[IP] 1st Circuit rules on Councilman
-----Original Message-----
From: "Dave Crocker"<dhc2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 06/09/05 1:03:21 PM
To: "dave@xxxxxxxxxx"<dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"<ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] 1st Circuit rules on Councilman
> It's remarkable, is it not, that the First Circuit en banc held
> that it's OK to convict someone criminally who is presumed to know what
> the law requires, ... This is just the latest
> example of a pernicious trend in federal criminal law - the ability and
> willingness of prosecutors to prosecute, harass, and persecute citizens
> and companies for violating utterly vague and/or overbroad federal
> criminal statutes and endless turgid regulations,
Dave.
I, too, found the latest appelate court decision remarkable. I found it
remarkable that the lower reviews had bought any of the artificial, lame
arguments brought by Councilman.
Are we to believe that it is the slightist bit reasonable for a provider of a
general-purpose communication service to me to inspect the content of messages
-- without my knowledge, of course -- and to use that content to competitive
advantage?
What is apparently often missed in this debate is that the lower courts were
playing around with what the rest of us would call legal technicalities, rather
than the meat of the offense.
The latest decision put logic and legal games aside and focused on reasonable
expectations and reasonable interpretations of the law -- and, by the way, the
intentions of those who wrote those laws.
The previous decisions worked in the detached vaccuum that can make the legal
process pure but destructive. What is remarkable about the latest decision is
that it stayed in the real world.
d/
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
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