Law firm sues to force startup to make anchor text contain the full url | Hacker News Reader

Law firm sues to force startup to make anchor text contain the full url

slate.com

50 pointschris1119 comments

Just more proof that anyone can sue for anything at any time and the victory will usually go to the richer. The pretexts have even become boring. (Trademark!? Really!?)

Lets just slap each other with fish and shout "I challenge thee to a duuu-ahh-elll."

It would at least provide a visual clue to how much respect people like this deserve. It would be much harder to put on a suit and pretend that you are contributing to society if you had to walk around slugging people with salmon and yelling nonsense.

Sometimes maybe a judge should casually browse the internet for a few dozen hours before handing out a ruling. Might learn something.

Nothing tops the Microsoft anti-trust judge who declared in open court one morning that he had separated IE from Windows on his PC, and he didn't understand why all of these Microsoft guys were saying it was so tough. When they took a look at his computer, he showed them how he'd deleted the IE icon from his desktop.

Sources?

The date was December 19, 1997, and the judge was Thomas Penfield Jackson

Or might find couple of controversial issues, read gold mines for the lawyer as he/she is anyway a lawyer.

> the firm presumably wasn't thrilled about having its attorneys' home purchases broadcast

This actually makes sense. Call me eccentric, but I wouldn't want my real estate purchases to be put on a high-traffic website with a link to my resume. Sure, the information is there and it is public, but that web startup is really pushing it. At the very least they could've been a bit more flexibile when asked to remove the link, which is a reasonable request given the circumstances.

I wouldn't want my real estate purchases to be put on a high-traffic website with a link to my resume.

Then don't buy a house?

I don't really see the problem here. Who cares what house you own?

That's the point of the business. Like Keiser Soze, they're willing to go further than their competition, in this case by reporting stories that other people won't due to ickiness.

The info is out there, they're just publicizing it to an apparently very interested audience.

Every link to my company site must be red, 18-pt font, and blinking.

Reminds me of the lawyer firm that stated that reading the html code of their web site was copyright infringement.

Link?

http://techdirt.com/articles/20071017/092927.shtml

I think people write things like that just because they like the sound their keyboard makes. Someone should mention to them that real fiction is usually more interesting.

The remarkable thing is that this story isn't really all that unbelievable or surprising. Those lawyers, always add value...

I hate this planet.

I hate the ignorant idiots in position of authority on this planet.

My usual reply to this sort of comment used to be, "kill them all", but one day the Secret Service showed up at my house and told me to stop saying that. (Seriously.)

So... uh... be sure to vote.

I guess I should have phrased that as "I hate those in a position of authority that happen to be ignorant idiots on this planet" to exclude the unforeseen interpretation that "I hate all those in a position of authority because they are all ignorant idiots".

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