I'm lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to be focusing on the full range of legal issues facing the Wikimedia Foundation. You can guess what some of them are (copyright, defamation, international law, etc.).
As you know, I fully credit your having had some inkling of Godwin's Law before I formalized it.:-)
Next thing you'll be telling me that somebody invented cars before Henry Ford and that Apple didn't invent the personal computer!
Seriously, I will admit that I'd have thought about stealing a line from Richard Sexton, who is a crafter of great lines, had I known about Richard and the line in advance. But the greatest influence on Godwin's Law was Keith Henson's article about memes in Whole Earth Review, plus the fact that I was reading a lot of Primo Levi at the time.
I disagree that I don't understand the significance of requiring that email headers be truthful. (I take this to be what Rocky is getting at.) I think I'm responsive to this issue in other answers, where I talk about our culture's tolerance for (and even need for) the ability to be anonymous.
Certainly, a legal requirement that email headers be truthful would create a way to get at spammers, but it would do so at the price of anonymous online speech -- I'm not sure we're at the point yet of having to make that choice.
"Fraud" generally requires a more complete transaction than normally occurs when one receives unsolicited commercial email.
Thanks for the correction regarding Vinge! I should add that anyone who likes "A Fire Upon the Deep" may also enjoy "A Deepness in the Sky," which is a kind of sequel (really a prequel) to "Fire.'
I certainly agree that aliases have been useable since, well, forever. Almost all of my prior ISPs contain aliases that send email to my current account.
I took the portability question to be addressing something different, however -- the prospect of a Telcordia email-address database of the sort Cramer describes.
Thanks for the correction about "local number portability" -- for some reason I had the impression that it still had not been widely rolled out yet. (I apologize for my ignorance and offer only the defense that Internet law and telecom law are not quite the same thing just yet, so I'm sorry for not keeping up!) At least I did know there is no serious technical obstacle to local number portability, so maybe I can get a small amount of partial credit?
"Am I to take it that Mr. Godwin is too busy to answer with some detail or that the detail doesn't exist?"
Well, I'm following new cases that come up, and it doesn't seem to me that they're cruising in under the radar the way they used to. Thanks to Slashdot and other venues, important cases tend to get publicized pretty quickly nowadays.
Obviously, there may be important cases that I don't know about, but, by definition, I can't answer any questions about them!
You're right, of course, that I could have mentioned that anyone who wants to be a *patent* lawyer has to have hold an undergraduate degree in one of the approved science or engineering fields.
I took the question to be a more general one by someone who might want to practice the varieties of law I practice. For that, no science/technology degree is required, although it certainly doesn't hurt to have one.
With regard to the lameness of my answers, well, I did have some pretty interesting answers stored up, but I couldn't quite make them fit the questions I got asked!
Slashdot Mirror
That's news to me, Steve. I'm opposed to American right-wing excesses myself.
--Mike
Hi, Jon.
I'm lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to be focusing on the full range of legal issues facing the Wikimedia Foundation. You can guess what some of them are (copyright, defamation, international law, etc.).
--Mike
Don't worry, I'm over the whole sink thing.
By the way, Glen is now my neighbor in Silver Spring!
--Mike
Hi, Richard.
:-)
As you know, I fully credit your having had some inkling of Godwin's Law before I formalized it.
Next thing you'll be telling me that somebody invented cars before Henry Ford and that Apple didn't invent the personal computer!
Seriously, I will admit that I'd have thought about stealing a line from Richard Sexton, who is a crafter of great lines, had I known about Richard and the line in advance. But the greatest influence on Godwin's Law was Keith Henson's article about memes in Whole Earth Review, plus the fact that I was reading a lot of Primo Levi at the time.
--Mike
EFF won the Steve Jackson Games case and Reno versus ACLU. Both cases were won while I was staff counsel at EFF. Just saying.
(I should add that I'm proud of EFF's work since then.)
That's okay. We still love you.
--Mike
I disagree that I don't understand the significance of requiring that email headers be truthful. (I take this to be what Rocky is getting at.) I think I'm responsive to this issue in other answers, where I talk about our culture's tolerance for (and even need for) the ability to be anonymous.
Certainly, a legal requirement that email headers be truthful would create a way to get at spammers, but it would do so at the price of anonymous online speech -- I'm not sure we're at the point yet of having to make that choice.
"Fraud" generally requires a more complete transaction than normally occurs when one receives unsolicited commercial email.
Or at least that's my take on it.
Best regards,
--Mike
Thanks for the correction regarding Vinge! I should add that anyone who likes "A Fire Upon the Deep" may also enjoy "A Deepness in the Sky," which is a kind of sequel (really a prequel) to "Fire.'
--Mike
I certainly agree that aliases have been useable since, well, forever. Almost all of my prior ISPs contain aliases that send email to my current account.
I took the portability question to be addressing something different, however -- the prospect of a Telcordia email-address database of the sort Cramer describes.
Thanks for the correction about "local number portability" -- for some reason I had the impression that it still had not been widely rolled out yet. (I apologize for my ignorance and offer only the defense that Internet law and telecom law are not quite the same thing just yet, so I'm sorry for not keeping up!) At least I did know there is no serious technical obstacle to local number portability, so maybe I can get a small amount of partial credit?
Best,
--Mike
"Am I to take it that Mr. Godwin is too busy to answer with some detail or that the detail doesn't exist?"
Well, I'm following new cases that come up, and it doesn't seem to me that they're cruising in under the radar the way they used to. Thanks to Slashdot and other venues, important cases tend to get publicized pretty quickly nowadays.
Obviously, there may be important cases that I don't know about, but, by definition, I can't answer any questions about them!
Best,
--Mike
You're right, of course, that I could have mentioned that anyone who wants to be a *patent* lawyer has to have hold an undergraduate degree in one of the approved science or engineering fields.
I took the question to be a more general one by someone who might want to practice the varieties of law I practice. For that, no science/technology degree is required, although it certainly doesn't hurt to have one.
With regard to the lameness of my answers, well, I did have some pretty interesting answers stored up, but I couldn't quite make them fit the questions I got asked!
Best regards,
--Mike