Gawker is responsible in the same way that you're responsible that your house got robbed because someone found your hidden door key under a rock in front of your house.

Ethically, it's clear that the hackers are wrong.

Should Gawker have had better security? No doubt.

Yes, on your first day at IBM you were given the opportunity to declare IP that you owned. Anything else going forward belonged to Big Blue.

Not true in California -- they can only assert copyright claims on anything you build using company-owned property. So, if you did it your own time, on your own hardware, you can actually fight back against this.

Such was also true in the 1980s (I was advised- never tested it in court). Whether a signed agreement was enforceable was pretty much a state issue, but it was generally thought that they were hard to enforce (like non-compete agreements).

Since the 1099 requirement was put in to recover more revenues and improve the healthcare bill's financial justification, if that requirement is repealed, should Congress re-evaluate the healthcare bill based on the new (worse) numbers?