... people get what's coming to them.

People who crap on you should receive the same back to them; hideous oafs who are cruel to animals should have their arms ripped off by giants, etc. I could go on but you get the point.

I make the point because of something I read in Slashdot: RIAA Hearing Next Week Will Be Televised.

Those nice people at the RIAA are in ‘opposition to televising the proceedings’ in the case ‘SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum.’

Slashdot reports that … “District Judge Nancy Gertner labeled as 'curious' the record companies' opposition to televising the proceedings, since their professed reason for bringing the cases is deterrence, 'a strategy [which] effectively relies on the publicity arising from this litigation'."

In other words, if you want to pick on ‘the little people’ and bully them for all to see, you better be willing to live with the implications of all seeing that you are a bully. If you don’t think you are bullying people and this is your fair and proper rights – then no issues with the publicity, eh?

The RIAA will get what it deserves – I hope – but two issues get blurred in this nonsense they are carrying on.

1. I am not saying companies and individuals should not be able to protect their IP and defend it in court - they should.

But let’s face it, going after single mothers, dead people, homeless people, 12 year old school girls and the like, is not the answer.

Newsflash: The music and TV industry needs to work how to live with the changes in their industry still have valuable IP – but then I am hardly the first to say that!

2. Patent trolls are dogs who should be taken out and shot.

We would be better off with the loser-pays system — known as the “English rule” — which exists in most of the rest of the developed world. If you lose a case like these, you often had to pay ALL the opposition’s costs. Sounds good to me. That would stop the stupidity that we’ve been watching in Utah. Yes SCO – that means you. Make Boyes pay the costs for IBM – maybe we could have moved on long ago - given that all started in 2003. See Groklaw for a timetable.

Of course we all work for companies that both sue and get sued. I am not in the legal department so I can’t give you the cut and thrust of ours cases – check our PR team for that. But I believe we operate with integrity and that’s the first step for me.

But there is another theory that says that’s all relative.