Quote of the day—My Lawyer

After looking at the letters you pointed to I would recommend that you take down any files you have posted and let the commodity jurisdiction request process take its course.

My Lawyer (who wishes to remain anonymous)
May 9, 2013
In regards to the files linked to in this post.
[It’s an interesting state of affairs when lawyers don’t want it to be known they are involved.—Joe]

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32 thoughts on “Quote of the day—My Lawyer

  1. Pingback: Can’t stop the signal with crypto hashes | The View From North Central Idaho

  2. It’s hard to imagine the “commodity jurisdiction process”, whatever that is, defeating the first amendment.

    • The Commodity Jurisdiction Request if I remember correctly what must be done to get something removed from the classification of ITAR.

  3. It was hard to see how the “hate speech” doctrine could overcome the First Amendment, too, but there it is.
    I wonder how many lawyers know what the “commodity jurisdiction process” is, anyway.

  4. 100,000+ Downloads later, and NOW the Obama Regime is trying to Stop the Signal?

    These guys are as slow as using a Snail to fight a Fire.

    Something tells me that the Supreme Court Ruling on the Pentagon Papers from the early ’70s is about to come into play when this gets to the Courts.

    • That this can’t possibly stop or even slow very much distribution is obvious. If it’s about giving Defense Distributed a big legal headache and deterring others from doing similar projects publicly then I think that it’s working just fine.

  5. “As your attorney, I advice you to give up your seat on the bus, and let the law handle this.” – Rosa Parks’ attorney

    “As your attorney, I advise you to just get on the rail car, and let the trials process move forward.” – Anne Frank’s attorney

    “As your attorney, I advise you to just go home” – attorney for Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell.

    This is fun.

    • You got it.

      And don’t look to attorneys for any real courage or leadership. I’ve seen this before. With their conservative, copy and paste method of operation, they’re always several steps behind the curve.
      And chances are they’ll turn on you if things get really tough.

        • I’m not saying “put the links back up”. Did I say that? I’m saying don’t put too much hope in lawyers. I’ve had ’em try to screw me more than once, while on my payrole. My mother and grandmother got screwed hard once, and they ended up seeing the guy disbarred. Most politicians are lawyers. ‘Nuff said?

    • Attucks, Gray, and Caldwell died “on the spot”. They paid a heavy price with only history to reward them a brief mention for their sacrifice. Had they known the price and reward would they still have made the same decision? I would not have. I would have been more inclined to increase my chances of causing injury to the soldiers and minimize my own risk in a different venue.

      Death was probably the certain outcome regardless of the action take by Frank so taking a stand would have had the potential reward of hindering or perhaps wounding/killing her attackers with no change in the cost she would have to pay.

      While death doesn’t seem to be an imminent risk in this case I’m pretty sure there are better risk/reward tradeoffs to be found in other principled stands. Resources are limited and it is best to expend them wisely.

    • Divemedic,

      You gonna rent some server space and host it? Or are you just gonna keep driving from the back seat?

      • You’re missing my point. The point here is that hosting the file from the beginning was a risk. Joe had to know that, or else why post the file at all?
        A lawyer will ALWAYS tell you not to take a stand. That is his job. The easiest legal case to win is one that you never get into in the first place, but this results in very little change.
        You accuse me of driving from the back seat, but isn’t that what the entire blogosphere does? We all sit around and complain about the state of affairs, but very, very few of us are willing to take a stand.
        This is the reason why I think that all of this big talk about the “line in the sand” for gun owners is just that: talk. Everyone wants to complain, but no one wants to actually risk anything. Including myself, Joe, and even you.

          • So pay the 10 bucks a month and host it yourself… Or again, you’re nothing but an insulting hypocrite upset that someone else isn’t willing to extend his neck for a risk that you’re unwilling to take yourself.

          • @ Barron
            So that makes you what? Name calling fixes NOTHING. What I’m asking is if no one is willing to step forward and violate the law to be a test case, then what? (and I’m not saying that I am, either.)
            This points out the flaw in our legal system. The only way to challenge the law is to risk prison in order to get standing. So that leaves us with what?
            1 We can take the course the Dr King took and risk prison, but no one is willing.
            2 We can keep things they way they are, and we can lobby while we bitch and complain. We know where that leads.
            3 Someone can “pay the ten bucks” and host it. I’m betting that someone that does that doesn’t get enough people even willing to donate to his legal fund.
            4 We can take the path that many Jews took in the late 1930’s and flee, but to where?

            In the end, this fight will have to be fought by our kids. I only hope that they have the guts that we did not.

        • So host it your self Divemedic or shut the hell up. I hosted it, was it a risk. Yes it was and I hosted it for as long as possible until the risk/reward ratio reversed.

          Tell me, is it worth me loosing my job hosting that file? Is it worth prison time hosting that file? Doubly so since the reason for mirroring has now served it’s purpose.

          The information has gone viral and what Joe and I did has served it’s immediate purpose. It’s very hypocritical and dickish to come in and say, “You’re not taking a strong enough stand.” When you in fact have not personally taken any risk at all, much less even approached the risk that Joe and I took.

          If you want to be the legal test case there, go right ahead. There is no winning a law suit and frankly I can use that money elsewhere when they can’t exactly shutdown bit torrent.

          In closing, shut the hell up or pay for a server and mirror it yourself. Otherwise you’re nothing buy an asshole and a hypocrite.

          • Ah yes. Name calling. The way to find solutions. You didn’t do DICK. Don’t try and say that you took some principled stand. This is just more internet posturing. Something that so many of us do so often.
            As far as your half-hearted posting of a file for half a day, that accomplished what? It gave you the ability to pretend that you did something tangible, so you get internet bragging rights. That information didn’t go viral because of anything you did, so don’t try to take credit for that.
            Don’t kid yourself. No one with any ability noticed your feeble attempt to pretend to be an activist.

          • I didn’t do dick? Last I checked I actually hosted the files. What did you do again?

            I would like to point out dumb ass I hosted it for much more than half a day. If it wasn’t because anything I did, the pile of downloads of the file never happened then?

            Tell me, who’s going to pay for my legal defense? Who’s going to support my wife and family? No asshole, you’re upset because I wouldn’t put my neck in the noose. I am intimately familiar with ITAR and it’s impacts and the second they ruled this as ITAR shit became very real because it isn’t a joke. As an FYI it currently is under review, but to continue to allow access while in the review process is a FELONY. So I should sacrifice myself and my rights because you think I should? There would be no fighting that felony because of the way it is written. ITAR isn’t a joke and companies have been destroyed by just a minor slip up. If you want to run the risk than do it, otherwise you’re merely a hypocrite that is disappointed in himself for taking no risk and is merely upset at those of us who only ran the risk for as long as we felt it really necessary.

            Also maybe you should look at the date on my post dip shit because I started hosting it over 4 days before I pulled it.

            1 We can take the course the Dr King took and risk prison, but no one is willing.

            So step up and do it yourself or stop criticizing.

  6. Pingback: Freedom of Speech and the Right to Arms... - The Minuteman

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  8. Interesting. The principle means nothing if the object is worthless. In this case, its a gun, but just barely. Its simply not worth the risk.

    Were it the files for an AR15, an AK, or something that really was worthwhile, I suspect that many of us would be more than happy to risk it. At this point, printable guns simply aren’t worth the risk. I suspect that someone will hand the government its butt on this ITAR, especially since the CAD/CAM files for legitimate machine guns, auto sears, etc. are available on line. BUT….there is no sense in ANYONE getting slapped for this, its not worth the money or, especially, the time.

    On top of that, they get to spend our money to prosecute us for something that eventually we would win, but we will have spent our money twice, and thats plain stupid unless its a file that can swing the balance. This isn’t the place to draw the line in the sand.

  9. Just wondering… if by some chance the files were already hosted outside of the US, and you directly copied them to another web server outside of US jurisdiction for hosting, and gave the link to that… that wouldn’t be exporting. Just moving the stuff that is not in the US around outside of the US.

    Reminds me a lot of how a developer for OpenBSD operated. He’d work on all parts of the system from his home, except the parts that actually did crypto. For that, he’d get in his car, drive 15 minutes across the Canadian border, and do the work at a friend’s house.

    • From what I read yesterday, the original files were hosted on a server outside of the US. (From what I recall, I think the server was in New Zealand or somewhere like that.) It didn’t seem to matter to the government.

        • Correct. After the PGP cat was out of the bag, ITAR was still used to create fear and doubt in the US to slow distribution, not to prevent export, as was claimed.

          This was one of the legal reasons the EFF used to blow this crap off.

  10. Pingback: Evidently I’m not an activist… - The Minuteman

  11. IIRC, years back before the crypto issue was resolved, MIT distributed PGP via the web. They had a web page wherein you certified that you were a U.S. citizen, were physically in the U.S., and were not working for a foreign entity. If you met those conditions it was legal to give you the PGP program. They did this by generating a web link that was valid for a very short time which then used to download the program.

    IANAL but it seems the issue with ITAR is not distribution per se but distribution to people that are not “U.S. Persons”.

  12. Pingback: SayUncle » Lawyering up

  13. The folks at EFF went to the wall to break ITAR in regards to encryption algorithms. They knew they would face jail time if they lost.

    Until you are willing to risk jail time and have arranged to get some serious legal help paid for, I would politely request that the “Free Julia” crowd first volunteer for a stint in Room 101 before bitching about other folks’ risk decisions.

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