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Judge Doesn't Know What a Web Site is
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 16, 2007 07:29 PM
from the and-the-earth-is-not-flat dept.
from the and-the-earth-is-not-flat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like "Web site" in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.
Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
"The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is". he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts.""
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Geez (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Geez (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is an irrelevant point to make, NO ONE is arguing or even suggesting otherwise. Anyone who makes that point has effectively demonstrated that they do not really grasp the issue under debate.
For example my Cable ISP offers me at least two different levels of service, one faster and more expensive than the other, and that's A-OK!
The issue under debate is a very different thing. The best comparison to illustrate the situation and the problem is to look at telephone service, and to explain what it would be like for the phone company to do exactly the same thing. For the sake of simplicity lets ignore local calls. The service that the phone company is providing is to take absolutely any number I dial and hand me a link to the long distance network and hand that phone number to the long distance network.
If the phone company wants to offer me different qualities of service, that's fine. They can give me a cheapo low quality low volume noisy link to the long distance network at a low price, or a high quality link at a higher price. That's fine. But that's not what we're talking about.
What we are talking about would be if my local phone company were to examine the phone number I dialed so decide whether or not they "approve" of the person or company that I'm calling. If they "like" the person or company I'm calling, then they give me an immediate pristine link to the long distance network. If they do not "like" the person or company I'm calling, then they stick in a 5 second delay before patching me through to the long distance network and deliberately sabotage the volume of the call and deliberately inject noise into the line.
The service I am paying for is a link to the long distance network, period. If they want to offer different levels of service, that's fine. However there is absolutely no valid justification for them to deliberately sabotage my call based on who I'm calling... they do the exact same work supplying me with the exact same link to the exact same long distance network no matter what number I dialed. They just want to examine the number I dialed and jump in to sabotage certain calls.
And there are at least two reasons they are interested in doing that. Number one is that they might open some other business or sign an alliance with some other business (lets say pizza delivery), and they deliberately sabotage any phone call to any competitor pizza delivery service. They want to abuse their monopoly position in phone service in order to attempt to establish a monopoly in a different area - pizza delivery. The other reason they are interested in doing this is to extort money from random deep-pocket targets... targets that are not their customers and who have no business involvement with them at all. Like your local phone company noticing that a lot of people place phone orders with Sears and that Sears makes a lot of money... so your local phone company says to Sears "we want you to pay us 5% of everything you sell to any of our phone customers, or we will sabotage every call one of our customers makes to you ". And the phone company makes the same extortion threat to all of Sears' competitors... makes the same extortion threat to Target and Macy's and K-Mart and Wal-Mart and JC Penny. If one of those companies were to refuse to pay the extortion threat, their customers are going to have phone problems trying to place orders... and those customers quite likely would switch to placing their phone orders with one of the other stores that did pay the extortion threat and which does not suffer disruptive phone problems.
And a critical point here is that Sears is NOT a customer of the local phone company. Sears pays their phone bill to THEIR local phone company for their phone service. This is YOUR phone company trying to extort money out of Sears. This is YOUR phone company making rediculous noises about how Sears is loading their phone lines
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Would that all judges had the same strength of character in this regard.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
So you tell me, then: what is a website? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly every reply I see here falls into one of two categories:
- "Wow, what a stupid judge! He doesn't know what a website is, like we teh smaert peoples do!!!"
- "No, the guy is wise to admit his limitation, and ask us, the smaert peoples who know what a website is, to tell him."
The tacit assumption is that it's perfectly clear what a "web site" is.Now, of course, I'm going to call that assumption into question. What is a web site? How do you tell where one web site ends, and where another starts? Is Geocities a web site? Is it rather a collection of web sites? Is it both, simultaneously? How does this decision interact with other legal reasoning that may be relevant to the case? What criteria ought to be applied in the kind of case he's handling?
The judge's supposed "admission" of "ignorance" could, for all that we know from TFA, not be because the judge has no concept of what a website is; it could be because his concept of what a website is is good enough for using, um, web sites, but not good enough for deciding this particular case.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
My father, a now retired British judge, pointed out to me years ago that sometimes a judge asks what appears to be a worryingly ignorant question, not because (s)he doesn't know the answer, but because (s)he suspects that some jury members don't know and will not want to appear stupid by asking. This way the judge can be sure they get an explanation, at the potential cost of a little personal flack.
Dad is a happy net user, by the way, and knows exactly what a web site is.
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Lawyer: I intend to prove that my client is completely innocent of the charges of theft of which he is accused.
In evidence, I shall produce receipts given to me by my client as proof of purchase for the three articles allegedly stolen.
This one for the digital watch...
Judge: A digital watch? What on earth is a digital watch?
Lawyer: Sorry, m'lud. A digital watch is a watch worked by microelectronics.
I will also be producing a receipt for the automatic video recorder...
Judge: Automatic video recorder?
Lawyer: It's a machine that records television programmes on special tapes.
Judge: How fascinating. What will they think of next? Proceed.
Lawyer: Thank you m'lud. Finally, I will produce in this court a receipt for my client's "deluxe model inflatable woman" -whatever that is.
Judge: The deluxe is the one with the real hair and the lifelike sister!
Give him credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers.
Re:Give him credit (Score:5, Interesting)
me: Open up your e-mail program and tell me what you see.
him: How do I do that?
me: Click on the start menu, and select the program that has 'mail' in the name.
him: I don't have a start menu.
me: It's on the lower left corner of your screen.
him: Ok, I see it! Now what?
me: Click on it.
him: With what?
me: Your mouse
him: I don't have a mouse
me: It's that white thing on the right with two buttons. Push it around. See the cursor move?
him: I see the mouse, but I don't have a cursor.
me: Yes, you do.
him: No, I don't
me: Yes, you do.
him: Oh! I see it!
me: Now click on the Start button. Do this by dragging the cursor over it, and pressing the left button on the mouse
It took pretty much a whole Saturday afternoon to talk him through it. It was one of the most tiring experiences of my life. The Judge is probably just like him. BTW, my father-in-law is a darned smart dude and well respected doctor. He just hates computers (or at least he did until he learned to use e-mail).
We got a 63 year old at work. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not age. It's interest.
He's found that his old interest has taken a new turn with computerization and he has spent his spare time learning all about it.
Re:We got a 63 year old at work. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We got a 63 year old at work. (Score:5, Interesting)
In turn, you are confusing programming skill with development skill.
But I still write better code than most of those people. Good code is code that is well documented, easy to understand, easy to verify, and easy to maintain.
This is software development as a whole, of which programming is a part.
But he doesn't sound like the kind of person I would ever hire to work on a real system.
No shit? He was a Delta Airlines pilot.
So, don't feel bad. You may not be an "advanced" programmer compared to him, but I bet you write code that is far more consistent, far better documented, and, ultimately, far more useful.
For fcuk's sake, just let the guy talk about his 63 year-old dad!
Re:Give him credit (Score:5, Insightful)
No. We don't need a special magistrate or specialized referee. No judge or jury can ever know everything about everything. A judge who happened to know a great deal about websites, HTML, Apache, LAMP, Perl, and what-have-you might not know anything about Listeria monocytogenes and ice-cream manufacture, and have to preside over a case about food poisoning (and death) allegedly caused by ice cream. The next case over which the judge might have to preside could be about the failure of a large generating turbine caused by a wear block about an inch square falling out of a recess and into the air stream, going through the turbine blades. The next might be about the quality of paint on some water faucet handles. The next about whether there was intent to create a joint work when author A wrote a study about the effect of something author B wrote, and included an appendix of author B's previously unpublished work. Judges don't need to be psychologists about intent, or polymer chemists, or experts on the standard of care in mechanical drawing and turbine design, or microbiologists or food processing experts -- or ever have seen a web page.
What judges DO need to be is educable. It is the job of the lawyers to educate the judge (or other fact-finder). It is the job of the lawyers to be sure that the fact-finder gets all the facts and concepts needed to decide. The fact-finders shouldn't need to know anything in advance about any given subject; a good lawyer will see to it that the fact-finders are educated about everything they need to understand. The fact that the judge had to ask is mainly, above all else, evidence that a lawyer was failing to do his or her job adequately. Kudos to the judge for telling the lawyers, in effect, "you haven't given been doing a good job of teaching yet; please start doing it better."
*whew* (Score:5, Funny)
He was overheard to mutter... (Score:5, Funny)
defined (Score:5, Funny)
Re:defined (Score:5, Funny)
Good for the judge (Score:5, Interesting)
I once was in a conversation with a highly paid Ivy League-educated lawyer. Somehow (don't ask) the fact that the sun's surface temperature is thousands of degrees came up. The lawyer said, "oh, is that how it stays up, then?" No one knew what she meant. "Well, is that why the sun doesn't fall down, because hot things rise?" she continued. Stunned silence. Then everyone speaking at once about, you know, the copernican view of the universe. The highly paid lawyer was not embarrassed. Instead she asked a lot of questions. They started out stupid, but over the course of 15 minutes of intense questioning she picked
up pretty much everything I knew about solar and planetary astronomy (which is a lot). By the end she was asking really clever questions I couldn't answer.
Lesson I learned: you get to be a highly paid lawyer by being smart, not by knowing anything in particular. And I would happily have her defend me in a trial.
Re:Good for the judge (Score:5, Funny)
Dude. You got pwned by a girl.
Re:Good for the judge (Score:5, Insightful)
(and perhaps I'm being a touch naive, but I think that this is a bit more likely than not knowing that the earth revolved around the sun)
Legalese is very very specific (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish everyone who wasn't up to an important job would say so.
In his defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Article is pretty light on details but it seems like the judge is trying to understand what a website actually "is"...it seems like an issue in this case is where the defendants' activities took place.
So perhaps he realized he needed to know more than "a window that comes up on your computer" as far as what a website is. It doesn't seem unreasonable for a 59-year-old in a completely non-technical job to not know how a website is put together; "what is a website?" is a feasible way to ask not only "describe this thing to me", but also "what makes up this thing?". Maybe he was asking the latter.
This is a GOOD THING (Score:5, Insightful)
What we expect judges to do is make fair rulings.
How can a judge who doesn't know anything about web sites and online forums make reasonable rulings? Well, he can't. And he knows this. So, the judge -- and MOST JUDGES -- have two choices:
- Learn enough to make a fair ruling
- Fake it and pick the lawyer with the nicest tie
Now, it has been fairly obvious that COMPLETELY CLUESS judges are making case law around the world. That is quite clearly BAD.
A judge willing to admit he lacks the deep understanding required to make a ruling, and taking steps to work around/solve the problem? NO PROBLEM, in my opinion, as long as he comes to the table with an open mind, impartiality, and a good sense of jurisprudence.
That said -- I think the judge should spend a few hours participating in IRC, reading bash.org, taking part in a forum about something he likes (maybe his car), checking out tubgirl, some pr0n, masturbating and so forth. Then maybe he will actually understand the medium. Somebody (prosecutor) should suggest that.
Re:This is a GOOD THING (Score:5, Insightful)
What is a web site? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps one would think that it would be easy to explain what a web site is. However, the definition of a website might not be so easy as you may think. Judges, like computer scientists, often have to tackle with very fine details and seek answers to subtle questions. For example: Should every website use the HTTP protocol? If yes, what if there is a law saying terrorist websites are illegal but the defendands used a slightly customised HTTP version? Furthermore, should every website include webpages? What if the law prohibits terrorist webpages, but the defendands just placed some gzip or pdf files on a public indexed directory served by Apache httpd? Is a non-indexed directory served by Apache a website? Can a website on the Principality of Sealand be prosecuted under US law? If you tunnel HTTP traffic through another protocol, would this qualify as website data? Is a website a publication? Is it still a publication if you open a website on a non-networked server? If you create a website unreadable by humans but readable by computers, would this qualify as a publication? Is a website that was online only for 3 minutes a kind of publication? Is the printout of a website still a website? Would the browser cache be regarded as copying potentially copyrighted material? If a very sucky webserver can only handle 3 requests per minute and you hit your Refresh/Reload button 4 times within a minute bringing the server down, would this be a DoS attack?
Reminds me of a hazardous waste story I heard... (Score:5, Funny)
One of the stories was to show how judges are sometimes in the position to interpret laws and regulations that are outside their scope of knowledge. One story goes that a case was about dumping of hazardous waste. The waste wasn't specifically listed as hazardous, but there are other procedures to test the compound's toxicity - such as exposing a certain species of fish to the compound for X days and seeing how they are doing at the end. If the fish are dead, then it's pretty obvious that the compound is toxic.
In this case, the fish toxicity testing data was presented to the judge and it went something as follows:
Judge: And do we have any of these fish in our county?
Answer: No, we don't have any of these fish in our county.
Judge: Then what do we have to worry about?
Grump
Re:Given the gravity and nature of the charges (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is a web page. There are about a billion of them in existence, and about a billion people viewing the web pages. Anyone can pay to have access to the internet. Anyone can get free or very cheap space to put up their own web pages. We are accusing these men of doing just that to incite hatred
(Don't bother correcting my estimates of web sites and users. I know it's wrong)
Re:Given the gravity and nature of the charges (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean you want legal decision-makers completely ignorant of even the basic working infrastructure of our modern society. Far from your notion that the judge can just "listen to the facts" -- rather than being able to take internet information for granted while his mind moves on to the pertinent facts of the case, he's wasting valuable brain cycles trying to figure out what this whole web site thing is on the fly as he either puzzles over it himself or TAKES SOMEONE ELSE'S WORD that what it is is important or not important to the case. Is it relevant to innocence or guilt? Is it not? He doesn't know because he's too much in the dark to even have figured out what my 90 year old grandmother knows.
Besides the issues of not knowing a basic building block of the case, it's just appalling that a judge in a modern society could have his head so far buried in the sand to not know what a web site is. Does his lack of observational skills extend to facts being dispensed in the case?
Re:Given the gravity and nature of the charges (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like blood stains - we've all seen them but a judge still wants an expert to explain the fine points.
Re:wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
My opinion is that our minds are already geared for the IF definition THEN result, EXCEPT WHEN whatever kind of language that most laws that I've read are written in.
Re:wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all set.
In reality, I was asked if I was pre-law or a paralegal when I asked an attorney to review my response to Farmers C&D letter on my gripe site. I consider that to be high praise.
As to this judge, he should recuse himself from the case, but should also be lauded for admitting his limitations.
-nB
Re:wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a judge, he is there to apply his understanding of the law to the case; if he doesn't understand a term that is important to the case, he should be expected to admit it and to find out about it, but not to hand the case over (and cause it to be restarted) every time he hears something that he doesn't understand.
It's like me, a web developer, being asked to make a website about law. I don't understand law, I don't understand the terms, but I am an expert in making websites. I am there to apply my understanding of how to make a website; if I don't understand a legal term that is important to the website, I should be expected to admit it and find out about it, but not to resign every time I hear something that I don't understand.
Sure, this time it may be that he doesn't understand what a website or a forum is - if that was someone in the computing world then yes, they should step down. But this is the whole point of having professionals - acknowledge that there are people who understand more than you, and that you need to go and ask them for help so that you can do your job properly. A lot of people I know in the computing world could learn a valuable lesson from this judge.
Re:Not a good argument (Score:5, Insightful)
By asking for an exact definition of a website, it does not preclude his ability as a judge to pass judgement on the case; it merely builds a solid base of understanding (for judge and jury alike) for the expert witness to build upon when they call him later in the week, and demonstrates the sensible and professional attitude of the judge. It is far better to be ruled by men who know their limits, than men who declare that the internet is made of tubes.
Legal language and geek language [Re: wow...] (Score:5, Interesting)
> EXCEPT WHEN whatever kind of language that most laws that I've read are written in.
Legal and geek language are equally horrible. And if legalese is too difficult,
just translate it to plain ol' English:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# "legalese2en.pl" - Converts legalese to proper English - (c)2007 by Jochen L. Leidner
# $Id$
use strict; # stick to the law of the Camel
while (<>) {
s/a large number of/many/g;
s/a number of/some or several or many or something more precise/g;
s/accord/give/g;
s/accord respect to/respect/g;
s/acquire/get/g;
s/additional/more/g;
s/additionally/also/g;
s/adjacent to/next to or near/g;
s/advert to/mention/g;
s/afforded/given/g;
s/aforementioned/often best omitted/g;
s/ambit/reach or scope/g;
s/any and all/all/g;
s/approximately/about/g;
s/ascertain/find out/g;
s/assist/help/g;
s/at present/now/g;
s/at the place/where/g;
s/at the present time/now/g;
s/at this point in time/now or currently or some such/g;
s/at this time/now or currently or some such/g;
s/attempt/try/g;
s/because of the fact that/because/g;
s/cease/stop/g;
s/cease and desist/stop/g;
s/circumstances in which/when or where/g;
s/cognizant of/aware of or knows/g;
s/commence/start/g;
s/conceal/hide/g;
s/concerning the matter of/about/g;
s/consensus of opinion/consensus/g;
s/consequence/result/g;
s/contiguous to/next to/g;
s/demonstrate/show/g;
s/desire/want/g;
s/despite the fact that/despite or though/g;
s/does not operate to/does not/g;
s/donate/give/g;
s/due to the fact that/because/g;
s/during the course of/during/g;
s/during the time that/while/g;
s/echelon/level/g;
s/elucidate/explain or perhaps clarify/g;
s/endeavor/try/g;
s/evince/show/g;
s/excessive number of/too many/g;
s/exclusively/only/g;
s/exit/leave/g;
s/facilitate/help/g;
s/firstly/first/g;
s/secondly/second/g;
s/for the duration of/during or while/g;
s/for the purpose of doing/to do/g;
s/for the reason that/because/g;
s/forthwith/immediately/g;
s/frequently/often/g;
s/fundamental/basic/g;
s/has a negative impact/hurts or harms/g;
s/(I would argue that|it is arguable that|it could be argued
Re:wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
We've all read some of the overlong slashdot replies/nerd emails that go to great lengths and painstaking detail, dismantling every aspect of the parent poster's point. Usually these posts include specific references to higher authority - textbooks, articles, past examples and other random websites.
Its exactly this combination of arrogance and pedantry that makes a good lawyer. The obsessive need to be absolutely, comprehensively and demonstratably RIGHT and for everyone to know it.
I knew that when I went to law school. Two things did surprise me though:
1. Law nerds have exactly the same sense of humour as computer nerds (pun or other liguistic trick based jokes, Monty Python etc); and
2. It really is exactly the same thought pattern for legal problem solving as it is for software development problem solving.
A misplaced semi-colon or the use of the wrong synonym can be as destructive in a piece of legislation or a 20 page judgment as it can in any piece of code.
Re:wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Joe
Re:wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, as another poster indicated, there's lots of "if then but else if" clauses. As black and white as a case my appear at first glance, the law is very gray. One can have two courts arrive at two entirely different conclusions on the same basic point, and then the appeals court decide to not take it up because the case isn't interesting. At that point, the implication is that both courts are right (or maybe they're both wrong), but it's no longer a simple truth. Don't even get me started on what one lawyer told me about the words "reasonable" and "prudent" in the context of any legal code.
Second, as strange as it may seem, a lot of practicing law is a matter of avoiding the real issue at hand. Take the SCO case - very little time has been spent addressing the case itself. Almost all the time has been spent on discovery motions, procedural arguments, evidence rules, etc. As a geek, I like to see results fairly quickly in a repeatable and consistent manner. If you told me that I had to write a perl program to compute the area of a triangle, I'd say cool. However, if you then told me that first I had to prove the theorem I'll use, but first I have to agree on the method in which my theorem will be proved, but first I have to decide whether the requester even has standing to ask me to write a program...you get the idea.
Third, I don't disagree on your point about geeks making good researchers. Certainly there's no question we're good at digging stuff up. What remains to be seen is whether we're good at digging everything up. This goes back to my other points. In a way, legal research is like the halting problem - you're never 100% confident that you've pulled every relevant law and ruling. Legal researchers also have to be completely free of bias. Most geeks I know (myself included) tend to feel very strongly on certain issues, and it's only natural that we'd favor facts that support our bias and disfavor those that don't. A good researcher can research the hell out of an issue that they vehemently oppose for the side that they despise. That takes something beyond being good at Google and Lexus.
Re:wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
I currently work for a judge and he refuses to have a computer in his chambers. Well, ok... there is a computer in his chambers but its unplugged and in the corner, with the screen facing the wall. His secretary prints out his email for him and he dictates his replies onto tape.
The scary thing is that I'm not actually kidding or even exaggerating.
That said, he does have a computer at home and a personal email address that he seems quite capable of using.
Re:wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow.. I can"t believe I could read that within a few seconds of seeing it for the first time. It says: I Am Not A Lawyer But I Have Studied Law And Work In The Field.
A sign I have been readin Slashdot too much
Re:wow... (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's not it...
What's important is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe he should recuse himself. (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that any court case might turn out to be important and end up getting cited for years (Salomon v Salomon for example was a case heard in 1896 which is still imporant today). So the judge has to bear in mind that people reading the transcript in hundreds of years time won't have the assumed knowledge that all the rest of us have. When they ask dumb questions like "who are these Rolling Stones?" it may not be that they really don't know, it may be for the sake of making sure the explanation is in the record.
Not that I'm necessarily saying that's what happened in this case.
Re:Maybe he should recuse himself. (Score:5, Funny)
Barrister [to witness]: "In fact, wouldn't it be fair to say that you were drunk as a judge."
Judge: "Would you care to rephrase that?"
Barrister: "I do apologise; I mean't drunk as a lord, my lord."
Re:Maybe he should recuse himself. (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet I can shoot holes in at least your first attempt. If he knew the 'casual use definition' but realized this case depended on an exact technical definition, even a fairly experienced internet user would probably want to turn to experts.
Re:But I Thought Only 'Mericun Jeebus-Lovers (Score:5, Funny)
I hear there's more than one nowadays.