The big firms, and Sonnenschein as one, charge upwards of $600 an hour for their services, so this amounts to between one and two weeks of billable hours. For what they did, which really wasn't much, that sounds about right.

Seriously. You can do as much or as little PvP as you want. But even in high security space (hi-sec) you can still get your pasty ass ganked if you aren't careful. Hulkageddon is likely to occur with some regularity, and sticking your nose in a null-sec and even some lo-sec systems is just asking to get yourself jumped. Granted, the community here is a lot smaller--probably around 150,000 active players as opposed to the millions sported by WoW--but they're pretty hardcore about the whole thing.

This is the President's job folks: to defend the laws passed by Congress and signed into law by a sitting President. It's implied by the Oath of Office. Presidents ignoring laws they don't like by refusing to defend them in court--which is what the DOJ is doing here--would be a pretty flagrant violation of the obligations of the executive.

This is not the first time and will not be the last that a President, through his officers, defends a law he isn't thrilled about. Just because DOJ lawyers show up with a brief in support of a law does not mean that the President--or even the DOJ lawyers, for crying out loud--believe either 1) that the law is worth defending, or 2) the validity of their own arguments. They're just doing their jobs.

See, I think this is on slashdot for two reasons: 1) Slashdot hates DRM and will publish just about any piece criticizing it, regardless of its bearing to reality. 2) Slashdot likes Cory Doctorow because he's a poster boy for item 1. Being passionate is not the same thing as knowing what the hell you're talking about. If he were running a marketing seminar, I wouldn't have any objections. But he tends to wax philosophical on legal and historical subjects about which he has no real knowledge.

...why anyone takes Cory Doctorow seriously?

He's a political activist and passable young-adult sci-fi author who contributes to a geek blog. He's an expert on nothing. He has not formally studied anything. He mouths off about copyright all the time, but his grasp of law and legal history is laughable. Yet he consistently makes headlines for saying asinine things about subjects about which he has no expertise.

How do I get people to pay me for saying stupid things about fashionable subjects? What he does is way more glamorous and takes way less actual, you know, effort than what I do.