Hello to Gator's lawyer(s)(?) at Cooley Godward

Greetings to a dedicated reader, who has taken such an interest in my poor corner of the web. Welcome, to someone from Gator's law firm "Cooley Godward". I have no objection, since of course this blog is to draw as many readers as possible. But will you indulge me in some of my curiosity?

1) Are you a senior person, junior person, or not even a lawyer?

2) How did you get stuck with the job of reading me? I always wonder at this. It's known, for example, that the cypherpunks list has (or at least had) Federal agents reading it. I always wondered about the sad sack who drew that job. Because I could imagine few more hellish tasks than being obligated to read, as a job, that Liberbabbling flame-pit. I've wanted to ask the person how they stood it. Hopefully, reading my material is less onerous. But I still would like to know how it comes off to someone not perusing it because they want to.

3) What did you think of my analysis of reverse-engineering ? Note, if you say "Wow, it was brilliant, we never thought of that before you said it" - then that doesn't reflect very well on your law firm! I suppose the best answer is "It was great, our senior intellectual property counsel wrote a very similar memo earlier." (i.e. you agree, but knew it already :-)).

4) Does your firm in fact, as John Palfrey suggested I ask, have a position for which you'd like to hire me? Preferably for a fat expert-witness fee? I am job-hunting! I don't work cheap, but I'm worth it. I wouldn't help you harm Ben Edelman personally. But I have no inhibition about being an expert opposing his expertise (and as he's in training to be a lawyer, he shouldn't mind). In fact, having studied his work extensively, I know its weaknesses and soft spots :-).

5) You can move down from Orange Alert regarding me. No promises, but at this time, I have no plans to do any more reverse-engineering work with Gator myself. It's just not worth all the hassle. I did analysis of censorware for years, because I thought it was important for the freedom of the net. Gator's merely vaguely interesting to me as a what's-inside issue. I'm pretty tired of playing lawsuit Russian Roulette, and I don't have the protection of the Berkman Center (this is not an invitation to sue me - it's an explanation of why I feel that Gator analysis is not worth taking any legal risk whatsoever).

Let me know! I've kept a few details of your host private, so hopefully I can distinguish a real reply from any fake.

[I haven't had this much fun with such a pseudo-reply since Mike Godwin brought up the idea of my being a government expert witness in a censorship trial. Then I got to do an elaborate riff on how disappointed I was, that Janet Reno never called me and personally begged for my invaluable help.]

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)