undemocratic. I would argue that that's a flaw with democracy, but democracy defines it to be a flaw with technology. Technology follows its own anarchy -- what is possible, will be built and will expand to the limit of its technical feasibility. Law is trying very hard to stop that, more in some areas than others (imagine if software development were under the same restrictions as cloning research!). Who will win? Who knows.
But all of us techies need ot remember that we are fundamentally enemies of all democracy, of all legislative systems. We're pushing on what is technically feasible and working around what is legal as a bug. Prosecution lawyers -- enforcers of the law -- are necessarily our adversaries, as much as legislators.
So it follows: Know your enemy. Learn the relevant laws. Continue to ignore or work around them, but know it.
--G
Re:A Techie view of law (Score:2)
think it could work better, if it where less subject to the influence of lobbyists)! Probably in most cases it's apparent
'complicatedness' just reflects that life isn't always simple.
that's probably the most sensible statement I've seen in this whole thread. You're absolutely correct that the law is so complicated because life is that way too.
It would be like programming an application that had to run on any operating system (including ones that haven't been written yet), with any combination of hardware (including hardware that hasn't been invented yet), that verified every piece of data (including data formats that aren't known of yet), and never returned an error.
Of course you'd build as robust a central system as you could, and give it one hell of a plug-in architecture to accomidate all those changes you know will come. now I don't know how smart everyone on Slashdot really is, but somehow I doubt that the program we write would work half as well over the next few centuries as the european/american legal systems have over the past few.
You are researching the wrong problem. (Score:2)
The question should not be if the lawyers understand technology. For the most part, they don't.
The question (unasked) should not be if the lawmakers understand either. For the most part, they don't.
We create or implement new ideas, or at least copy them from someone who does. Lawyers deal with who should have permission to perform these acts based on prior law. Lawmakers create laws that they are lobbied to create.
The problem is that we have allowed ourselves to feel superior through technical knowledge and then are shocked when those we have kept ignorant rebel against us in a battlefield not of our choosing.
We wanted a place where only we were allowed to go and then we bragged about how cool it was. Eventually the masses (aol) were bound to flock there. They brought with them their own interests (bad porn) and their money (etoy). In the process we lost control of some things (domain names, usenet), had some things corrupted (amazon.com used to be cool), and had some things forced upon us (spam).
We disliked the masses. We tried to keep them uninformed. We tried to keep them out. We built places like slashdot that rewards people for being "one of us", in an effort to keep them away.
We were wrong. There is no refuge from idiots. Mensa has more idiots than I can stand. Science fiction conventions are filled with them. The internet is becoming overpopulated with them. No matter how far you run, you can't escape the idiots.
But you can educate them.
Leonardo, etoy(s), DeCSS, Amazon: These are all actions of people with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. It's not that the lawyers are dumb. They're not. They are paid to win. But the judges, the juries, the spectators, and the defendant's lawyers are just not knowledgeable enough to see our side of the story.
The sad thing is, we hold that knowledge. We knew and did not tell. We distributed DECSS without explaining what it is, what it can and can't do, and why it exists. We boycotted Amazon and Etoys without explaining to them or their customers why what they were doing was wrong in language they could understand. We insulted their intelligence when we could have increased it.
"Information wants to be free". "The internet perceives censorship as damage and routes around it." I've heard it all before, all from people who didn't realizing that they were keeping the knowledge of how and why it worked to themselves.
What fools we mortals be.
From a Techie-Lawyer (Score:2)
This is an issue I have thought about a lot recently. It is part of the reason I wrote a Slashdot article [slashdot.org] about the basics of patent law. I am a techie (masters and bachelors degrees in aerospace engineering, programmer for most of my life, have a Linux network in my home), but I'm also a lawyer. I am always surprised when I see techies/engineers/scientists missing the point in legal discussions -- it's just not necessary.
The law is not that complicated, and most lawyers are less skilled at logical, rigorous thinking than are techies. Techies should be unphased by legal issues -- but in reality that is not the case. It seems that most techies write off the complexities of a legal issue at the outset, and then bluster through it (see the quality of discussion on Slashdot following a story about patents). Although the law is not extraordinarily complicated, there are complexities that must be thought through carefully. Any programmer should be able to reason through most legal issues without any problem.
The reason, I believe, for techies not "getting" legal issues is that (i) non-lawyers in our country are not explained even the rudimentary legal principals that govern our law, and (ii) techies are often unwilling to examine a legal issue at the level of detail that is required. I think that part (i) of the problem is deplorable, and lawyers are at the root of the problem. Many lawyers have a "guild" mentality and they don't want non-lawyers to understand the law. Non-laywers should demand to know how law works (as I said, it isn't that complicated). Part (ii) of the problem is something for techies to work on. When approaching a legal issue, try to avoid making snap judgments -- look for the nuances of the issue, and give it the attention it warrants.
I've been meaning to write another piece about techies and the law. Maybe I should do that soon... when I can find some time...
-Steve
Re:Root cause: adversarial legal system. (Score:3)
> [ and scientific publications, and open source developers, work that way ]
>
> why are adversary proceedings good enough for science, standards, and open-source software
> but not for the mechanics of the larger societies that we live in?
The flaw in your reasoning was addressed by others in the notion of the zero-sum game. The examples you cite aren't zero-sum games. Law, as it is practiced today, is.
My 2 bits on zero-sum:
In law, the defendant's loss is the plaintiff's gain, and vice versa. Because lawyers have a contractual obligation to represent the interests of the client, and because those interests are, by the nature of the "plaintiff vs. defendant" arena, inherently diametrically opposed to the interests of the other side, the way "you win" is to "make the other guy lose".
The examples you cite are not zero-sum games; the goal of standards review in engineering, peer review in science, and open-source development is NOT to make "the other guy lose", but "to find the bugs and fix them to arrive at the truth".
If you are laboring under the delusion that the goal of any court proceeding is "to get to the truth", I cannot help you.
Consider criminal law. The verdict is never "innocent", it's "not guilty". It doesn't mean "we know for a fact that the defendant is innocent" - it merely means "we cannot ascertain the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonabe doubt."
In the OJ Simpson case, 12 people decided (whether you agree with them or not) that he was not "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt". But during a civil trial thereafter, it was established that "on the balance of probabilities", he was guilty.
So did he kill his wife or not? The courts cannot - and will not - tell you. All the courts can tell you is that if you apply one set of standards for verdict-determination and one set of arguments to one set of people, you'll get one answer, and that if you change all three of these variables, you'll get a diametrically-opposed answer.
In engineering, there are design goals that can be measured against and optimized. In science, there's an objective truth being sought by both sides of a debate. In open source, the quality of software speaks for itself; if you don't like a feature, you fork the code.
But in law, it's still trial by combat - the only way for one side to win is to make the other side lose. Primitive mammalian "us-vs-them" behavior at its finest.
Lawyers & Techies (Score:2)
I agree with the comment that techies don't often understand legal issues; their view is quaintly, what _ought to be_ rather than _what is_. I also feel that while techies often profess cynicism, they really are idealists; how else could open source really work? Idealism and the law collide (I can personally attest to this); law is really the art of the doable.
But more importantly, techies are guilty of the same thing that people in business generally are: they aren't proactive. (I feel comfortable in saying this, as I advised a lot of smaller developers). No one wants to go see a lawyer, to write up one's licence agreement properly, or to ensure that the bases are covered to avoid liability with the things that are said and done on the internet, or to protect one's intellectual property properly. This costs money. And more often than not, it is this "penny wise, pound foolishness" that brought most litigants to my door to sue someone: they simply had not spent the money to retain a lawyer to protect themselves adequately at the start, or did it on the cheap by "using" the same lawyer as the prospetive investor (who is going to protect their client's interests, not the developer's), or they went to a generalist (read: cheap lawyer) who was not equipped to deal with software-related issues. Worst of all is the client who thinks that they are a lawyer: they copy the text of agreements others have drafted without understanding why it is there. Old saying: If you act for yourself, you have a fool for a lawyer and a fool for a client.
Techies, and laypeople in general, have a tendency to not be proactive. The consequence is that they hate lawyers. Why? Because the problem that they initially created by not getting legal advice, is now transferred to the lawyer, who may or may not be able to rescue the client from the consequences. The law, as someone else here has pointed out, does not always keep pace with technology. And it always costs more money to fix than to do right from the beginning.
Lawyers are also disliked because they have a tendency to mystify their profession with jargon, which creates a barrier for understanding. Lawyers are like shaman; feared and hated for their power, their incantations which can cause the system to help them or harm them. Does this sound familiar?
As to what techies should do about lawyers:
I always believed that a lawyer was not only his/her client's advocate, but also a teacher about the law, to help demysify it. A lawyer as well has a duty to engage his/her client in an ethical conversation regarding the matter that the lawyer had been asked to deal with. If you want that, and are not getting that, then become an educated consumer -- go find someone who understands your business, and the way you go about it.
Techies are sadly lacking in knowledge about alternative dispute resolution (ADR). After a few years of litigating disputes that involved technology, and watching what judges did with them, I became a fervent believer in ADR. You get to pick a specialist as a judge, you can do it online or by videoconference, and it is a lot friendlier and more in keeping with the philosophy of the open source movement. By simply including ADR clauses in their contracts, techies could design a far more effective means to resolve disputes which makes sense and is more responsive to the changing technology. Why wait for the governments to draw up the rules of the game--any contract is the law between the parties who agree to it.
However, the sad truth is that when technology-based businesses grew beyond a certain point, they all go to the bigger firms which promote the same old viewpoints; staying with a sole practitioner doesn't give them the same reputation as going with the bigger law firms. So, after being abandoned by yet one more techie whom I had weened along, investing more time in them than I had billed, I became frustrated with legal practice, and I jumped when the opportunity presented itself.
Moral of the story: (1) Find a lawyer that understands you and your business, and explains as they go along. (2) Stick with them; loyalty is a two-way street.
FROM A REAL LAWYER (Score:2)
firstly, most lawyers know little but the law. they read the charge and if it's hard, look it up and then apply the PRINCIPLES to it.
They never dig their heads out into RL or VR to see what it is that is being dealt with--it's just Charge (n) = ingredients (x)
so if you were charged with murder, it's either self defence, not me, accident or insanity. No matter who murders who where or when that's the box it fits in--prosecutors prove it is not self defence while def. counsel try to prove it it, etc.
When it moves to tech 99.99% of all lawyers don't know jack. A few can turn on computers by themselves and actually point and click.
they no more see the reality of something like the DVD scene as beyond the black/white. X says Y infringed their right, therefore prove Y infringed or prove Y did not.
It is fortunate there are a couple of judges who do understand the tech or in not understanding err on the side of innocence because they don't have a clue what guilty would look like.
In Jamaica there are really only two lawyers, myself and Bladerunner who know the tech, (he's a programer as well with his own company, so he's definately in the Nerd/Geek category. I'm the other one.
Sadly, too few people realise that when it's a tech case, whether the *&&^ phone company claiming that bypass is trespass, or an ISP claiming the monopoly phone company has used its market dominance position, the lawyers hired are the run of the mill mouth for hire, so the issues don't make it to the fore.
Too many lawyers will take any case for the money.
causing a distinct difficulty in telling them from garden variety whores.
As long as we know the tech and as long as non-lawyer geeks have the guts to push--we will win.
One mistake we made was letting Kevin Mitnick rot in jail so long. We must not let hacking/cracking whatever replace drug offenses as the bogeyman.
Re:Geek snobbery (Score:2)
sensibilities of the general population)
That's exactly what the law should not do, IMHO. The common sense or sensibilities of the general population are contradictory and much less decent than one might suppose. Common sense, as the old saw goes, is quite uncommon.
The interests of the general population are hardly shared as well - I suppose it would be to my boss' interest for me to work for a dollar a day, but it's certainly not in my best interests. To insist that there's a general good in all but the most general of circumstances is to be rather myopic. In the end, someone's ox is inevitably gored.
The law, on the other hand, should strive to become as self-consistent as possible, and measure out the competing interests according to their merits; to do otherwise is utterly unworkable (or at least a prescription for anarchy), since the laws will lay in conflict to one another.
The law does not "exist to serve itself", like it was dropped on America by a vagrant spaceship. It was written by people who sought to enshrine just those community standards; the process of law-making, by both the legislative and judiciary, is reconciling those with many other community standards. That means seeking consistency and harmony on as much as possible.
The law can't make society one bit better, nor is the law as a whole guaranteed to be any good itself - garbage in, garbage out. What it can do, at best, is provide balance to society's competing interests. I certainly don't expect any more of it.
--
Re:Root cause: adversarial legal system. (Score:2)
The examples you cite are not zero-sum games; the goal of standards review in engineering, peer review in science, and open-source development is NOT to make "the other guy lose", but "to find the bugs and fix them to arrive at the truth".
Ah Ha! The perceptive sutdent points out, that's not the whole picture.
If you are laboring under the delusion that the goal of any court proceeding is "to get to the truth", I cannot help you.
I am, as you say, "laboring under the delusion" tha the goal of the entire legal system is Truth and Justice. Which is not to say that I'm naive enough to think that the system always works. Any more than that standards bodies never set stupid standards, that the prevailing scientific theories are always better than the ones laughed at, or that open-source software development always produces optimal software.
The fundamental oversight in your analysis is that these little head-butting contests have side effects (a phenomenon that should be familiar to techies.) Standards bodies not only have winners and losers, but influence the course of technology. Science not only has Stephen Hawking and Archimedes Plutonium but enables human advancement. Open-source software not only has the Gnome and KDE teams, but lands on millions of desktops. And the law not only has winners and losers but keeps Bob Vickers out of circulation.
Have you actually served on a jury lately? I have. And I can tell you that all of the main players there really were there for more than scoring in some pointless game, and the result really was the truth as nearly as we are given to find it.
In engineering, there are design goals that can be measured against and optimized. In science, there's an objective truth being sought by both sides of a debate. In open source, the quality of software speaks for itself; if you don't like a feature, you fork the code.
But in law, it's still trial by combat - the only way for one side to win is to make the other side lose. Primitive mammalian "us-vs-them" behavior at its finest.
You make it sound like we might as well flip a coin, or that the only thing that matters is the legal teams. Which, except in our more dramatic moments, we all know to be silly. It really does matter what the facts in the case are; I've seen defense lawyers work wonders trying to raise doubts and be totally overwhelmed by the evidence.
By the way, don't dis that head-butting. It works, too, because of side-effects. The winner, on average, fathers a healthier bunch of kids than the loser would. Which renders the game a net gain for the herd in the same way that you and I are the net beneficiaries of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.
KILL ALL THE LAWYERS (Score:2)
Only the wise, knowledgeable, and fair were laywers, that line is supposed to confer that the best way to demoralize and destroy a people is to kill off the brightest, most shining examples of what goodness is supposed to be.
This may be semi-off topic, but I think that sometimes lawyers get a bad rap when it's their clients who are the true scumbags. I don't blame the RIAA's lawyers for their MP3 insanity, I blame the RIAA. It's just a shame for lawyers that the most high profile members of their profession are now Bill and Hillary Clinton.
LK
Re:wrong! (Score:3)
Sure, the article you quoted is absolutely correct that the level of inventiveness needed for a patent is very small, but it's precisely the nature of prior art that the USPTO is falling apart on right now. They didn't realize that windowing existed years before, and they seemed to have no clue exactly why the cookie spec was invented, or even exactly what a cookie was.
Those types of things are definitely issues about technical knowledge. Even with the current definition of patent law (which I don't agree with BTW, I understand the court cases but disagree with them), these patents should not have been granted.
Re:Hang all lawyers! (Score:2)
competition among law students for these $10/hour jobs is fierce... so it isn't just megacorporations that have access to the best
legal talent.
Exactly -- there's no shortage of attorneys with ideals, they just don't make slashdot (or the news) as often.
A similar thing for doctors -- there is a waiting list for Doctors Without Borders, and international free care organization where you go to the shittiest places on earth to cure the most stomach-turning stuff you could imagine. And the doctors don't get $10 and hour -- they pay upwards of $30k a year for the privlege of volunteering.
Sure, substitute vigilanteeism for justice . . . (Score:2)
Jury nullification is nothing less than the ultimate form of lawlessness: arguing that because a decision is unreviewable it is therefore right. Despite taking an oath to apply the law as instructed by the court, to find the facts as they lay before the jury, a nullificationist calls for the substitution of a judgement for a judgment.
Cochran argued jury nullification for more than twenty minutes before a jury trying O.J. Simpson, and the jury bought this view. Ask yourself if this was just.
To claim that instructing every panel of juries to ignore the law, ignore the facts and make their own call depite their oaths leads to justice is to defy reason: whatever you may think about the laws and the process, the substitution of anarchy (or worse) for laws derived under that process would undermine far more, and lead to far more injustice than the status quo.
The world has sufficient experience with the institutionalization of legal nullification -- indeed, it has even been parodied in Star Trek's "courts of fact." This is not justice.
Jury nullifciation is far more likely to lead to abuse and injustice than the controversy. From vast color-based captial convictions throughout the Jim Crow era to the OJ trial of modern times, nullification has been taken as an excuse to substitute bigotry, prejudice and personal disdain for unpopular individuals.
Nothing could more clearly assure injustice in American law than uniform adoption of the unprincipled application of "jury nullification" to the American Legal system.
Jurors, like high courts, are not final because they are infallible, they are infallible because they are final -- to claim justice derives from abandoning their oaths on the basis that they have the de-facto power to do so is to cede all "justice" to the hands of those with power.
Whatever might be said of the preceding posting, it has nothing whatsoever to do with justice.
Re:Root cause: adversarial legal system. (Score:2)
Guilty as charged. This is one point on which I will readily concede.
Your arguments are sound and cogent - perhaps I have missed a point that others have raised here, in that while science aims for an idealized truth, lawyers and jurors alike are forced (whether by something inherent in the system or by "tradition") to work for something that fits in the established bounds of legal precedent.
Given the broken tools we have to work with (an irreconcilably-conflicting mass of laws too complicated for citizens to fully comprehend themselves), perhaps our adversarial system is the effect of humans using broken tools, and not the cause as I'd originally implied.
(Throw a bunch of otherwise level-headed geeks onto a bulletin board system and yell "vi rules" at them and they all ultimately turn into raving lunatics tearing at each other's throats. Problem is, in law, we never got past the "holy war" stage of debate, "Legal precedent" is IMHO often used as little more than a glorified version of argument-by-authority. This case matters because this judge was better than that judge, and my client's opponents are obviously fools for citing the case that took the opposing view...)
So perhaps the really interesting question is - how can we do to our legal codes and bodies of precedent what we do to hairy code? (Leaving aside the practical matter that the lawyers and politicians who make the decisions have based their careers on the system in its present form and will never allow it to be thrown out for a redesign-from-first-principles or a code review and pruning of the dead wood.)
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
Re:Good question. (Score:2)
Anyway, so long as laws represent the desires of the majority, what right does any majority have to say they're "wrong"? (or rather, what right does any minority have to ignore them?) - And I say this as part of the minority on many issues.
Think about this; If the majority believe that technology is bad, is it therefore perhaps bad by definition? Law, right and wrong, is far more subjective than you might imagine. Law simply (well, perhaps not simply) represents the views and beliefs of the majority. Now, Justice is a different matter... (BTW: I prefer plain vengence - it doesn't care if it's right or wrong, or lawful or illegal, it just is - but it's not really appropriate in this example.)
Judge Jackson is astonishingly clueful (Score:2)
I'm still trying to explain to myself how he did it. Does a federal judge have a staff of law clerks to help him with the research and the writing, as Supreme Court justices do? Maybe it wasn't really the judge, but was some nameless clerk who nailed it so well. Or is Judge Jackson especially savvy with respect to technological issues? Or can federal judges in general be trusted to understand this stuff better than I in all my cynicism ever expected?
There are still two groups who consistently cannot buy a clue about technology: the media and politicians. Rajiv Chandrasekharan (sp?) of the Washington Post is the only media writer I trust to get it right, and I can't think of a single politician (excluding activists from groups like the EFF) who has impressed me with any understanding of technology. What we have to do to get these people to Get It? Judge Jackson has shown that we don't have to set our standards so low, after all.
Re:Got a better idea? (Score:2)
//rdj