zlacker

>>YeGobl+(OP)
Powerful article. What strikes me as a layman (non-lawyer, non-law enforcement), is how prevalent these methods of forensic science have become, without any solid scientific basis backing them up - such as peer reviewed studies with quantifiable evidence. You'd think that in order for the state to take the life of a human being, you'd need to prove it using means that are more thoroughly vetted than "[one doctor] who in 1971 suggested the cause might be violent shaking" (emphasis mine).

>>GlumWo+lb
The closed source DNA testing code used daily just raises so many red flags. It's honestly concerning how basically no one in the legal community understands why this is an issue. This stuff is way too important to be proprietary.

>>Grimbu+Bk
Wanting to weaken or abolish any kind of property right - even the non-naturally-derived government-granted monopoly bargains that form copyright, patent, and trade secrecy - makes you extremely fringe in the legal profession. If you want to be a competent and successful lawyer while holding those opinions you have to firewall half your brain off from the other half. Partially because fringe people who want to change the law make terrible legal arguments[0], and partially because nobody wants to hire a lawyer that's arguing that forensic software should be decopyrighted and its source code forcibly expropriated by the state for the sake of avoiding a miscarriage of justice.

[0] Like me, right now, who thinks we should demand copyright term maximums

>>kmeist+IO
There are alternatives to “decopyrighting”: a government-sponsored development effort, open source from the beginning, for example. Or a government buying an existing piece of software to a willing company. Or sending money to that company in exchange of them publishing their source code.

The OP did not say anything about taking ownership of already-existing software without its owner’s consent.