Shakedowns

… and the concepts of justice

I am prone to indignation; I try hard never to make it righteous. I let you be the judge in this case.
I will be talking about two videos, a short one from Substack and a long documentary. You should watch both and, in both cases, try to reflect on your own emotional reactions. The short one you should watch now, the second, the documentary, when you please. It is one and a half hours.

The documentary:

I assume you watched the first one. You should check out the comments as well.
They are educational.

When I finished, I was just angry. I cannot stand phony, contrived and scripted propaganda garbage. Bad writing, bad acting, but above all, BAD MESSAGE!
When you look at the content, the first question would be: Why wouldn’t Alexis stand up for herself?
The setting is clearly a university lecture hall, where she is trying the get an education, mortgaging her future in the process. Why wouldn’t she ask WHY? She is paying to be there. The professor is, in a way, her employee. She could have easily said: “Not until you give me a legitimate reason”, or
“Not until you give it to me in writing with a full refund of what I paid to be here.”
Just like the professor’s ‘dismissal’, it can be done politely.
In an educational setting it should also be expected to see students questioning what happened. Not because they are standing up for her, but to understand what is happening. Wouldn’t YOU be curious? Wouldn’t you want to know whether he had just cause?
Shouldn’t YOU/WE try to understand what happened before forming an opinion on what is just and fair?

Then comes a set of stupid suggestions to answer the question: “what are laws for?”
“Social order”; “To protect a person’s personal rights”; “So that you can rely on the government”, then the BINGO answer: “Justice”
Did you notice the slight of hand? How the law became a weapon that must be wielded for a noble cause?

The whole skit reeks of leftist authoritarianism, where justice is and requires collective action, where ‘justice’ is not a state of balance, but an uncompromising absolute that must be fought for.
I think we can all agree that we should labour on bringing about a just and better world, but that should not start with hasty judgments and ill-informed concepts. Justice starts with careful balancing, considerations and compromises.
Social justice warriors have never created a better world.
Yes, sometimes we all must fight to make our case, but we should never forget that we are not fighting for an idolized absolute, but for a particular issue in need of equilibrium, because ultimately, that is what justice is. Balance. That thing in Justicia’s hand.

Now let me deal with my furious anger about the imbalance of power. Maybe you can take a break and watch the documentary so that you can relate better.

Are you angry yet? What patent trolls are doing is legalized extortion. What makes this most egregious is that it is racketeering perpetrated by officers of the courts, lawyers and judges.
Part of the reasons for the civilizational decline of the West is the decline of trust in its institutions.
I would be hard pressed to name one that is not affected by the slow rot.

Patent trolling is an attack on the spirit of the law itself. Allowing it to happen is inexcusable.
I understand that the FBI has its priorities, but it still should be able pick such a low hanging fruit.

I would love to see every one of the lawyers and judges who were participating in the racket exposed in the documentary disbarred, investigated, sentenced, jailed and opened for civil litigation. I want to see them pilloried. Not in East Texas, but on Time Square. Especially the judges.

The cost is enormous:

The problems of low-quality patents are on stark display as the count of patent litigations and their associated costs are on the rise. Such costs declined from 2013-2017, but have since returned to 2013 levels. Patent troll suits cost defendants approximately $29 billion per year on litigation, before counting the corresponding decline in investment in R&D. (highlight mine) (source)

Now consider that the 29 Billion figure is just the cost of litigation. The cost of the collateral damage is immeasurable.
Elon Musk says that he does not believe in patents. The only reason he files them is to prevent attacks from patent trolls.

Austin Meyer has a list of simple ideas to fix the problem:

• No more method patents

• No more software patents

• 5 year duration only

• Filing only in defendant’s district

• Full disclosure of the parties (people, not LLCs)

• Using a technology is not an infringement on it.

• No lawsuits by NPEs (non-practicing entities)

I could add a few more:

• To sue, you must demonstrate material damage.

• If you lose, you should be responsible for the costs of the defendant

• If you settle, the terms of that settlement should be a matter of public record.
  No NDRs.

While I have serious questions about the utility of the whole system, for the sake of the argument, let’s say that I support it. In that case, the above suggestions would protect the integrity of the system. The NDRs are only protecting the criminals. Upstanding champions of justice would not need to hide in the dark.

This whole issue is a rabbit hole. Just follow the links at the end of this post.
Once you dive into it, you will soon realize that there is no good news around.

Civil forfeiture laws and their abuse are just another example of legalized extortion. There are several documentaries about that too. Movies are made about it. The IMDB blurb of Rebel Ridge describes it as “small-town corruption”, not as a nationwide assault on the concept of due process. The civil forfeiture idea is not questioned, only its execution.
(That, btw, is a fundamentally communist practice that I will NOT get into here and now)

But since I am talking about Hollywood…, you must also have noticed that it is getting progressively more violent. Action movie heroes are not only getting more violent, but even nonchalant about the extrajudicial murders they are committing. All of it, of course, in pursuit of the nobble goal of justice.

We are talking about lawfare as if it was a game.
The most important preoccupation of the democrats during the Trump confirmation hearings was to pry some commitments out of the nominees, so that they will not subject them to the same treatment they, the democrats, were dishing out to republicans when they were in power.
The law is a powerful weapon, while justice is fragile concept.

In the world we are living in, the law is not about justice anymore; it is about power and ideology. The example I started with subjugates the law to justice.
I understand that this is a serious claim, but I will have to return to it later. Subscribe if you want to be notified.

I don’t think I can overstate the importance of this issue. Attacks on the integrity of the law are attacks on the very foundation of civilization.
What influenced my views the most on this subject is the seminal work of Friedrich Hayek: Law, Legislation and Liberty; especially its second volume: The mirage of social justice.
I highly recommend it to anybody interested in the subject.

Mr.E

was asking us to help him make a confused propaganda piece go viral.
What are the chances that this post can go viral? In either case: why?

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More from this stack

There can be no peace without justice

The price of clemency

To see another day

References

Mr.E
Justice - Etymology, Origin & Meaning

The documentary
The Patent Scam (2017) - IMDb
The website: The Patent Scam - Documentary About Patent Trolls

An excellent exploration of the issues:
Patent troll: What is a patent troll and how to deal with it

The Growing Problem Of U.S. Patent Trolls, And What Should Happen Next

How the US Patent Office Could Change Under Trump

Trump Taps Ex-Goldman Sachs IP Chief to Lead US Patent Office