The problem with this whole line of thinking is that we don't know what Dan Borislow's lawyers said to him. We only know what Dan Borislow says about his lawyers.

Trust me, every day good lawyers say to their clients the equivalent of "if things blow up, just blame it your lawyer". They often do this when their clients say "I don't care about the probability of getting what I want, I want to got for it. How can I do damage control?"

That may be true. Or it may not. You haven't supported it with anything other that "I'm in law school". You're pretty much sort of correct but it's much more complicated than that when you actually practice.

Jesus Christ, I've been reading /. since 1999, only made an account in 2004 or something like that because I never had anything to say previously and just randomly decided to sign up, and didn't start commenting on /. again to start defending NYCL, but this is stupid.

The topic of the conversation is RIAA defendants.

What do you think the sentence in question means? I mean, if you want to willfully misconstrue something to make a point, at least make it more subtle. Else you're not going to fool anyone.

PS was it /. or Ars that had the party at the Modern in Boston in around 2000? I can't remember if I was there for the one or the other.

(I'm traveling and my powers are severely limited)

He didn't say XOR.

I only know about recent decisions on that issue with respect to the State Farm case, which I think was about punitive damages (I could be wrong but I can't look it up at the moment). If you don't mind, if you see this reply could you please post a reply to this with a link to that UMG decision? I don't currently practice there, but I am admitted in MA and if it's a first circuit decision I would be really interested.

I am not seeing this.

In the first link you provided, the only prediction I see relates to statutory damages. NYCL says that there are facts that could lead a court to find fair use in the context of a p2p environment, but there's no prediction with respect to that. The statement that there are fact patterns such that court could find fair use in a p2p situation is still true.

I can't find a comment by NYCL in the second link. If one is there, can you show me where it is?

NYCL is providing links and updates to potentially important IP cases. He's also "biased" in the sense that he has an opinion, but he wears it on his sleeve so I'm not sure where your anger comes from. If you want to be angry you can also say "the court probably won't care about the amicus briefs", or "the court won't care about the scholarship", or "linking to an 'Ed. Note: the law and scholarship agree' comment is lazy and lame and unpersuasive', but, although all of that would be true in a sense, this is /. and not a law weblog.

99% of the people here have an opinion on the outcome they want and will criticize the courts if that outcome is not reached no matter what is a reasonable interpretation of the law and precedent. /. is a machine that gets fed and, at least with respect to law, is not a place you're going to fund much honest discourse on the current state of IP law. What you will find is discourse on how IP law should be changed -- but those arguments are, no matter what they pretend to be, about statutory changes rather than informed arguments regarding textual analysis of actual law and precedent.

NYCL is feeding information to the machine with his own opinion injected in the summary. He has the advantage of having an educated opinion, whether or not he's correct about the eventual outcome in any particular case. That's like 10 jillion times better than people will ever see reading Cory Doctorow. So I'm happy he exists and posts here. (IAAL, and I am an IP lawyer)

Ok, I've got some news for you. The quotation is not meant like an immutable law. There's a really good, important point there, but it's still just a meaningful aphorism. Let me help you with this -- when you see "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", read it as "given enough eyeballs, [almost all] bugs are shallow". Does that help? Can we move on now? This discussion is so stupid it's almost painful. Here are some other things to know: MS blog author wants attention; ESR is a self-important moron. Thank me later.

hey now, I didn't say it didn't exist. I just quoted the movie.

It's a UNIX system! I know this!

The lawyer was making those objections because that's how these things work, for better or worse. In these situations, lawyers attend depositions assigned specifically to object to anything remotely objectionable in order to preserve their objections in the future (because otherwise they are lost). If something really damaging happened in one of the answers to an objected question, those lawyers could then bring up the fact that they objected at the time and wouldn't be hosed by failure to preserve the issue. In many cases it's just wasting time, but in the event something goes ill in your deposition, you'll thank your lawyers for so protecting you.