A judge in Washington, DC, is apparently very easily stressed out.  His life was ruined when a pair of pants he dropped off at the dry cleaners were lost.  And the terrible mental trauma this has inflicted upon him is worth a mere $54 million dollars.  He initially sued the ordinary working class owners of the dry cleaning shop for $67 million, but apparently concluded that he could shave $13 million off of that since the pants were used.

Those must be some really special pants, I guess.  Either that, or Judge Roy Pearson is a scum sucking, ambulance chasing, bill-padding lawyer who should be dragged out back, have honey poured over his body, and be staked out on an ant hill.  The fact that his case is undoubtedly costing the tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of likely bankrupting the owners of the dry cleaning shop, appears to have flown right over His Honour’s head. 

On the plus side, if Judge Pearson is ever charged with murder he should have no trouble whatsoever getting a reduced sentence due to mental defect.  All he has to do is draw attention to this lawsuit.  The really sad thing, of course, is the fact that the Chungs have probably already been strongly advised to settle with him for a half million dollars or so just to save money.  They’ve already tried to settle for as much as $12,000, but that’s only about two days of lawyer-time. 

I’ve heard that bullets are available for about 10 cents a piece at Walmart…*

*This is purely informational.  I do not in any way condone shopping at Walmart

Update: the judge in this suit has ruled in favour of the defendants (I.E.: the dry cleaners).  I wouldn’t exactly call this a victory for justice.  The judge *should* have offered an opinion on how incredibly unreasonable the demands were, how inappropriate and unbecoming it was for an officer of the court to pursue such unreasonable claims,  and perhaps charged the plaintiff (another judge) for wasting the court’s time.

[tags]stupidity, lawyers, judges, pants, criminal, moron, bastard, ass[/tags]

I found the following today during my usual morning coffee + web browsing session:

Wayne Crookes, a former campaign manager of the Green Party of Canada, said he “suffered an immense amount of frustration and emotional distress” over postings on Google’s Blogspot.com, a free blog-hosting website, within an entry under his name in Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, an interactive political forum set up by Michael Pilling, an Ontario and federal Green Party activist.

Source: globeandmail.com: Internet hosts should be made to pay for libellous statements…

Mr. Crooke is, by my reading of it, basically frustrated and upset that anonymous people have been able to post defamatory (and presumably untrue) statements about him.  Since he can’t find the anonymous people to sue (and since they probably don’t have any money anyway), he’s suing the various service providers who hosted their content.

The world wide web is founded on the premise of free speech.  I can say whatever I want, and if you don’t like what I say you can post your own opposing opinion somewhere else.  If I libel you in a legal sense, you can in theory send your lawyers after me…if you can figure out who I am.  But anonymity is also pretty well established on the Internet.  So that leaves  suing the Internet service providers.

But validating opinions and determinations of “fact” versus “fiction” are decidedly *not* something the ISPs are equipped to deal with.  Doing so would mean having full time legal teams working around the clock to review tens of thousands of posts: basically, it is totally inconceivable.  And thus far, the courts have been pretty clear in their interpretation that free speech on the Internet is reasonably well protected.

In contrast, service providers like Google, or your local ISP, can and do respond to relatively clearly defined copyright violation notices.  If you hold copy rights on something and I post something on the Internet using it, you can probably get it taken down very quickly by contacting whomever is hosting the content.  These takedowns proceed without any real confirmation of actual copyright violation.  The ISPs take the content down defensively, because right or wrong, proving copyright violation in court is expensive.  And copyright issues have been clearly defined in court and in law, in the U.S. at least, via the DMCA. 

Lawsuits like the ones being launched by Mr. Crooke that target ISPs for libel regarding content posted by their clients should send a chill through anyone who likes to think of the Internet as a true bastion of free speech.  I’m not saying that libeling someone should be “protected”, but I think we and our legal system should definitely err on the side of permitting free discourse of opinions. 

If, for example, a significant collection of case history was established showing that suing ISPs to take down “libellous” content was a successful strategy, I can guarantee that ISPs would start taking down content the same way they do for DMCA complaints.  That is, before the complaint has been proven by law.  So, if you said something I disagree with, I could send a letter to your ISP and poof- your thoughts would be gone from the Internet.  If I was simply a jerk who didn’t like you I could do the same, and poof- your rights disappear because of the fear of litigation.

I sincerely hope that Mr. Crooke’s legal motions get tossed out of court with extreme prejudice.  Not because I support libel or dislike Mr. Crooke (I have no idea who he is, and know absolutely nothing regarding what it is he’s upset about), but because I know how damaging a successful result for such a case could be.   He and people like him are living in a happy fairy-land where somehow ISPs can determine instantaneously the difference between a legally protected opinion and a piece of libellous trash.  Either that, or he and his legal team don’t give a flying fig about the rights of everyone to express their opinion.

In short, my opinion is this: people like Mr. Crooke and his entire legal team should be required, by law, to read and agree to an Internet usage license before they launch a browser.  The Internet is a scary place, full of personal opinion dressed up as fact, despicable thoughts and images, and dangerous scams intended to trick you.  It is also full of useful and wonderful things: it is up to the user to figure out the difference, and no one will babysit you.  If you don’t “get” this, you should be permanently banned from use of the service.  Good day and good riddance.

I was reading a disclaimer today regarding the Internet that was written in response to/was inspired by an equally thorough disclaimer written for a rock preserve (whatever that is).

I love the following bits (emphasis mine)

The other people in the preserve, including other visitors, our employees, agents, and guests, and anyone else who might sneak in, may be stupid, reckless, or otherwise dangerous. They may be mentally ill, criminally insane, drunk, using illegal drugs and/or armed with deadly weapons and ready to use them. We aren’t necessarily going to do anything about it. We refuse to take responsibility.

I love it