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Gawker is demanding that the lawsuit filed by Quentin Tarantino — claiming that Gawker violated copyright laws by posting a link to the leaked script to The Hateful Eight — be dismissed. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Gawker is claiming that reading a script doesn’t qualify as copyright infringement.

Robert Penchina, Gawker’s lawyer, is arguing that there is no proof that anyone who clicked the site’s link to the read the Tarantino screenplay did anything wrong:

Here, the Complaint does no more than raise the possibility that some member of the public who accessed plaintiff’s script using Gawker’s link subsequently violated Tarantino’s rights by committing an infringement. Because plaintiff did not allege any facts showing that an infringing act actually was undertaken by a third party — merely accessing the script by clicking on the link is legally insufficient — plaintiff did not state a claim for contributory infringement.

Penchina goes on to note that if there is no proof any Gawker readers “actually saved or otherwise made a copy” then there isn’t anything of substance to Tarantino’s lawsuit.

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David Foster Wallace’s famous essay "Consider The Lobster" explores unsettling questions about how much pain lobsters feel when we cook them. By law, that introductory sentence must be on this blog post, which is about new research into whether lobsters and crabs feel pain.

In the Washington Post today, Tamar Stelling has a nice overview of recent work by scientists trying to pin down actual evidence for whether or not invertebrates like crabs, lobsters, octopuses, and squid actually "feel pain," as we understand it. There are plenty of behaviorist philosophers willing to weigh in on this question without knowing a damn thing about neurons, but what the scientists have to say is more compelling:

If he applied a brief electric shock to one part of a hermit crab, it would rub at that spot for extended periods with its claws. Brown crabs rubbed and picked at their wound when a claw was removed, as it is in fisheries. At times the prawns and crabs would contort their limbs into awkward positions to reach the injury. "These are not just reflexes," Elwood says. "This is prolonged and complicated behavior, which clearly involves the central nervous system."

Octopuses and squid also show similar behavior, and possess the same kinds of nerves that detect certain pains in humans. Read all about it here.

It is really not so bad being a vegetarian.

[Photo: Flickr]

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday the CIA improperly searched a stand-alone computer network established for Congress in its investigation of allegations of CIA abuse in a Bush-era detention and interrogation program and the agency’s own inspector general has referred the matter to the Justice Department.

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