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> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you. Aside from everything else in your argument, this is a
by munk-a 5y ago
> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you.
Aside from everything else in your argument, this is a really bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically structured to leave the selling party blameless in all but the most extreme circumstances.
As a more general response:
I also think the thing that makes anti-troll legislation difficult is that making it harder to attack patents, and making it harder to defend patents makes it harder for smaller businesses trying to defend their property from larger businesses. If we start leveraging personal penalties on the attorneys of bad faith suites we need to have confidence that that also won't be turned into a tool to silence legitimate claims from small parties...
If we decided, for instance, to fine every bad faith attorney for 1 million dollars we'd need to make sure that large companies can't use the threat of that fine to strong arm small businesses into compliance.
This is a really complicated question and, at the end of the day, it's why we need to be really careful about maintaining a high quality in our federal judges - bad judges cause extreme harm by making justice inaccessible.
- nonrandomstring 5y agoJust to be clear, my suggestion has absolutely nothing to do with attorneys. But this is more interesting; >> If you sell a gun to an unstable crazy who shoots up the neighbourhood then some blame lies with you. > bad point to lean on - in America laws are specifically structured to leave the selling party blameless True perhaps. But I did not raise a point of law. This is an ethical chestnut that traces back to at least Plato. Perhaps unclear from my wording I'm implying you know the buyer to be a killer, and so it would be irresponsible to sell. Anyway, my suggested legal revision doesn't rely on whether the seller knows or not, but on the buyers legitimacy to hold the patent.
- munk-a 5y agoAs depressing as this may be - we're talking about the legal system so ethical standards aren't really relevant. America (and well, everywhere mostly) has historically had a lot of extremely unethical laws. Currently on the ground most weapon sales don't require extensive background checks which frees the seller of any legal liability - it is illegal to sell a gun to a dangerous person, but it's not illegal to clamp your hands over your eyes and ears and never run a background check in the first place... thus, legally, remaining ignorant of the individual's fitness to own a firearm. This is an extremely divisive topic in America so I'd really just suggest avoiding any gun or self-defense related analogies whenever possible.