Category: Justice

Class Action Suit Against the RIAA

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Well, it looks like the someone gets what the RIAA is, and they’ve filed a class action suit claiming:

  • negligence
  • fraud and misrepresentation
  • racketeering and corruption
  • abuse of the legal process
  • malicious prosecution
  • outrage and intention to inflict emotional distress
  • computer fraud and abuse
  • trespass
  • invasion of privacy
  • libel and slander
  • deceptive business practices
  • misuse of copyright laws
  • civil conspiracy.

I would argue that all of these accusations are to be accurate, and that there is a significant benefit to society if the RIAA, and it’s equally evil twin, the MPAA, are properly labeled as the racketeers that they truly are.

They are protection operations that prey on those too weak to defend themselves, doing things like trying to browbeat a 10 year old (see article), etc.

A monetary judgment would be nice, but I want to see jail time.

Malice in NSAland

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Kevin Poulsen was live blogging the two NSA wiretap suits in San Francisco.

One is the generic warrentless surveillance case, the other involving wiretapping privileged communications between a lawyer and a client, where the wiretap was inadvertently revealed to the lawyers in a document dump (the FBI subsequently confiscated the document).

At one point, in response to the government’s assertion that they could not proceed on the basis of the lawyer’s recollections of the inadvertently disclosed document, and that the government could not release the document one of the Judges, Judge McKeown, said, “I feel like I’m in Alice and Wonderland.”

No, my dear man, this is Kafka.

allofmp3.com Owner Acquitted

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Well, the owner of allofmp3.com just got acquitted in Russia. This is not surprising. While the IP laws in Russia are not what the record distributors would want, it has always been fairly clear that Denis Kvasov was operating within those laws.

The question now is whether Putin finds more advantage in joining the WTO, or giving Washington the finger.

One thing that needs to be said though, this dispute does not affect the amount of money that performers get for their recordings by one cent. That number is still zero. I’ve yet to hear of a performer who has actually received royalties, due to corrupt record company accounting.

What Jonathan Singer Said

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He comments on the fact that Democratic investigations in the House and Senate have had the side effect of slowing the approvals of Bush Judicial Nominees.

However, an article on the front page of Wednesday’s Washington Post penned by Jerry Markon perhaps adds to the case that the investigations into Gonzales and the administration, more broadly, are bringing benefits — tangentially related, but related nonetheless — both to the Democratic Party and to the progressive movement. Specifically, as the Senate Judiciary Committee works on these and other investigations, it is not taking up potential judicial nominees sent to Capitol Hill by President Bush.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, long considered one of the nation’s most conservative appellate courts, is shifting to a moderate direction with the balance up for grabs. A growing list of vacancies — now five — has left the court evenly divided between Republican and Democratic appointees.

With an election year approaching, experts predict the court will tilt decisively to the left if Democrats keep control of Congress and reclaim the White House.

“There is a very good chance that this court will be solidly Democratic for many, many years,” said Arthur D. Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor. He said the current 5-5 split — which began July 17 when Judge H. Emory Widener Jr., a Republican appointee, took semi-retirement — is “tremendously significant.”

To clarify, I’m not arguing that the Democrats pursue investigations of spurrious charges in order to slow the confirmation of ultra-conservative jurists. Far from it. But at the same time, the positive consequences that have come out of the fact that the Congress has been holding the Bush administration’s feet to the fire are not limited to a few subpoenas here and there, a few resignations here and there, and the truth beginning to come out. And if, as a result of these investigations appellate courts around the country do not shift to the right — or even shift to the left, as this article seems to indicate is the case with the fourth circuit — that’s not necessarily a bad thin.

Well said.

Judge Says that Qualcomm Acted in Bad Faith, Loses Patent Rights

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The concealing of existing or likely future patents seems to be all to common in standards setting, and now a Judge has slapped down Qualcomm for engaging in “an organized program of litigation misconduct” in a patent suit against Broadcom.

This is big, and this is good. One of the more sophisticated methods of patent trolling out there is to concealed patented, or patent pending, product when one sits on standards making bodies, and when the standard is widely accepted, it’s time send out demand letters.

Then again, the ruling may be more narrow:

… in a patent case in San Diego, U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster ruled that two Qualcomm patents related to video-compression technology can’t be enforced because the company deliberately concealed the patents from a standards-setting group. Qualcomm compounded its misconduct by withholding evidence and making false statements before, during and after a trial in the case that ended in January, the judge concluded.

Another possibility is that this is more an artifact of telling blatantly transparent lies to a judge, which tends to piss them off.

Then again, this is getting interesting:

But after the surprise discovery during the trial of an initial set of relevant emails, Qualcomm found and later shared more than 200,000 emails and other documents with the court. After reviewing the documents, Judge Brewster concluded that Qualcomm engineers had participated in the group well before May 2003. He also rejected Qualcomm’s suggestion that its failure to share evidence with Broadcom was an accident.

“The eventual collapse of Qualcomm’s concealment efforts exposes the carefully orchestrated plan and the deadly determination of Qualcomm to achieve its goal of holding hostage the entire industry desiring to practice the H.264 standard,” he concluded.

Broadcom, meanwhile, is pushing to find out more about whether senior Qualcomm executives knew of evidence that should have been disclosed sooner. It contends Qualcomm withheld information from other standard-setting bodies, too, a charge Qualcomm rejects.

“I think this is just a snapshot of their corporate behavior,” said David J. Rosmann, Broadcom’s vice president of intellectual-property litigation.

Pass the popcorn.

Another Victory for the End User.

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The response of the record distributors to digital music has been punative and stupid, and they’ve just been slapped down by a Court in Germany.

They refused to force an ISP to turn over data of file sharers.

Under the European privacy regulations, this is typically restricted to criminal, not civil, matters:

The ruling follows the publication two weeks ago of an Advocate-General’s opinion prepared for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) which said that countries whose law restricted the handing over of identifying data to criminal cases only were compliant with EU Directives.

Advocate-General Juliane Kokott produced advice for the ECJ on a Spanish case in which a copyright holders’ group wanted ISP Telefonica to hand over subscriber details to it.

Kokott said that details did not have to be handed over in civil cases such as Telefonica’s, and that they only had to be handed over in criminal cases. The ECJ does not have to follow an Advocate-General’s advice, but does so in over three-quarters of cases.

Another German authority had made a similar decision earlier this year, according to Heise Online. The chief prosecutor’s office in Celle refused to offer a handover because it said that substantial damage had not been shown, and that it doubted that music industry representatives would use the evidence to bring a criminal case.

It would be nice if the US weren’t the 3rd world of privacy rights.

NBC Producer Owned at Def Con.

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It appears that an overzealous, and quite frankly not very bright Producer for the NBC program Dateline, Michelle Madigan, got outed at Def Con, the hackers convention.

Reporters are allowed, they are supposed to wear a press badge, and not to photograph or record without the subject’s consent.

Def Con is a bit of an odd bird, it resembles those “Christmas Truces” during the first world war, with white hats, black hats, and law enforcement all mingling in relative peace.

There is a hacking contest, and numerous demonstrations of security holes and hacking tools, which is why law enforcement shows up. This is just as useful to them as it is to the Nigerian spammers who attempt to get you to give them your bank account information.

It appears that the hopefully soon to be unemployed Ms. Madigan was attempting to create a bogus story about law enforcement folks being there.

While probably not factually false, it’s an attempt to create a scandal where none exists. Def Con is as valuable an asset to people combating hackers as it is for hackers, and any security professional who gets his undies in a bunch about people attending should not be in the field.

There is a description, with photos and video, of Ms. Madigan’s flight once she was outed here.

It appears that she was chased from the show by reporters looking for pictures and video once she was outed.

I love the irony.

Christian Fundies Think That Jesus is a soft-on-crime Pinko

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Well it looks like the wacko fundamentalists have decided that all that stuff about casting the first stone is some sort of communist secular humanist plot.

They are now sending “court watchers” out to make sure that judges are sufficiently punitive. Teaching a man to fish is just too pinko.

…. Yet, she added that she doesn’t feel pressured by the presence of Court Watch participants.

Let me guess…elected judges…nope…no pressure there. The independent judiciary, yet another bastion of modern thought opposed by the Talibaptists.

Neither does Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle, who said, “Some judges probably feel they are there to intimidate him. If the judge is intimidated, that’s his fault.”

I just had to note….Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle????? There is not one “hillbilly” joke that could be funnier that that reality.

House Minority Leader Boehner and Fox News Conspire to Leak Classified Information for Political Gain

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Well, it looks like John Boehner and the employess of Fox News are filthy traitors who whould be locked away foir the rest of their life. I expect the administration to pursue this investigation with all diligewnce that it did the leaking of the name of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame.

A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president’s spying powers.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court’s decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

I keep forgetting, it’s OK if you are a Republican.

It’s be a bit less serious if those pig felchers called the “blue dog coalition” didn’t fold like a bunch of overcooked broccoli this weekend to give Bush and his evil minions™ everything that they wanted.

We can now all be spied on at Abu Gonzalez’s say so.

Normally, I’m Against the Death Penalty, But In His Case, I’ll Make an Exception

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Notorious spammer Christopher “Rizler” Smith was sentenced to 30 years in prison. There is a part of me, the lizard brain, which was hopint for the death penalty.

Between dealing Hydrocodone and Viagra, and threatening the children of a witness, he’s going to be in jail for a very long time.

Ironically, because of his efforts, his cell mates will have easy access to Viagra and Cialis.

OOPS!!!

Why We Need an Agressive and Competent Labor Bureaucracy.

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It appears that Universal Media Group has been cheating its employees out of overtime pay.

Luckily for them, this has occurred in California, because, “the employees will receive 25 per cent of fines rewarded”.

The department permits these exemptions for computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers, and other similarly-skilled workers in the computer field. Under California regulations, an exempt IT employee must primarily perform work that is “intellectual or creative and requires the exercise of discretion and independent judgment.” In addition, the employee must earn over $41 per hour.

The UMG workers, who are employed as “IT Support Engineers,” claim the company has illegally classified them as exempt to skip out of paying overtime. The employees are seeking back wages and civil penalties under California’s Private Attorney Act. Under the Private Attorney Act, employees can sue an employer for fines based on labor law on behalf of the state of California. If successful, the employees will receive 25 per cent of fines rewarded, while California will receive the rest.

Note that this is a private lawsuit. Here’s why:

The Law Offices of Michael Tracy, the firm representing the employees….. said the employees had previously filed the overtime complaint with California’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency, but the organization refused to investigate. In response, the employees are suing for the labor fines.

My guess is that Arnold was the reason that they refused to investigate.

Australian Government Lies Through His Teeth

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Well, it appears that the Australian government is using secrecy as an excuse for covering up their own incompetence:.

As an American, let me say to the Australian general public that I feel your pain. I am rather familiar with corrupt politicans screaming “terrorism” for political gain, and screaming “secrecy” to cover up their screw ups.

Secret material used to cancel the visa of an Indian doctor falsely accused of terrorism cannot be released as it may jeopardize investigations, Australia’s immigration minister said Tuesday.

Kevin Andrews said he wanted to release the “protected material” to demonstrate why he cancelled Mohamed Haneef’s working visa but the Australian Federal Police had advised him against it.

So they are claiming that they had a reason to kick him out of the country, but not enough to hold him, even though, as a result of his initial detention, he has detailed knowledge of Australian interrogation techniques.

Prime Minister John Howard this week ruled out an apology and Andrews dismissed calls for a judicial review of the case, which was the first time tough counter-terrorism laws introduced after 9/11 had been put to the test.Andrews had faced heavy criticism in Australia over his decision to exercise a little-used discretionary power to cancel Haneef’s visa then refuse to reinstate it when the terrorism case against the doctor collapsed last week.

….

Haneef was charged with recklessly supporting a terrorist organisation but returned home at the weekend after more than three weeks in custody when the case against him collapsed due to lack of evidence and bungles by prosecutors.

….

Prime Minister John Howard this week ruled out an apology and Andrews dismissed calls for a judicial review of the case, which was the first time tough counter-terrorism laws introduced after 9/11 had been put to the test.

And is desparately trying to avoid showing that they failed, and theat they are the threat to basic human rights that its critics have always said.

Accused Hacker Gets Appeal To Law Lords

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The Law Lords are a committee of the House of Lords in the UK, and they function as the court of last appeal there.

They have accepted the appeal of Gary McKinnon, the blithering idiot who broke into Pentagon computers looking for UFOs.

While I have little affection for McKinnon, who, the law under which he is to be extradited is a farce. It requires no showing of proof, and no guarantees of due process, so he could be sent directly to Gitmo.

The law Lords agreed to hear arguments that US authorities acted in an “oppressive” and “arbitrary” manner during plea bargaining negotiations, for example by allegedly threatening McKinnon over the loss of rights to serve part of his sentence in the UK unless he submitted to voluntary extradition.

This is the problem with this US-UK agreement. It’s being misused.

It’s intended for terrorists, but its first use was for a group of bankers engaging in white collar crime, and now it’s being used to attempt a plea bargain.

This is why you have limits prosecutorial power.

That being said, one thing is certain, McKinnon is not the biggest idiot involved in all of this:

The 41-year-old has said he gained access to military networks – using a Perl script to search for default passwords – but describes himself as a bumbling amateur motivated by curiosity about evidence of UFOs rather than a cyberterrorist.

The people, hopefully now unemployed, who did not change their default passwords probably need help cutting their steak.

John Roberts, Supreme Court Chief Justice, Hospitalized After Seizure

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John Robert’s seizure may not have any particular significance in the course of the court. It appears at this time that he is fine and suffering no ill effects.

He has had a prior seizure, in 1993, but there are no indications of anything that would prevent him serving, though having a second seizure, even after a 14 year interval might indicate a need for him to go on some prophylactic anti-seizure medication.

My diagnosis is that he had an attack of conscience, about once every 14 years for that sounds about right for a Republican, but I’m an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*

*Man…I just love it when I can go all “reverse Doctor McCoy”!!!!

Will No One Rid Me of This Meddlesome Spammer?

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It appears that MySpace has gotten a court injunction to keep Sanford Wallace out of their service.

The preliminary injunction came in a lawsuit MySpace filed in March. It claims Wallace created more than 11,000 MySpace profiles that churned out private messages, comments and bulletins that directed users to spoofed MySpace pages seeking their login information.

The ruse allowed him to hijack at least 320,000 accounts, which he used to send 400,000 private messages and post 890,000 comments, both of which redirected MySpace users to the sites freevegasclubs.com and realvegas-sins.com. The sites are owned by Feeble Minded Productions, an aptly-titled firm affiliated with Wallace.

He’s not going to change. Can someone just send him to Gitmo or something?

It looks like he is covered under CAN-SPAM, and the least the judge thought it was likely enough that he granted the injunction, and there is potential jail time ther.

Favorite comment of the piece:

We were unable to find a phone number for Wallace and were reluctant to email him.

I gotta go clean my screen now.

This Is Not Funny, It’s Repulsive

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It appears that Municipal Judge Michael Cicconetti, of Painesville, Ohio, is a power drunk jerk, which is all the more remarkable since a municipal court judge does not have much in the way of power.

In any case, ordered three men charged with soliciting sex to take turns dressing in a bright yellow chicken costume while carrying a sign that reads “No Chicken Ranch in Painesville.”

I’d call him a schmuck, but a schmuck has a head.

This might be a cute movie, or a funny Simpsons episode, but in real life it’s an example of abuse of power, and this is not the first time:

It’s not the first time Cicconetti has used barnyard animals in his sentences. He ordered a man who called a policeman a pig to stand next to a live pig in a pen and hold a sign that read “This Is Not a Police Officer.” A couple who stole a baby Jesus statue from a manger were sentenced to dress as Mary and Joseph and walk with a donkey.

I’m upset at the tone of the story too, that says we are all supposed to laugh about it.

Professional misconduct is nothing to laugh about.

This is How Much George W. Bush is Hated

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If only the degenerate sots who spend their evening at Sally Quinn’s parties got it.

Harold Lischner, and anti-war protestor is suing for false arrest. The defense team for the Upper Darby Township asked the judge to prohibit any mention of George W. Bush, whom Mr. Lischner was protesting, because they fear that he is so unpopular that his name will prejudice the jury.

The judge turned it down. In fact, he turned it down more quickly than I would, because I’d be giggling hysterically for an hour or so.