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Re: [dvd-discuss] CA Supreme Court hears Pavlovich Jurisdiction Challenge in DVDCCA case



On 7 Sep 2002 at 4:00, Tom wrote:

Date sent:      	Sat, 7 Sep 2002 04:00:18 +0200
From:           	Tom <tom@lemuria.org>
To:             	dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
Subject:        	Re: [dvd-discuss] CA Supreme Court hears Pavlovich  
Jurisdiction Challenge in DVDCCA case
Send reply to:  	dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu

> On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 02:33:44PM -0700, Bryan Taylor wrote:
> > At best, the appropriate question is whether Pavlovich knew that the trade
> > secret harms would impact California. Indeed it was impossible for him to know
> > this, because it was not even TRUE at the time his web site posted DeCSS. The
> > owner of CSS was based in Japan, not California, until a few weeks before the
> > case was filed. 
> 
> Am I just being dumb or is that the killer argument if it can be
> proven? "Your honour, the plaintiff requests that my client should have
> been able to see into the future. He seems to have watched a few too
> many of their movies."

Better than the Twinki Defense... (BTW a coworker got a tour of a Twinki 
factory...they told him that the date is really just there for show....a Twinki 
has an almost infinite shelf life...)

> 
> 
> > Moreover, the DVDCCA is a very obscure business entity. Jack
> > Valenti, head of the MPAA, testified under oath he did not know who the DVDCCA
> > was, so it is extremely unreasonable to expect Pavlovich to know this. 
> 
> Another good argument, though DVDCCA will probably reply that he should
> have made at least a "good faith effort" to check that he doesn't harm
> anyone. It'll be difficult to prove that he did.

Good Faith? was there a contractual relationship? What relationship was there? 
While Martha Stewart allegedly got a phone call that said "SELL", if I overhear 
someone saying "stocks X is gonna tank SELL" and I do because I own that stock. 
THe former is insider trading. The latter is acting on a tip ...afterall, the 
information might be wrong. Whereas in Martha's case....there is less certainty 
of that...[OTOH think about this..if a stock price plummets that much because 
information has been withheld so that people can make an informed decisiona 
bout the risk then  there has been a fraud committed ]

What obligation is he to assertain that this information is trade secrets? What 
obligation is he to protect them? Why should anyone expect him to devote time 
to investigate all this because he happend to stumble across it on the Internet 
anymore than I am to send the dime I picked up yesterday in the parking lot to 
the LA Co. Sherriff as lost property? (Yes Jim T. I know that the limit is $10 
(?) for lost property.) SO how is he to assess the worth? How is he to assess 
the damage? How is he to know ANYTHING? I would contend that since there have 
been so many legal challenges/issues here that the Ca. USSC should enact the 
"if we can't figure it out-neither could he-so until we do- it's too much for 
anyone to figure out-so we'll slap your wrists if you don't"defense".
THat BTW is a pragmatic aspect to all the appeals process. How can a defendant 
know something is wrong if learned judges can't decide? A rather nasty 
contradiction...

> 
> One other argument that I think has not been properly addressed is that
> AFAIK, misappropriation of a trade secret requires that you came by
> your knowledge in some inappropriate way. Reverse engineering is
> perfectly legal. In fact, it's the old-fashioned approach to acquiring
> a trade secret.
> 
> -- 
> http://web.lemuria.org/pubkey.html
> pub  1024D/2D7A04F5 2002-05-16 Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>
>      Key fingerprint = C731 64D1 4BCF 4C20 48A4  29B2 BF01 9FA1 2D7A 04F5