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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 04:38 AM EDT |
But as the anonymous poster in a reply to the post above yours implies: Citizens
are commonly expected to obey the law, and an excuse of not understanding the
law is not likely a successful defence if you are found to have not followed the
law. If it is commonly accepted that you need a special agent to translate these
laws for you (ie. a lawyer), how reasonable is that then?
It means that the government effectively pushes you to use an expensive service
to be able to function in society (if you are getting anywhere close to possible
legal boundaries).
I do see that several engineering fields have similar effects where you run a
large risk (or can't get, for example, building permission) if you don't use a
trained/certified agent, but there at least it is usually clear that you
shouldn't be accountable for not understanding the issue, which isn't the case
with the law (again, a crime is no less a crime bc. you didn't know it was
forbidden).[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- precisely - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 09:31 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, August 21 2012 @ 04:42 AM EDT |
To be fair, this isn't a problem of legalese in particular.
Every field of study
has its own specialised language;...specialised words that
are only comprehensible to someone who knows
enough about the field in question
to pick up on the nuances.
But it IS is problem of legalese
when it tries to express ideas of another specialised language (an "-ese") and
is then used to argue about those ideas and make a decision about those ideas
that is binding. Any time a translation (paraphrasing) is done between
languages there is a trade off in terms of expression of ideas.
Legalese is
causing a problem with software:
Software patents are written in legalese
NOT softwarese (for want of a better word). [Patent] Lawyers who write
software patents are mostly unable to pick up on the nuances of the specialised
language of Softwarese and so in translating into Legalese are likely to make
mistakes which are then compounded if the patent is translated back into
Softwarese - by a non lawyer who is supposed to be skilled in the art of
Software (not Legalese). The result is overly broad patents that do not match
the original invention. (Unless, of course, by translating into Legalese it
obfuscates the true meaning of the Softwarese and so is done
deliberately.)
Why are patents [claim] specifications not written in the
relevant -ese of the invention where they would be of actual use to one skilled
in the art? If they were, it would solve some of the litigation problems I've
followed on Groklaw (the nuances where the Patentese has been translated back
into Softwarese).
Simples. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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