Ask Mike Godwin About Internet Law

Mike Godwin is probably best known to Slashdot readers for Godwin's Law, but that's one of the most minor reasons you should know him. In this blurb for his book, CYBER RIGHTS, he's (correctly) described as "one of the first lawyers to 'live and work in cyberspace.'" Naturally, Mike can't give specific legal advice, but he's certainly about as expert as they come about the development of law and legal hassles surrounding the Internet. We'll send him 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and publish his answers as soon as we get them back.

Comments

Re:Gotta ask

[happyfrogcow]

please.

You're connecting "piracy", something inherantly illegal by definition, with peer-to-peer. p2p is a technology that can be used for so many different things, that lumping them together is naive.

so many geeks want what to be legal? piracy? sharing mp3's? p2p? they are 3 separate things, only one of which I care about, as a geek, and that is p2p. Which I don't even use. Once i tried bit torrent to d/l slackware, but it didn't work.

please, for the sake of reality, don't lump 3 vastly different things into one thing that the general public sees as illegal. p2p != sharing mp3s. p2p != piracy. sharing mp3's is not always even equal to piracy.

generalizations are like premature optimizations... the root of all evil.

Re:Individuals vs. Major ISPs

[Zordak]

Think about this one for just a minute. If some gang banger breaks into your house and steals a gun, and then uses it to rob a bank, and it the process kills a police officer, with whom does the fault lie? Is it with you for not having your gun properly secured against all possible kinds of break-ins? Is it with the manufacturer of the house or the manufacturer of your gun safe for not building a system immune to all types of breaches? Or is it with the guy who broke into your house, breached whatever security you had in place, stole your gun, and used it to commit capital murder? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm sure many Slashdotters would read your post and think, "That's right, make those stupid Windows lusers responsible for not keeping their machines patched, and while we're at it, let's send Bill Gates to prison for his crap OS too!" That same line of thinking, applied to the scenario above, would land you strapped to a gurney in recompense for somebody else's crime. Let's be a little more realistic.