If you do something stupid then piercing the S-Corp layer isn't that hard. At the end of the day you are really a sole proprietor, and having paid a few hundred bucks to file some paperwork isn't going to work any magic in court.

Not remotely true. If you keep your paperwork in order (not just upfront, but ongoing) piercing the veil is nearly impossible. The upfront paperwork takes a few yours, after that you're looking at one or two hours per year.

This would work if the owner of the S-Corp was someone else. As the sole owner of the S-Corp and the only person who does any work for the S-Corp then you are deemed to be an "active" owner. You owe SS and Medicare on all of the income, including the pass through income. You may not report the income this way, but you should be. I'm guessing you haven't been audited yet.

The IRS allows you to pay distributions to shareholders that are above "reasonable" compensation for the work done. They haven't yet defined "reasonable," although there's never been a case where employee/shareholders have been prosecuted if they are paying a fair amount of tax. Google John Edwards and Payroll Tax for more information.

As an S-Corp owner I legally reduce my tax burden by thousands of dollars while shielding my personal assets from lawsuits. Yes I need to file an additional return and do some additional paperwork, but the benefits far outweigh the costs.

OpenDNS allows you to turn off said feature. I did, and get NXDOMAIN back instead of the IP of their goofy page when I typo or try to resolve a non-existent name.

The charge is that the contests of the hard drive are illegal. That's not just "evidence", that's the entire crux of the case. The question at hand is, "are the contents of this drive illegal?" If the prosecution can't prove that it is, that's their tough luck. If they can't view the contents of the drive then what the hell business do they have prosecuting this guy? Their inability to break encryptioon isn't the defendent's fault or problem. The state wants to prove that the guy did something wrong? Okay, let's see the proof. You have the guy's laptop, let's see why you think he's doing something illegal.

The prosecution could move forward with the case without the decrypted documents, presenting the sworn testimony of the ICE agent, but they're within their rights not to. They've decided that they need to examine the contents of the drive, shown probable cause to a judge (based on the testimony of the ICE agent), and gotten a warrant. The judge compelled the defendant to supply the documents pursuant to the warrant. He's not complying, therefore he's in contempt of a court order.

The defendant could easily claim to have forgotten the password, and the case would move forward without the evidence (although that's clearly not the prosecution's preferred outcome), but the judge would then instruct the jury about the defendant's claim, and let them weigh that against the ICE agent's sworn testimony. That doesn't look like a good option for the defense, so they're trying this first.

In any case, the 5th amendment doesn't protect defendants from handing over incriminating evidence, only from making self-incriminating statements to the government.

As many others pointed out, had the defendant not shown the documents to the ICE officer, the prosecution would not have probable cause to search the drive, a warrant would not have been issue, and we'd all be wasting our time discussing something else on slashdot right now.

The guy hasn't claimed he forgot the password. If he did that, the case would move forward without it, and the judge would instruct the jury that the defendant claims to have forgotten a password to documents that a sworn officer testified under oath were child porn.

That doesn't sound so good.

So the defense is trying this first. If it doesn't pan out (and it won't, because the 5th amendment doesn't apply to a subpoena for evidence), then they can try the "I forgot" defense at trial.

Wow. You must live in a country where everyone is perfectly moral (by everyone else on the planet's standards) and nobody has ever committed a crime. Where is this wondrous place? Cause last time I checked pretty much every country has citizens who have done much worse than what you describe.

The courts pretty routinely take one person's word over another's, if that one person is a sworn peace officer.

Second, even if the courts doubt the peace officer's word (or the defense wants to refute it) there's a fairly straightforward way to handle that: compel the guy to cough up the documents. The password itself is not incriminating, therefore it's not protected by the 5th. Even still, the court is not demanding the password, just the unencrypted contents of the drive. Again, they have probable cause (the ICE officer's sworn testimony).

Last, the contents of the hard drive is not self-incrimination (though it may be incriminating). It's evidence. Evidence is not protected by the 5th. This guy is withholding evidence that the prosecution wishes to present at trial to make its case. The judge has ruled that the evidence is material to the case, and that a warrant has been issued for it. The defendant is refusing to comply with the warrant. That's all this case is about: there's no 5th amendment element to it.

Miranda doesn't kick in until you've been arrested and questioned by an officer. He wasn't under arrest, thus the officers didn't need to Mirandize him. Hell, this guy wasn't even a suspect at this point. Just a perv who probably forgot his unencrypted kiddie porn drive was mounted when he handed it to the officer.

He's off to prison for a long time, whether he gives up the keys (conviction) or not (contempt). I have no issue with that.

This could cost consumers literally incalculable amounts of synergy and innovation.

Just because the amount of "synergy and innovation" is incalculable, that doesn't mean it's very much. Of whatever "synergy and innovation" is.

Why won't the government just let capitalism work?

Hear, hear! Just look what deregulated capitalism has done for the financial markets!

I second the motion.

QuickBooks Pro (at least the Mac version) uses SQLite as its file format, which makes getting direct access to accounting data really, really simple.

Here's the copyright filing from government records, 1/24/08...

There used to be a GUI app which sort of helped you mount SSHFS volumes, but it was very unsupported and I could never get it to work at all.

I built sshfs for MacFUSE 1, and the binaries still work under MacFuse 2, which is handy. However, it was an PITA to build, as MacFuse had to generate the makefiles for sshfs, gettext, et al. If you followed the directions it did work, but it took a long time to get running.

A GUI sshfs that was supported and worked would be a great addition. A protocol helper would be even better, so that I could tell somebody to hit command K from the Finder, enter "sshfs:user@host:/path" and hit return and have the volume show up on their desktop.

Sadly I don't have the time to put it together.