When this happened, I was mulling over my position on jury nullification, and came to the conclusion that it is an important tool as a limit on state power. However, in a civil case it gets a lot more difficult. We need a stable set of rules so we know where the boundaries are, otherwise we are no better than a third world country where graft is the norm. The problem is now that civil damages exceed what criminal damages can do to an individual, where do we draw the line? Do we say Jury nullification is okay to be used when excessive damages are awarded for file sharing? Okay, then why is that different than patent infringement? I like jury nullification. Unfortunately every time I've been in voir dire, and admitted to the ability to use it, I've been thrown out. For jury nullification to be a valid defense against the state (and corporation too?), it must be used properly. It doesn't feel to me like it was used properly in the Samsung/Apple case.

Sometimes you have to wonder. If one reads enough of these vulnerabilities in Windows and antivirus and browser systems, one would get the idea that it's all quite convenient in some ways. I am not a conspiracy theorist ... well after this post I may be. My theory would be that a company could easily be approached by the government and paid to add back doors to their software. It's a lot safer than trying to get records from the phone companies and there's a lot more information to be had. If the company is large enough, it would never get noticed by regular programmers. All it would take is a compromized module, object, dll, whatever to make this happen. Even a compromized compiler would do it.