Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

@James O'Brien

Assange is under threat of US prosecution for his alleged involvement in the theft and publication of a lot of classified data.

So when the US Government has enough information against Assange and some of his Wikileaks associates, they will officially charge him (them).

The reason the US hadn't moved quicker is that there is some case law which shields the Press from such 'whistle blowing' efforts in the past. The issue in that case was that the courts ruled that the probative value of alerting the public outweighed the charges... Meaning that while the person broke the law, he was doing it for the greater good.

This however may not apply to Assange. First, there is this issue of Manning. Did Assange act merely as an agent and received the stolen electronic documents, or did he help facilitate the theft? (We don't know yet and those that do haven't been talking to the press.)

Assange claims he merely received the documents and that he is a member of the press and distributed those documents and is protected by the first amendment. Even though Assange isn't a US citizen, the charges he faces are in the US and he is still protected by the US Constitution. Unfortunately for Assange is that he doesn't really understand the laws governing the US. They are not absolute and there is some 'free speech' which isn't protected.

Regardless of the Free Speech argument, Assange is also on thin ice because of the other potential charges. This is where the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the press back in the '70s. But Assange isn't a member of the press. And when he decided to publish unredacted information of questionable probative value... Again... he's on thin ice.

So the bottom line, even though Assange isn't a US Citizen, he could face charges in the US for breaking US laws.

@ AC re: Self interest

I think that was the point of the initial post.

Assange bit the hand that fed him. So using the excuse of a threat of legal action, they shut him down. You attack the banks, blackmail them... They are going to shut him down using a legal excuse where Assange has no legal recourse.

Reading the other articles also sheds some light on the situation. Assange has self-destructed by believing in his own hype.

Huh?

Ok,

Here's the simple solution.

Send him to the US to face trial.

His lawyers can then argue their case in court.

They can continue to appeal it if they lose.

The problem is that a) Asperger's ?sp? doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't fit to stand trial, or that he is incompetent by a mental defect.

b) He has openly admitted to doing the act. His excuse was that he was looking for sekret alien files.

There's more, but again all of the arguments including mens rhea need to be made in court. You do realize that had he gone to the US instead of fighting extradition, he would have already be done with this mess by now.

C'mon... that's theft!

You wouldn't want to be the one who leaked Julian's book to the net, now would you?

After all, he owns the rights and that it would be wrong to leak his private and privileged information.

Say it aint so...

@Mouse

True. However, the key is that you have to show that the GPL code can stand alone and separate from the ASF code, and vice-versa.

I seriously doubt that Google can demonstrate this hence I am skeptical.

Add to it comments from their lawyers ... ;-)

You can't mix and match OSF licenses.

GPL protects the rights of the authors. ASF doesn't. With ASF, you can do whatever you bloody well want to do with it.

So if Android is a mix/match mashup of both licenses, all bets are off. You can't assign ASF rights to GPL code that you don't own. (Meaning you have to be the original author to allow the rights to the code to be assigned under the T's&C's of ASF.

FAIL to the AC who doesn't get this simple concept.

Who cares?

Sorry but how many class actions are filed in the UK?

Sony is trying to protect themselves....

Well....

I guess since its Al Gore, I'd let him use my Facebook account. Too bad I don't have one!

What are the odds

That one picks a clutch and the other a very large handbag full of bricks?

@Frederic Bloggs... not exactly.

"What strikes me about this, is the way that the US court system seems to have bent over backwards to facilitate e360's case. "

The US court system didn't. In fact, one of the ironies of this case is that the US courts do use Spamhaus to filter their e-mails...

Here's the problem...

Spamhaus' original attorneys made a serious mistake. Note: I'm familiar with his initial firm and they are or were fairly reputable.

My guess is that in trying to cut costs, they tried to kill two birds with one stone by arguing that the county court (Cook County, IL) didn't have the proper jurisdiction to hear the case for two reasons... 1) Steve Linford is a UK citizen who doesn't reside in the US and Spamhaus has no US presence. 2) The dollar amount is > $75K (USD) therefore should be tried in Federal court.

I'm not sure, but I believe that it was Spamhaus' lawyers who brought the case to Federal court so that they could get it dismissed and Lindhart wouldn't be able to file. This would be killing two birds with one stone and would have saved Spamhaus at least $5-10K USD in legal fees. Unlike the UK legal system where the loser pays, in the US, everyone pays and only the lawyers win.

It was this mistake which opened the door for the lawsuit.

When Linford made the decision to walk away from the case, opening the door for the default judgment, the courts had no choice but to award Lindhart a summary default judgment. Steve Linford did this for a couple of reasons, the biggest is that it would have cost him and his company a ton of cash to defend themselves against a frivolous lawsuit and would have opened the doors for future lawsuits. The other big issue would be that in discovery, the spammers would learn how Spamhaus operated and thus making it less effective in trying to control spam.

So you have to blame Linford for one really bad decision, or his lawyers trying to cut corners.

In hindsight, I bet the judge would have been happier if he had just granted the initial argument about a lack of jurisdiction instead of going by the letter of the law.

So you can't blame the courts because they were following the law. Kocoras took a lot of heat, but he is a good and well respected judge and made the right decisions. He may have been sloppy in awarding the initial 11 million dollar judgment against Spamhaus. But then again, when you walk away from a case, the judge has to take what information presented to him at face value. This was the only door open to Spamhaus in their appeal. The appellate court let the default judgment stand.

@AC Re: From my understanding, there were no Can-Spam violations

You understand wrong....

Lindhart claimed that all the e-mails he sent were actually to people who had 'opted-in' to his mail list. Note the following: 1) Sending an unsolicited e-mail stating that you were opted-in until you opt-out is not an opt-in except in the minds of spammers. 2) Buying a marketing list from a reputable marketing company which includes e-mails and then claiming that they opted in to your promotions and is a clear violation of the contract you signed... again a no no.

[Note: Lindhart also sued said company in a different lawsuit.]

In fact, if you follow any of David Lindhart's legal battles, he's pretty much come out on the losing end of most. Except in the cases where he used the courts to harass several people online but that too is another story.

An even more interesting fact... during the past legal issues, Lindhart demanded and won the right to have Spamhaus remove his networks from Spamhaus' filters. Note that while this did not stop people from adding the net blocks on their own to their own mail servers, it opened the door to Lindhart to spam with impunity. Linhardt also tried to sell the right to other spammers by claiming that they too were affiliates of Lindhart and hence their networks should also be removed from the filters.

Oh yes. very interesting reading... You could write a book about spammers and Spamford Wallace, Pickle Jar, and Lindhart would be 3 very long and funny chapters. (Although with Spamford, you would have a couple of other chapters due to his activities post spamming AOL...)

@Ragarth Huh?

Uhm... you, John Q Public don't run a mail server. Your ISP does. Your ISP filters based on using Spamhaus, you don't have a say on who or what filters are in use.

Note that in addition to this... Michael/Michelle Sullivan runs a different organization which also is in use. Unlike Spamhaus, Sullivan (Michael/Michelle) is the same person BTW, doesn't do the same due diligence...

@veti Not even close.

There's this section of law called tort law. Contractual Interference is a tort.

While you're trying to be silly, which I can understand, it doesn't help your argument.

Linhardt (E360) sued Comcast based on the argument that they were interfering with his 'ongoing business relationship' with his customers on Comcast. He claimed that Comcast was filtering out his e-mails specifically and that he was at an economic disadvantage from his competitors. And that because he had an existing business relationship, he had the right to send his emails unfiltered.

(This was done after he had his 11+ million dollar default judgment against Spamhaus...) In short, he was attempting to blackmail Comcast w his cartooneys. Note that Comcast tried to be reasonable and then slammed him in court.

With respect to Spamhaus, its a little bit more complicated than that.

Spamhaus maintains RKSO (Record of Known Spammer Organizations) [Going from memory...]

So Lindhart (E360) was listed as a known associate of a spammer in RKSO and was added to that spammer's entry. Now going from memory... Lindhart was booted from his ISP for spamming and was booted from a different ISP (Contract was pulled) because of his association with spammers. Here Lindhart alleged that someone from Spamhaus had 'tipped off' his new ISP that Lindhart was a spammer and was going to spam from the network which would have been against that ISP's ToS. (Terms of Service) Were this true and Lindhart was never a spammer, then it would be as claimed as tortuous interference with a business contract.

("Three elements must be established in every tort action. First, the plaintiff must establish that the defendant was under a legal duty to act in a particular fashion. Second, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant breached this duty by failing to conform his or her behavior accordingly. Third, the plaintiff must prove that he suffered injury or loss as a direct result of the defendant's breach.") [see http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Tort+Law]

The point is that Linhardt could sue Spamhaus or anyone that they had reason to believe to be associated with Spamhaus for committing said tort.

BTW, later in court documents, Lindhart admitted to being a spammer. He did this by identifying that he had an 'ongoing business relationship' as required by the law, to some 100+ million e-mail addresses. (Note: If this were true, then he would have been one of the more successful internet sales companies, more so than Amazon.)

[Note: Sending an e-mail that says 'thanks for subscribing to our mailing list, unless we hear from you, you're being "opted-in" to our mailing list...' isn't an opt-in request....]

Like I said, there's more to this case. I wonder if Mickey Chandler still has his website up detailing this and other spam related lawsuits....

@David 45

Linford's first set of attorneys made a big blunder.

Lindhart sued Spamhaus in Cook County. (Lindhart's blunder because of the alleged damage amount was > $75,000.00 USD. ) Spamhaus, rather than just arguing jurisdiction, also argued that Linhardt sued in the wrong court and that they should have sued in Federal court because of his claims of damages.

In hindsight, had Spamhaus first argued jurisdiction, they would have won that argument, then had Lindhardt then refiled in Federal court, The lawyers could have also argued against jurisdiction and would have won.

By redirecting and taking the case to Federal court, Spamhaus ended up losing their argument by jurisdiction. Then by walking away, handing Lindhart the summary judgment. So Spamhaus made a mistake and then compounded the mistake.

Lindhart knew that Spamhaus was UK based, however he and his lawyers maintained that they had a US presence because of customers in the US along with US 'volunteer' spam fighters.

Not exactly...

In part the case was about Linhardt being named in another spammer's RKSO entry.

(Yeah, its not just the filtering of spam. )

Linhardt used his short lived victory to go after Comcast for filtering his e-mails out.

(But that too backfired and is another story.)

@Tobin Let me get this straight...

Assange puts the files up in an encrypted package on a closed/private server using one password. Tells Guardian that its a one time password.

Later Assange puts same files out on the internet as a bit torrent, as its insurance policy.

Unknown to the Guardian, Assange was dumb enough to reuse the 'one time' password.

So in theory, there shouldn't be any problems for the Guardian to publish a password use by Assange, right? Only an idiot would reuse a 'one time' password to re-encrypt the package.

Kinda says alot, don't it?

@Danny2

Why don't you say what you believe to be the 'breach' of journalistic ethics?