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RICO Suit Filed Against Skype Founders
Stitch_Surfs writes "Defendant Skype Technologies S A, Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis, Kazaa, Bluemoon Ou and a slew of others have been named in a Rico Suit Filed by StreamCast Networks, of Houston, Texas. StreamCast is the company credited with the development of the Peer to Peer Technology called Morpheus. From the little information the courts have released, StreamCast is claiming that the group engaged in corrupt business practices."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Can anyone with a Pacer account get the complaint full text ?
> If...this country will be ruined.
You keep using that subjunctive mood. I do not think it means what you think it does. That horse already left the barn.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
1) Violence is NOT tacitly accepted. That is a complete and utter distortion. There have been many more acts of violence committed by environmental groups for their cause. Yet noone is charging Greenpeace and PETA with RICO suits. Not to mention unions, who have a history of being linked with violence and ironically the mob.
2) If in-your-face confrontations were "illegal" you would pretty much ban most union strikes as well as any other demonstration outside of a company that attempted to get a company to "change". Martin Luther King Jr would have been arrested for Racketeering.
3) Clinics have the right to free speech and association, but they don't have the right to limit others' free speech and association rights. Of course, private property rights do exist and protesters should be arrested if they violate these.
4) Threats, if real and physical should lead to arrests. REAL arrests, not RICO suits. But telling someone they are evil and going to hell for supporting abortion is not a real threat.
RICO used against people who aren't the mafia? I am shocked, shocked! Next you'll be telling me that they use the PATRIOT act against people who aren't terrorists!
English is easier said than done.
FYI this act has been used agains fringe groups in the pro-life movement that attempt to close clinics through inimidation of their patients. usually they can prove that a group is organizing a blockade of the clinic doors. this is illegal. they are not going after protesters, rather people who think that their rights to free speech include barring enterence to a health provider. if this is your idea of acceptable protest, that is messed up.
What's the point of the RICO statutes if it's randomly enforced?
The Catholic Church knowingly traffiked paedophiles interstate and internationally. Why wasn't it invoked then?
Ridiculous to the informed, yes. Unfortunately, however, rather functional on the uninformed. Thus, their use. Which saddens me; third-world countries keep their populace uneducated because it helps the leaders defraud them.
Holy shit, is that what the "No Child Left Behind" unfunded mandate was all about? Give props to education, but no financial support for it--so it looks like the government is doing something good, whereas they're really dumbing us down to be the next soldiers or oil field workers?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
IANAL, but the last time I checked, the First Amendment guaranteed freedom OF religion, not FROM. The First Amendment was not passed to guarantee atheists freedom from religion entering the public sphere, but rather in the milieu of Revolutionary America, where Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, etc., each had a large degree to do with the founding of many of the 13 Colonies (Rhode Island, for instance, being founded to escape persecution of Baptists in the Congregationalist Massachusetts colony, which itself was founded by those fleeing persecution in England), that one's religious affiliation could not be used to deny one's civil rights. Furthermore, since each state had a state church, it would guarantee that Congress would not favor one over the other, which would give certain states undue influence over others. It had nothing to do with suppressing religious speech or public display or exercise of religion. The intent was quite the opposite. In fact, before the Civil War, the Supreme Court did not get involved in religious exercise matters and let state laws prevail. It wasn't until after the War, when the judiciary took on a more activist and legislative role for itself, that this started to change. The Constitution is meaningless today thanks to the Supreme Court justices who over the last century have reinterpreted every single word to the point where it just does not have the same meaning as it did in the late 18th century.