The FBI didn't seem to be deceived. A special agent talked to the informant, and didn't bother investigating any further. Guy Hottel (probably his superior) wrote a memo summarizing what the informant said. I think that was all that there was to it.

I misread something on another site. The informant was saying what an Air Force investigator supposedly said, not the other way around. It is notable that the SA (FBI Special Agent) decided that what what the informant said wasn't worth investigating. That's in the PDF of the FBI memo. I wish I could delete my own comments.

I agree that it's just "another sensationalist samzenpus headline", but I think that there was probably more to the original Air Force memo than what you said. IIRC, there actually was a crash in the area, apparently of a secret airplane. The USAF would naturally want to know how much foreign spies could learn from talking to the local population. It's not surprising that the USAF would have investigators find out and document what the locals would say about the crash, no matter how crazy it was.

The problem is the deletion and sandboxing of comments that don't discredit Groklaw and that are perfectly consistent with her rules. They are often not anonymous and often by members of the community. Another problem is PJ and some of her supporters who keep hiding and misrepresenting what is going on.

If you continue to insist that what you said is true, please explain why so many of comments in the first corrections thread to this article were hidden, causing nsomos to start a second corrections thread because no one could see the first corrections thread. How were they posted anonymously? How did they discredit Groklaw? Doesn't it look like they were posted by a members of the community in order to be helpful?

For that matter, how is the unannounced sandboxing of comments ever consistent with transparency? The intent is clearly to mislead members of the Groklaw community into thinking that their comments are visible to others when they are not.

What shows she lacks integrity is deleting and sandboxing comments that aren't even close to being "terrible", than falsely claiming that she doesn't do that after she has the evidence hidden. Your claims of what the "truth" is are worthless. All you know about are the parts of the truth that you can see. You can't see what is missing.

How your comment gained the score for "5, Insightful" is beyond me. You paint everything in simplistic black and white terms and make broad claims as if what you can't see must not exist.

I can't read Brian Proffitt's article (I get an "Unsupported database type" error), but I can't hold out much hope for a "a bigger, more community-oriented site" given PJ's desire to limit and control what can be said. Already there isn't enough time for her to adequately review and consider whether or not comments actually deserve to be censored, nor even to explain her decisions afterward. It seems that she would prefer to have a small, pure, community rather than a large and potentially messy one. That limits its value to me.

Skimming through the comments so far, I get the impression that most people are concentrating on the argument that if a person can't pirate, that doesn't mean they will buy. TFA makes an even better point: They BSA assumed that, by value, 50% of the software in use is pirated. Otherwise a 10% reduction in piracy wouldn't result in a 10% increase in sales, even if all of the ex-pirates purchased. Gee, doesn't 50% seem a little high?

How did BSA get 50%? A questionable study said greater than 40%, and since 50% is greater than 40%, it must be the correct number. (The actual number was 43%, FWIW.

The earlier study included countries such as China and Russia and it appears (even the detailed version didn't really say) that they assumed that each piece of unlicensed software counted as much as each piece of licensed software. So every unlicensed copy of Windows 98 running on an underpowered PC in a third world or BRIC country was as valuable as any piece of brand-new business software.

One thing that makes this look like so much hoo-ha is that the "detailed studies" available as PDFs don't contain any collected data or details about methodology. It's just nicely presented conclusions and spin.

The part added by kdawson isn't quite right. The article is available on the New York Times website, but was not written by them. It obviously says: "By PAUL QUINLAN AND JOSH VOORHEES of Greenwire", "Copyright 2010 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved", "Greenwire is published by Environment & Energy Publishing." The actual New York Times article was written by different people and doesn't say anyone was "awed."

In addition to what truthsearch said, Alex Brown was a very influential person in the "but it will be different this time" camp. It's getting to the point that there are very few credible people who aren't employed by Microsoft or its partners who would argue that anymore. So more governments may conclude that Office 2010 doesn't produce output that matches a valid ISO standard. Besides, people enjoy schadenfreude.

Any user flagged as a "hostile life form" is punished by the website playing Mr. Shatner's version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" the next time they access the site.

You are right, TFA did say the appellate court affirmed the lower court decision. I missed that. However, in an earlier blog post the same author said the appeals court overturned it. I think he forgot which way the lower court initially ruled. I admit that's sloppy. He definitely is an attorney, though, for what that's worth.

I don't think the legal costs to date were included. The reasonable costs and attorney fees mentioned in the settlement were for filing the stipulated judgment if Katzer doesn't make the payments on time. Also, if they had to go to arbitration in the future, the looser would pay the winner's attorney fees.

I think Katzer was trying to give himself time to come up with the money rather than having the court put a lien on him or forcing him to pay the money immediately. Jacobsen got the injunction he wanted, though (he doesn't seem to trust Katzer for some reason), and by being able to force Katzer into binding arbitration, he should be able to avoid the hassle and expense of the courts if Katzer starts misbehaving again.

No, as TFA, which was written by a lawyer, makes clear, the decisions of the lower court that weren't overturned create precedent as well. The idea is that the law is to be administered consistently, so judges will tend to rule consistent with previous decisions. Precedent created by a lower court isn't as weighty as that set by a higher court, but it still exists.

The decision by the appellate court was on a very important point. If copyright law couldn't be applied to software that is copied and distributed without payment, F/OSS would have lost an important weapon. It was important that the court ruled that this does not make the licenses too broad to be enforced. All of the logic used by the Court of Appeals to reach that conclusion also sets precedent (or strengthens previously existing precedent).

I don't understand why you are making a big deal about the fact that the case was heard in federal court. Federal courts have precedence over state courts in matters of federal law. Copyright law is federal law.

... and the rulings will likely be influential in other circuits, as explained in TFA.

TFA might be getting slashdotted, though. Google has it cached: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.consortiuminfo.org%2Fstandardsblog%2Farticle.php%3Fstory%3D201002190850472

Well, this discussion wouldn't be complete without some mention of Nazis or Neo-Nazis, I guess.