Or better yet shut up in general. Defamation cases have paid out on less than you posted above - especially as on the internet they could forum shop for whatever country had more favourable laws. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for sticking it to the man... but for god's sake finish the case (including all appeals) before you go blab, let alone publish a book (ie 7+ years after you actually get paid following a judgement).

After the bug deletes all your friends... Tom is added.

He was feeling all left out when everyone left myspace.

You are missing the role of discretion - there should be and is a controlled level of freedom for officers (and judges / juries) to choose - that is, to interpret the law based on their own first hand experience. This is (or should be) limited by reasonable standards, but the officer is usually in the best place at the time to determine the difference between an aggressive disagreement, and assaulting someone.

Some claim he left a power of attorney:

God, c/o His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
VATICAN CITY

I'm sure there is an intelligent design troll to be found here somewhere.

... or at least an intelligent troll designing something.

In the recent iiNet case (Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Limited (No. 3) [2010] FCA 24), using BT to share a file, no matter how many times the file was downloaded, how long it was available, or who each part was downloaded from, were considered a single infringement. The decision is being appealed but the decision will still be persuasive for 2 years or so.

Talking from Australian law here (I believe it is substantially similar in most commonwealth countries):

Copying exists when any 'substantial part' is copied [Copyright Act 1968 (Cth)]. There is no strict 10% cutoff, nor any set %. It is however common policy not to copy over this to be on the safe side (you will find posters and notices about this in most libraries).

Main reason for the 10% suggestion is the case 'University of New South Wales v Moorhouse' regarding authorisation infringement. It is more about protecting the library than any allowance individual copying.

As a law student - "reasonable timeframe", and "reasonable period of time" are examples of perfectly airtight legal language.

Pretty much all laws </exaggeration> have some sort of 'reasonable man' component, which is so abstract as to be anything but reasonable. But without the ambiguity the law would be arbitrary and wouldn't support justice. And by justice I mean billable hours.

Unfortunately they usually become lawyers.

Something you are... or were before I took your hand / eyeball / DNA.

Correction: Login passwords are for authentication, not authorisation.

Authentication checks whether the password / user matches and grants access on that basis - Is this Joe?
Authorisation checks whether the login combination is authorised for the requested command / task once authenticated - Is Joe allowed to do X?
Accounting is a method of ensuring that Dave is not being authorised as Joe, unless you are referring to the trolls.

Too often we presume than if a user is authenticated (correct user/pass combination) they should be allowed access, without considering further security aspects of Non-repudiation (proof of transaction), Availability (physical and virtual - avoid DDoS and break-in), Confidentiality (was the password in cleartext?) and Data Integrity (sanitise your damn inputs).

This comment implies that all freedom is beneficial. I am not free to murder strangers, nor publish child pornography - yet I would consider these restrictions on freedom beneficial.

As does any media you choose to find meaning in.

Not the wrong sources, just one sided sources. There are many arguments for software patents, but they revolve more around the conceptual foundations of patent law, and not on the current direction of precedent.

Fundamentally, a patent is a legal right, for an invention/innovation, to exclusive reasonable profit (nb not exclusive use), in exchange for public disclosure of how the invention/innovation works. You tell identify a problem and tell everyone a way to solve it, and the law supposedly ensures only you can profit from it for a limited period. Conceptually, this promotes investment in innovation (due to the greater certainty of reward), and preserves the first to market right for the inventor / their investors.

To restrict the system from being too broad, they excluded 'discoveries', opposed to inventions - basically to stop the mathematicians at the time from licensing their proofs. This was soon logically extended to business methods, recipes and algorithms. The trouble is that software overlaps: conceptually, it is an algorithm or set of instructions, but it also involves inventive reasoning, is non-obvious, provides a useful function (that is, it has value), and builds upon prior knowledge.

Take for example a Chinese character - the language and meaning would be a discovery, and that extends to writing and translating to another language. A calligraphy pen would be an invention (albeit one already invented an age ago). Attaching bristles to a stick solved the problem of writing thick / thin strokes with a finger. A program for typing chinese characters into a computer is both. Arguably it is a method of translation, and arguably a tool for writing.

Unfortunately the US legislature refused to create an additional system for software patents (as did most of the rest of the world). This left us with Bilsky and many cases trying to squish software into a system it doesn't really fit, because the alternative is unregulated free market exploitation (first to take the stolen idea to market, or with a bigger budget, gets everything).

Each matter is independent - refuting another's patent holds no legal risk to any of your own.