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First, link to the opinion here.

I'm especially impressed by the opinion's final paragraph:

Under Pennsylvania law, school districts can punish students only
"during such times as they are under the supervision of the board of school
directors and teachers, including the time necessarily spent in coming to
and returning from school." 24 PENN. STAT. Sec. 5-510. Plaintiffs cast J.S.'s
actions as occurring at home; and therefore, the school could not properly
punish her for them. We have found above, however, that the school did
not err in disciplining J.S., and her actions were not merely personal home
activities.

Of course! If something doesn't violate any court precedents, it's impossible for it to violate a state law, right? The court's reasoning is even more funny when you consider an earlier quote:

To the
extent that Killion stands for the proposition that a school can never
discipline a student for lewd and vulgar speech made off of the school
campus, we simply disagree, and Killion is not binding on this court.

Disagree all you want, it appears that the above statute does stand for that proposition.Granted, the judge may nonetheless be correct. IANAL, but I don't think US District Courts can apply state law. I wonder if the student would have a better chance in a state court.

It's also interesting that part of the school's basis for discipline was copyright infringement, since the student used the principal's photo from the school district website. While the school's authority to suspend the student for this is again open to debate (since she didn't use school computers), the student should be really thankful that the school district isn't suing her for infringement.

Wow, there's an amazing amount of confusion over this ruling, and the article summary seems to cloud things almost as much as it clarifies them. The actual text of the ruling is here: http://howappealing.law.com/JSvsBlueMountainSD.pdf, and I'd recommend everyone read that before spouting off their amateur legal or political opinions in this forum

First, the principal did not accuse the student of libel, and did not punish her on that basis. It punished her, with a suspension, for a) making false accusations against the school staff, and b) using a copyrighted photo from the school district's own website, without permission. Before we get sidetracked into a "fair use" discussion, I'll note that both (a) and (b) above were explicitly spelled out as forbidden in the district's school discipline code, and their computer use policy, respectively. Whether they were violations of a (federal, state, municipal) law is irrelevant; they were violations of school rules, and for that, the student got a suspension.

Next, a lot of people have questioned whether the student's accusations could be protected under the "parody" exception to libel, but again, this is irrelevant. She was not sued for libel. She was suspended for violating school rules. Now, whether the school district has some sort of appeal process, and whether they follow the same "parody exception" rules as actual libel laws, I have no clue. But one should not simply assume that "parody" shields one from punishment under any and all systems of rules.

Lastly, a lot is made of the fact that the student composed the MySpace page physically and chronologically outside of school. So what? If you read further into the case, you'll see that the author deliberately made the MySpace page available to her classmates, discussed the page in school, and apparently there was a hard copy which made it into the school physically. The barrier between "school" and "not school" here was, if it existed at all, extremely permeable. That's the way of the world. But, it's also a double-edged sword. While students in this day and age may on the one hand avail themselves of the ability to be connected to the outside world while in school (through cellphones, text messaging, email etc.), they also must learn to accept responsibility for data/information/content that leaks into school from the outside. The distinction is blurred.

So, in summary, in case it wasn't already obvious, as much as I like and defend Free Speech in general, I think the judge ruled correctly here. The student was punished for violating school rules, and this seems perfectly appropriate when you understand that those rules (which the student knew or should have known ahead of time) included prohibitions on making false accusations and/or snarfing copyrighted material from the district's web site. You break the rules, you get punished. This may have pushed things closer towards the slippery slope, but I don't think we're there yet.

You can be held in contempt of court for the reason that you paid in pennies.

Most people don't have the money to risk being sued, which means that it does affect them somewhat even if previously unenforced. After all, there's nothing preventing someone new from coming in and suddenly deciding to enforce them.

It also appears from this same document that the Swedish government put in a lot of regulation to allow other ISPs access to TeliaSonera's infrastructure.

This makes a large difference.

Having one company serve one town, and another company serve another isn't competition. It is just two local monopolies. Also having multiple companies laying down lines to the same house may be competition, but it sure isn't efficent competition, and what good is the market if it doesn't make things more efficent. Plus even if you have two competitors at one house, that often isn't enough to create real competition. Especially in a difficult to enter market.

Another important thing to further broadband adaptation is the ease at which companies can lay down lines without getting hindered by private or goverment restrictions. Finally, relating to all of the above, having towns be able to provide their own fiber networks without getting sued is a big plus.

Yeah, well until Valentine's Day this year, you weren't allowed to own too many sex toys either...

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202904864073

Of course, you can still have guns. I mean, we're not savages here...

From what I can tell by looking up prior restraint, it refers to when organs of the government besides courts restrict the publication or distribution of written materials. The courts only do it based on laws created by the legislative branch, and if they decide such laws are unconstitutional, they don't do it. But it's the courts who decide whether it's a constitutional action or not, on a case-by-case basis. If this court was wrong and doesn't reverse itself, a higher court will probably do so.

Prior restraint is pretty much only allowed where national security (not mere "public safety" -- think launch codes, not Pentagon Papers) concerns come into play.

Not according to this. If there's a more authoritative citation, please provide it.

And again, the whole point of the temporary injunction is that it's asked for and granted in a hurry, without taking time to fully consider the case. Mass. probably argued that terrorists or criminals could make use of this information to disrupt Mass. transit (heh) on a large scale.

Yup, and so does "conversion". From the law.com legal dictionary:

n. a civil wrong (tort) in which one converts another's property to his/her own use, which is a fancy way of saying "steals."

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202422673041

This ruling came down against eBay on two fronts. The court faulted the online company for "guilty negligence," for not doing enough to prevent fake goods from being sold on its site. The court also ruled that eBay was responsible for the "illicit sale" of perfumes from the LVMH empire, which can be sold only through the brands' "selective distribution networks."

The Yahoo blurb left that part out, which is where you got your misinformation from. So no, when you say "Still in France I can sell stuff I buy from LVMH, as soon as I buy it it is mine (first sale doctrine ?)" you are not correct.

If verbal agreements and emails were all that were necessary, though, we wouldn't have the aforementioned instruments. Verbal agreements are hard to make stick for large and/or significant disagreements. Again, a handshake and a nod will probably work for a nominal amount in small claims court, and you can find cases of larger settlements, but this smacks of a collaborative deal that didn't pan out.

Companies enter into formal contracts because those are the best way to make sure all the terms of the agreement are stated. But honestly with a few exceptions (especially in regards to the statute of frauds) an oral agreement isn't any less enforceable than a written one. And most jurisdictions recognize that parties to a contract both promise to deal fairly with the other party, and courts will enforce these unstated terms.

As ostentatiously hard as it may be for you to understand, even if a store owner was so negligent as to leave his store open with a mistakenly placed item on the "Free Sample" stand which you decide to help yourself to, the owner would still have every right to not only be angry but to prosecute you for "Breaking and Entering" and/or theft.

Just because someone else is being negligent does not mean you now have permission to use their property and be faultless.

No he can't. According to http://dictionary.law.com/default2.asp?selected=98&bold= breaking and entering is:

1) the criminal act of entering a residence or other enclosed property through the slightest amount of force (even pushing open a door), without authorization. If there is intent to commit a crime, this is burglary. If there is no such intent, the breaking and entering alone is probably at least illegal trespass, which is a misdemeanor crime.

I did have authorization. The store owner may not have meant to give it, but he did. If that isn't authorization then you're effectively arguing that anyone who ever shops at any store and doesn't buy anything or uses an automated checkout system is committing a crime.

You seem to believe that "authorization" is the exact same thing as "an intention to give authorization in the owner's mind". It isn't. The former can obviously be an impersonal form of communication, such as your authorization to use this web site, and the later is merely a thought in the owner's mind.

Their intention is not irrelevant. If you were to stumble upon an unlocked car with the keys in it with a sign that broadcast "Free Car" it would be highly unwise of you to take advantage of that so called opportunity. The owner may not have placed the sign on the car or had the intention of others driving it, which would mean that you're stealing.

It would be unwise because A) it is illegal B) keys in ignition alone does not communicate "free car" C) anyone could trivilally put a "free car" sign on any car, unlike creating an open access point.

Moreover, even if their intentions were true, you would be equally liable for driving it. What if something went wrong, you were drunk, or you were to kill someone? Is it insured? Is it stolen? Do you truly have permission? You'd better find out, otherwise you are a complete idiot and criminal.

I don't deny I'd be liable for my driving when driving that car, nor do I deny that I'd be responsible for my actions when using an open access point.

Again, common sense dictates that a reasonable person would not appropriate property anonymously. That goes for you and the owner. Especially in the case of property that could be used to commit a crime.

No it doesn't. I take property anonymously all the time. There are free samples at the supermarket ocasionally. There are two newspapers published for free around here that I ocasionally read. I frequently use restrooms at private truck/travel stops on the freeway without buying anything - in full view of the staff who never say anything. Sometimes I even use private driveways to turn around in when I make a wrong turn.

If there is so much as a traffic cone in the drive way, I won't use it. If there's a "restrooms for customers only" sign I'll buy something first. If the AP so much as has SSID broadcast off, I won't use it because while these things prevent me from doing very little they at least communicate "I don't want you to use this" to me on the owner's behalf.

Someone being irresponsible does not translate into a situation that's okay or justified to take advantage of.

As you can see from the numerous examples given, it depends entirely on just how they're being irresponsible.

The

The article includes a lot of confusion and/or FUD about licensing.

"There's a great fear sometimes, that if I use open source, will I lose my intellectual property?" acknowledged Novell's Levy. Other panelists Randy Hergett, director of engineering for the Open Source and Linux Organizations at HP, and Marcus Rex, CTO at the Linux Foundation, sought to assuage those fears. "The current license for Linux requires you give back any changes you make to the open source community, but there's no way anyone can require those assurances and there's no way we'd know," Rex said.

Someone needs to sit down with some of these people and explain to them what the GPL actually says. It doesn't require software written to run on Linux to be GPL'd. Even if you had some reason why you wanted to modify the Linux kernel itself (and why the hell would a Wall Street firm want to!?), you wouldn't need to GPL your modifications unless you were turning around and selling or distributing the modified version publicly.

We seem to be getting a lot of this kind of idiocy recently. Maybe it's good news -- it might just be a sign that a lot of PHBs are getting open source on their radar for the first time. But you'd think that lawyers and journalists would at least get it straight before they published their thoughts on the web.

No, you actually implied that it was illegal to resist a buyout.

No, it isn't. That's just what Carl Icahn has said. And that is his "batshit crazy" opinion.

You should think really carefully about this opinion. It is uninformed. Yes, people invest to make money, but deciding against a one-time payout in favor of growing the company is a valid position. You can't possibly be saying that accepting a buyout is always the only option for a board of directors of a publicly traded company. That's absurd.

And about this "always has been, always will be" stuff: Public corporations as we know them have been around since 1934. There have been some pretty drastic changes in the philosophy of investing since that time.

This might seem pretty obvious: Yes, it is subjective. Everyone likes money, and people invest to make money, but over what term? There is nothing to back up your claim that companies must destroy themselves if it results in a moderate-sized payday for some investors.

Eww. I don't want to know what a "big boy meeting" is.

Why are they screwed if they are not owned by somebody else?

Also, speaking of legal matters, I think that the SEC is probably (if there is any justice) looking into manipulation of Yahoo's price.

Man... Quit watching so much CNBC. Google is your friend (hah!).

And as for the kind of lawyer who would take up the kind of litigation you advocate:

"ex parte" is from Latin and literally means "for (or by) one party", and refers to actions taken without the adverse party being present or represented, usually (but not always) due to lack of notice, sometimes just because the adverse party is not available or chooses not to appear. Usually attempts to provide notice are in fact required. Oh and IAAL too.

See also this dictionary definition

From an article at law.com -

"Thompson also has sued both the Alabama and Florida bar groups in Orange Circuit Court in Orlando, Fla., claiming the complaints violate state religious protections because his advocacy is motivated by his Christian faith.

Thompson "seeks to be left alone to serve God in the fashion that God has chosen, not in the fashion that two liberal bars would choose," his pleadings state. "

DISCLAIMER - I do hate religion in general. Well, maybe hate is a strong word, but "dislike and generally find useless in most cases" is an acceptable alternative.

You can read a good summary at law.com:

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202421556225

In editing the submission, scuttlemonkey took out the link to TFA.
Howard wrote:
"Va. Supreme Court to revisit divisive spam case; It upheld convictions but will consider constitutional issue": The Richmond Times-Dispatch today contains an article that begins, "The Supreme Court of Virginia yesterday agreed to a limited rehearing of its closely divided decision upholding the first felony spam convictions in the country."
My earlier coverage of the Supreme Court of Virginia's original 4-3 ruling in this case, issued February 29, 2008, appears here and here.
Yesterday's order granting rehearing on specified issues can be accessed at this link.
Posted at 08:04 PM by Howard Bashman

You're close, but you're overlooking one detail. The minute the judge in Utah uttered the word "conversion", SCO went rushing off to the bankruptcy court as fast as they could scuttle in the hopes of more delay. Novell isn't going to get in line as a debtor. They are, basically, the victims of theft; the money in question was never SCO's to begin with. The resulting scenario will probably play out fairly close to the way you described, except that repaying Novell is going to be a much higher priority that any mere debtor, and there's a good chance that liquidation will follow almost immediately. Criminal charges are not out of the question either.

If you go to Vegas and blow your life savings, then file bankruptcy, your mortgage company and credit card company will appear as debtors, and will try to get whatever they can. If you also took the contents of your employer's safe before heading out to the desert, though, your employer is not going to appear as a creditor--not even as the "lead creditor"--and things are going to be a whole lot more serious.

Indeed, had JEDEC limited Rambus to reasonable royalties and required it to provide licenses on a nondiscriminatory basis, we would expect less competition from alternative technologies, not more; high prices and constrained output tend to attract competitors, not to repel them. [Opinion, page 18]

This represents a rather startling lack of understanding regarding what standards are all about, as the purpose of a standard is not to provide incentives to launch non-compliant alternatives, but to provide incentives for everyone to give up that right in favor of the common good to be found from supporting a single standard.

Judge Williams wrote that there wasn't sufficient evidence to claim that the standards organization would have gone with different technology. He also wrote that "deceit merely enabling a monopolist to charge higher prices than it otherwise could have charged ... would not in itself constitute monopolization."

If the try to make me pay Taxes because I live in Michigan, well what happens when I make a purchase but I am in Georgia at the time? Or maybe Texas? Whose tax do I pay then? Does my tax burden follow me around the nation?

You pay taxes in Michigan, Georgia, and Texas. You think I'm kidding, try telecommuting from Michigan to a job in New York. You'll pay both New York and Michigan income tax. Check this and this

To tell you the truth, this is just another way to place a disproportionate amount of the tax burden on the poor and middle class. Sales taxes are a regressive tax, and any increase of a regressive tax during a recession is just plain idiotic.

It's the same concept as an insurance policy. Remember all those people in Katrina who had hurricane insurance and had to fight on collecting due to overselling?

Same idea. 100% marketing, 0% quality, 1% actual service.

misjoinder n. the inclusion of parties (plaintiffs or defendants) or causes of action (legal claims) in a single lawsuit contrary to statute. Reasons for a court ruling that there is misjoinder include: a) the parties do not have the same rights to a judgment; b) they have conflicting interests; c) the situations in each claim (cause of action) are different or contradictory; or d) the defendants are not involved (even slightly) in the same transaction. In a criminal prosecution the most common cause for misjoinder is that the defendants were involved in different alleged crimes, or the charges are based on different transactions.

Typical ignorant Slashdot reaction. You guys need to stick to stealing and rationalising... oops I mean "file sharing" in your mom's basement.
I have yet to see even one poster who can correctly describe what Rambus was accused (and found innocent) of doing wrong - ie remaining silent about patent applications over technology that others were proposing into the standard. Note Rambus was never accused of pushing or proposing their technologies as widely stated here.

Juries generally get it right and they have seen and heard the evidence, unlike Slashdotters. In a price fixing involving some of the participants here, the jury called it as they saw it.

Hung Jury in Chip Price-Fixing Case
Finding government's star witness not believable, jurors vote 10-2 for
acquittal
Dan Levine
The Recorder
March 7, 2008

After 11 trial days, the first thing jurors talked about when they
could finally discuss the price-fixing case before them was the
government's star witness, foreperson Phyllis McCaughey said
Thursday.

And she was blunt about their assessment of Micron executive Michael
Sadler, who testified in the high-stakes DRAM antitrust prosecution
against his counterpart at Hynix, defendant Gary Swanson: "Mr. Sadler,
we all felt, was a lying sack of shit."

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1204804010871

Now, where's my violin?

Simply put, no.

"After the court issued its claim construction rulings, Medtronic's counsel proceeded cavalierly, with reckless indifference to the merits of Medtronic's infringement claims," Matsch wrote."

"Matsch said the McDermott lawyers willfully ignored his rulings on claim construction in their arguments before a Colorado jury in 2005. In patent cases, those orders define the scope of the patents and, therefore, what the plaintiff's lawyers can argue for infringement."

"The judge said in his Tuesday ruling that while McDermott paid lip service to the orders, the lawyers improperly pointed the jury toward Medtronic's broad reading of the patents. McMahon also made comparisons of the two companies' products, the StealthStation and VectorVision, instead of comparing Medtronic's patents to BrainLAB's product, "contrary to established law," Matsch wrote."

Summary for lawyers

In the anatomy of the typical patent case, there is

1. The filing of a suit
2. Discovery
3. A so-called "Markman hearing" to resolve disputes between the litigants as to the meaning of disputed terms or phrases within the patent claims
4. Summary judgment motions
5. A trial (bench or jury)
6. Post-verdict motions
7. Appeal

If you read through the judge's ruling, or even the law.com article, it's apparent that the judge believed that the trial was unnecessary, and that the case could and should have been resolved by summary judgment (and any subsequent appeal). If the case had ended at this point, there would likely be no talk of sanctions or the like. Therefore the answer to the question at the end of the summary is no.

All the rest relates to the judge's determination that 1. the platintiff's attorneys misrepresented the state of the case in their briefs opposing the motions for summary judgment that would have ended the trial phase and 2. the plaintiff's attorneys disregarded both his rulings in case and unequivocable legal standards for what does and does not constitute patent infringement.

To use bad sports analogies, this ruling is the red card or the technical foul called on the field, not a warning that the team should never have attempted to play the game.

Please move to Alabama so she could claim this law violates her religious beliefs.

This creates a quandary which the **AA activists are attempting to warp toward their own favor - circumventing encryption is illegal but sometimes required to exercise "fair use". Indeed, there has been talk about encryption and the "right of fair breach". The links are a few years old but they're good background into why we're still asking these questions.

If you let the **AA define these answers in Court and rewrite/purchase their own custom laws through Congress, everyone becomes a criminal and our rights go out the window. That's what needs to be stopped cold. Anyone out there a voter? We allowed ourselves to get into this mess and we need to get ourselves out.

The California Supreme Court disqualified a law firm in Rico v. Mitsubishi Motors for using inadvertently-produced privileged information. The facts are particular, but the holding is by its own terms broad: if you get an inadvertent, privileged e-mail, you can only read it to the extent necessary to realize it is privileged and inadvertent; then you must delete all copies of it and notify the sender.

Mostly people who took out variable-rate loans when interest rates were at historic lows and housing prices at historic highs. This definitely sucks for them, but shouldn't stupidity have consequences sometimes?

People who are under water should realize that they bet wrong, and face the music. They treated a house as an investment, and not a home. A home is where you "hang your hat" - and that can be either owned or rented. A house, on the other hand, is a pile of wood, plasterboard, bricks, stucco, etc., on some dirt.

We're going to see a huge increase in "jingle mail". Also foreclosures and bankruptcies will continue to increase. The sooner people realize this, the sooner they can start rebuilding their lives, and the sooner banks will have to bring those toxic loans back onto their books.

Its only once everyone (including potential investors in the rest of the world) know the true numbers, that a solution can be found. Yes, there was criminal behaviour on the part of lenders, brokers, and real estate agents. However, under the legal doctrine of "unclean hands" many of the people who got "taken" were no better.

Liar's loans, ninja loans (no income, no job or assets), purposeful mis-statements - if you lied to get that loan, you have as much right to complain as someone who got ripped off because they got short-changed buying a rock of crack.

Millions of people lied. The honest ones have recourse - the dishonest ones will have to suck it up, and be happy that they're not facing criminal fraud charges (yet), rather than blaming others.

How come no politician is saying this simple truth - that if you lied to get your mortgage, you should be happy you're not in jail, and there will be NO bail-out for you.

Iirc, any circumvention for fair-use purposes are allowed. From http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1052440872261

In Universal City Studios Inc. v. Reimerdes, a 2000 case out of the Southern District of New York, the question was whether a Web site distributing the code to crack DVD protection was in violation of the DMCA. Specifically, the defendants posted and linked to code that would strip the encryption from DVDs. The site's sister print publication had also run articles on (to quote U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan) "such topics as how to steal an Internet domain name, access other people's e-mail, intercept cellular phone calls, and break into the computer systems at Costco stores and Federal Express." That said, the defendants' postings were, after all, speech -- they communicated information to others. Further, others could have used the code for purely fair use ends.

Judge Kaplan nodded his head to fair use. Then he wrote, "The fact that Congress elected to leave technologically unsophisticated persons who wish to make fair use of encrypted copyrighted works without the technical means of doing so is a matter for Congress unless Congress' decision contravenes the Constitution." (The judge decided that it didn't.)

The judge is implying that the DMCA lets you hack protected technology for fair use purposes. But you have to do the hacking, and you have to conjure up, all by your lonesome, the code that lets you do it. Only computer geniuses need apply.

If you believe that the decision carries some weight in interpretation of the law, and with the columnists assertion of the implication, then you most certain can circumvent...you just have to do it yourself.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1170928966137

Apparently he's unprofessional. How surprising.

This was a decent discussion on BoingBoing not too long ago.

"Is it true that it's 'not infringement once fair use kicks in' ?

Fair use is a defense to infringement where you admit infringement but say it was justified, isn't it? You affirm the boundaries of copyright but justify crossing them, rather than arguing that the boundaries should be moved. This is why it's argued on a case-by-case basis.

This article suggests some good reasons to move the boundaries, I think."

Not sure if that's right (IANAL), but it sure sounds like it to this lay-person.

In any trial there are two broad groups of things at issue: issues of fact (what things actuall happened) and issues of law (how to interpret the things that happened). Fair Use is an issue of law, not of fact. When an accusation is made against you in a court of law, you may defend yourself in several ways: you can deny the facts of the case ("I never did the thing that I am accused of doing.", "I never made any copies of the copyrighted work.") and you may deny the illegality of your actions ("I did the deed, but it is allowed under the law for this reason.", "I did make a copy of the copyrighted work, but it is allowed under fair use for this reason."). You can even defend yourself on both the facts and the law ("I never did the deed, but If I had it wouldn't have been illegal under the law for this reason.").

Number one law school to attend (smaller class size = easier access to professors; no grades = less stress). Not the number one law school in terms of being an legal powerhouse.

In fact, the avant garde thing for law firms now is to refuse to recruit at Yale.

There is a lot of research in both forensics and statistics about fingerprint uniqueness. A classic reference for calculating these numbers is Stoney and Thornton - Stoney, David A., and John I. Thornton. 1986. A critical analysis of quantitative fingerprint individuality models. Journal of Forensic Sciences 31 (4): 1187-1216.

Fingerprint identification is done by comparing the location and orientation of "minutiae," small defects in a fingerprint pattern. Typically, it takes around 12 minutiae to be considered a good match (by the FBI). Now, IF ALL OF THESE MATCH, the probability of misidentification is small (10^-8 or so assuming perfect procedure, I don't remember actual numbers, but it's a small, small chance). However, it's even money that the FBI has two fingerprints that match up to six minutiae.

There have been some high-profile misidentifications (take this case) but these seem to come from a couple of errors:

1) true screwups in the lab (only double-checking and real responsibility will help)
2) people believing that six or fewer minutiae matching is conclusive (education and honesty needed)

Incidentally, a somewhat convincing anecdote is that identical twins have correlated*, but clearly distinct fingerprints!

*i.e. if one has a whorl-pattern, the other is more likely than average to also have a whorl - this doesn't mean the minutiae are correlated, I don't know about that.

It is looking more and more that the court systems of the world are looking to EULA click-through "agreements" as contracts of adhesion.

Chain of custody issues are of increasing importance. Many may not be aware that until last december, there were no federal rules for e-discovery, and now that these rules are in effect, it is causing a lot of problems for attorneys not used to navigating the realm of electronic documentation (and preservation!) during the discovery process. http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1193043816651 has a brief discussion of this issue (many will recognize its reference to MD5 hashes, as was mentioned earlier in this thread). Consider the implication for a suit against a corporation where the corporation, instead of turning over tens of thousands of physical pages of documents, must instead provide images of storage servers, and the difficulty of proving the legitimacy of all this electronically 'preserved' evidence.

There's no issue here about the info being classified.
What the story is about is that the court issued an opinion, then withdrew it, and issues a redacted opinion. Probably what happened is that the the court had inadvertently included info that was under seal by the district court.
One possible explanation for the redaction is to protect the guy's family in Egypt.
Another, maybe more likely, explanation was to avoid embarrassment to the FBI.
The story was broken by blogger Howard Bashman of How Appealing, who refused to take down the unredacted version after a call from the court asking him to take it down.
http://patterico.com/2007/10/21/was-a-passage-omitted-from-a-recent-second-circuit-opinion-for-security-reasons-or-to-cover-up-material-embarrassing-to-the-fbi/
http://howappealing.law.com/102007.html#029139

Above post is insightful and informative.

Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in
danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am
screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is
going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I'm screwed and my family's in danger. And
Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than
this device is not mine."

Higazy explained why he feared for his family:
The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is --they're
suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam's security force--as they
later on were called his henchmen--a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in
Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My
mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When
the word 'torture' comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just
press on one of these knuckles. I couldn't imagine them doing anything to my sister.

And Higazy added:
[L]et's just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or
they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same
token, some people who actually could be --might try to get to them and somebody
might actually make a connection. I wasn't going to risk that. I wasn't going to risk that,
so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that's
convincing? And I said okay.

Here's the unredacted opinion and here's the redacted opinion.

OK slashdot, make a million copies of the original.

Here's the unredacted opinion and here's the redacted opinion.

Gee, that's the exact opposite of every single definition of "defamation" available to check online.

This isn't legal advice, but while in a strict dictionary sense "defamation" might be anything said that hurts a reputation, truth is an affirmative defense. The articles linked above state that no action is called for and no damages occur when someone states a truth. The person whose reputation is tarnished by the truth earned that reputation. Speaking or printing the truth therefore does no damage to the rightful reputation. That seems to this non-attorney to mean you can call the speech or publication by any name you want, but you're not going to get money by suing someone for telling the truth.

Again, I am not a lawyer, but grade-school Social Studies teachers in the U.S. teach their students about John Peter Zenger and the case of New York v. Zenger. That case set forth truth as a defense for slander and libel in the common law of the North American colonies of England.

BTW, where are "defamiation" and "plaese" on any of the above sites? Do I need the latest edition of Black's? I can't find those definitions at all, oh careful and detail-oriented A. Coward. Without resolving those two issues, I'm having trouble following your carefully stated premise and well-reasoned arguments to your no doubt brilliant conclusion.

Perhaps that would be attempted theft, the act isn't complete till you've taken it away.

theft

n. the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale). In many states, if the value of the property taken is low (for example, less than $500) the crime is "petty theft," but it is "grand theft" for larger amounts, designated misdemeanor or felony, respectively. Theft is synonymous with "larceny." Although robbery (taking by force), burglary (taken by entering unlawfully) and embezzlement (stealing from an employer) are all commonly thought of as theft, they are distinguished by the means and methods used and are separately designated as those types of crimes in criminal charges and statutory punishments.
See also: burglary embezzlement larceny robbery

Is there no common law or statutory cause of action in barratry (or otherwise, e.g. RICO Act) that could be brought against the RIAA in a class action? While not a defence, and certainly adventurous, barratry et. al. ought to be available as a counterclaim.

I imagine it would be more judicially efficient to resolve all these cases as a class action. It would also give access to justice to those who would otherwise be unable to properly defend (or counterclaim in) their action.

Finally, and less adventurous, do the relevant statutes address classes of defendants? This would seem to be, if the boilerplate accusation is correct, a quintessential case for judicial efficiency by way of a defendants' class.

(I am not a lawyer).

As Constantine pointed out, the GPL is not a EULA.

If anything, EULAs are illegal because, despite being End User License Agreements, they do not meet the legal definition of a license: "4) n. a private grant of the right to use some intellectual property such as a patent or musical composition." according to law.com. (There are four other definitions; Three of them involve government, the last is for the verb license)

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: By Title 17 (US Copyright Law), section 117 in particular, I have all the rights I need to install and run a computer program that I have legally obtained. I don't need a license for it and telling me that I do is fraud.

You're preaching to the choir in this case. In fact, here's a few additional points.
2) b) Current US Copyright law allows you to make copies of a program if it is needed to run the program. It does not restrict this to copies made in RAM... in case a company tries to claim that you need a license to install a program.
5) EULAs are not licenses under the legal definition of the word. Licenses grant rights; EULAs take away rights.