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| Judges Using the Internet |
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Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 01:07 PM EDT
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I get a lot of mail asking if judges are allowed to read Groklaw. The answer is, Yes. There are some footnotes with respect to what judges can use in deciding a case, and rules can vary according to which state and which kind of judge, but the general answer is yes, they can read whatever they think will be helpful and use it too, with some limitations. Here is an article that talks about judges using the Internet. The trend is to use the Internet more and more, particularly on the appellate level, it says. There are some who feel they shouldn't use Google in deciding cases and should stick to facts in evidence, which is another topic. Trademark cases are one type where it seems more and more use search engines, because one part of a trademark case involves how well-known your mark is. A search can demonstrate your fame or lack of it. Domain name disputes also often involve search engine work. Again, the issue is trademarks in such disputes.
Here is how the article explains it: "Rules governing out-of-court research are ambiguous about the use of search engines and, in the United States, tend to vary by state. In general, though, appeals courts have leeway in the sources they use. 'Often appellate arguments require going outside the record of a particular case, because a judge or a panel must weigh the ramifications. What does this mean down the road?' said Dick Carelli, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOC). 'Tradition dictates that anything is fair game in terms of the research a judge or a judge's staff can do online.' . . .
"Trial judges are more constrained. Rule 201 of the Federal Rules of Evidence says trial judges may take notice of public information only when they 'resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.' Most of the cases reviewed by CNET News.com involved trial judges using Google."
Here is one relevant section from the article, showing the trend to use search engines: "In the United States and abroad, judges are turning to search engines such as Google to check facts, to look up information about companies embroiled in litigation, and to challenge statistics presented by attorneys in court. Dozens of judges have penned opinions describing Google as a valuable--and sometimes crucial--source of knowledge.
"To be sure, Google has no monopoly in the legal system. Yahoo's search engine popped up in the landmark Napster copyright case four years ago, and Oregon police tried to track a criminal defendant accused of firearm violations through Yahoo searches. When AltaVista was in its heyday, it also was mentioned in a handful of cases. So, yes, judges can read whatever they think would be helpful, and they are free to use the information even in their decision-making, subject to the above limitations. That's why I am always so careful not to put any information on Groklaw unless I have two sources and why we provide links to proofs of whatever we write. It's also why -- well, part of why -- I ask that comments be phrased in language a judge might be accustomed to read and would not be offended by. Judges can read Groklaw, and if any do stop by, I hope they will feel very welcome here.
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| Authored by: PJ on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 01:37 PM EDT |
| Pls. put any mistakes in this thread. Thank you. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 01:52 PM EDT |
| the wealth of knowledge is to great to not take advantage of. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 01:54 PM EDT |
I have a question about judges that's sort of off topic. I wonder how much
control a judge has over the procedures in a case.
Say Judge Kimball wanted to know, before discovery with SCO even began, what
AT&T (the original party in the IBM System V contract) had to say about the
SCO (as purported successor in interest) interpretation of the contract and
amendments.
If AT&T employees were to testify that IBM could do whatever they want with
their AIX code, as long as it contained no System V code, this would eliminate
the ability for SCO to request the AIX code. Wouldn't the judge save a lot of
time and money if he eliminated the need for a lot of the motions during
discovery by asking some questions at the beginning?
SCO can still do an audit of the Linux kernel against their System V code and
then see if IBM contributed any code that might be found.
Am I being too much of an idealist, or does the judge have the power to do
something like this?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ujay on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 02:34 PM EDT |
I may be totally wrong here, but I would assume that Judges are usually too busy
to peruse the net in research without having a definite goal in mind.
With that said, I would also assume that judges must make decisions based only
on the evidence presented in court.
Proceeding from the above premises, I would then assume that the primary reason
for judges to indulge in research on the internet is the search for case law
that is relevant to the decisions they are forming.
The biggest problem in my logic is that it is based on assumption, as I have no
working knowlege or experience with American legal practice, and my basis may be
totally in error.
---
Programmer: A biological system designed to convert coffee and cheesies into
code[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: gdeinsta on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 02:50 PM EDT |
I fear judges are using Google and other search engines without knowing how
dependable or reliable the search engines are. Do judges know about Google
bombing? Are they aware of the blog effect (in which blogs link to each other
and end up high in the list)? Do they know whether the search engine they are
using accepts payment to alter the order of listing?
I think it would be
a good idea to put together a document, in language that a judge would
understand, explaining the legal hazards of relying on search engine results.
Here are a couple of paragraphs as a sample:
Search engine
operators are engaged in a constant arms race with manipulative advertisers.
Each search engine has its own secret methods for screening out such
manipultation. The methods change from week to week, as do the methods of their
opponents. Consequently search results are not reproducible even if we imagine
the Internet staying put. Furthermore no two search engines can be counted upon
to give the same result.
You might take advantage of diversity of search
engines to get a broader view of the Internet. But be aware that several
different search engine operators use the same underlying search engine.
Therefore at any one time multiple search services may manifest the same
selectivity. Yet they may yield different results (that is, they may appear to
be independent searches) because the operator has chosen to filter and rearrange
the search results for business reasons, for example, placing paid search
results at the top of the list.
It would need to be properly
researched with links to news articles, academic studies, and of course legal
cases.
Or has somebody already done it? [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 03:51 PM EDT |
Are jury members given any instructions about what information they can access
during the course of a trial, particularly if the trial is long?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: RedBarchetta on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 05:37 PM EDT |
It's a slow weekend day, so I thought this would be interesting to
post:
I just received my "bonus" publication from Scientific American
for renewing my subscription. It's titled, "New Horizons for Information
Technology."
I've been fascinated by this publication since it first
arrived. It has a number of articles that cover the latest, cutting-edge
breakthroughs in a variety sciences. Among the articles inside, there is one
titled, "Do-It-Yourself Supercomputer," by William H. Hargrove, Forrest Hoffman
and Thomas Sterling.
At the beginning of the article, there is a
section that states:
"In the 1980's, UNIX emerged as the
dominant operating system for scientific, and technical computing.
Unfortunately, the operating systems for PCs lacked the power and flexibility of
UNIX. But in 1991, Finnish college student Linus Torvalds created Linux, a
UNIX-like operating system that ran on a PC. Torvalds made Linux available free
of charge in the Internet, and soon hundreds of programmers began contributing
improvements. Now wildly popular as an operating system for stand-alone
computers, Linux is also ideal for clustered PCs."
[..]
"One of us
(Sterling) decided to pursue the then radical concept of building a computing
cluster from PCs. Sterling and his Goddard colleague Donald J. Becker connected
16 PCs, each containing an Intel '486 microprocessor, using Linux and a standard
Ethernet network. For scientific applications, the PC cluster delivered
sustained performance of 70 megaflops [..]. NASA researchers named their
cluster Beowulf, after the lean, mean hero of medieval legend who defeated the
giant monster Grendel, by ripping off one of the creatures
arms."
[..]
"As of last November [2003], 28 clusters of PCs,
workstations or servers were on the list of the world's 500 fastest computers.
The LosLobos cluster at the University of New Mexico has 512 Intel Pentium III
processors and is the 80th-fastest system in the world, with a performance of
237 gigaflops. The Cplant cluster at Sandia National Laboratoris has 580 Compaq
Alpha processors and is ranked 84th. The National Science Foundation and The
Department of Energy are planning to build even more advanced clusters that
could operate in the teraflops range (one trillion floating-point operations per
second), rivaling the speed of the fastest supercomputers on the
planet."
Later in the article, it goes on to describe the
business aspects:
"Beowulf systems are also muscling their way
into the corporate world. Major computer vendors are now selling clusters to
businesses with large computational needs. IBM, for instance, is building a
cluster of 1,250 servers for NuTec Sciences, a biotechnology firm that plans to
use the system to identify disease-causing genes."
[..]
"Research
groups, high schools, colleges or small businesses can build or buy their own
Beowulf clusters, realizing the promise of a supercomputer in every basement.
Should you decide to join the parallel-processing proletariat, please contact us
through our Web Site and tell us
about your Beowulf-building experiences."
Linux is being
mentioned in a major, scientific publication, as well as Beowulf clustered
computing. Sweet.
---
Collaborative efforts synergise. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cbc on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 06:04 PM EDT |
While looking for something else on the internet I found this:
Caldera - a depression caused by collapse of a volcano into the cavity once
occupied by magma.
No wonder they want to change the name to SCOG.
This site clarifies in summary form many geology questions. A semester course
in a couple of hours:
http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/geol111/igneous.htm[ Reply to This | # ]
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- caldera - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 06:41 PM EDT
- O/T Caldera - Authored by: Rann on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 07:54 PM EDT
- O/T Caldera - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 10:01 AM EDT
- O/T Caldera - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 11:16 AM EDT
- O/T Caldera - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 03:58 PM EDT
- More O/T volcanic calderas - Authored by: Duster on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 11:00 PM EDT
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| Authored by: _Arthur on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 06:21 PM EDT |
MacNewsWorld has conducted a match between a Mac detractor (RobEnderle)
and a
Mac lover, (Bryan Chaffin of MacObserver).
Round 1 & 2:
Should Apple switch to Intel ?
Round One
Round Two
Round
3 & 4: Apple, a hardware or a software company ?
Round
Three
Round
Four
Round 5 & 6: Is Apple going in the right direction
?
Round
Five
Round
Six
Rounds 1,3,5 are the respective answers, and 2,4,6 the
cross-rebuttals.
Enjoy!
_Arthur
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 06:40 PM EDT |
Microsoft, a sponsor for the presidency
of the EU?
'Now we note that, Microsoft officially sponsors
the Irish presidency of the
European Union . According to Olga Zrihen, member
of the European parliament
Belgian socialist party, "We have the right to
question this situation: the
presidency of the EU, which is a central element of
the European legislative
process, and is supposed to obey the democratic
principles, accepts to be
sponsored by a private company whose economic
interests are directly put into
cause by a legislative proposition on the agenda
of the Council!' [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 06:54 PM EDT |
Where a judge is deciding facts she must evaluate conflicting stories. As long
as there is a credible fact that a judge "can hang her hat on", she
can bring all of her life experience to bear on deciding the case. (Surfing the
web is one form of life experience.) In deciding credibility, she doesn't have
to cite that life experience of course.
Especially in cases involving expert testimony that the judge isn't likely to
fully understand; I have long suspected that the judge gets a gut feeling about
whose side the angels are on and selectively chooses witness statements that
bolster that opinion. I don't think there is anything wrong with this. I think
it is mostly an example of wisdom at work.
The foregoing is supposition on my part based mostly on a few experiences as an
'expert' witness. Am I wrong? Has anyone ever done a formal study of how
judges arrive at decisions?
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: m_si_M on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 07:37 PM EDT |
LinuxInsider has article on the "Mac Death Match":
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/macanalysis/33799.html
Here's a quote on Enderle: "notorious industry analyst analyst "Rob
Enderle" "
And here's some of Enderle's prose:
"It looks as if Mr. Chaffin and I agree that Apple is on the right path.
Where we disagree is what that path is."
huh?
Maybe his next turn will be:
"It looks as if the Open Source community and I agree that SCO has no
chance. Where we disagree is what that chance is."
---
C.S.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: brian on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 07:55 PM EDT |
"Trial judges are more constrained. Rule 201 of the
Federal Rules of
Evidence says trial judges may take
notice of public information only when
they 'resort to
sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.'
Most of the cases reviewed by CNET News.com involved trial
judges using
Google."
There is an inherent problem with using the
Internet
for critical decisions. That is the probelm of false
information
the net poses. Educators are having to fight
this problem daily. In my English
writing class
days, the professor had a standing order....."No Internet
citations what-so-ever" and I don't recommend going
against that order. For
example, everyone knows the world is
round right? So
you can't really trust this medium.
B.
---
#ifndef IANAL
#define IANAL
#endif [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jkondis on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 08:54 PM EDT |
PJ, I think that right now would be an opportune time for a piece on the name
game that Caldera/The SCO Group is playing. This would be a helpful reminder
for the interested readers on Groklaw, including the media, judges, lawyers,
etc.
The reason for this is that The SCO Group has been engaged in a Constant
Drumbeat of Rewriting History. This seems to be very important to them. They
*always* refer to contracts, documents, etc. that the Real SCO was a party to as
if the New SCO, Caldera/The SCO Group had been a party to them. This ranges
from agreements to how much who paid for what software licensing rights, to who
developed OSes for Intel ia32, to who was involved in Project Monterey, etc.
I know that most of the knowledgeable participants here on Groklaw understand
this distinction. But honeslty, I think it bears repeating with an article
devoted to the topic, backed up by research. This will help defuse what is
apparently The SCO Group's potentially most effective weapon.
With any luck, any judges that happen to be reading Groklaw could benefit from
this reminder.
---
Don't steal. Microsoft hates competition.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: RedBarchetta on Saturday, May 15 2004 @ 09:38 PM EDT |
Speaking of Google searching, here's an interesting
link to a contest where they pitted a phone and library against a google
search. The results are something to note...
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Collaborative
efforts synergise. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 07:22 AM EDT |
I wounder if a Judge looking at this site understands that it is heavly
moderated and posts are removed for no reason. I bet this could change the
opinions of someone looking at this site.
Just in case you are going to say it is all "trolls" post that are
removed. I had one removed that simply said. I dont think SCO will show up in
court for the Dimler Chrystler case. It was one sentence. I have to belive that
one sided sites are not judges favorites.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: darlmclied on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 07:34 AM EDT |
| There is a posting on the ILUG
(Irish
Linux Users Group) announcing a talk by Richard Stallman on May 24th in Dublin
on software patents.
The ILUG mailing list also has quite bit of discussion
about this and related issues in the Irish government, with a fair amount of
gentle lobbying and letter writing going on.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 16 2004 @ 04:12 PM EDT |
| I've been debating this issue amongst my fellow law clerks. I have no
hesitancy
stating that it would absolutely unethical for a judge to visit a
site like
Groklaw if they were actively working on one of the SCO actions.
To boil it down, american justice is a system: Lawyers present argument
and
judges judge those arguments. One aspect of this system is that lawyers get
to rip apart the arguments of opposing counsel. Now... imagine that Judge X
decids to hit the net. There the judge reads an article that states the
defendant is a scumbag of the first degree. The problem with this
information
is that defendant has no opportunity to rebut this allegation.
That's fine and
dandy when the judge uses sources whose accuracy cannot
reasonably be
questioned... but very few sources meet that criteria...(and no,
neither the NY
Times nor Groklaw meet that standard.) Moreover, even when
a sources facts
cannot be questioned, the conclusions drawn from them can
be. So again, even
if Groklaw's FACTS could not reasonably be questioned,
it's conclusions can
be.
So... we have the potential scenario where Judge X considers the
arguments
of outsiders but doesn't allow the actual litigants to comment on
those
arguments. Can you imagine the outrage if a judge based his ruling on
something he never gave the losing party a chance to comment on? So to put
it
bluntly, if Judge Kimball began the with "I read on Groklaw..." the judge
wouldn't finish the sentence before SCO's lawyers had moved for recusal.
Now
does this mean that all the fine work that goes into Groklaw is wasted? I
certainly hope not. Indeed I'm sure that the lawyers for IBM, et al., have
staff
hitting the site every 10 minutes. It's just that when something juicy
is
turned up, IBM presents it to the judge and SCO gets it's fair chance
to rebut the argument.
I'll close with one last comparison... Is a judge
allowed to visit the scene of a
crime by himself? Nope...the judge can do so
only with the all parties in tow.
Without the parties, such ex parte fact
finding will get the judge reversed and
reprimanded.
The line is very
simple...even with the ease of the internet, all fact finding,
except for
impecable data resources, the judge should leave the
research to the
attorneys. [ Reply to This | # ]
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