Well, they *obviously* found someone named "Nachiketa Kapur", whose response was "There was no cash to point out to". Note that it wasn't "I don't work for Mr Sharma", or "I have no connection to that political party", or anything else that might indicate that he was *not* in fact Mr Sharma's aide.

What we'll probably discover is that Mr. Kapur is officially employed by someone other than Mr Sharma, in some position that on paper has nothing to do with politics. But Kapur's response indicates that he is involved in that party, and has some association with Sharma.

Because governments routinely lie, while Wikileaks has yet to be caught in *any* sort of fabrication? Your theory of them building their reputation via real information so they can then fabricate some false info suffers from one major problem - what does Wikileaks get from risking that hard earned reputation? Is causing a scandal in India really worth risking the whole Wikileaks project?

You clearly don't understand how "Common Law" system works. There are two types of precedent - binding and persuasive.

If 100 cases with identical circumstances are filed, then the first one resolved provides persuasive precedent - other cases can refer to it to try and persuade the judge in their case that the ruling in the first case is the proper ruling for their case as well. But judges can and do disagree, so there's no guarantee that just because one judge rules one way, another judge won't rule the other.

Once a matter has been reviewed and ruled upon by an appellate court, it becomes binding precedent, but only for those courts beneath that particular appellate court. In other jurisdiction it remains persuasive precedent (though appellate decisions do tend to carry more weight than lower court decisions).

A case can slowly work its way up the ladder, until eventually it reaches the Supreme Court. Once the SCOTUS has ruled on an issue, it becomes binding precedent for all courts in the US.

Also, precedent requires the cases to be identical - a court may make a different ruling, if they can be convinced that the specific issues in the precedent are sufficiently different that the ruling in that precedent should not apply.

And when the MAFIAA types file their John Doe suits against hundreds or thousands, they're just seeking the information required to file proper lawsuits against the copyright infringers. Yeah, right...

Sony is using the excuse of proving that California is the proper venue to engage in a fishing expedition, in the hopes of netting more people to subject to harassment-by-litigation. Sure, they'd love to keep the Geohot case in California where they have their animatronic simulation of a judge working in their favor, but that's hardly the entire reason for seeking the Paypal info.

You don't read enough history.

You mean the argument that Edison *lost* - he was the big proponent of DC, while Tesla and Westinghouse were behind AC.

.htraE ylno eht si sihT .tuoba gniklat er`uoy tahw wonk t'nod I .uoy rof taht dexiF

Don't bet on that - the USPTO does grant reexaminations, but regularly changes or invalidates patents based on reexaminations.

In the case of 3rd party requests for reexamination such as this, if the reexam is granted, there's a very good chance the patent will either be invalidated, or some of the claims will be removed or changed (about 71% according to this (somewhat old) report).

From TFA:

Or maybe those responsible has pwned some computers at a business, which were only turned on between 9 and 5. While McAfee's conclusion is possible, I wouldn't consider it likely without some other evidence supporting it.

You make it sound like that experiment revealed some great truth that wasn't already known, but anyone who spent any time studying history in the last couple thousand years was already fully aware of that particular insight...

How much money each year did pharmaceutical companies make from selling palliatives for those conditions? Vaccine sales are chump change - Big Pharma makes billions per year selling over-the-counter "remedies" to suppress the symptoms. They aren't going to be happy with an effective vaccine that can substantially reduce demand for those products.

Assuming larger trials prove this vaccine to be effective, I expect it to become commonplace in Europe fairly quickly. But in the US, given Big Pharma's influence with the bureaucrats who are supposed to be regulating them, I expect such a vaccine will have to meet some exceptionally high standards before it gets FDA approval.

Consider this analogy: You're shopping in a store, and step into a line to check out. Such lines are normally strictly FIFO (First In, First Out), so the amount of time required for you to reach the register is based solely on how long it takes the people ahead of you to check out.

Now, add in a special policy of the store, where certain customers have "priority checkout", and are allowed to cut into the line ahead of anyone already in line. Each time such a customer cuts into the line, it adds to the amount of time it will take you to reach the register.

Your ISP is charging you X number of dollars per month for access to their network. YouTube's ISP is charging them X number of dollars per month for access to their network. You ISP and their ISP have some sort of agreement that they will take packets from each other's network.

Then your ISP goes to YouTube, and says "for X dollars per month, we will push your packets to the head of the queue, providing the best possible service to your customer". Sounds okay? Sure, unless you happen to be Netflix, whose packets are now being being pushed back in the queue because YouTube's packets are cutting into the line...

It's not an issue of "has no right to profit from their labor". It's an issue of "has no right to always profit any time any person anywhere views/listens to the work they produced".

The media companies aren't in danger of going bankrupt, despite their constant whining and moaning about how piracy is killing their business. They are still quite profitable. They just aren't making the profits they *think* they should be making, based on the assumption that anytime anyone, anywhere, views/listens to a work they created, they should get paid for it.

I would strongly agree that if someone is making a profit from selling a work, then the creator of the work deserves a share of that profit. But I also strongly disagree that the creator deserves to make a profit every time someone sees/hears the work.

As for the first part - too bad. The patent deal is that you get a limited monopoly in exchange for revealing how the invention works. If you don't want to file the patent (revealing how it works), then neither get nor deserve any protection.

The second issue is quite valid, though. If you have a great idea, but lack the money to patent it, then you can *try* to keep it secret until you can acquire the necessary funds, but if the secret leaks, or if someone else comes up with the same thing, then you're screwed.

That's a nice theory. But in reality, a major corp with a suitable (i.e. ethically deficient) legal team can tie up anyone but another major corporation in court until they go bankrupt. The fact that all evidence is against them is only a minor problem - look at how long SCO was able to tie things up without ever producing any real evidence to back up their claims.

For some people, maybe. But I doubt practitioners of this sport would even be fazed by a mouse in the pants...