Oh dear. From the one lecture of his that I attended, I knew that Charlie Nesson had some unconventional ideas, but this is a bit excessive. (You know you should be worried when Lawrence Lessig dismisses your fair use argument.)
The student he is representing should be worried that all this showmanship is angering the judge, who would then give less credence to legitimate arguments.
Right, this strikes me as exactly the kind of "I'm not touching you!" argument that basically never works in a court of law. The law's not like code. "Well it's not any different than publishing a book, so this is just free speech and not legal representation"; "OK, cool, well, we both know that's sophist bullshit, judgement against you, next case."
I thought it was a clever way to gain standing in order to litigate. While it might get the guy off a quick clarification in the Ca law would close the loophole. As a publicity stunt to drive the conversation about rights versus rights assignable entities it seems to have achieved that objective.
I agree the lawyer is doing the right thing for his role - perhaps I should have phrased as "ridiculous for this argument to be taken seriously" or some such.
Yeah, if this law professor were at all confident in his pronouncements he would publish his views somewhere where other law professors could see and critique them--not on some layman's Facebook page.
I'm not fan of conservative law professors generally but I can't see what's unreasonable about the argument he's making here. Broadcasting lies about someone is bad for them and the "those fools should know this is bs so I'm not responsible" defense is itself bs.
Edit: While I might not agree with Turley, his wikipedia bio makes him sound far more principled and consistent than the average "public intellectual" today.
When there are large sums of money at play, who among us wouldn't work in their best interest? If you have a lawyer telling you that there's a case to be made, you would be a complete and utter moron to not take that route. Do you guys think any angel in such a situation would give it a second thought?
Silicon Valley Exceptionalism is the product that YC sells, and boy do they sell it well. They want you to believe that SF is a magical place where you're expected to reject the opinion of a lawyer saying you have a claim to millions of dollars-- because Silicon Valley is a totally chill place, bro. No assholes in the bay!
When large sums of money get involved, lawyers get involved, and your actions are masked by your lawyer. I am not going to judge this guy at all. I feel like the author is trying to make the case that this guy is an asshole, and implicitly, because we all know YC doesn't like to help assholes-- and because that's an agreeable ideal, we're supposed this guy as the enemy.
But maybe it's the case that he's really a good guy that realizes that he has the opportunity to convince a court to award him a life-changing amount of money.
I really hope the motivation between this post is not to give him an ultimatum. I really hope the reasoning is not, "I have the ability to get a post on the front page of HN, and I can use that as leverage to make this guy's lawsuit more of a gamble-- I can drag his name through mud and stick it on the top of HN, such that he will have more difficulty getting a job in SV after this lawsuit. Unless, of course, he drops the case."
Because if that's the motivation, then I think it's pretty clear who is being an asshole.
Well his intention is clear. But stating you are guaranteed to win if you are in the right strikes me as naive at best and woefully neglectful of reality at worst.
It's probably best stated like "lawyers are not _always_ like Pokemon". Sometimes they very definitely are.
I enjoy Jason's work (although he is an aquired taste) and think he is very smart, but my completely-legally-untrained intuition is that he is wide open for a law suit.
The distinctions he makes between what he does with his conference and what the people he is attacking at doing may not seem so clear to people in a legal setting.
Oh nonsense. This is just an attempt at hacking the legal system by playing definition games. It's like being told not to shoplift and argue that you never touched anyone else's goods because you wore gloves the whole time. His lawyers just responded to the allegation by trying to turn it into a basis for negotiation.
A valid argument.But few students have the wherewithal to "lawyer up". Not to mention that the "kid" wanted to make movies, not get himself in his own court room drama.
So defensive it may be, but that is just a symptom of an exceptionally litigious system, that overwhelmingly favors big players.
this is precisely why I was suprised to find out the author is actually a lawyer. I know you're joking ... but reality of legal practice entails so much more than just a "right"/"rational"/"convincing" decision (hell, there's an eternal debate in legal theory about whether or not this is even a sensible thing to ask for).
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