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Comment by thatthatis | Hacker News Reader

Good news for him. But I kinda wanted this to make it to the supreme court so the question of linking could be more summarily decided.

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I agree. I wanted to see the EFF's amicus brief, and for the Court to decide on the issue so that we could have good case law with hyperlinks as protected speech.

There's no reason the EFF can't release their amicus brief, even if there's no longer a reason for them to file it. Good arguments should be shared.

Do you want that outcome enough to get yourself charged for activities that would bring it about? After all, without a SCOTUS decision the fruit is still hanging on the vine for any of us to snatch.

You wanted to turn him into a martyr? That doesn't seem very nice.

No, I wanted him to ultimately be vindicated by the highest court so as to protect us all in the future.

Martyrs die, I wanted him to set a precident without getting harmed. Like Brown when he fought the board of education, or Johnson when he fought the state of Texas.

The sentence he's facing is effectively a death sentence. Care to volunteer yourself?

By that reasoning all of life is effectively a death sentence.

Poetic, but not entirely logical.

I'm not sure I understand the relevance, care to elaborate?

He's saying you're full of shit

Except...I'm not?

Are you serious? Why would you even say that?

People like you are the problem. Linking to something, just like talking about something, is protected in most countries by free speech. The simple fact that this journalist was arrested is disgustingly totalitarian and should be of great concern. To everyone.

Why would you want this to go all the way up the rotten vines of a corrupted court system that only gives favorable rulings to those with ties to the rulers?

Those protections you say other countries have, I want them too. Case law created by the supreme court is how we get them.

I don't trust the system at all, which is why I want the system to generate case law which will prevent the system from doing wrong things.

What?

Are you intending the first sentence to be a quote from somebody? If so, it couldn't be from the person you responded to, who never said that they didn't trust the system.

Setting precedent is great and all, but I wouldn't dream of telling somebody else that I think it should it happen at their expense.

A Supreme Court ruling upholding linking as free speech would be incredibly important.

But, a Supreme Court ruling equating linking with distribution would be a disaster. If I were the Internet I'd rather not roll the dice with a court consisting of people who remember black and white TV.

You think the Supreme Court somehow manages to wade through incredibly complex insurance or financial regulation cases but can't understand the relevant features of a hyperlink? Read through Reno v. ACLU, which struck down portions of the Communications Decency Act almost two decades ago (written by Justice Stevens who was at the time 77): http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1557224836887427.... The description of the internet, as it existed in the late 1990's, is pretty cogent for a bunch of people who remember black and white TV.

Yeah, but Stevens was the smartest one on the court on tech issues into his 90's because he cared. That overcomes age. But Stevens is gone. I hope his retirement is healthy and happy.

Aside from Breyer, I don't think anyone on the current court cares at all.

When it comes down to it, I trust the supreme court more than I trust prosecutors.

Right now, the decision of if linking is speech that can be prosecuted is being decided by prosecutors.

And, if scotus rules that it isn't protected I'd like to know that so we can fight to change the laws to make it protected. And so I can follow their clear tests to keep myself out of prison.

I find prosecutorial discretion to usually be a far worse form of tyrany than clear case law, even if I disagree with it.

Tyranny thrives in the opaque discretion of buerocrats.

The NRA pretty much never wants to settle 2nd Amendment issues at the Supreme Court for the same reason, you never really know which way the dice will roll.

(Beyond that, it's much more lucrative for the NSA to have the doubt and controversy persist, because there will always be pro-2nd people who see the NRA as their best shot at grouping together to fight for their 2nd Amendment rights. That was my main motivation when I belonged to the NRA. "It's a profit deal.")

Sorry, but that made me laugh and feel terribly old at the same time (touché, oh wait... so do I!). Can we use "played 78RPM records in their teenage bedrooms" instead?

(Fun fact: "The date of the very last 78-rpm record is not known, although some claim that the last one issued in the U.S. was Chuck Berry's "Too Pooped to Pop " (Chess 1747), released in February 1960.)

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