"6. Choose Supermarkets that Don't Use Loyalty Cards. Be loyal to supermarkets that offer discounts without requiring enrollment in a loyalty club. If you have to use a supermarket shopping card, be sure to exchange it with your friends or with strangers."
Huh? This really seems quite trivial. And anyway, if you're so paranoid that you don't want anyone to know what you're buying from the grocery store, you can always:
1) Not use the card when you're buying your monthly supply of liqueur, cigarettes, and condoms
2) Give a made-up name when you get the card. It's not like they care enough to check.
The thing is, at the moment even the easily-editable text file logs kept by most IM programs are considered sufficient 'proof' of a conversation that the authorities can nab you based on them. The standard for proving that a conversation wasn't added to later is already through the floor.
Crying "I published the key, anyone could have added to that conversation!" to the police probably won't help you very much.
"Here is my Plan B: The Gov't offer a $100B prize to the first PRIVATE venture to take 3 humans to the Moon and back, and $250B if they can make it to Mars and back. The Gov't posts the money up front and it keeps earning interest each year until it is claimed. Whoever wins, they can claim the money, they own the technology and they corner the market. What would YOU give to send your most hated celebrity/movie star to Mars so you wouldnt hear from them or see them for 2 yrs?;) Or what would YOU pay for a trip to the Moon?"
Even a prize that large would probably be insufficient to get companies or individuals working on a Mars mission. Even if you get a giant prize for pulling it off, you still have to pay the initial cost of getting there. The star-up costs would be so staggering that even a huge consortium of companies would have a very difficult time funding it. Simply developing the necessary heavy-lift launch technology - something that the U.S. doesn't currently have - would require many billions of dollars. In many ways private companies would have a big disadvantage even compared to poor bureaucracy-ridden NASA, since NASA has already invested billions in their launch facilities and personnel base.
Also, in a situation like this competition could actually be a bad thing - if there can only be one winner then any competing company would be risking an astronomical (heh) amount of money in exchange for basically zero return, since the winner would be virtually assured to dominate the space industry for a long time to come.
" Unless they were using a laser to shoot the ball into the number they wanted, there's nothing at all illegal about this in the U.S., and I'm heartened to read the U.K. either."
In the U.S. it's illegal to use and sort of electronic computer to 'assist' with casino gambling. The law's main purpose is to prevent card counters from using digital devices to help keep track of which cards have been played, but the law would certainly cover this sort of thing as well.
I agree that it's possible for one to interpret the comic as a parody of Strawberry Shortcake rather than "Alice"; in fact, if someone who was unaware of American McGee or his twisted line of videogames were to view the comic they would likely interpret it that way, since that would probably be the only meaning that they could extract from it.
I'm not aware of any copyright cases involving a claim that the possibility for someone misconstruing the purpose of an otherwise illegitimate use of copyrighted material would cause the use to become legitimate, but I doubt that such an argument would hold up. The fair use laws that allow parody say that "the author's purpose" must be taken into consideration, which seems to suggest that only the actual intent of the authors is important - not how others perceive it.
"You've got a pretty one dimensional view of things if you don't think it can be both, or if you think art has to be about only one thing.
Frankly, the concept wouldn't work if it wasn't parodizing both at the same time. Try to imagine a parody of Alice that used Strawberry Shortcake without parodizing Strawberry Shortcake. In that case, you'd have a point, but I doubt it would be a very funny comic."
In order for a parody to be considered "fair use" it has to provide some sort of commentary or criticism related to the copyrighted work that's being exploited. For example, if I thought that the Disney corporation was run by fascists I could make a cartoon that depicted Mickey Mouse dressed in a Nazi uniform and it would be fair use. On the other hand, I couldn't take a copyrighted character that was owned by another corporation and use it to make fun of Disney. So if I were to draw a picture of Bugs Bunny dressed in a Nazi uniform and write "This is what Bugs would look like if he were owned by the fascists at Disney" it would not be fair use.
What Penny Arcade did is an example of the latter. The mere fact that they depicted Strawberry Shortcake as an S&M dominatrix doesn't make their use of the SS character a protected parody, because the purpose of the dominatrix Strawberry Shortcake depiction was to make fun of "Alice", not to provide any sort of commentary on Strawberry Shortcake.
"Personally, I thought the SS parody was more a parody of SS than of AMcGA. I'd played the demo once, so I was aware of Alice and it's style, and I could argue that a reasonable person could interpret PA's parody in this way. After all, it's generally refered to as the Strawberry Shortcake parody, not the Alice parody."
I'm sure you could try to argue that they were parodying Strawberry Shortcake rather than "Alice" in their comic, but that would be more of a sleaze-ball lawyer defense trick than an actual reasonable argument. Since Penny Arcade is a comic about parodying video games rather than small children's toys, and since the news post that accompanied the comic talked extensively about "Alice" but said almost nothing about Strawberry Shortcake, it's pretty clear (to any reasonable person, anyway) that they were using SS to parody Alice, rather than the other way around.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for the cops and prosecutors because juries are starting to want to base their decisions on objective scientific data rather than circumstantial evidence and notoriously unreliable eye-witness testimony?
Sorry, but claiming that building the space station is 'critical training' for future space operations pretty much instantly flags you as a NASA fanboy among serious space analysts. NASA likes to try to pass the space station off as necessary 'practice', but there is little question that it is nothing more than a tremendously expensive NASA jobs program that produces negligible scientific/technical returns.
I'm not sure what you're replying to here. Perhaps you read some things into my post that aren't really there. It's inarguable that Gatto is is conspiracy theorist, as evidenced by his previous book "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" Perhaps he's right, perhaps not. I just think it's interesting that he toned down the wild theories in his latest book. I wonder if he really changed his mind, or if he just thinks people will take his message more seriously this way.
In this newest book Gatto distances himself from the idea that our public school system is part of a deliberate conspiracy by the elite corporate/government leaders to generate a large pool of unthinking laborers and consumers. Indeed, he says (as quoted earlier in the review) that
"With conspiracy so close to the surface of the American imagination and American reality, I can only approach with trepidation the task of discouraging you in advance from thinking my book the chronicle of some vast diabolical conspiracy to seize all our children for the personal ends of a small, elite minority."
This is quite a change of tune for Gatto. In his last book, "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" that was published in 2002, he rather explicitly claims that government officials and business leaders are involved in an active, deliberate conspiracy to make us all stupid, obedient, yet productive workers. It's interesting that he seems to be changing his stance from his last book. I wonder if he has really changed his opinion, or if he's just hoping that people will take him more seriously if his claims are somewhat less outlandish.
"And if the shuttle program is over, manned space flight as we know it would be over. While many think that the shuttle is a very poor vehicle (actually it's amazingly engineered, but always lacked a real purpose), having it around pushes Congress to fund something simpler and cheaper."
Manned space flight has been over in any real sense since the shuttle's inception. All we've done is putter around aimlessly in earth orbit.
" For example, when he says "the terrorists hate our freedom," instead of accusing him of stupidity, try to disprove that claim in a reasonable, intelligent manner."
To most people who have two brain cells to rub together, it's so obvious why this is stupid that it's not worth belaboring the point. It's much like if you were to witness someone slamming the back of their hatch-back car closed on a load of wooden posts that don't quite fit in the car, causing his rear window to shatter. You might comment "That was really stupid" to the guy standing next to you, and it wouldn't really be necessary to go into a detailed explanation as to why.
I've had several bad experiences with off-shore tech support recently in which the support people have actually lied to me in an effort to get me off the phone. I can only assume that they get paid based on call volume, and want to pack as many calls as possible into as short a time as possible.
"Example: refusal to extradite criminals who might be subject to a death penalty in the US. Moral indignation is the reason why."
Actually, it's nearly impossible to get France to extradite ANYONE to ANYWHERE. The death penalty has little to do with it.
Re:turnitin.com is illegal
on
Cheating Made Easy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Hate to burst your bubble, but many high school teachers, schools and districts are asking parents to sign waivers."
You might be right in some cases, but most schools don't do this. Turnitin.com actually encourages schools to not inform students. And in any case, it's very questionable whether or not a public school can compel students to sign a FERPA waver.
"And I know, first hand, that some are removing all identifying information except a unigue ID from the essays."
Sorry, but simply stripping off identifying information like a student's name doesn't allow you to get around FERPA. It is well-established that FERPA applies to all graded work that is turned in by a student, even if the student's name isn't included.
"No offense, but your smarmy attempt to invalidate the legitimate use of the service, makes you sound as if you would suffer should your school subscribe."
I guess different people have different opinions regarding what qualifies as 'smarmy'. Personally, I consider it smarmy for a school to violate privacy laws in the name of expedience and for companies to violate copyright laws in order to make a profit. You apparently consider it smarmy for someone to be concerned that their rights are respected. Difference of opinion, I guess.
"While you might find some high school teacher, administrator or superintendent intimidate into relenting, please try this argument with a college professor."
Actually I teach (as a graduate student) at a major state university, and many of the professors here have stopped using turnitin.com because of the legal risks involved. It is a pretty clear violation of both FERPA and the Copyright Act. Most college professors are smart enough to understand the law.
Although the iParadigms corporation (the parent company of turnitin.com) likes to scream to anyone who will listen that there's nothing wrong with turnitin.com, the truth is that by using it schools are almost guaranteed to violate both copyright laws and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
When a teacher submits a paper to turnitin.com the paper is archived indefinitely in their database for comparison to future paper submissions. In nearly all cases this is done without the student's knowledge or permission, which violates that student's copyrights. Remember, YOU own the rights to any school papers that you create, even if your only purpose in writing the paper is to fulfill a class assignment. There are certain instances in which a school will require a student to sign an intellectual property rights waver that gives up the copyrights on anything that they create to the school, but this happens almost exclusively with university graduate students - not the undergrads and highschoolers that turnitin.com is aimed at. Turnitin.com is using your copyrighted material for commercial purposes without your permission.
All copyright issues aside, use of turnitin.com also violates FERPA, which is a federal law prohibiting schools from sharing student's records, coursework, or pretty much anything else with anyone outside the school system (like, say, a for-profit corporation) without the student's explicit permission. The entire turnitin.com company is based around violating federal law.
" Yes you are missing something, it's called DRM!
the whole point of NOT using mp3s is to restrict people to when/where/how they can use their purchase."
Well I realize that, but I don't understand how Apple refusing to share their particular DRM scheme hurts Virgin in any way since you can play *any* mp3 on an iPod, no matter where you get it. So I don't understand how specifically Apple is hurting Virgin's business. I mean, Virgin can still start up an online music store to sell me music and I'll be able to play it on my iPod. It's not like the iPod is DRM locked so that I can't play other people's music on it.
How is Virgin being hurt by their current inability to use the iTunes DRM system? Since the iPod can play any mp3 file no matter where you get it from, it shouldn't be interfering with Virgin's (or anyone else's) ability to sell people digital music to play on the iPod. Right?
Any time a new technology or device is created society has to decide whether or not it should be legal. The only way to do this is to weigh the possible harm that could come from illegitimate use vs. the benefit of legitimate use. Even most die-hard libertarians acknowledge that there has to be some limits to what people are allows to own. The most extreme example of this would probably be the fact that you can't own a nuclear weapon, since the possible harm from illegitimate use is very high and the possible legitimate use is almost nonexistent. A more reasonable example would probably be a silencer for a handgun; most people can't own handgun silencers because the possibility for harm done through criminal misuse is far larger than the possible benefits that society could derive through legitimate silencer use. So keep in mind that there clearly is some threshold where the law can say that people shouldn't have something because the possible harm far outweighs the possible good. I'm not saying that this anonymous network routing technology necessarily meets that threshold, but I do think that it's an issue worth seriously considering. Like I said before, I realize that there are legitimate uses for this sort of technology; but many people here at slashdot seem to believe that any shred of possible legitimate usefulness is enough to validate a technology, no matter how potentially harmful it might be.
If you think that your business competitors can break modern encryption algorithms like AES, I'd be really curious to hear what sort of business you're in.
This sort of thing is of little use to anyone but criminals. Yes, I realize that you shouldn't necessarily ban or restrict something that has legitimate uses simply because it's also useful for criminals, but I think it's worth asking whether or not something like this would really be a net benefit to society. I know the Freenet crowd likes to make constant reference to oppressive governments, political dissidents, etc., but does anyone really think that the ratio of illegal porn and illicitly-traded copyrighted material to legitimate use isn't astronomical?
You can sue anyone for anything, no matter how petty or ridiculous - and people do, all the time. It doesn't mean that you're likely to win, or even that your lawsuit has any shred of legitimacy. Most of these sorts of suits are summarily dismissed by the judge before the trial even starts.
Slashdot Mirror
All you have to do to make your case mod twice as cool, apparently, is make it twice the size!
"6. Choose Supermarkets that Don't Use Loyalty Cards. Be loyal to supermarkets that offer discounts without requiring enrollment in a loyalty club. If you have to use a supermarket shopping card, be sure to exchange it with your friends or with strangers."
Huh? This really seems quite trivial. And anyway, if you're so paranoid that you don't want anyone to know what you're buying from the grocery store, you can always:
1) Not use the card when you're buying your monthly supply of liqueur, cigarettes, and condoms
2) Give a made-up name when you get the card. It's not like they care enough to check.
The thing is, at the moment even the easily-editable text file logs kept by most IM programs are considered sufficient 'proof' of a conversation that the authorities can nab you based on them. The standard for proving that a conversation wasn't added to later is already through the floor.
Crying "I published the key, anyone could have added to that conversation!" to the police probably won't help you very much.
Virtually all spam email has fake headers, so presumably they would never even get a "your email bounced" message back.
"Here is my Plan B: The Gov't offer a $100B prize to the first PRIVATE venture to take 3 humans to the Moon and back, and $250B if they can make it to Mars and back. The Gov't posts the money up front and it keeps earning interest each year until it is claimed. Whoever wins, they can claim the money, they own the technology and they corner the market. What would YOU give to send your most hated celebrity/movie star to Mars so you wouldnt hear from them or see them for 2 yrs? ;) Or what would YOU pay for a trip to the Moon?"
Even a prize that large would probably be insufficient to get companies or individuals working on a Mars mission. Even if you get a giant prize for pulling it off, you still have to pay the initial cost of getting there. The star-up costs would be so staggering that even a huge consortium of companies would have a very difficult time funding it. Simply developing the necessary heavy-lift launch technology - something that the U.S. doesn't currently have - would require many billions of dollars. In many ways private companies would have a big disadvantage even compared to poor bureaucracy-ridden NASA, since NASA has already invested billions in their launch facilities and personnel base.
Also, in a situation like this competition could actually be a bad thing - if there can only be one winner then any competing company would be risking an astronomical (heh) amount of money in exchange for basically zero return, since the winner would be virtually assured to dominate the space industry for a long time to come.
" Unless they were using a laser to shoot the ball into the number they wanted, there's nothing at all illegal about this in the U.S., and I'm heartened to read the U.K. either."
In the U.S. it's illegal to use and sort of electronic computer to 'assist' with casino gambling. The law's main purpose is to prevent card counters from using digital devices to help keep track of which cards have been played, but the law would certainly cover this sort of thing as well.
I agree that it's possible for one to interpret the comic as a parody of Strawberry Shortcake rather than "Alice"; in fact, if someone who was unaware of American McGee or his twisted line of videogames were to view the comic they would likely interpret it that way, since that would probably be the only meaning that they could extract from it.
I'm not aware of any copyright cases involving a claim that the possibility for someone misconstruing the purpose of an otherwise illegitimate use of copyrighted material would cause the use to become legitimate, but I doubt that such an argument would hold up. The fair use laws that allow parody say that "the author's purpose" must be taken into consideration, which seems to suggest that only the actual intent of the authors is important - not how others perceive it.
But I admit that I could be wrong about that.
"You've got a pretty one dimensional view of things if you don't think it can be both, or if you think art has to be about only one thing. Frankly, the concept wouldn't work if it wasn't parodizing both at the same time. Try to imagine a parody of Alice that used Strawberry Shortcake without parodizing Strawberry Shortcake. In that case, you'd have a point, but I doubt it would be a very funny comic."
In order for a parody to be considered "fair use" it has to provide some sort of commentary or criticism related to the copyrighted work that's being exploited. For example, if I thought that the Disney corporation was run by fascists I could make a cartoon that depicted Mickey Mouse dressed in a Nazi uniform and it would be fair use. On the other hand, I couldn't take a copyrighted character that was owned by another corporation and use it to make fun of Disney. So if I were to draw a picture of Bugs Bunny dressed in a Nazi uniform and write "This is what Bugs would look like if he were owned by the fascists at Disney" it would not be fair use. What Penny Arcade did is an example of the latter. The mere fact that they depicted Strawberry Shortcake as an S&M dominatrix doesn't make their use of the SS character a protected parody, because the purpose of the dominatrix Strawberry Shortcake depiction was to make fun of "Alice", not to provide any sort of commentary on Strawberry Shortcake.
"Personally, I thought the SS parody was more a parody of SS than of AMcGA. I'd played the demo once, so I was aware of Alice and it's style, and I could argue that a reasonable person could interpret PA's parody in this way. After all, it's generally refered to as the Strawberry Shortcake parody, not the Alice parody."
I'm sure you could try to argue that they were parodying Strawberry Shortcake rather than "Alice" in their comic, but that would be more of a sleaze-ball lawyer defense trick than an actual reasonable argument. Since Penny Arcade is a comic about parodying video games rather than small children's toys, and since the news post that accompanied the comic talked extensively about "Alice" but said almost nothing about Strawberry Shortcake, it's pretty clear (to any reasonable person, anyway) that they were using SS to parody Alice, rather than the other way around.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for the cops and prosecutors because juries are starting to want to base their decisions on objective scientific data rather than circumstantial evidence and notoriously unreliable eye-witness testimony?
Sorry, but claiming that building the space station is 'critical training' for future space operations pretty much instantly flags you as a NASA fanboy among serious space analysts. NASA likes to try to pass the space station off as necessary 'practice', but there is little question that it is nothing more than a tremendously expensive NASA jobs program that produces negligible scientific/technical returns.
I'm not sure what you're replying to here. Perhaps you read some things into my post that aren't really there. It's inarguable that Gatto is is conspiracy theorist, as evidenced by his previous book "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" Perhaps he's right, perhaps not. I just think it's interesting that he toned down the wild theories in his latest book. I wonder if he really changed his mind, or if he just thinks people will take his message more seriously this way.
In this newest book Gatto distances himself from the idea that our public school system is part of a deliberate conspiracy by the elite corporate/government leaders to generate a large pool of unthinking laborers and consumers. Indeed, he says (as quoted earlier in the review) that
"With conspiracy so close to the surface of the American imagination and American reality, I can only approach with trepidation the task of discouraging you in advance from thinking my book the chronicle of some vast diabolical conspiracy to seize all our children for the personal ends of a small, elite minority."
This is quite a change of tune for Gatto. In his last book, "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" that was published in 2002, he rather explicitly claims that government officials and business leaders are involved in an active, deliberate conspiracy to make us all stupid, obedient, yet productive workers. It's interesting that he seems to be changing his stance from his last book. I wonder if he has really changed his opinion, or if he's just hoping that people will take him more seriously if his claims are somewhat less outlandish.
"And if the shuttle program is over, manned space flight as we know it would be over. While many think that the shuttle is a very poor vehicle (actually it's amazingly engineered, but always lacked a real purpose), having it around pushes Congress to fund something simpler and cheaper."
Manned space flight has been over in any real sense since the shuttle's inception. All we've done is putter around aimlessly in earth orbit.
" For example, when he says "the terrorists hate our freedom," instead of accusing him of stupidity, try to disprove that claim in a reasonable, intelligent manner."
To most people who have two brain cells to rub together, it's so obvious why this is stupid that it's not worth belaboring the point. It's much like if you were to witness someone slamming the back of their hatch-back car closed on a load of wooden posts that don't quite fit in the car, causing his rear window to shatter. You might comment "That was really stupid" to the guy standing next to you, and it wouldn't really be necessary to go into a detailed explanation as to why.
I've had several bad experiences with off-shore tech support recently in which the support people have actually lied to me in an effort to get me off the phone. I can only assume that they get paid based on call volume, and want to pack as many calls as possible into as short a time as possible.
"Example: refusal to extradite criminals who might be subject to a death penalty in the US. Moral indignation is the reason why."
Actually, it's nearly impossible to get France to extradite ANYONE to ANYWHERE. The death penalty has little to do with it.
"Hate to burst your bubble, but many high school teachers, schools and districts are asking parents to sign waivers."
You might be right in some cases, but most schools don't do this. Turnitin.com actually encourages schools to not inform students. And in any case, it's very questionable whether or not a public school can compel students to sign a FERPA waver.
"And I know, first hand, that some are removing all identifying information except a unigue ID from the essays."
Sorry, but simply stripping off identifying information like a student's name doesn't allow you to get around FERPA. It is well-established that FERPA applies to all graded work that is turned in by a student, even if the student's name isn't included.
"No offense, but your smarmy attempt to invalidate the legitimate use of the service, makes you sound as if you would suffer should your school subscribe."
I guess different people have different opinions regarding what qualifies as 'smarmy'. Personally, I consider it smarmy for a school to violate privacy laws in the name of expedience and for companies to violate copyright laws in order to make a profit. You apparently consider it smarmy for someone to be concerned that their rights are respected. Difference of opinion, I guess.
"While you might find some high school teacher, administrator or superintendent intimidate into relenting, please try this argument with a college professor."
Actually I teach (as a graduate student) at a major state university, and many of the professors here have stopped using turnitin.com because of the legal risks involved. It is a pretty clear violation of both FERPA and the Copyright Act. Most college professors are smart enough to understand the law.
Although the iParadigms corporation (the parent company of turnitin.com) likes to scream to anyone who will listen that there's nothing wrong with turnitin.com, the truth is that by using it schools are almost guaranteed to violate both copyright laws and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
When a teacher submits a paper to turnitin.com the paper is archived indefinitely in their database for comparison to future paper submissions. In nearly all cases this is done without the student's knowledge or permission, which violates that student's copyrights. Remember, YOU own the rights to any school papers that you create, even if your only purpose in writing the paper is to fulfill a class assignment. There are certain instances in which a school will require a student to sign an intellectual property rights waver that gives up the copyrights on anything that they create to the school, but this happens almost exclusively with university graduate students - not the undergrads and highschoolers that turnitin.com is aimed at. Turnitin.com is using your copyrighted material for commercial purposes without your permission.
All copyright issues aside, use of turnitin.com also violates FERPA, which is a federal law prohibiting schools from sharing student's records, coursework, or pretty much anything else with anyone outside the school system (like, say, a for-profit corporation) without the student's explicit permission. The entire turnitin.com company is based around violating federal law.
" Yes you are missing something, it's called DRM! the whole point of NOT using mp3s is to restrict people to when/where/how they can use their purchase."
Well I realize that, but I don't understand how Apple refusing to share their particular DRM scheme hurts Virgin in any way since you can play *any* mp3 on an iPod, no matter where you get it. So I don't understand how specifically Apple is hurting Virgin's business. I mean, Virgin can still start up an online music store to sell me music and I'll be able to play it on my iPod. It's not like the iPod is DRM locked so that I can't play other people's music on it.
How is Virgin being hurt by their current inability to use the iTunes DRM system? Since the iPod can play any mp3 file no matter where you get it from, it shouldn't be interfering with Virgin's (or anyone else's) ability to sell people digital music to play on the iPod. Right?
sigh
Any time a new technology or device is created society has to decide whether or not it should be legal. The only way to do this is to weigh the possible harm that could come from illegitimate use vs. the benefit of legitimate use. Even most die-hard libertarians acknowledge that there has to be some limits to what people are allows to own. The most extreme example of this would probably be the fact that you can't own a nuclear weapon, since the possible harm from illegitimate use is very high and the possible legitimate use is almost nonexistent. A more reasonable example would probably be a silencer for a handgun; most people can't own handgun silencers because the possibility for harm done through criminal misuse is far larger than the possible benefits that society could derive through legitimate silencer use. So keep in mind that there clearly is some threshold where the law can say that people shouldn't have something because the possible harm far outweighs the possible good. I'm not saying that this anonymous network routing technology necessarily meets that threshold, but I do think that it's an issue worth seriously considering. Like I said before, I realize that there are legitimate uses for this sort of technology; but many people here at slashdot seem to believe that any shred of possible legitimate usefulness is enough to validate a technology, no matter how potentially harmful it might be.
If you think that your business competitors can break modern encryption algorithms like AES, I'd be really curious to hear what sort of business you're in.
This sort of thing is of little use to anyone but criminals. Yes, I realize that you shouldn't necessarily ban or restrict something that has legitimate uses simply because it's also useful for criminals, but I think it's worth asking whether or not something like this would really be a net benefit to society. I know the Freenet crowd likes to make constant reference to oppressive governments, political dissidents, etc., but does anyone really think that the ratio of illegal porn and illicitly-traded copyrighted material to legitimate use isn't astronomical?
You can sue anyone for anything, no matter how petty or ridiculous - and people do, all the time. It doesn't mean that you're likely to win, or even that your lawsuit has any shred of legitimacy. Most of these sorts of suits are summarily dismissed by the judge before the trial even starts.