All the more interesting in cases where you wish to threaten legal violence and do not wish to allow your victim an opportunity to rally support.

"legal violence" reminds me of a previous discussion.

Rallying support can be done without copy-pasting another person's writing; i.e., through summarization. This is not an either/or situation, where absolute silence is required when demanded.

The attempt to make this into an either/or situation has 4GW tones, imo. Poor little blogger must literally have lips stapled together or risks an even worse fate!! No, that's not it, really.

I agree that the discussion is a bit simplistic.

In particular, your argument boils down to saying that "Because one is not totally oppressed, totally victimized, totally defenseless, one is not oppressed victimized, and without some defenses."

And also: that each party in any dispute should have relatively equal defenses, or at least defenses which do not translate into one party's having formalized legal superiority over the other.

Regardless of the personal character of either disputant.

Incidentally, I would think that one could summarize more creatively, to better effect than merely posting the offending letter as "proof" or sending it to someone else who will post that letter. Then, the original writer would have to launch a lawsuit saying the letter was misrepresented, and would have to prove it, etc., which would most likely bring the letter into the public domain anyway.

The 4GWish overtones of the Swarming Once-Stung Mob, on either side (let's say a certain lawyer may have attempted to be a mob of One), cause any member of the very public storming to become vulnerable to counter attack. I would bet that a 5GW approach would have been better; but then, using lawyers and third-party bloggers to slug it out for you is a bit of co-optation, right? ;)

As I commented over at Public Citizen, Citizen Media has an excellent analysis of copyright law in this case. As does Patry.

The 4GWish overtones of the Swarming Once-Stung Mob, on either side (let's say a certain lawyer may have attempted to be a mob of One), cause any member of the very public storming to become vulnerable to counter attack. I would bet that a 5GW approach would have been better; but then, using lawyers and third-party bloggers to slug it out for you is a bit of co-optation, right? ;)

Why is 5G normatively better than 4G? Especially when considering that 5G is a more complicated technology?

Not normatively, necessarily; but in a world trending toward open source and static, it might be more pragmatic ultimately. To use an example from a recent attack in the U.S. -- and it could be the school shooting or the 20 year-old deputy killing teens at the movie & pizza party: anything you say, or allow to be said about you, can and will be used against you.

Are private citizens now the militia run wild, justified by the number of fellow swarmers? But another term entered my thinking in the last two days: parens patriae. On the issue of scammers and scheming businessmen, there seems to be an assumption that the poor, foolish, rather stupid "other individuals" in the world need protection from the advertising campaigns; they can't figure things out for themselves, are indeed pathetic little children, and the swarm steps in to "protect" them. Ack.

The link at Citizen Media is interesting for what it doesn't say. E.g., that the writer of that post has entirely dismissed, or forgot to consider, the free speech rights of the author of the letter in question. Additionally,

At the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court held that allegations that Joyce had used the threat of copyright litigation to intimidate the scholar from using "non-copyrightable fact works such as medical records" and "works to which [the estate] did not own or control copyrights, such as letters written by third parties," were sufficient to establish copyright misuse. Id. at 16.

is given, but the example is incredibly weak; using this as an example of copyright misuse, within the context of the current controversy, to support a general (but I'll admit a bit skeptical) argument against Dozier is mixing apples and oranges in order to give the oranges as red or green sheen. Medical records and documents written by a third party are distinctly different than a cease-and-desist letter that was written by an individual in the firm who also declared at the time of the writing that the writing was protected by copyright. Indeed, an analysis of the recipient's activities seems targeted at that specific recipient, so some original work seems to have been done in the writing of the letter. A careful study of the letter, against other cease and desist letters sent from the firm and indeed from other firms, might reveal that it is not very original writing; but if only other in-firm examples matching the letter, even there the possibility for copyright protection might exist.

Curtis,

Are private citizens now the militia run wild, justified by the number of fellow swarmers? But another term entered my thinking in the last two days: parens patriae. On the issue of scammers and scheming businessmen, there seems to be an assumption that the poor, foolish, rather stupid "other individuals" in the world need protection from the advertising campaigns; they can't figure things out for themselves, are indeed pathetic little children, and the swarm steps in to "protect" them. Ack.

You're mixing discussions (armed and unarmed resistance), but note that was precisely the purpose of the 2nd amendment -- militias -- not government armies or lone crazies, but the traditional self-defense that colonial towns had against the dangers of the world.

"Legal violence" -- does this mix discussions ("armed and unarmed" aggression)?

Do militias in the traditional sense have the right to acquire your personal property at whim and use it against you? (Ha, does the "right to bear arms" mean any arms, even arms belonging to someone else?)

"Do militias in the traditional sense have the right to acquire your personal property at whim and use it against you?"

You mean after they mail you/attack you with their "personal property"? Or after they violently attacked you with their "personal property" (with the approval of the Crown, of course)?

"Legal violence" -- does this mix discussions ("armed and unarmed" aggression)?

No, it merely describes violent conflict, whether subtle or overt.

So subtle that no one was injured, eh?

So subtle that no one was injured, eh?

No more violent than the thug who doesn't cut you because you give him your wallet.