It's just shy of 10000 Kazakh Teng (except you are not allowed to export that currency, so maybe there is an overhead for acquiring it where you live).
When I was in a similar situation, I got a consulting contract with a fixed number of hours per week and a fixed hourly rate. Details are under NDA, but I typically charge EUR 60/hour to work on things that interest me very much and at least EUR 150/hour for boring stuff. I don't get much work at the second rate, but that's kind of the aim;-)
Check the details of the contract, i.e. who can terminate it, with how much advance warning, how conflicts are resolved, who pays for arbitration, if any, who pays for travelling, and so on. I always insist on the company paying arbitration, and paying my travel costs for arbitration, regardless of outcome. It lowers my risk significantly, and I have not yet had any trouble.
A poorly-administered OpenBSD box will be far less secure than a well-administered Windows box.
I'll give you that. If someone opens telnet and installs a 1988 version of WuFTP, anything can happen. But will a non-administered OpenBSD box (i.e. out of the box installation left alone) be less secure than a well-administered Windows box?
1.) Advertising is regulated and must be within professional guidelines defined by each state's Bar.
Well, I spend half a year in Miami, and those guidelines seem to be fairly low.
Well dressed lawyer in a suit, trying hard to look like an honest person: "Have you been in an accident? You may get some money, if if you were not hurt! Call 1-800-Shark-Shark-Shar NOW;-)
2.) Minimum fees are not fixed, don't you folks use the concept of 'pro bono' work? (lawyers ONLY get paid if they win the case when they take a case 'pro bono').
No, no contingency work allowed. And regulations are fairly strict, it is even forbidden for lawyers to give concrete legal advise to their friends for free. They can give general advise, and its harldy ever actionable if they give concrete advise, but its outside their code of conduct.
...
3.) Loser paying winners fees depends on state law. In Florida, thats exactly what happens, and that DEFINITELY helps contribute to so called insane fees. I'm sure even German lawyers don't give any leeway when they are calculating their time and billing when the other party is paying.
Yes, but reasonable legal fees (that you can recoup) are not based on hours, but only on the total value of the lawsuit (or other action). And those are fixed statewide (and most lawyers actually work for this amount). If you hire a hot shot that demands more, you pay the difference.
In other words, competition between lawyers is not mainly via price, but via quality.
...
I think it has more to do with the freedom allowed for within the regulations... don't forget that eve German politicians are mostly lawyers, just like the US and Britian.
They are? As far as I know, most of our MPs are actually mid-level civil servants, many in particular teachers.
My understanding was that in Germany, an attorney can initiate a suit in a matter without actually representing a plaintiff: can go shopping for lawsuits and find the plaintiffs later. Is that true? If it is, I wouldn't guarantee that Germany is less litigious than the US.
Two answers: It's an easily observable fact that Germany is a lot less litigious than the US.
Secondly, your understanding is wrong. There was an incident about some Free Software trademark issues that seems to have left that impression.
What really happened is this: In Germany, there exist certain non-profit (theoretical) corporations whose charter allows them to monitor the market ("Abmahnvereine"). If the detect a transgression of certain regulations (correct use of trademarks, untrue advertisments, wrong labelling...), they send a cease-and-desist, usually with a hefty (for individuals, small change for most corporations) bill for this friendly service. Up to then, no lawsuit is involved.
The corporation in question can now either cease and desist (and pay), or defend themselves in a court of law.
Examples of recent actions: Monitor sizes now have to be given in metric in Germany, and also state the size of the actually viewable area (not just the size of the tube). Floppy drive sizes can still be given in inch (a court ruled that 3.5 inch is not an exact measure anyways, but a type description).
Most often this system works ok, but sometimes things are sneaky because one of the most prolific and aggressive "Abmahnvereine" is under the control of a reasonably famous German lawyer, and many people are under the impression that he is actually fishing for lawsuits (in wich case he will represent the corporation, thus syphoning of the money for the "non-profit" - regardless of whether they win or lose).
What happens if they're both equally loose? Do they split the costs or is there some sort of tie-breaker?
In a civil lawsuit, there usually if a winner. But if the judge only awards partial damages, or grants a partial injunction, both parties pay proportion. If it's near 50/50, the normal ruling is for each to pay their own costs, and to share court costs.
Example: If I hit your car, you will win full damages for the car. But if you're not buckled up, you only get partial relief for the injuries. In that case, costs might be split 2/3rd for me, 1/3rd for you.
Like lawyers from other countries are any different.
You have to remember, lawyers are a lower lifeform, parasitic in nature. They are drawn to ambulances, disasters, and any other form of suffering like their cousins, the sharks, to blood.
Not that I want to defend lawyers, but American (US) lawyers are indeed a separate species from at least German ones. That might have something to do with different ecosystems. Over here, Lawers are reasonably regulated. Among other things, the following rules apply:
No advertising
Minimum fees are fixed, depending on the value of the lawsuit (and that will be set by the judge). The lawyer typically gets paid the same for winning and for loosing. He can't work for just a percentage of the damages awarded.
Looser pays the winners reasonable legal fees.
All in all, it makes for a lot less ligitious society. It also means that damages are reasonable to low (as opposed to much to high to insane in the US).
I anticipate this tool will be useless more often than not, simply because the slightest systemic change would result in zero matches. Replacing tabs with spaces, two spaces with three, or even line-feeds with carriage-returns would yield 100% false negatives if you use this to identify copyright violations.
I've read the man page that comes with the program, and such things are taken care of. There is an option that will ignore horizontal and vertical white space for comparison purposes, and another one that ignores curly braces (possibly as bad a source of false negatives as formatting).
All in all, it seems to be quite a nice little tool.
But, I think it was their high price and Jobs' attitude that ultimately killed the company. Plus, they were in debt to Hitachi by like, $400mil or something.
When I was a student, NeXT was trying to market those machines at us. They were cool machines, but much to expensive (and the optical drive of the first models was a stupid idea).
What killed them was SUN with much more bang for the buck (!) and shortly after that cheap 32 bit PCs.
Actually, back then we said "Get a NeXT - you'll get three machines in one. Powerful as a PC, priced like a workstation, sells like a mainframe."
Well, first of all I hope that German courts (indead, all courts) decide cases based on their merits and current law, not on wether they like one side better. It's the task of the legislative power to make laws that prefer the side we like better;-).
Secondly, no court was involved, but a German Professor of Law wrote a study.
And thirdly, the study was commissioned by a trade association of proprietary software companies -- what do you expect? Even without suspecting the author of willful misinterpretation, you can be sure that the sponsor carefully picked somebody who shared their vision or something to that effect.
Re:Not interested in being acquired?
on
Darl McBride Interview
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
That seems to have an "it's not about sex" ring to it.
Indeed. If you read through the article, you can see that he is actively threatening to make as much as nuisance of himself as possible:
Auditing IBM's customers...I strongly doubt that SCO has a leg to stand on, unless they have a direct contract with them as well.
Going over IBM with a fine-toothed comb to see what comes up...right. If they are so sure of themselves, they should push for a fast trial, which they obviously don't.
I think IBM is actually very smart in not doing anything at all while letting SCO run up legal bills and make more and more unwise threatening statement. Sooner or later, SCO will be deflated, and then the company actually will be totally bust.
This is exactly what the RIAA should've been doing from the beginning if they wanted to enforce their copyrights online.
You are exactly right. Offering a P2P service is not (or should not be) illegal - in fact, an open FTP or NFS server can be used for copyright violation, and somehow I don't see the RIAA going after SUN. Downloading copyrighted files is illegal, and hence the RIAA should go after the downloaders.
Of course this also means that people will finally notice how stupid many of our laws about copyright and restriction to fair use are, and that this might actually become a topic for elections - and hence we might have a chance of getting reasonable laws.
Well sorry to interrupt, but what's wrong with a nine to five attitude? Seems to me that your only problem is that you don't have it too;-)
I know, my point-of-view is a little bit too much over at the other edge,
Not at all. Yes, some flexibility is ok, but it should definitely go both ways. If you get time off later, some overtime is ok. But 12/7 for 4-6 weeks is just insane. I wonder how any management can expect people to be productive under these circumstances....
Hmm., can anybody give a concrete example of a software patent that actually makes sense?
The RSA patents and Unisys's LZW patents both were valid from my point of view. I don't know if there were patents on Diffie-Hellman key exchange (if yes, they have expired), but that also would have been a worthy software patent. Yes, Unisys mishandled the patent badly, but the original algorithm definitely was non-obvious and innovative.
Borderline cases (that, as far as I know have not been patented): Splay trees, A* algorithm.
Of course nowadays you can get a patent on "Doing X with a computer" and "Doing X with the Internet", where X can be anything from selling candy to taking a dump.
As far as I can tell, while there are some worthy software patents, the vast majority is crap. And even the few valid patents cover algorithms that would have been developed either way, so the patent system is not "promoting science and the useful arts" in the softeware field.
While an FTP site with anonymous access is much less private than a phone conversation or an individuals car or home, does this start to push into the realm of search warrants?
There is certainly a fuzzy area as to whether the public FTP site "consents" to entry and search in the same way a suspect can consent to letting authorites search his home or whatever.
I think there is a correct assumption that what is public is public - otherwise the whole internet breaks down. However, I wonder if a "robots.txt" file is a "technological measure to effectively control access to a copyrighted work", and a RIAA spider that spiders a server with such a file violates the DMCA.
Pfffff..... how can the earth rotate if the earth is flat?!?! The realities of the earth have been established a long time ago; it is a plane board, sort of like a game board mounted on top of an infinate tower of turtles. All this stuff about the earth being round? Reactionary bull shit.
Obviously, you are not nearly up to the state of science in Earthism. Of course the world is both flat and round (think a round piece of cardboard). And it rotates around the earth axis, which is mouted under the temple rock in Jerusalem (you did know that the middle of the earth is in Jerusalem, right?).
Now, in El Nino years, all the scientists move to South America to study the phenomenon. South America is on the outermost fringe of the flat world (as is North America), hence they move mass from near the center (Europe) to the fringe. So to maintain angular momentum, rate of rotation has to slow down.
Now since this information is out, more scientists are going to study El Nino, of course, making the problem worth. And once the US scientists (being slightly slower and always behind) notice this and flock to Peru to, we can even expect the world topple over. If George Bush were slightly smarter, he would move troops to South Korea, to balance things. Moving them to Iraq helps with the rotation problem, but not with the toppling problem...
If a developer doesn't like war, then he better put that in the license. Short of that, he has nothing to complain about.
Well, I disagree. Even if a developer grants the legal right to use his code in any way, he still retains a moral right to complain if people use his/her creation in a way he does not like. Cue RMS and GNU/Linux (even if he and the FSF created only part of a Linux distribution and little to nothing of the kernel.
Sure thing, chicken little. That would be why most free developers avoid patented garbage. You are familiar, I'm sure with some of the efforts such as Portable Net Graphics format? While it's disgusting that there would be patents on something so obvious as a file format that uses well know compresion routines, free developers obey the law even when it's stupid.
It's not the GIF format that was protected, but LZW compression itself. And while UNISYS behaviour with respect to the patent was quite despicable, I consider that patent one of the few reasonable software patents. LZW compression is a significant innovation, non-obvious, and non-trivial. Compare it with a patent to draw a cursor by XORing it with the background image - something I (re-) invented as a totally uneducated (w.r.t. computer science) 17 year old hobby programmer.
Developers are potentially liable for using or distributing patented code. Users are as well. Patents grant much stronger protection to intellectual property than copyrights do - but for a much shorter duration and they are (in theory) harder to obtain. However, submarine patents and the PTO's tendency to allow somebody to patent the practice of eating and breathing have caused all kinds of problems which shouldn't be there.
Sorry, the PTO did not grant patents on eating and breathing. Do you think they are stupid?
They only granted a patent on "eating and/or breathing while using a computing apparatus" and probably a separate one on "eating and/or breathing while using a device connected to an electronic network" -- totally reasonable things to patent, and absolutely non-obvious to a practitioner of the art!
I will fight any attempt to make different denominations be different sizes with my very last dying breath. That is the MOST annoying feature of other currency, and it would ruin all that is good about our currency. A nice standard size, easy automated handling in tellers and vending machines, easy handling in my wallet, easy to fan out and deal with. Someone will institude multi-sized bills over my dead body. I cannot imagine anything more annoying or pointless.
This is (at least) the second time somebody mentioned "fanning the money out". I have no idea what the purpose of this should be, but I suspect that this is only necessary because the US bills look and feel all the same.
I've traveled all over Europe, and I've been in the US about 10 times by now. I never understood the common warning against "counting your money in public places" -- while I see that this may draw pickpockets or worse, I never ever have the desire to count my money at all. A quick look into the wallet is fully sufficient to see approximately were I am in Europe - both with German Marks and now with Euros. Then I went to the US. Yes, I can read the numbers, but you still need to go through all your bills to get an idea of how much money you have in your wallet.
As to teller machines and vending machines: They work fine with different sized bills. I don't know if it's any harder to make a vending machine for Euros than for Dollars, but both are possible.
I can't see how eliminating pro bono work would reduce frivolous lawsuites.
Well, perhaps I misunderstood the exact meaning of pro bono. In Germany, a lawyer always has to charge at least the minimal fee, he is not allowed to work for free, and he is not allowed to charge only if the lawsuit is won, or to participate from the settlement money. So if you loose your case, you always have to pay at least the two lawyers (yours and your opponents). This acts as an entry barrier against lawsuits which you do not expect to win. In the US, a lawyer who has free time can much easier talk people into entering a lawsuit even if he only has an off-chance of winning (Hey! It's FREE!). If he gets one McDonalds jury out of 10 suits, he will do well!
this is IMO the problem of most western (particulary US) legal system.
At least here in Germany, there are are number of useful mechanisms to protect individuals against misuse of the legal system. First, if you are reasonably poor and the court recognizes that you have a reasonable (not necessarily winning) case, it will sponsor your legal representation. Secondly, lawyers usually work for a standard fee (based on the amount in controversy) determined by the equivalent of the board association. And finally, the court will award these standard fees and other reasonable costs to the winning side.
All in all, a normal lawsuit is not insanely expensive, and if you are right, you cannot easily be forced to give in by a big spender.
Another bonus is that lawyers are not allowed to work pro bono, which much reduces frivolous lawsuits.
I believe that similar checks are in force in most European countries.
I suspect that the original poster just used the language imprecise. My interpretation is the following:
"Legally, I'm pro-choice": Abortion should not be illegal.
"Morally I'm pro-life": I want there to be as few abortions as possible.
This is a perfectly reasonable position - you can be against abortions, but still value the right of the women to her own body higher than the life of the fetus. Or you can recognize that making abortions illegal does not necessary reduce the number of abortions - it just forces women into a black market, where they receive less counceling and worse medical care.
Ignoring the legal reasons why you are wrong; the moral question is "Why not"? A company consists of
people. If people have a right to privacy, how do you take it away from them at work simply because they
are now "at the company". Have I given away all my rights against you and the world as soon as I reach the
company parking lot? Do I get it back at 7:00PM? Is the right to privacy somehow connected to the time
clock?
This is a classical fallacy. Just because some parts of an object have a certain property ("right to privacy"), it does not follow that the object has. For a simple example, consider a piece of paper, which is (arguably) lightweight. Now compare the Encyclopedia Britannica (in print).
The people in the company certainly have a right to privacy (well, certain to me). However, as most rights, this is not absolute. Their actions while acting as agents of the company do not fall under this right - for the simple reason that they are not (or should not) be acting on their own behalf.
When a lawsuit came along we had to turn over the contents of our local email clients as well, so if you saved that message from the boss that said "Screw the client and don't tell them about this problem.", you just cost the company some large sums of money.
Note that this is indeed how it should be! If your company decided to screw the customer, it should pay up. Indeed, with current prices for storage, I think it would be a very reasonable demand that companies archive all internal communication about forever (or at least for 25 years). It's not like a company has a right to privacy.
If you don't want to loose in court, don't use questionable business practices!
Slashdot Mirror
Alternatively, try any online currency converter.
Consulting agencies tyically charge significantly higher rates.
Check the details of the contract, i.e. who can terminate it, with how much advance warning, how conflicts are resolved, who pays for arbitration, if any, who pays for travelling, and so on. I always insist on the company paying arbitration, and paying my travel costs for arbitration, regardless of outcome. It lowers my risk significantly, and I have not yet had any trouble.
Well dressed lawyer in a suit, trying hard to look like an honest person: "Have you been in an accident? You may get some money, if if you were not hurt! Call 1-800-Shark-Shark-Shar NOW ;-)
No, no contingency work allowed. And regulations are fairly strict, it is even forbidden for lawyers to give concrete legal advise to their friends for free. They can give general advise, and its harldy ever actionable if they give concrete advise, but its outside their code of conduct. Yes, but reasonable legal fees (that you can recoup) are not based on hours, but only on the total value of the lawsuit (or other action). And those are fixed statewide (and most lawyers actually work for this amount). If you hire a hot shot that demands more, you pay the difference.In other words, competition between lawyers is not mainly via price, but via quality.
They are? As far as I know, most of our MPs are actually mid-level civil servants, many in particular teachers.
Secondly, your understanding is wrong. There was an incident about some Free Software trademark issues that seems to have left that impression.
What really happened is this: In Germany, there exist certain non-profit (theoretical) corporations whose charter allows them to monitor the market ("Abmahnvereine"). If the detect a transgression of certain regulations (correct use of trademarks, untrue advertisments, wrong labelling...), they send a cease-and-desist, usually with a hefty (for individuals, small change for most corporations) bill for this friendly service. Up to then, no lawsuit is involved.
The corporation in question can now either cease and desist (and pay), or defend themselves in a court of law.
Examples of recent actions: Monitor sizes now have to be given in metric in Germany, and also state the size of the actually viewable area (not just the size of the tube). Floppy drive sizes can still be given in inch (a court ruled that 3.5 inch is not an exact measure anyways, but a type description).
Most often this system works ok, but sometimes things are sneaky because one of the most prolific and aggressive "Abmahnvereine" is under the control of a reasonably famous German lawyer, and many people are under the impression that he is actually fishing for lawsuits (in wich case he will represent the corporation, thus syphoning of the money for the "non-profit" - regardless of whether they win or lose).
In a civil lawsuit, there usually if a winner. But if the judge only awards partial damages, or grants a partial injunction, both parties pay proportion. If it's near 50/50, the normal ruling is for each to pay their own costs, and to share court costs.
Example: If I hit your car, you will win full damages for the car. But if you're not buckled up, you only get partial relief for the injuries. In that case, costs might be split 2/3rd for me, 1/3rd for you.
Not that I want to defend lawyers, but American (US) lawyers are indeed a separate species from at least German ones. That might have something to do with different ecosystems. Over here, Lawers are reasonably regulated. Among other things, the following rules apply:
- No advertising
- Minimum fees are fixed, depending on the value of the lawsuit (and that will be set by the judge). The lawyer typically gets paid the same for winning and for loosing. He can't work for just a percentage of the damages awarded.
- Looser pays the winners reasonable legal fees.
All in all, it makes for a lot less ligitious society. It also means that damages are reasonable to low (as opposed to much to high to insane in the US).All in all, it seems to be quite a nice little tool.
What killed them was SUN with much more bang for the buck (!) and shortly after that cheap 32 bit PCs.
Actually, back then we said "Get a NeXT - you'll get three machines in one. Powerful as a PC, priced like a workstation, sells like a mainframe."
Secondly, no court was involved, but a German Professor of Law wrote a study.
And thirdly, the study was commissioned by a trade association of proprietary software companies -- what do you expect? Even without suspecting the author of willful misinterpretation, you can be sure that the sponsor carefully picked somebody who shared their vision or something to that effect.
- Auditing IBM's customers...I strongly doubt that SCO has a leg to stand on, unless they have a direct contract with them as well.
- Going over IBM with a fine-toothed comb to see what comes up...right. If they are so sure of themselves, they should push for a fast trial, which they obviously don't.
I think IBM is actually very smart in not doing anything at all while letting SCO run up legal bills and make more and more unwise threatening statement. Sooner or later, SCO will be deflated, and then the company actually will be totally bust.Of course this also means that people will finally notice how stupid many of our laws about copyright and restriction to fair use are, and that this might actually become a topic for elections - and hence we might have a chance of getting reasonable laws.
The RSA patents and Unisys's LZW patents both were valid from my point of view. I don't know if there were patents on Diffie-Hellman key exchange (if yes, they have expired), but that also would have been a worthy software patent. Yes, Unisys mishandled the patent badly, but the original algorithm definitely was non-obvious and innovative.
Borderline cases (that, as far as I know have not been patented): Splay trees, A* algorithm.
Of course nowadays you can get a patent on "Doing X with a computer" and "Doing X with the Internet", where X can be anything from selling candy to taking a dump.
As far as I can tell, while there are some worthy software patents, the vast majority is crap. And even the few valid patents cover algorithms that would have been developed either way, so the patent system is not "promoting science and the useful arts" in the softeware field.
I think there is a correct assumption that what is public is public - otherwise the whole internet breaks down. However,
I wonder if a "robots.txt" file is a "technological measure to effectively control access to a copyrighted work", and a RIAA spider that spiders a server with such a file violates the DMCA.
Obviously, you are not nearly up to the state of science in Earthism. Of course the world is both flat and round (think a round piece of cardboard). And it rotates around the earth axis, which is mouted under the temple rock in Jerusalem (you did know that the middle of the earth is in Jerusalem, right?).
Now, in El Nino years, all the scientists move to South America to study the phenomenon. South America is on the outermost fringe of the flat world (as is North America), hence they move mass from near the center (Europe) to the fringe. So to maintain angular momentum, rate of rotation has to slow down.
Now since this information is out, more scientists are going to study El Nino, of course, making the problem worth. And once the US scientists (being slightly slower and always behind) notice this and flock to Peru to, we can even expect the world topple over. If George Bush were slightly smarter, he would move troops to South Korea, to balance things. Moving them to Iraq helps with the rotation problem, but not with the toppling problem...
Well, I disagree. Even if a developer grants the legal right to use his code in any way, he still retains a moral right to complain if people use his/her creation in a way he does not like. Cue RMS and GNU/Linux (even if he and the FSF created only part of a Linux distribution and little to nothing of the kernel.
It's not the GIF format that was protected, but LZW compression itself. And while UNISYS behaviour with respect to the patent was quite despicable, I consider that patent one of the few reasonable software patents. LZW compression is a significant innovation, non-obvious, and non-trivial. Compare it with a patent to draw a cursor by XORing it with the background image - something I (re-) invented as a totally uneducated (w.r.t. computer science) 17 year old hobby programmer.
They only granted a patent on "eating and/or breathing while using a computing apparatus" and probably a separate one on "eating and/or breathing while using a device connected to an electronic network" -- totally reasonable things to patent, and absolutely non-obvious to a practitioner of the art!
This is (at least) the second time somebody mentioned "fanning the money out". I have no idea what the purpose of this should be, but I suspect that this is only necessary because the US bills look and feel all the same.
I've traveled all over Europe, and I've been in the US about 10 times by now. I never understood the common warning against "counting your money in public places" -- while I see that this may draw pickpockets or worse, I never ever have the desire to count my money at all. A quick look into the wallet is fully sufficient to see approximately were I am in Europe - both with German Marks and now with Euros. Then I went to the US. Yes, I can read the numbers, but you still need to go through all your bills to get an idea of how much money you have in your wallet.
As to teller machines and vending machines: They work fine with different sized bills. I don't know if it's any harder to make a vending machine for Euros than for Dollars, but both are possible.
Well, perhaps I misunderstood the exact meaning of pro bono. In Germany, a lawyer always has to charge at least the minimal fee, he is not allowed to work for free, and he is not allowed to charge only if the lawsuit is won, or to participate from the settlement money. So if you loose your case, you always have to pay at least the two lawyers (yours and your opponents). This acts as an entry barrier against lawsuits which you do not expect to win. In the US, a lawyer who has free time can much easier talk people into entering a lawsuit even if he only has an off-chance of winning (Hey! It's FREE!). If he gets one McDonalds jury out of 10 suits, he will do well!
All in all, a normal lawsuit is not insanely expensive, and if you are right, you cannot easily be forced to give in by a big spender.
Another bonus is that lawyers are not allowed to work pro bono, which much reduces frivolous lawsuits.
I believe that similar checks are in force in most European countries.
-
"Legally, I'm pro-choice": Abortion should not be illegal.
- "Morally I'm pro-life": I want there to be as few abortions as possible.
This is a perfectly reasonable position - you can be against abortions, but still value the right of the women to her own body higher than the life of the fetus. Or you can recognize that making abortions illegal does not necessary reduce the number of abortions - it just forces women into a black market, where they receive less counceling and worse medical care.The people in the company certainly have a right to privacy (well, certain to me). However, as most rights, this is not absolute. Their actions while acting as agents of the company do not fall under this right - for the simple reason that they are not (or should not) be acting on their own behalf.
If you don't want to loose in court, don't use questionable business practices!