They have been sentenced to a year in jail along with extensive fines. for operating their Bit Torrent search engine.
I don’t think that this is a good thing, because it’s a symptom of an increasingly draconian IP regime worldwide, which is now serving to hinder, rather than promote, creative and inventive activities.
I watched Keith Olbermann’s special comment from last night on Youtube, as I was too busy wrapping Passover to watch the show.
While I generally agree with him, I find him powerful even when I disagree with him, or find his conclusions lacking, as was the case last night, and I’m not referring to the Kaiser thing.*
In this case, I believe that KO did not go far enough.
While he is correct that letting people off for “just following orders”, as is implied by the statements that those , “carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice,” will not be subject to prosecution.
This is wrong, and there is a bigger point, made ably by Glenn Greenwald, that there is a real and legally binding obligation obligation under the Convention Against Torture, which was signed in 1988 and ratified in 1994, to actively pursue and prosecute torturers ( roll Article 7 para 7):
The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
This is not to say that refraining from after the little fish to target the big fish is a violation of this.
That is a legitimate prosecution strategy.
However, it increasingly appears that President Obama and Attorney General Holder do not intend to go after anyone, and in so doing, they are, but not going after anyone, with the explanation that this is, “moving forward”.
This is a obstruction of the prosecution of these acts is a war crime, and if this means no prosecution, it is an affirmative act to obstruct the course of justice.
Certainly, there are alternate venues, such as some sort of “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” but all indications are that the White House are fighting even this weak tea.
I believe that, in the absence for support for some sort of fact official fact finding process, it makes Eric Holder and Barack Obama accessories after the fact to a crime against humanity.
In the short form, people who actively work to subvert any process of judicial or semi-judicial fact finding inquiry, outside of the context of legitimate activities of defense counsel, are war criminals, including the current President and Attorney General of the United States of America if they choose to continue this course.
That being, said, I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit,‡ and I would be interested in hearing opinions from people with a deeper knowledge of both US and international law.
*The Kaiser committed no war crimes by the standards of the day, notwithstanding the accusations of amputation Belgian babies hands† made in the early days of the war. The rules had not yet caught up with the technology of war, and if the Kaiser were guilty, than every participant in the war would have been guilty.
†Ironically, the Belgians, during the genocide phase of their rule over what was then the Belgian Congo DID require their native levees to return a human hand for each bullet fired, in order to prevent them from “wasting” bullets hunting game for food, along with holding families hostage, etc.
‡I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
Unfortunately, it’s Spanish prosecutors seeking criminal charges.
We need a criminal investigation of these folks.
Phil Spector was found guilty of Lana Clarkson’s death, and Ivory Snow girl, and pr0n superstar, Marilyn Chambers died at 56.
They are both sad. 56 is young to die, and Spector has clearly been profoundly mentally ill for years.
Because he is, well, Phil Spector, people let it pass, and he never got the help that he needed.
The three judge panel soundly rejected Norm Coleman’s arguments, using the term “absurd” in their opinion to describe some of his arguments, and hit his campaign with sanctions, requiring that the Coleman campaign reimburse both the election court and the Franken campaign for a portion of their legal expenses. (click image for full size)
Coleman has 10 days to appeal to the state Supreme court, and will probably use all of that time, since delay is what the ‘phants are paying for, and now everyone’s 2nd favorite Minnesota slimebag, Governor Tim Pawlenty, has signed on to the delay Franken at all costs camp, because it will help his bid to the the Republican nominee for President in 2012.
For weeks, he has said that he would sign the certification when the state courts ruled, and now he’s saying that he’s likely to wait for the federal courts, in contravention of Minnesota law.
For running death and kidnap squads while President of Peru.
Unfortunately I don’t see the same thing happening in the US with Bush/Cheney.
In a response to the EFF’s lawsuit over illegal NSA wiretapping, the Obama has now responded with a claim for executive privilege that is more expansive than that of Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
Basically, the Obama DOJ, and this is their ruling, this is the first filing in the case, is saying that, “the Patriot Act bars all causes of action for any illegal surveillance in the absence of “willful disclosure.'”
As Glenn Greenwald says in this analysius, “This is the Obama DOJ’s work and only its work, and it is equal to, and in some senses surpasses, the radical secrecy and immunity claims of the Bush administration.”
Lovely.
The case is Golan v. Holder (originally filed when Gonzalez was Attorney General), and challenged the provision of the URAA that restored copyright to out of copyright works, and rendered derivative works that had been made when there was no copyright illegal, and now a Federal District Court has ruled it an unconstitutional violation of the first amendment, after a remand from the appeals court (PDF of opinion at link).
This is the first time ever that, “a court has held any part of the Copyright Act violates the First Amendment and the first time any court has placed specific constitutional limits on the government’s ability to erode the public domain,” so it is very significant.
This differs from Eldred, in which the Supreme Court allowed copyright extension, in that the speech of the plaintiffs was already legally created, and so the change was an infringement on their legally created speech (derivative works of then public domain items).
It is my understanding, that this applies only to legally created derivative works, and one would assume, newly created derivatives of those derivatives, but not new derivatives of these works, but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*
In either case, this is a recognition that IP law is a restriction of the rights of the rest of society, and as such there needs to be a showing a serious state interest in order to override that, and this is IMHO, a major step forward.
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
Basically, the judge drew a distinction between people caught “on the battlefield” in Afghanistan and those caught elsewhere and transferred to Bagram.
Simply calling it a POW camp, particularly when you are not treating the detainees as POWs didn’t cut it for the judge.
Needless to say, the Obama administration is expected to appeal this decision, in yet another case of going to the wall to support Bush era assaults on civil rights.
So I was reading this account of a Seymour Hersh interview on Fresh Air in which he says that Cheney loyalists have been “burrowed” into sensitive government positions, and continue to feed him information:
“I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay-behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve been driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay-behind that you can continue to have contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay-behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence.”
(Audio at bottom)
And the first thing that went through my head was, “People from the NSA are talking to a guy who orchestrated the outing of a covert CIA agent?”
Then I realized that the real question was, “Why does Richard Bruce Cheney still have a security clearance?”
Based on my reading of the entire Lewis “Scooter” Libby case, it’s clear that Patrick Fitzgerald had concerns that Cheney was aware of the leaks on some level, though he lacked any hard evidence (missing emails anyone?) to go any further.
That being said, a security clearance is not a legal procedure, it’s an administrative procedure, and to a significant degree, it is necessary for the holder of this clearance to show that they not a security risk, either intentionally or through negligence.
There is also an additional duty to report any credible potential security violations to the appropriate authorities.
This is a lower standard of proof than, for example, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, or obstruction of justice statutes.
There is therefore a significant concern that Dick Cheney violated the terms of his clearance, and pending an investigation, his clearance should be suspended pending an investigation.
Unlike a government employee whose livelihood is dependent on having a clearance, this should not provide an undue burden, and a hearing, with witnesses, including Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Mr. Cheney, testifying under oath, would be an appropriate venue to decide whether or not he was either deliberately or negligently cavalier with sensitive intelligence data.
Of course, if Mssrs Cheney or Libby were to make untrue statements in the process of giving their testimony, that would be a matter for the federal prosecutors.
The DoJ is dropping charges because of rampant proprietorial misconduct.
That does not mean that Ted Stevens is not guilty as hell, though.
Now, how about looking at Don Siegelman?
There has now been testimony that Nasser Kazeminy, a close friend of Norm Coleman instructed his CFO to pay $100,000.00 to Coleman’s wife’s insurance agency for nothing in the way of services.
Now the Star-Tribune has obtained a March 19 deposition from the lawsuit that first surfaced the scandal. The deposition is from B.J. Thomas, the chief financial officer of the company that paid out $75,000 to a firm where Laurie Coleman worked as a consultant — even though he found no evidence of actual work.
Thomas was asked: “In that conversation that you had with Mr. Kazeminy, did he tell you, quote, United States senators don’t make sh#$, close quote? Or words to that effect?”
Thomas answered: “Yes, sir.”
Kazeminy is boned, unless he roles on Coleman, and Coleman is a rat, so you gotta figure so is Kazeminy.
Pass the popcorn
It appears that they are concerned that foreign authorities will arrest them…..More accurately, they are concerned thatforeign authorities will arrest them, and then they will sing like canaries.
My heart bleeds for people whose business model is based on the idea that, “Only the little people pay taxes.”
Certainly, if I were a prosecutor, I would be looking at here, because Ruth Madoff’s got a $2 million payment from Madoff Securities International Limited just before her husband was arrested, the London office of the Ponzi scheme, and itself under investigation for aiding and abetting Bernard Madoff’s fraud.
I’ll bet that he is wondering the same thing that I am, how much of this was legitimate deal making, and how much was self-dealing.
Hopefully, we will see serious criminal investigations here.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has reversed hundreds of convictions of children made by judges who took kickbacks from privately owned detention centers.
Obviously, it’s nice to see their records expunged, but some of the damage will be permanent.
As I said 6 weeks ago, old post This is a Natural Result of Private Prisons.
It looks like the financial meltdown, and the reduction in tax revenues for local and state authorities have lead to a reevaluation of incarceration policies, which have led the US to have the largest prison population of any society in history: (Gulag nation)
For nearly three decades, most U.S. states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: Lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing many of those policies and practices.
Some states, like Colorado and Nevada, are closing prisons. Others, like Kansas and New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.
Obviously, it’s depressing that it’s taken a fiscal crisis to interject some sanity on the entire issue of over imprisoning our population, but I’ll take what I can get.
Hopefully this can make a dent in the “prison-industrial complex.”
Basically, the question is whether the legal opinions that John Yoo supplied to Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are so outrageous as to justify the termination of his tenure at UC Berkeley law school.
I am of the opinion that Yoo actually broke the law, using the Nuremberg precedents for trying judges and lawyers.
One caveat about this article, ignore Alan Dershowitz, who has actually been a big supporter of torture, going so far as to suggest that judges should authorize it, and not an opponent of Yoo’s position as the writer states.
US Government lawyers attempted to get Binyam Mohamed, the Ethopian detained at Guantanamo, to sign an aggreement not to discuss his treatment as a condition for his release.
Since Mohamed is alleging illegal torture, and the lawyers in question had reason to believe that there was a possibility of criminal prosecution, I do not see how this could be anything but a slam dunk case of obstruction of justice:
U.S. government lawyers tried to get a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay to sign a deal saying he had never been tortured and that he would not speak to the media as a condition of his release, according to documents presented in Britain’s High Court.
U.S. lawyers also wanted Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen held at Guantanamo for more than 4 years, to plead guilty to secure his freedom, even though he was never charged with a crime, according to documents released by two judges who ruled in the High Court case.
The documents, relating to a ruling the judges made last October, reveal the U.S. military wanted Mohamed to agree not to sue the United States or any of its allies, and that any rights to compensation should be assigned to the U.S. government.
Any lawyers among my reader(s) want to weigh in on this?
It looks like US and British authorities are investigating possible criminal activity.
Here’s hoping they find some, and send him away for a very long time.