Whats this... common... sense... head... exploding... paradox.

I've always said:

Fear the politician that claims he'll make the trains run on time.

and

The end is near when courts start to work for the common man rather than against.

mines the one with the NBC hood.

some of the rubbish they come up with, criminals don't have a right to shut down any website that exposes then? next thing you know they will be trying to claim tazers can kill people!

..."Federal courts lack jurisdiction in cases where both the plaintiff and defendant are located outside the country."

No shit?

I'm actually impressed by the judge now - rather than sticking his head in the sand like many US judges would, shouting 'no, no, no, I've made my decision and I'm sticking to it', he's actually listened to the arguments (on both sides) and made a rational decision, and has the balls to admit that he made a big, embarrassing mistake.

Of course, he shouldn't have issued the original gag order, and his reputation will be in tatters because of it, but kudos to him for owning up to his errors.

..."Federal courts lack jurisdiction in cases where both the plaintiff and defendant are located outside the country."

And Judges in the USA don't need to be vaguely familiar with the US constitution.

Is the old fool still working? Here's a "get out of jail, free" heiress.

@david suggest you pick up a good volume or two about International Treaty Obligations within the US Federal Legal System together with a full copy of the North American Free Trade Agreement as signed by Switzerland '06/07 especially the sub clauses allowing the Swiss National citizens and /or companies to initiate appropriate legal sanction as outlined in the 1998 Bono Act to redress copyright abuse in the US by either it's citizens or corporations !

Happy reading with additional research , it may wash away a large volume of mud or other !

Much has changed in the legal landscape , in many countries thanks to new treaty obligations since the dawn of this new century of propaganda rules !

As for wiki by operating foreign servers and mirrors this prevents any one site from suffering any downtime should any one server or mirror go down suddenly and provide peak bandwidth load sharing too !

As for the Judge , if it was done properly it would have set the benchmark ruling for all future international cases , but as it stands he just keeps on digging an even bigger hole to hide in for some unknown reason , which is very strange when given his background resume prior to his bench appointment in 2002 by one GW Bush !

It's a bad thing.

"Federal courts lack jurisdiction in cases where both the plaintiff and defendant are located outside the country."

What he means is that the federal courts cannot take American companies to task for their actions regarding Internet traffic between persons abroad.

The Democrats in Congress were holding out on this very point in the retroactive immunity for telecom companies bill.

The only action the judge took was against the domain registrar, who was indeed a party to every website access.

The domain name lookup was equivalent to using an ad in the printed telephone book.

This action extends the reach of corporate immunity against civil litigation, even for American companies.

What happened to all the "think of the children! This ruling means all websites will have slander, hearsay and our faces photoshopped onto elephant porn on them!?!...Don't the rules apply!" that were in the other story?

Hopefully it'll be the piano playing bikini clad one in hearsay.

suddenshowofcommonsense!

That is not likely to happen .. think about it.

Im in UK and I phone someone in Germany .. where is AT&T going to come into the equation ? What I was routed via the states ????

If AT&T is a carrier in my country or receiving country then I would still sue in this country.

Paris .. cos she is easily confused as well ; )

Ian Ferguson said:

...

Of course, he shouldn't have issued the original gag order, and his reputation will be in tatters because of it, but kudos to him for owning up to his errors.

-----

If anything, it has solidified his reputation... he isn't like most judges... he has been open-minded, listened to additional arguments about his decision, took in the new information, realized he was in error, and reversed himself.

That kind of person, earns my respect, and only enhances his reputation in my eyes.

That's the kind of person I want on the bench.

-- Smoovious