It sounds as though his issue is with the site, not with Google. Google is just presenting information that exists -- it is the site that is the problem for him. So....doesn't he know a lawyer or two to address the site in question?

Great idea! Then he can learn the definition made popular by another "defamed" celeb, the "Streisand effect"!

TFA speaks correctly in pointing out that Santorum doesn't have a "Google" problem - His real problem centers around his unfortunate cranial-rectal insertion. OTOH, we all have a problem when whackjobs like that can ever made it to the public spotlight to spew their hate in the first place.

Yeah, that's the first thing I think about in an emergency. Logging on to twitter and posting some bullshit. How useful.

Well, I suppose that counts as the obvious symmetry to the jackasses who, watching someone burn to death in a wrecked car, will whip out their cell phones - Not for anything so mundane as calling for (never mind actually trying to) help, mind you, but to record it for YouTube.

We've become a society of narcissists and voyeurs. Welcome to the dawning of a new age.

Of course if the terms were unfavorable, you might not be interested in a valid contract, and just wanted to shut HR up... which is fine, but it's not an enforceable contract.

This.

The terms of such agreements, without exception, contain nothing even the slightest bit favorable to the employee. Going forward without a valid contract, complete with the possibility of having them send you packing at a moments notice, usually works out more favorably than agreeing to their boilerplate.

Especially when you explain to them that your contract negotiation technique was to say, "I don't like the terms of my contract, so I'll just ignore them"

Did you, uh, y'know, notice that most of my post addresses the fact that most (FTE) software engineers in the US don't work under contract? As made all the more obvious by the counterpoint of my last paragraph that basically says "if you actually do have a contract, make sure you produce nothing they can actually take away"?

No? Okay then. To summarize:

If you don't have a contract giving up right-X, then the default laws applicable to right-X still apply, regardless of what MegaCorp's "all your base are belong to us" BS "policies" have to say about it.

unless you can afford to lose that kind of money, you can't afford to sue anyone for any reason.

The FP author wouldn't need to sue in this case - His employer would need to sue him, which a court would laugh back to the stone ages (okay, realistically, he'd end up paying a few hundred bucks for an hour of some shyster's work filing a motion to dismiss). It takes a lot less effort to enforce your rights when you get them by default.


and, in any case, the OP already *has* a contract

Where did you get that information? The FP says "my employer has an IP policy that states that anything I do while under their employ is theirs". No matter how sternly worded, a "policy" does not equal a contract, even in the handful of non-"at-will" employment states.

you have two options
renegotiate your contract or quit.

Quitting sucks, plain and simple. Negotiating with HR/Legal generally reduces to either "suck it up" or quitting (possibly not by choice). So what does that leave? The really obvious third option that everyone in this discussion seems to have overlooked...

"Policies" don't mean a bucket load of sheep guts in court unless your employer has an actual signed contract with you granting them the rights to your work on your own time - Without that, they have nothing but one more vague threat to get rid of you for conduct unbecoming a serf. And, in most US states, they can already toss you on the street at the drop of a hat, for no reason whatsoever or for any reason that doesn't violate federal anti-discrimination law. So threatening to get rid of you for one more reason than "nothing" amounts to just a few more squirts of piss in a barrel of raw sewage.

So the easiest course of action, in the absence of an actual, legally-binding transfer of rights? Just don't tell them, simple as that. Obviously that limits you from doing any real marketing of your side projects, but your company can do exactly one thing about it if they find out - Threaten to fire you if you don't give them your firstborn, then do so when you wisely refuse. Which they already could have done any time they wanted, so, same outcome as every other worst-case scenario except with a rather low probability of it ever happening.


Now, on the off chance you do actually have some formal contract spelling out the terms of your employment, you can still opt for "just don't tell them". It just comes with the extra condition that you need to do your side-work in an area they can't really "own" in any meaningful way - Network installations, fixing/upgrading little old ladies' computers, releasing your code anonymously into the PD, etc.

eg. How does a CD store the difference between 22kHz square/sine/sawtooth waves?

Whereas with vinyl, while a few researchers have found that you can actually reproduce nanoscale artifacts present on the pressing master, you completely obliterate all that detail the first time you actually play the thing by dragging a razor-sharp needle down the groove of soft, soft vinyl that contains all your nice sound information.

So before you play it, you have 60+kHz frequency response and >25dB stereo separation. The second time you play it, you have more like 12-16kHz response and <10db separation.

"But I can hear the difference in my $1600 retro clamshell-style headphones!"


These days we ought to be listening to 96kHz/24bit, the technology to reproduce it is ubiquitous.

With that, I will agree completely - And for a very small number of performances (mostly superstars and symphonic), you can get that as DVD-A. But for the rest, we've sadly headed in entirely the opposite direction, with crappy MP3s the de facto distribution standard for music now and for the near future.

And, FYI, you do not look out for yourself. You can't. No one can. No one is always alert, all the time, for any emergency.

Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow. It happens, and in the "real" world, you simply die and the worms get their turn. It doesn't matter how much of your taxes goes to maintaining the roads, to well-designed intersections, to free medical care for all. We all die when our turn comes.

So no, not a superman. Just a boring ol' mortal human who will take vigilance over nannyism any frickin' day of the week.

The Super Bowl is an obvious target for anyone who wants to kill a bunch of people to make some deluded point.

The government response to any other private "too big to secure" event consists of "okay then, if you can't secure it, you can't hold the event". So, following your (entirely true) statement, the government should simply ban the superbowl.


If we follow your approach, then what does the government do?

Roads. Schools. Water. National defense (stress both the "national" and the "defense" parts of that). And although I'll throw "police" in there as well, I do so with the caveat that providing police protection for the populace at large does not equate to providing security for a private, for-profit event.


Besides, I feel much safer being looked after by the government.

I feel much safer looking after myself. And damned good that I do, because apparently during the superbowl, all the Big Eyes will look just that much less closely at all the other prime targets.

Al Qaeda didn't attack the WTC with an airplane to show the holes in our impenetrable airport security screening procedures; they did it because no one thought they'd use the airplanes themselves as weapons, only as a bargaining chip for hostages or money or guns.

So, if Al Qaeda attacks on superbowl Sunday, you can bet your eyeteeth they'll go for Six Flags Texas, or the Mall of America, or the Golden Gate bridge. Something totally unexpected, rather than walking into a highly visible trap.

That's all well and good until someone needs to get contact info, mail, and apps in and out of a company-purchased phone. An iTunes account is necessary to operate an iOS device.

I think the the GP fully understands that; it simply does not count as an acceptable solution.

Speaking as a member of a mid-sized IT team, I can respond to the FP's question very, very simple - "Leave it". Give us absolute enterprise-level control of our devices without the consumer-gimmicky BS, or GTFO(ff) my network.