“Defamation of Religion”

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog gives us “Defamation of Religion” — The New International Legal Craze?

Apparently, the United Nations is beginning to embrace the idea that there should be liability for calling bullshit on stupid stone age superstitions defaming religions.

Angela Wu, the international law director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public-interest law firm seems to have her head screwed on straight. She said,

The defamation of religions protects ideas rather than individuals, and makes the state the arbiter of which ideas are true. It requires the state to sort good and bad ideologies. (source)

Angela, care to come visit us and tell that to the speech-code liberal nazis that run American academia?

250,000

When we hit 100,000 visitors, I saw it coming and held a little contest.

It looks like the quarter million eyeballs mark just snuck up on me a bit.

Now I have very large blogging chram.

I’ll still take post-250,000 hit submissions for new contest. Prize TBA.

Lulz over “Lulz”

It is always funny to see kids get the better of a journalist. This Sunday’s New York Times article The Trolls Among Us has at least one hilarious example.

“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

Another troll explained the lulz as a quasi-thermodynamic exchange between the sensitive and the cruel: “You look for someone who is full of it, a real blowhard. Then you exploit their insecurities to get an insane amount of drama, laughs and lulz. Rules would be simple: 1. Do whatever it takes to get lulz. 2. Make sure the lulz is widely distributed. This will allow for more lulz to be made. 3. The game is never over until all the lulz have been had.”

Ohhhh…. so THAT is what “lulz” means. What ever happened to fact-checking? What major lulz to see a NYT reporter PWNED like Ted Stevens at a tech convention.

EPIC LOLICOPTERZ!

Laptop Detention

There is a reason why I don’t take my *good laptop* outside the country.

1. We have turned into a nation of mewling cowards — prepared to sell our freedom for mere “security theater.”
2. We pass rules to control the worst possible people committing the worst possible acts, regardless of the actual effectiveness of the rules or their side-effects.
3. We have idiots write the rules.
4. We hand the idiot-drafted rulebook to flunkies who aren’t qualified to work a frialator.
5. We then call the result “security.”

“The Department of Homeland Security now claims the right to seize your laptop ‘absent individualized suspicion’ for as long as it deems ‘reasonable’ whenever you dare cross an international border.” More Fun With Laptop Detention

“Intelligent Sexism”

No, not strippers reading Dante to you… although that would be hot…

See Sexism “as it should be” by Tatiana von Tauber.

The Original Intent of the Earl of Sandwich

Ann Althouse goes medieval on modern-day perversions of the Earl of Sandwich’s dream. I heartily concur. See The Sandwich Manifesto

If you are going to lie in a UDRP case - at least be smart about it! Hydentra, LP. v. Xedoc Holding SA

The recent domain name decision, Hydentra, LP. v. Xedoc Holding SA, WIPO Case No. D2008-0454 is of interest for a few reasons:

The Best Part - Cybersqatter Busted and PWNED

The Complainant alleged that the domain in question, metart.com, was owned and controlled by a man by the name of Slavik Viner. The Complaint further alleged that given Viner’s standing in the adult entertainment community, he must have known about the Complainant’s trademark and website (www.met-art.com) when he registered the domain in question, www.metart.com.

The Respondent claimed that Mr. Viner was not the owner of the domain name.

In support of its position, the Respondent also files a declaration in the name of Paul Raynor Keating that is said to be given “under the penalty of perjury”. Mr. Keating asserts:

(i) That he is an attorney licensed to practice by the State of California.

(ii) That he is a director of the Respondent and familiar with the ownership of the corporation and that “Mr. Viner is not listed in the records of the corporation as a shareholder”. (source at 5.22)

Perhaps Mr. Viner was “not listed in the records of the corporation as a shareholder,” but does that make the statement honest? Lets keep exploring:

The respondent then continued to deny any involvement by Mr. Viner:

“Mr Viner does not control all or any part of Xedoc. Xedoc is a duly registered Luxembourg corporation. None of its shareholders are US citizens or residents. Its directors are publically listed. They include Mr. Keating who is a director of a number of corporations”. (source at 5.26)

The Panel was provided with various emails between the Respondent and the domain broker.

Some of these are redacted but an explanation of this is given in a footnote. In particular, the Respondent states: “Some documents may have been partially redacted so as to preclude the inadvertent disclosure of highly confidential information such as bank account numbers, user names, passwords and the like.”(source at 5.17)

However, it seems that more than this “highly confidential” information was redacted.

Complainant’s Response to the Respondent’s Supplemental Submissions

5.29 The Complainant contends in this particular submission that notwithstanding the Respondent redaction of certain emails appended to its submissions, it was possible for the Complainant to see what was behind those redactions. In particular, some text was not fully obscured and when the pdf text was copied by it to a Microsoft Word file, the redactions disappeared in their entirety.

5.30 Once these redactions are removed, the Complainant contends that it is apparent that Mr. Slavik Viner was the individual who conducted the negotiations with Sedo in relation to the purchase of the domain name. (source at 5.29-5.30)

Oh SNAP! It is bad enough to be PWNED for lying to a tribunal — it is even worse when you get caught by being so utterly stupid as to not know how to properly obscure text in a PDF document!

5.31 As a consequence the Complainant contends that the Respondent has sought to deliberately hide Mr. Viner’s connection with the Respondent. Further, since the material discloses Mr. Viner’s email address, the Complainant has been able to discover further evidence to show that Mr. Viner frequently frequents and posts on various “adult webmaster forums” and it is “not conceivable that he would not be aware of one of the most well-known adult nude photography sites in existence”. (source at 5.31)

This is why even if you are ethically-challenged, honesty is still the best policy. You never know when a dumb maneuver will reveal your lack of honesty for all the world to see.

Although this is the most interesting part of this decision, there are other issues of interest:

Video Leads to Voyeurism Charges & Civil Suit

What is it with Gainesville and surreptitious video? Back when I was at the University of Florida, some guy got arrested for putting a web-cam in the women’s toilet in a restaurant. No, not just in the bathroom, but in the toilet. The thought of installing it makes me want to barf, let alone the thought of firing up the computer and saying “hey man, come see what I can do!” That guy got arrested.

Of course, the classic version of the Gainesville gander is this: Guy hooks up with Girl. Guy has his buddy hide in the room and videotape the encounter. Guy screws girl and then has circle-jerk with his fraternity brothers.

Not so in a recent story from the Gainesville Sun. This time, the girl wins. She not only caught the guys in their little game, but managed to physically wrench the tape from the guys, called the police, and the guys got 10 days in the Alachua County clink on charges of misdemeanor voyeurism.

Now the girl is suing the guys and the fraternity for invasion of privacy.

And in an unrelated story, another Gator installed software on a girl’s computer so that he could secretly watch her via web-cam.

Word to the wise… this kind of stunt can get you in lots of trouble. If you’re considering videotaping someone, ask for permission. If they say “no,” then just buy your porn commercially, for god’s sake.

Welcome to the Roll, QuizLaw

I don’t know why QuizLawhasn’t made it to the roll earlier. But, now that QuizLaw announced that the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is Seth’s favorite charity — my hand is forced.

Welcome, Seth et. al.

Talk about a bad day for a Pastor

The only thing funnier than the underlying story (pastor breaks into a woman’s house, steals her sex toy and lube, and breaks his leg while escaping) is the melodramatic news coverage.

The senior pastor at the church had this to say:

I am deeply grieving for the victim in this terrible situation.

That must have been some sex toy if its loss creates a need for deep grief. Good grief!

Hat Tip and Props to: Quizlaw