Thursday, May 5, 2011

2nd big legal ruling of the new millenium

Yesterday's news that a U.S. District Court has ruled that an IP address is NOT a person could be quite interesting. Not as interesting as my report on the 1-800CONTACTS attempt to hijack the Internet. But follow my logic. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland and was also a mathematician who expounded on logic and mathematics. So is the following what Carroll might call an "invalid syllogism?" Well, as I said in the 1-800CONTACTS posting, I'm no attorney. But this could be the one-two-three punch needed to get cyber privateering (or at least a level of countermeasures) on solid legal ground:

  1. The court has ruled that an IP address is NOT a person.
  2. If therefore your servers, your computer, or your life is attacked from an IP address, you could then legitimately "roach" that IP address to determine from whence the attack came. Because the IP address is not a person, but a vehicle for perpetrating a crime. This is critical to enforcement of your cyber privateer Letter of Marque and Reprisal.
  3. And per paragraph 1 of the Cyber Privateer Code, "Any unauthorized attempt to access your computer or phish your data access privileges constitutes a crime punishable by the looting of the attacker's assets by an authorized cyber privateer. All assets. Within 6 months of the attack."
What I'm trying to say is that today's reported ruling might be the precursor to the get-out-of-jail-free card critical to legalizing retaliatory cyber exploits.

We'll have to wait and see if the U.S. Supreme Court backs up this decision. Because it will most certainly be appealed. Let's hope they fast-track it.


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Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?