DEFCON 17: That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it as a great, hilarious talk about legal threats and cease and desist letters.
What it is
Jason Scott of textfiles.com tells the story at DEFCON 17 of being sued for two billion dollars by a scammer who plagued him and others for over a decade. The talk is tragic and funny, covering what he learned about misleading schemes.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2015 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec hobs · 2015-01 · on “The MS-DOS Showcase”
If you don't know him already, textfiles has one of my favorite people on the internet (Jason Scott) running a lot of things, and hoarding interesting material for our future. As far as I can tell the dude just loves MS-DOS games and hence we have this great project. (I imagine there are a lot of contributors, but he is clearly pushing it forward) He gave a great talk at DEFCON 17 called "That one time I was sued for two billion dollars." in which he gives a few more details about textfiles if you are interested. [this video]
Strong rec __z · 2015-05 · on “I Want Your AOL CDs”
This guy has gotten cease and desist letters from catheter companies as well as been sued for two billion dollars. Watch his talk on the matter, it is really great - [this video]
Recommends Rendello · 2026-01 · on “Anna's Archive is sued for $13T”
For a less-serious but similar situation, Jason Scott (textfiles.com, Internet Archive) gave a hilarious DEFCON talk called "That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars": [this video]
Cites reitzensteinm · 2020-04 · on “textfiles.com”
The owner of the site gave a talk at DEFCON 17, "That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars" [this video]
Critical mhh__ · 2021-09 · on “UK national extradited to US for film/TV piracy”
It's no better than [this video] (That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars) level argument, just with better lawyer-speak. The US is sheltering a diplomat(spy?) who negligently ran over and killed a British civilian as we speak, but these guys are the real danger.