Gotta love a judge that quotes Spock and kicks Troll butt.
Also gotta love a judge that calculates his sanctions with an eye toward irony. See footnote 5.
And lest you think it's just an Internet torrentfreak thing, here's an article in Forbes and one in American Lawyer about it.
Myself, I have just spent a dozen hours collecting up twenty years of writing from various backups and getting it all (or most of it) copied onto a single writing machine. Over the summer, I expect to winnow it down to a single set of organized backups, where everything is actually organized in some semblance of logical order.
The important parts can probably all fit on a single flash drive, big as those are nowadays. That being done, I expect to start moving forward again presently.
Wish me luck.
Long story short on the Patterico case - P commented about a woman who was involved in illegally recording congresswoman Maxine Waters. The woman sued P, claiming P said all kinds of things. The judge read what she claimed P said, read what P actually said, and read what harm she claimed to have suffered because of P and what laws she wanted to recover from P under. Bottom line - she presented no actual facts that would support recovery under her theories.
Also, to keep the case in Federal court, she would have to prove at least $75K of real damage attributable to his unpriveleged words, and didn't even prove that. Mere allegations without facts that demonstrate clear probability of liability are insufficient to proceed.
conduct that is merely consistent with liability is not enough to get you there either.
Case dismissed, half with prejudice, half without. She's appealing, but it's unlikely she'll prevail.
had me laughing so hard at this one that I couldn't even attempt to explain the joke to my wife, not without backing up all the way to January... of course, old Klaus didn't get it either.
Of course, really the payoff is most funny if you've been waiting for it and didn't know when it was coming...
