On 5/4/07, Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Fred, why do you presume it could? In theory, maybe, but we're certainly not the richest target (Youtube/Google, anyone?), we're far from doing the least to stop it being posted gratuitously (Youtube again, not to mention Slashdot and hundreds of thousands of others -deliberately- publishing it), we're not revealing anything (it's already out there, it can no longer, in any reasonable way, be considered a trade secret),
This has nothing to do with trade secret law.
we're publishing it for educational purposes (rather than just for grins or in an undisguised flip-em-the-finger attempt),
Strangely if you can figure out a way to make money out of the second two your legal case might be stronger than one involving educational use
and we're a PR nightmare (You think suing dead grandmas and soldiers about to leave for Iraq for having some mp3's got some bad press? You ain't seen nothing yet...).
"The website that messed up the Seigenthaler article and declared various living people dead now lends a helping hand to movie pirates..."
Interesting PR nightmare.
Overall, even if they decided to go after -someone- (which would be petty and vindictive at this point anyway, and hopefully one could expect a judge to recognize that), we're pretty far down the list of "tempting targets". (We'd also make a pretty sympathetic defendant, and they don't like sympathetic defendants, especially when the case in question is something of a "test case").
We are big. You go for the big targets
There's something wrong, Fred, when an educational resource is scared to publish (or even mention in discussion besides oblique references to "that key" or "the number") a -numeral-.
Um we delete numbers all the time. We delete child porn images from time to time. Those are just numbers when you come down to it.
But must we be pushed around so easily (and without anyone even having to do any pushing, just the hint they might!), when there is a good case for use of this numeral in some articles?
Yup. We stay legal. We create free stuff by bypassing copyright and other IP law completely.
And if you insist on poltical activism:
"The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly" (supposedly Abraham Lincoln).