I think the supposition was that an obviously not 'wrong' thing would land the guy in the slammer because it would be illegal.
I don't know why you keep repeating that, when nothing illegal has actually occurred.
Defacement of a website, or something like that...
You might as well say he'll get thrown in jail for assault, too, because he didn't do that either.
this certainly is a crime in some jurisdictions, and the mere point that you defaced the site by uploading an image to your own Myspace area might not be enough.
No. This just isn't how things work. Something isn't illegal just because some jerk gets angry. Find a law that says it's illegal to alter your own things such that some moron who's decided to become dependant gets made to look stupid, or stop flogging it.
There is no method under the law for this to be any form of defacement. STOP SAYING DEFACEMENT.
Am I just spreading FUD about the legal system?
No. FUD requires you being close enough to the truth for other people to believe you. You're just flapping your arms, trying to fly while everyone in eyeshot giggles under their breath. Nobody else is afraid that the ground is going away. There is no FUD here. Only dumb.
But we've seen enough high-profile bad cases like Schwartz or Sklyarov to be wary.
Don't name drop; it's ugly. Skylarov was about copyright law, not computers, not bad judging. The only Schwartz case I can come up with in the last 20 years that even comes close to germane is a Saudi Arabian spying case. I wonder if you believe you're making a point by citing random last names. Let's be clear: if this is the level of your comprehension of the law, it doesn't matter what you've seen. You don't understand any of it. Stop pretending to have a reason to be wary. You might as well be preaching about meteors.
Yes, even though the legal arguments in those cases are quite different to ones about defacing a website.
You do realize that by saying this, you're admitting to wasting time and invoking emotionally bound irrelevancies for lack of an actual point to be made, yes?
You can go to jail for things that aren't criminal.
Not in the US you can't. "A person convicted of a crime may pay a fine or be incarcerated or both. People who are held responsible in civil cases may have to pay money damages or give up property, but do not go to jail or prison. (We don't have "debtors' prisons" for those who can't pay a civil judgment.)"--http://criminal.findlaw.com/articles/ 1376.html.
You seem to be confused. There are things in this world other than convictions. Can you go to jail for non-criminal convictions? Not at a federal level (though you can at a state level, something findlaw isn't mentioning for you.) Can you go to jail for non-criminal things which aren't convictions at all? Yes, which is what that gigantic list of things I gave was, all of which are non-criminal, all of which are non-civil, all of which can send people to jail.
The rebuttal you gave was equivalent to this:
There are vowels in the alphabet other than "A".
No there aren't: A is a vowel, but B and C are not.
Giving an example of something that doesn't send you to jail doesn't mean nothing else will ever send you to jail. There is more in court and jurisprudence, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your example.
Some idiot claims that a horrifically unfunny cliché needed to be repeated.
Wait, let me get this straight. You're bitching about other people missing jokes on slashdot, and saying "go outside, breathe air and get laid," and this is all in the same breath that you're calling someone else cliché?
I realize you're trying to be deep and meaningful. Maybe next time wait for someone that doesn't know they're a bigotted jerk, like I do. By the way, just because I'm a bigotted jerk doesn't mean my logic - and don't make a mistake, I gave a clear and reasonable logical explanation for my belief - is wrong. Surprisingly, despite what the after school specials tell you, some stereotypes are accurate.
I'll give you an example: most black people aren't serial killers. Now there's a stereotype you can sink your teeth into!
If you think pointing out predispositions is a bad thing, maybe you should get the ruler. Everyone and everything is predisposed towards judgements. You have to be. It's the only way you can get through life. You walk inside buildings because you're predisposed to believe that they won't collapse on you. You drink soda because you're predisposed to believe it doesn't contain a nuclear warhead. You watch television because you're predisposed to believe it won't give you ass cancer.
Just because you can attach an ugly word like "prejudice" to a predisposition doesn't mean it's suddenly ugly. I am predisposed to believe that most adults, regardless of skin color, gender and relgion, will not attempt to eat me alive. Guess what? That one's gotten me pretty far in life: I wouldn't likely have a job if I ran screaming into a corner going "please don't eat me" every time I saw my boss.
Or, do you think I'm supposed to be embarrassed for expecting a high caliber from someone? I can see someone saying "don't talk down to that man just because he's black." I have a hard time imagining someone saying "Don't talk up to that man just because he's black." Rarely are people angry because they are expected well from. "How dare you treat me like a competant non-boob just because of who I am?" (Don't worry, though - I will agree never to apply such expectations to you, and I will casually say it's because you asked me not to.)
You really should have an actual reason to be offended by proxy, you half-baked auteur of human rights. Go save a whale.
I've never heard of any commercially available pacemaker that generates its energy supply by mooching stuff off its recipient.
Well, then you don't know much about pacemakers. Funny how that works out. I bet you also don't know about the modern developments in, say, large-scale industrial beet farming, or perhaps in the chemistry of wood sealants.
The biocompatibility issues in such a system would be a real killer.
Actually, no, it turns out that the body is well equipped to handle the waste products of the fuel it itself uses - unless you thought a machine would magically produce a different waste product than did the body? Indeed, one of the big reasons for the switch to biofuels is how much easier they are to deal with than spent lithium batteries. So it seems you've got this one backwards.
According to you "jail" implies criminal (or contempt of court).
Where the hell did you get that idea? Criminal means nothing of the sort, and I never implied anything of the sort. At no point did I attempt to define criminal; I honestly expected you to know the difference between a criminal and a civil offense. You can go to jail for things that aren't criminal. I'm saying this repeatedly to someone in another thread. Do I have to start saying this to you, too?
Criminal != Illegal. All criminal actions are illegal, but not all illegal actions are criminal. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Criminal is a kind of illegal. Nothing in this discussion is criminal in any way. Criminal covers things like violent crime, breakins, racially motivated action, murder, threats, that kind of stuff.
Dude, embezzlement isn't criminal. Criminal doesn't mean wrong or against the law. Criminal means violent and horrible. Many illegal things aren't even remotely criminal. Pot isn't criminal, but it's illegal in most of the country. Jaywalking. Smoking in a resteraunt in New York. Slander. Junk bonds and pyramid schemes. Voluntary lemon used auto dealership. Selling mattresses with that tag removed. Stealing MP3s. Killing someone's dog. Opening your neighbor's mail. All of these things are illegal. Some of them are federal. None of them are criminal.
First of all, if you're middle-class or a student, then losing $500 for a few months is a large deal.
That's funny, I actually did suffer such a thing as a middle class student, and I weathered it essentially without problems. Maybe that's because I have simple money management skills. (shrugs) Anyway, it's about an eighth of the standard balance of those credit cards they huck at college students like water, so unless they've already buried themselves up to the eyeballs in tens of thousands of dollars of debt - at which point $500 is less than they're paying in monthly fees - then there should be no problem whatsoever getting through it.
When I was in college, there was a guy who stood outside of the cafeteria hall *every* *day* with stacks of credit card forms pre-filled out for each of the dorms, so that all a kid would do was write and sign their name, date the form, write their room number, and discover debt. I just can't imagine that's stopped.
You took a discussion about a civil case and added criminal to the discussion list.
Don't be a tard. What I said, over and over, was "this is not criminal."
What I'm trying to point out is that the legal system can cost you a lot of time and effort in a criminal matter even if a judge dismisses the issue the second they see it.
I wonder if you even know what "dismissed with prejudice" and "barratry" mean. If the judge thinks it's a floating turd, the enemy takes your legal bills on, not you. Furthermore, something like this should cost you maybe an hour or two on the phone with a lawyer. You don't have to go to court, you don't have to deal with the police or the judge, you can do this on your lunch hour at work. I know: I did once.
I'm just saying that negative costs from the legal system arise from situations other than being found guilty.
Yeah. You pay two months of interest on a credit card until your legal bills are refunded by your lawyer since they've become someone else's responsibility, and you lose a whopping ninety minutes on the phone. Tremendous. Something like that could kill a man.
If I made $50,000 a year, that's about half a week's salary.
Zomg, three days of salary? How will you pay for the dialysis?
Not a deal-breaker, but certainly not "tiny".
I know people who make $25k/mo and spend nearly $500 between their cable bill and cell phone every month. They're not even that uncommon. If you get lunch at fast food at work every day
If an activity is not illegal, you cannot be sentenced or jailed for it. I think we agree on this (with the possible wrinkle of contempt of court).
(blinks) Did I stutter?
By definition, if you can be convicted and sentenced for doing it, then it's illegal.
Actually, no. Judges can send you to jail for things that aren't illegal
You want a judge or the law sending someone to jail for something that isn't illegal,
There is no such example.
Contempt of court. Failure to reappear after break. Religious intonation instead of testification (silence is legally defended; nothing else is.) Swearing at the prosecutor. Making jokes about an attack that happened at that courthouse a week previously. Wearing religious iconography during a court case. Wearing short pants in court (think I'm joking? Hon. Joseph Puglia, October 2003, Forest Township PA near Pittsburgh, all over the news, upheld and still doing it.) Leaving cell phone on in traffic court (saw that one a year ago, yay jury duty.) When I was at Rutgers watching cases, I saw a judge haul someone off to the tank for 14 days for punching a cop, even though the cop dropped the Assault Of An Officer (5 years mandatory minimum in NJ) charge.
One of the first things you learn about when you take law classes - which you might try, before you continue pretending to understand what you obviously do not - is that judges can do absolutely whatever the silly shit they want to, and that the *only* person who can screw them on it is another judge. Other judges will not screw them on it, because that mechanism exists to allow the judges to keep control of court. Given the kind of people who go through court, this sort of ability is neither abused nor is it something that can feasibly be removed; the judges know better than to put it at risk, because without it they could not do their jobs.
Nonetheless, for you to suggest that they cannot do this shows an explicit lack of understanding of the law. Yes, they can. It's written down on paper that these are things they may do at their whim. That they don't is a symptom of their being sober, well trained people, not an indicator of lack of ability. There is nobody in this country, short of the president, whose power is more flexible or extensive than a judge.
About the only thing a judge can't do in this country is set the death penalty without the support of law, and military judges can even do that - yes, even to civilians.
Just because you didn't know they could doesn't mean they can't. Please stop confusing absence of knowledge for absence of actuality.
If anyone has a lawsuit against anyone, this dude has one against the McCain Campaign (say that nine times fast) for use of his computing resources.
When I was a kid, I watched the Rocky and Bullwinkle show a lot. Every time that moose said "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!," I winced and cheered, because I knew that even though he kept saying it, he'd never be right, and the results would always be painful.
I often say "there is no way this slashdot discussion could sink to a point of lower clue." Sometimes I wonder if anyone's watching me on TV.
the judge publicly expressed that they felt the ruling was unfair and should not have happened, but that their hands were tied due to the nature of the law.
Isn't that exactly the point?
Er, no, it isn't. At all. Previously the supposition was that the obviously not illegal thing would land the guy in the slammer because of clueless judges (and, for whatever reason, the public, even though they have zero effect on a lawsuit - maybe you thought there was a jury involved when someone sues someone else?)
Now you seem to think that archaic laws regarding children and pornography have something to do with a different person changing an image on their own website.
Do you maybe think that John McCain is going to jail for lesbian jokes on his webpage? Who do you think is the victim exactly? Isn't this new, completely disconnected example that of a victim going to jail because of a technical problem? If John McCain is the victim, then do you think he's going to jail? Or, instead, have you taken the precarious position that Mr. Davidson is the victim of... his own... having changed an image?
I mean, could you maybe use some complete examples, so that you can repair your own inconsistency before it confuses others?
If memory serves, you're the one who mentioned jail time, not me: "Find one case of someone going to jail because a judge or legal system clueless about technology sent them there. It's a myth. It does not happen".
Wait, so let me get this straight. If I say jail time doesn't happen, then you say it does so, and I say no it doesn't, then it's my fault for bringing it up?
I simply pointed out that in a criminal case, there is a non-zero cost of innocence.
Which is incorrect. By the way, this isn't a criminal case. As I clearly pointed out earlier, this is illegal, not criminal, and the difference is important.
didn't claim there would be a conspiracy against this guy
calc sarchasm
I'm simply saying that getting convicted and serving a full jail sentence are not the only potential downsides to a criminal case.
Yes, such as legal fees that will be paid back to you, and several hours on the phone with a lawyer you'll probably never meet face to face, while defending yourself from one of the most powerful men on Earth.
Gee, that sure sounds like a broken system. Oh, wait...
Turning around and saying "that doesn't apply to a civil case" or that I'm not proud of our legal system is not a response. I never tried to discuss a civil law situation, and I certainly am happy about the low mistake rate of our legal system.
Harbl harbl harbl. You keep repeating the things I was saying about other things, and ignoring the thing I said about what you're now flogging. Yes, I get you, you're myopically focussed on a tiny amount of money and personal time. The money will come back to you, and if you're complaining about two hours on the phone to defend yourself against one of the most powerful men on Earth, frankly, I just have no way to respond.
I cannot imagine a legal system which causes less hassle or cost than this one does in a situation as thoroughly ridiculous and implausible as the one you're describing.
Did you know that the *Senator* could go to jail for barratry for attempting the kind of nonsense you're describing?
Yes, I get it, you can point at things I was saying to the group of people while ignoring the thing I clearly said specifically to you about the thing you're flogging.
I'll say it again.
YOU WOULD NOT BE OUT ANY MONEY FOR MORE THAN A FEW MONTHS, AND TWO HOURS ON THE PHONE IS NOT MUCH TO ASK TO SUPPORT A SYSTEM THAT CAN DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN WHEN THESE THINGS MATTER AND WHEN THEY DON'T. THAT IS HOW I AM ARGUING YOUR PROPOSITION. DO NOT RESPOND TO ME BY PRETENDING THAT THIS LARGE ALLCAPS BOLD SECTION DOESN'T EXIST.
Please, in the future, actually read what I write and what you wrote before hitting submit
It takes a special man to tell another person to please read what they're writing while abjectly refusing to do so themselves. For the purposes of this conversation, "special" is redefined as "hypocritical."
I did address the thing you're pretending that I didn't. Read my reply a second time.
No, but seriously: if he's in four digit land, that means he's been around since the dawn of dirt. (I know, I look kind of like a noob, saying that; take it on faith that it took me two years to register an account.) It just seems like if he's been around that long, he would have his stupid-dar fine tuned, and would have picked up on the vast wrongness of what he was saying on grounds of seeing other wrong people say it.
There is a lot of legal clue running around SlashDot, even though by percentage it's pretty rare; I would have expected someone in the five thousands to catch onto the pattern by now, is all, I guess.
Of course you can't find a case of a judge sending someone to jail for something that isn't illegal. By definition, if you can be convicted and sentenced for doing it, then it's illegal.
Actually, no. Judges can send you to jail for things that aren't illegal (which is why you can be thrown in jail for contempt of court in a nation that honors free speech,) and judges have no part of creating law, thanks to our fundamental system of checks and balances, which you should have learned about in sixth grade. The only point at which judges are involved with law in any way other than interpretation is to declare laws unconstitutional, but that's done in circuit court, which doesn't hear criminal or statutory cases. You're not even talking about the same people. They don't even go to the same law schools, for christ's sake.
By the way, that was exactly my point. The reason you can't find anyone being sent away for it is *BECAUSE* it isn't illegal. To turn around and tell me that of course they aren't doing it because it isn't illegal is kind of stupid.
You abstractly claimed that the reason great grandparent's common sense remark that nothing involved was in any way illegal was unimportant, because (and I quote,)
Yes - but don't expect any common sense from the legal system in anything related to computers or (shiver) 'hacking'.
To which I replied "show me a case of your paranoia actually coming true."
I do not see an actual germane example of brokenness in the US legal system regarding this kind of crime.
Another example is the case of Daniel Cuthbert:
Yes. Britain's computer crime laws are fucking retarded and broken, I know. They also have cameras Big Brothering their people. This is America. I don't care if some other country gets it wrong.
I've never heard a satisfactory description of why what Randall Schwartz did wasn't wrong. All I've ever heard is people who say "Well can you name anything he did that *was* wrong?"
Yes, actually, I can, because I've read the court transcripts. If you're going to invoke his name, explain what you think he did. The reason you only said his name, no doubt, is because you read a page like this, which wastes time saying what he was charged with, and listing a bunch of things that aren't actually bad but that are phrased to look bad.
And yet, if you look around, at no point does that page explain what Randall did. Just what he was charged with. Did it occur to you that the reason you think he hasn't done anything wrong is because you have no idea what he did?
The legal system presumes innocense. Slashdot arguments do not.
Now, is Randall innocent? Actually, no. Should he have been penalized in the way he was? No, certainly not, but he should have been penalized. A sensible reaction to what happened would have been to fine him a couple of hundred dollars for misdemeanor vandalism, and to move on. Yes, what happened to him was bad, but you shouln't be invoking a case you don't understand in order to make a point.
By the by, what happened to Randall wasn't about ignorance regarding computers in any way. It was simple corporate abuse of the legal system. What I asked for was a fault in justice that happened because of a clueless judge. That's not the same as "find me something bad in the legal system that had a computer in it."
By the way, if the best you can do in a nation of a third of a billion people is a single twelve year old case that has nothing to do with what was actually requested, then I'd say that we as a nation are doing pretty damned well.
This is about children and pornography, not about cluelessness about computing. If you read more about the issue than what Boingboing told you, you would know that the judge publicly expressed that they felt the ruling was unfair and should not have happened, but that their hands were tied due to the nature of the law. Yes, what happened there is unfortunate, but it really has nothing to do with ignorance of computing. And, frankly, all she really had to do was stand in front of the monitor, or turn the computer off.
Is the law doing the wrong thing there? Yes. Is it germane here? No, not really.
If you get arrested and spend a night in jail, have to post bail, have to retain an attorney, and take 1+ days off (or at least mornings off) to go to court, you've already lost an assload of time and money and it's a huge hassle.
If someone sues you and it's dismissed with prejudice, they pay your legal bills. Generally, for something like this, you wouldn't actually need to go to court; you'd just send your attorney. It would cost you several hours on the phone explaining the situation, and you'd be out the money temporarily until the judge said "fuck you, McCain, this is retarded, pay his lawyer." As far as an assload of money, this is fairly standard legal fare; you can get something like this covered for about four hours at $125/hour. If $500 seems like a lot to you to resolve legal disputes, I'm not sure what to say. Also, what makes you think that someone gets arrested and goes to jail for getting sued? You get something in the mail.
So yeah, you're out $500 for a few months, and you have to waste two lunch hours on the phone. So what? Big deal. You could easily take a day or two off over this. Your boss isn't going to get angry if you say "I have a US senator suing me, I need a day off to mount a defense." Chances are you'll be the office hero at the end, and you'll make more than your $500 back in free lunches before McCain would be forced to give it to you anyway. By the way, it's illegal for an employer to affect your employment status due to your court appearances, so you can skip the "but he'd fire me" right now, because if he did, you'd be a millionaire.
One of the most common misconceptions of the legal system is that being found innocent/not-guilty is free. It's not.
It is when the lawsuit is an obvious turd, and when you look at it from more than the two month perspective. Look it up. Barratry isn't legal in this country. That's why every time someone sues a big corporation, the big corporation doesn't just tie it up in counter lawsuits until the person has died of old age.
Just because you can see a way a conspiracy might work to stomp the little guy doesn't mean that's how it actually will work. Some time, try thinking about what might stop the obvious train wreck of justice from happening.
We're a nation of a third of a billion people, and I'm willing to bet you can't count your way off of one hand naming legal mishaps regarding computer ignorant judges that led to jail time in the last ten years. No system is perfect, and even a perfect system has problems when it's administrated by human beings. That our mishap rate is so low should be something you're proud of, not afraid of.
Show me a law that comes within ten nautical miles of what you suggest, making this image replacement illegal, and I will mail you a dollar and an apology. Until then, please accept this notification that you, sir, are utterly clueless as regards our system of jurisprudence. Show me another shaky metaphor or "well they might look at it this way" and you will be summarily subjected to laughter and derision. If what you cite doesn't have some legal index code at the beginning, it's a built-in larf.
Metaphor, viewpoint, simile, juxtaposition, parallel and hypothetical are all worthless in law by definition. Either you cite a code, you cite a precedent, or you stop playing dress-up in the basement and let your daddy do the lawyering. And please don't waste my time telling me that An Opinion, which is a specific thing from a judge which has concrete legal value, is the same as you giving your opinion, which seems to be largely a work of constructive fiction built on top of a miserable lack of actual legal training or comprehension.
If what you say isn't coming from a law book, don't bother hitting submit.
The thing a judge would (or should) look at is that the image was changed intentionally for the specific purpose of having that image appear on McCain's website.
And? What, you think it's illegal because it's mean? Can you cite a law to the effect of "508.c4.232 section 6 statute 5b states that no man shall place lesbian jokes on another man's webpage" ? Maybe there's that people's doctrine entitled "Leaving shit on your web page so someone else can use it?"
I mean, I seem to be missing something here. Did someone change the law to "thou shalt not thumb thy nose at thy Politicians" while I was sleeping? Have you pointed out something illegal, or do you just think people can go to jail for being funny, or what?
Yes, a judge should be looking at that. It's freaking hilarious. That doesn't mean incarceration, though.
If you know that someone is stealing your lunch everyday, and you know who it is, and you poison the food, I'm sure that they can get you locked up for murder.
Wow, that's a great analogy. Now if only one person was hurt or killed in any way by a guy choosing to replace an image on his own webserver, that might be germane. What you seem to be missing is that embarrassment isn't criminal. The reason poison would be illegal is because it would kill someone. Nobody died here. Some jerk has egg on his face for being thoughtless.
If you think that's illegal, I challenge you to show how through something other than than metaphor.
You bet they can come up with some crime that vaguely matches this though.
Uh. No, you really can't. You also can't come up with a crime that vaguely resembles my drinking coffee in the morning.
Anti-graffiti laws maybe, who knows?
Oy. First off, graffiti is illegal in less than a quarter of the United States, and in those places where it is illegal, it's almost always simply illegal on public property. There are almost no points in the United States where graffiti on private property is illegal. That's why almost all graffiti cases are actually tried as destruction of private property - graffiti isn't illegal.
Why is the difference important? Well, for one, destruction of private property is illegal, but it's not criminal; unless there's something particular about the content of the graffito, the person can't be sent to jail except overnight holding, there's a limit on the fine that can be laid, and they're not liable for concommitant damage. So, for example, if an artist painted a beautiful graffito painting on the side of a building, and some jerk was staring at it instead of driving and got into a wreck that killed a kid, the artist would not be accessory to manslaughter.
Graffiti involves you doing something to someone else's things, not your own. The reason you can't come up with a sensible example is because there isn't one. The legal system isn't a question of who can come up with the biggest stretch, and believe it or not, a judge is well within their rights to say "fuck off, that's not what that law means." In fact, that's their purpose, and they do that all the time.
What a judge cannot do is send you to jail without a damned good reason. If you appeal a judge's ruling and it gets overturned, circuit court is required to make a decision that they never seem to teach you about at the SlashDot J Fakespert Building of Almost Law at the NBC campus of the University of Law and Order: SVU. (That's right, I'm making fun of your channel 4 law degree. Maybe you can convince a judge that I'm putting a graffito on SlashDot?) Specifically, that decision is whether to overturn with or without prejudice.
Maybe you should get on http://notacollegeofjurisprudence.wikipedia.net/ and track down just what happens to a judge when their rulings are overturned with prejudice? The actual count varies from state to state, but in Pennsylvania it's three a year, and in Washington DC it's zero tolerance.
A bit of creativity and liberal use of words and you can easily make this a crime.
Really? Go right ahead: we're listening. Show us something a little less ridiculous than laws designed to keep city signs legible. Or did you think graffiti laws were there to keep people from painting on things?
Have a look through your local law library for a 1970s New York City block of precedent that was taken state then national by Andy Warhol, surrounding the then-little-known street artist Jean Michel Basquiat. We've actually gone through this on walls in public, where Basquiat intentionally took it to a senator in public. The wall didn't belong to Basquiat, and Basquiat wasn't having a good old josh like Mr. Davidson is. The senator tried a bunch of stuff to get it taken down, including leaning with all his senatorial might. He got nowhere. Basquiat died a few
Basquiat died several years later on the wrong end of a heroin needle, a free man. At that time, most of America learned that paranoia does not generate legal fault. Our founding fathers went way, way out of their way to make what you're describing fundamentally impossible, and they did a beautiful job of it. Clueful legal commentators understand and respect that.
And please have the sense to stop pretending to grok the law. Lawrence Lessig you are not.
But would the general public and some random computer-illiterate judge understand [hotlink replacement]?
Would someone who went to law school for eight years, then acted as a lawyer, then went back to law school for four more years, understand simple propriety and ownership? Yes.
It's not the judge's problem to understand things. I don't know why SlashDot thinks it is. That's the purpose of the defense attorney. The system is simple: the attorneys both understand and explain the situation as best they can, and then the judges use the information presented by the attorneys to rule.
Seriously, there's a reason for expert witnesses, and it's this: judges are there to understand the law, AND ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST ICING. Judges don't need to understand the internet, because any defense attorney worth half his salt will say "yes, and Mr. Davidson didn't change anything outside his own server," and the prosecution will be summarily laughed out of the building. If it's Wisconsin, they may have a large red "L" tattooed on their forehead first.
How can someone with as low a UID as yours be this fearfully clueless about the legal system? Find one case of someone going to jail because a judge or legal system clueless about technology sent them there. It's a myth. It does not happen. I mean, christ on a crutch, even Sundown got overturned, and that was eighteen years ago, before most people who are on SlashDot now had even heard of the internet.
Seriously. Find me one in the last ten years. Don't bother dusting off some RIAA case; the legal system isn't at fault for those. You want a judge or the law sending someone to jail for something that isn't illegal, not a bunch of people whining about the record industry, and if your example is built on anything even resembling theft, it's crap at the door.
Insightful my ass. Judges have a better record for understanding this stuff than any SlashDotter. Mod parent into the deep, deep earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Parent message isn't a troll, you morons, it's a joke. And it's hilarious, if you'd quit being quite so hypersensitive.
What I wouldn't give for a mod point right now. Mod parent up.
Feeling superior yet?
I think the supposition was that an obviously not 'wrong' thing would land the guy in the slammer because it would be illegal.
I don't know why you keep repeating that, when nothing illegal has actually occurred.
Defacement of a website, or something like that...
You might as well say he'll get thrown in jail for assault, too, because he didn't do that either.
this certainly is a crime in some jurisdictions, and the mere point that you defaced the site by uploading an image to your own Myspace area might not be enough.
No. This just isn't how things work. Something isn't illegal just because some jerk gets angry. Find a law that says it's illegal to alter your own things such that some moron who's decided to become dependant gets made to look stupid, or stop flogging it.
There is no method under the law for this to be any form of defacement. STOP SAYING DEFACEMENT.
Am I just spreading FUD about the legal system?
No. FUD requires you being close enough to the truth for other people to believe you. You're just flapping your arms, trying to fly while everyone in eyeshot giggles under their breath. Nobody else is afraid that the ground is going away. There is no FUD here. Only dumb.
But we've seen enough high-profile bad cases like Schwartz or Sklyarov to be wary.
Don't name drop; it's ugly. Skylarov was about copyright law, not computers, not bad judging. The only Schwartz case I can come up with in the last 20 years that even comes close to germane is a Saudi Arabian spying case. I wonder if you believe you're making a point by citing random last names. Let's be clear: if this is the level of your comprehension of the law, it doesn't matter what you've seen. You don't understand any of it. Stop pretending to have a reason to be wary. You might as well be preaching about meteors.
Yes, even though the legal arguments in those cases are quite different to ones about defacing a website.
You do realize that by saying this, you're admitting to wasting time and invoking emotionally bound irrelevancies for lack of an actual point to be made, yes?
You seem to be confused. There are things in this world other than convictions. Can you go to jail for non-criminal convictions? Not at a federal level (though you can at a state level, something findlaw isn't mentioning for you.) Can you go to jail for non-criminal things which aren't convictions at all? Yes, which is what that gigantic list of things I gave was, all of which are non-criminal, all of which are non-civil, all of which can send people to jail.
The rebuttal you gave was equivalent to this:
Giving an example of something that doesn't send you to jail doesn't mean nothing else will ever send you to jail. There is more in court and jurisprudence, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your example.
My mistake.
What good is half a graphics card, anyway?
These days? About a gig of ram and 32 cores.
Wait, let me get this straight. You're bitching about other people missing jokes on slashdot, and saying "go outside, breathe air and get laid," and this is all in the same breath that you're calling someone else cliché?
I realize you're trying to be deep and meaningful. Maybe next time wait for someone that doesn't know they're a bigotted jerk, like I do. By the way, just because I'm a bigotted jerk doesn't mean my logic - and don't make a mistake, I gave a clear and reasonable logical explanation for my belief - is wrong. Surprisingly, despite what the after school specials tell you, some stereotypes are accurate.
I'll give you an example: most black people aren't serial killers. Now there's a stereotype you can sink your teeth into!
If you think pointing out predispositions is a bad thing, maybe you should get the ruler. Everyone and everything is predisposed towards judgements. You have to be. It's the only way you can get through life. You walk inside buildings because you're predisposed to believe that they won't collapse on you. You drink soda because you're predisposed to believe it doesn't contain a nuclear warhead. You watch television because you're predisposed to believe it won't give you ass cancer.
Just because you can attach an ugly word like "prejudice" to a predisposition doesn't mean it's suddenly ugly. I am predisposed to believe that most adults, regardless of skin color, gender and relgion, will not attempt to eat me alive. Guess what? That one's gotten me pretty far in life: I wouldn't likely have a job if I ran screaming into a corner going "please don't eat me" every time I saw my boss.
Or, do you think I'm supposed to be embarrassed for expecting a high caliber from someone? I can see someone saying "don't talk down to that man just because he's black." I have a hard time imagining someone saying "Don't talk up to that man just because he's black." Rarely are people angry because they are expected well from. "How dare you treat me like a competant non-boob just because of who I am?" (Don't worry, though - I will agree never to apply such expectations to you, and I will casually say it's because you asked me not to.)
You really should have an actual reason to be offended by proxy, you half-baked auteur of human rights. Go save a whale.
Pacemakers use Lithium-Iodide batteries nowadays.
What gives you that idea?
I've never heard of any commercially available pacemaker that generates its energy supply by mooching stuff off its recipient.
Well, then you don't know much about pacemakers. Funny how that works out. I bet you also don't know about the modern developments in, say, large-scale industrial beet farming, or perhaps in the chemistry of wood sealants.
The biocompatibility issues in such a system would be a real killer.
Actually, no, it turns out that the body is well equipped to handle the waste products of the fuel it itself uses - unless you thought a machine would magically produce a different waste product than did the body? Indeed, one of the big reasons for the switch to biofuels is how much easier they are to deal with than spent lithium batteries. So it seems you've got this one backwards.
According to you "jail" implies criminal (or contempt of court).
Where the hell did you get that idea? Criminal means nothing of the sort, and I never implied anything of the sort. At no point did I attempt to define criminal; I honestly expected you to know the difference between a criminal and a civil offense. You can go to jail for things that aren't criminal. I'm saying this repeatedly to someone in another thread. Do I have to start saying this to you, too?
Criminal != Illegal. All criminal actions are illegal, but not all illegal actions are criminal. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Criminal is a kind of illegal. Nothing in this discussion is criminal in any way. Criminal covers things like violent crime, breakins, racially motivated action, murder, threats, that kind of stuff.
Dude, embezzlement isn't criminal. Criminal doesn't mean wrong or against the law. Criminal means violent and horrible. Many illegal things aren't even remotely criminal. Pot isn't criminal, but it's illegal in most of the country. Jaywalking. Smoking in a resteraunt in New York. Slander. Junk bonds and pyramid schemes. Voluntary lemon used auto dealership. Selling mattresses with that tag removed. Stealing MP3s. Killing someone's dog. Opening your neighbor's mail. All of these things are illegal. Some of them are federal. None of them are criminal.
First of all, if you're middle-class or a student, then losing $500 for a few months is a large deal.
That's funny, I actually did suffer such a thing as a middle class student, and I weathered it essentially without problems. Maybe that's because I have simple money management skills. (shrugs) Anyway, it's about an eighth of the standard balance of those credit cards they huck at college students like water, so unless they've already buried themselves up to the eyeballs in tens of thousands of dollars of debt - at which point $500 is less than they're paying in monthly fees - then there should be no problem whatsoever getting through it.
When I was in college, there was a guy who stood outside of the cafeteria hall *every* *day* with stacks of credit card forms pre-filled out for each of the dorms, so that all a kid would do was write and sign their name, date the form, write their room number, and discover debt. I just can't imagine that's stopped.
You took a discussion about a civil case and added criminal to the discussion list.
Don't be a tard. What I said, over and over, was "this is not criminal."
What I'm trying to point out is that the legal system can cost you a lot of time and effort in a criminal matter even if a judge dismisses the issue the second they see it.
I wonder if you even know what "dismissed with prejudice" and "barratry" mean. If the judge thinks it's a floating turd, the enemy takes your legal bills on, not you. Furthermore, something like this should cost you maybe an hour or two on the phone with a lawyer. You don't have to go to court, you don't have to deal with the police or the judge, you can do this on your lunch hour at work. I know: I did once.
I'm just saying that negative costs from the legal system arise from situations other than being found guilty.
Yeah. You pay two months of interest on a credit card until your legal bills are refunded by your lawyer since they've become someone else's responsibility, and you lose a whopping ninety minutes on the phone. Tremendous. Something like that could kill a man.
If I made $50,000 a year, that's about half a week's salary.
Zomg, three days of salary? How will you pay for the dialysis?
Not a deal-breaker, but certainly not "tiny".
I know people who make $25k/mo and spend nearly $500 between their cable bill and cell phone every month. They're not even that uncommon. If you get lunch at fast food at work every day
(blinks) Did I stutter?
Contempt of court. Failure to reappear after break. Religious intonation instead of testification (silence is legally defended; nothing else is.) Swearing at the prosecutor. Making jokes about an attack that happened at that courthouse a week previously. Wearing religious iconography during a court case. Wearing short pants in court (think I'm joking? Hon. Joseph Puglia, October 2003, Forest Township PA near Pittsburgh, all over the news, upheld and still doing it.) Leaving cell phone on in traffic court (saw that one a year ago, yay jury duty.) When I was at Rutgers watching cases, I saw a judge haul someone off to the tank for 14 days for punching a cop, even though the cop dropped the Assault Of An Officer (5 years mandatory minimum in NJ) charge.
One of the first things you learn about when you take law classes - which you might try, before you continue pretending to understand what you obviously do not - is that judges can do absolutely whatever the silly shit they want to, and that the *only* person who can screw them on it is another judge. Other judges will not screw them on it, because that mechanism exists to allow the judges to keep control of court. Given the kind of people who go through court, this sort of ability is neither abused nor is it something that can feasibly be removed; the judges know better than to put it at risk, because without it they could not do their jobs.
Nonetheless, for you to suggest that they cannot do this shows an explicit lack of understanding of the law. Yes, they can. It's written down on paper that these are things they may do at their whim. That they don't is a symptom of their being sober, well trained people, not an indicator of lack of ability. There is nobody in this country, short of the president, whose power is more flexible or extensive than a judge.
About the only thing a judge can't do in this country is set the death penalty without the support of law, and military judges can even do that - yes, even to civilians.
Just because you didn't know they could doesn't mean they can't. Please stop confusing absence of knowledge for absence of actuality.
Indeed, that is moderately funnier. I was mocking several people simultaneously. Thanks for the catch; I got sloppy.
If anyone has a lawsuit against anyone, this dude has one against the McCain Campaign (say that nine times fast) for use of his computing resources.
When I was a kid, I watched the Rocky and Bullwinkle show a lot. Every time that moose said "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!," I winced and cheered, because I knew that even though he kept saying it, he'd never be right, and the results would always be painful.
I often say "there is no way this slashdot discussion could sink to a point of lower clue." Sometimes I wonder if anyone's watching me on TV.
Anyway, your perspective is noted.
Er, no, it isn't. At all. Previously the supposition was that the obviously not illegal thing would land the guy in the slammer because of clueless judges (and, for whatever reason, the public, even though they have zero effect on a lawsuit - maybe you thought there was a jury involved when someone sues someone else?)
Now you seem to think that archaic laws regarding children and pornography have something to do with a different person changing an image on their own website.
Do you maybe think that John McCain is going to jail for lesbian jokes on his webpage? Who do you think is the victim exactly? Isn't this new, completely disconnected example that of a victim going to jail because of a technical problem? If John McCain is the victim, then do you think he's going to jail? Or, instead, have you taken the precarious position that Mr. Davidson is the victim of
I mean, could you maybe use some complete examples, so that you can repair your own inconsistency before it confuses others?
If memory serves, you're the one who mentioned jail time, not me: "Find one case of someone going to jail because a judge or legal system clueless about technology sent them there. It's a myth. It does not happen".
...
Wait, so let me get this straight. If I say jail time doesn't happen, then you say it does so, and I say no it doesn't, then it's my fault for bringing it up?
I simply pointed out that in a criminal case, there is a non-zero cost of innocence.
Which is incorrect. By the way, this isn't a criminal case. As I clearly pointed out earlier, this is illegal, not criminal, and the difference is important.
didn't claim there would be a conspiracy against this guy
calc sarchasm
I'm simply saying that getting convicted and serving a full jail sentence are not the only potential downsides to a criminal case.
Yes, such as legal fees that will be paid back to you, and several hours on the phone with a lawyer you'll probably never meet face to face, while defending yourself from one of the most powerful men on Earth.
Gee, that sure sounds like a broken system. Oh, wait
Turning around and saying "that doesn't apply to a civil case" or that I'm not proud of our legal system is not a response. I never tried to discuss a civil law situation, and I certainly am happy about the low mistake rate of our legal system.
Harbl harbl harbl. You keep repeating the things I was saying about other things, and ignoring the thing I said about what you're now flogging. Yes, I get you, you're myopically focussed on a tiny amount of money and personal time. The money will come back to you, and if you're complaining about two hours on the phone to defend yourself against one of the most powerful men on Earth, frankly, I just have no way to respond.
I cannot imagine a legal system which causes less hassle or cost than this one does in a situation as thoroughly ridiculous and implausible as the one you're describing.
Did you know that the *Senator* could go to jail for barratry for attempting the kind of nonsense you're describing?
Yes, I get it, you can point at things I was saying to the group of people while ignoring the thing I clearly said specifically to you about the thing you're flogging.
I'll say it again.
YOU WOULD NOT BE OUT ANY MONEY FOR MORE THAN A FEW MONTHS, AND TWO HOURS ON THE PHONE IS NOT MUCH TO ASK TO SUPPORT A SYSTEM THAT CAN DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN WHEN THESE THINGS MATTER AND WHEN THEY DON'T. THAT IS HOW I AM ARGUING YOUR PROPOSITION. DO NOT RESPOND TO ME BY PRETENDING THAT THIS LARGE ALLCAPS BOLD SECTION DOESN'T EXIST.
Please, in the future, actually read what I write and what you wrote before hitting submit
It takes a special man to tell another person to please read what they're writing while abjectly refusing to do so themselves. For the purposes of this conversation, "special" is redefined as "hypocritical."
I did address the thing you're pretending that I didn't. Read my reply a second time.
It's moments like these that I wish I could mod responses to stuff in threads in which I'm active as "funny."
Bwahahaha.
No, but seriously: if he's in four digit land, that means he's been around since the dawn of dirt. (I know, I look kind of like a noob, saying that; take it on faith that it took me two years to register an account.) It just seems like if he's been around that long, he would have his stupid-dar fine tuned, and would have picked up on the vast wrongness of what he was saying on grounds of seeing other wrong people say it.
There is a lot of legal clue running around SlashDot, even though by percentage it's pretty rare; I would have expected someone in the five thousands to catch onto the pattern by now, is all, I guess.
Actually, no. Judges can send you to jail for things that aren't illegal (which is why you can be thrown in jail for contempt of court in a nation that honors free speech,) and judges have no part of creating law, thanks to our fundamental system of checks and balances, which you should have learned about in sixth grade. The only point at which judges are involved with law in any way other than interpretation is to declare laws unconstitutional, but that's done in circuit court, which doesn't hear criminal or statutory cases. You're not even talking about the same people. They don't even go to the same law schools, for christ's sake.
By the way, that was exactly my point. The reason you can't find anyone being sent away for it is *BECAUSE* it isn't illegal. To turn around and tell me that of course they aren't doing it because it isn't illegal is kind of stupid.
You abstractly claimed that the reason great grandparent's common sense remark that nothing involved was in any way illegal was unimportant, because (and I quote,)
To which I replied "show me a case of your paranoia actually coming true."
I do not see an actual germane example of brokenness in the US legal system regarding this kind of crime.
Another example is the case of Daniel Cuthbert:
Yes. Britain's computer crime laws are fucking retarded and broken, I know. They also have cameras Big Brothering their people. This is America. I don't care if some other country gets it wrong.
I've never heard a satisfactory description of why what Randall Schwartz did wasn't wrong. All I've ever heard is people who say "Well can you name anything he did that *was* wrong?"
Yes, actually, I can, because I've read the court transcripts. If you're going to invoke his name, explain what you think he did. The reason you only said his name, no doubt, is because you read a page like this, which wastes time saying what he was charged with, and listing a bunch of things that aren't actually bad but that are phrased to look bad.
And yet, if you look around, at no point does that page explain what Randall did. Just what he was charged with. Did it occur to you that the reason you think he hasn't done anything wrong is because you have no idea what he did?
The legal system presumes innocense. Slashdot arguments do not.
Now, is Randall innocent? Actually, no. Should he have been penalized in the way he was? No, certainly not, but he should have been penalized. A sensible reaction to what happened would have been to fine him a couple of hundred dollars for misdemeanor vandalism, and to move on. Yes, what happened to him was bad, but you shouln't be invoking a case you don't understand in order to make a point.
By the by, what happened to Randall wasn't about ignorance regarding computers in any way. It was simple corporate abuse of the legal system. What I asked for was a fault in justice that happened because of a clueless judge . That's not the same as "find me something bad in the legal system that had a computer in it."
By the way, if the best you can do in a nation of a third of a billion people is a single twelve year old case that has nothing to do with what was actually requested, then I'd say that we as a nation are doing pretty damned well.
This is about children and pornography, not about cluelessness about computing. If you read more about the issue than what Boingboing told you, you would know that the judge publicly expressed that they felt the ruling was unfair and should not have happened, but that their hands were tied due to the nature of the law. Yes, what happened there is unfortunate, but it really has nothing to do with ignorance of computing. And, frankly, all she really had to do was stand in front of the monitor, or turn the computer off.
Is the law doing the wrong thing there? Yes. Is it germane here? No, not really.
If you get arrested and spend a night in jail, have to post bail, have to retain an attorney, and take 1+ days off (or at least mornings off) to go to court, you've already lost an assload of time and money and it's a huge hassle.
If someone sues you and it's dismissed with prejudice, they pay your legal bills. Generally, for something like this, you wouldn't actually need to go to court; you'd just send your attorney. It would cost you several hours on the phone explaining the situation, and you'd be out the money temporarily until the judge said "fuck you, McCain, this is retarded, pay his lawyer." As far as an assload of money, this is fairly standard legal fare; you can get something like this covered for about four hours at $125/hour. If $500 seems like a lot to you to resolve legal disputes, I'm not sure what to say. Also, what makes you think that someone gets arrested and goes to jail for getting sued? You get something in the mail.
So yeah, you're out $500 for a few months, and you have to waste two lunch hours on the phone. So what? Big deal. You could easily take a day or two off over this. Your boss isn't going to get angry if you say "I have a US senator suing me, I need a day off to mount a defense." Chances are you'll be the office hero at the end, and you'll make more than your $500 back in free lunches before McCain would be forced to give it to you anyway. By the way, it's illegal for an employer to affect your employment status due to your court appearances, so you can skip the "but he'd fire me" right now, because if he did, you'd be a millionaire.
One of the most common misconceptions of the legal system is that being found innocent/not-guilty is free. It's not.
It is when the lawsuit is an obvious turd, and when you look at it from more than the two month perspective. Look it up. Barratry isn't legal in this country. That's why every time someone sues a big corporation, the big corporation doesn't just tie it up in counter lawsuits until the person has died of old age.
Just because you can see a way a conspiracy might work to stomp the little guy doesn't mean that's how it actually will work. Some time, try thinking about what might stop the obvious train wreck of justice from happening.
We're a nation of a third of a billion people, and I'm willing to bet you can't count your way off of one hand naming legal mishaps regarding computer ignorant judges that led to jail time in the last ten years. No system is perfect, and even a perfect system has problems when it's administrated by human beings. That our mishap rate is so low should be something you're proud of, not afraid of.
Show me a law that comes within ten nautical miles of what you suggest, making this image replacement illegal, and I will mail you a dollar and an apology. Until then, please accept this notification that you, sir, are utterly clueless as regards our system of jurisprudence. Show me another shaky metaphor or "well they might look at it this way" and you will be summarily subjected to laughter and derision. If what you cite doesn't have some legal index code at the beginning, it's a built-in larf.
Metaphor, viewpoint, simile, juxtaposition, parallel and hypothetical are all worthless in law by definition. Either you cite a code, you cite a precedent, or you stop playing dress-up in the basement and let your daddy do the lawyering. And please don't waste my time telling me that An Opinion, which is a specific thing from a judge which has concrete legal value, is the same as you giving your opinion, which seems to be largely a work of constructive fiction built on top of a miserable lack of actual legal training or comprehension.
If what you say isn't coming from a law book, don't bother hitting submit.
The thing a judge would (or should) look at is that the image was changed intentionally for the specific purpose of having that image appear on McCain's website.
And? What, you think it's illegal because it's mean? Can you cite a law to the effect of "508.c4.232 section 6 statute 5b states that no man shall place lesbian jokes on another man's webpage" ? Maybe there's that people's doctrine entitled "Leaving shit on your web page so someone else can use it?"
I mean, I seem to be missing something here. Did someone change the law to "thou shalt not thumb thy nose at thy Politicians" while I was sleeping? Have you pointed out something illegal, or do you just think people can go to jail for being funny, or what?
Yes, a judge should be looking at that. It's freaking hilarious. That doesn't mean incarceration, though.
If you know that someone is stealing your lunch everyday, and you know who it is, and you poison the food, I'm sure that they can get you locked up for murder.
Wow, that's a great analogy. Now if only one person was hurt or killed in any way by a guy choosing to replace an image on his own webserver, that might be germane. What you seem to be missing is that embarrassment isn't criminal. The reason poison would be illegal is because it would kill someone. Nobody died here. Some jerk has egg on his face for being thoughtless.
If you think that's illegal, I challenge you to show how through something other than than metaphor.
You bet they can come up with some crime that vaguely matches this though.
Uh. No, you really can't. You also can't come up with a crime that vaguely resembles my drinking coffee in the morning.
Anti-graffiti laws maybe, who knows?
Oy. First off, graffiti is illegal in less than a quarter of the United States, and in those places where it is illegal, it's almost always simply illegal on public property. There are almost no points in the United States where graffiti on private property is illegal. That's why almost all graffiti cases are actually tried as destruction of private property - graffiti isn't illegal.
Why is the difference important? Well, for one, destruction of private property is illegal, but it's not criminal; unless there's something particular about the content of the graffito, the person can't be sent to jail except overnight holding, there's a limit on the fine that can be laid, and they're not liable for concommitant damage. So, for example, if an artist painted a beautiful graffito painting on the side of a building, and some jerk was staring at it instead of driving and got into a wreck that killed a kid, the artist would not be accessory to manslaughter.
Graffiti involves you doing something to someone else's things, not your own. The reason you can't come up with a sensible example is because there isn't one. The legal system isn't a question of who can come up with the biggest stretch, and believe it or not, a judge is well within their rights to say "fuck off, that's not what that law means." In fact, that's their purpose, and they do that all the time.
What a judge cannot do is send you to jail without a damned good reason. If you appeal a judge's ruling and it gets overturned, circuit court is required to make a decision that they never seem to teach you about at the SlashDot J Fakespert Building of Almost Law at the NBC campus of the University of Law and Order: SVU. (That's right, I'm making fun of your channel 4 law degree. Maybe you can convince a judge that I'm putting a graffito on SlashDot?) Specifically, that decision is whether to overturn with or without prejudice.
Maybe you should get on http://notacollegeofjurisprudence.wikipedia.net/ and track down just what happens to a judge when their rulings are overturned with prejudice? The actual count varies from state to state, but in Pennsylvania it's three a year, and in Washington DC it's zero tolerance.
A bit of creativity and liberal use of words and you can easily make this a crime.
Really? Go right ahead: we're listening. Show us something a little less ridiculous than laws designed to keep city signs legible. Or did you think graffiti laws were there to keep people from painting on things?
Have a look through your local law library for a 1970s New York City block of precedent that was taken state then national by Andy Warhol, surrounding the then-little-known street artist Jean Michel Basquiat. We've actually gone through this on walls in public, where Basquiat intentionally took it to a senator in public. The wall didn't belong to Basquiat, and Basquiat wasn't having a good old josh like Mr. Davidson is. The senator tried a bunch of stuff to get it taken down, including leaning with all his senatorial might. He got nowhere. Basquiat died a few
Basquiat died several years later on the wrong end of a heroin needle, a free man. At that time, most of America learned that paranoia does not generate legal fault. Our founding fathers went way, way out of their way to make what you're describing fundamentally impossible, and they did a beautiful job of it. Clueful legal commentators understand and respect that.
And please have the sense to stop pretending to grok the law. Lawrence Lessig you are not.
Seriously, there's a reason for expert witnesses, and it's this: judges are there to understand the law, AND ANYTHING ELSE IS JUST ICING. Judges don't need to understand the internet, because any defense attorney worth half his salt will say "yes, and Mr. Davidson didn't change anything outside his own server," and the prosecution will be summarily laughed out of the building. If it's Wisconsin, they may have a large red "L" tattooed on their forehead first.
How can someone with as low a UID as yours be this fearfully clueless about the legal system? Find one case of someone going to jail because a judge or legal system clueless about technology sent them there. It's a myth. It does not happen. I mean, christ on a crutch, even Sundown got overturned, and that was eighteen years ago, before most people who are on SlashDot now had even heard of the internet.
Seriously. Find me one in the last ten years. Don't bother dusting off some RIAA case; the legal system isn't at fault for those. You want a judge or the law sending someone to jail for something that isn't illegal, not a bunch of people whining about the record industry, and if your example is built on anything even resembling theft, it's crap at the door.
Insightful my ass. Judges have a better record for understanding this stuff than any SlashDotter. Mod parent into the deep, deep earth.