DEFCON 17: That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars

Name: DEFCON 17: That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars
Uploaded: 2011-01-15T07:27:16Z
Duration: 1888 s
Description: 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.

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1.7M views · Jan 15, 2011 · 31:28 · 3 HN recommenders · 5 mentions · discussed 2015–2026

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.

Why Hacker News points people here: HN commenters recommend it as a great, hilarious talk about legal threats and cease and desist letters.

“Watch his talk on the matter, it is really great”HN comment, 2015

Hacker culture & free software Law, policing & justice Internet culture & memes Talk #jason scott #defcon #lawsuit #textfiles #internet history

What Hacker News said 5

Strongly recommendshobsJan 2015

“He gave a great talk at DEFCON 17”

Jason Scott's talk with details about textfiles.

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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

Strongly recommends__zMay 2015

“Watch his talk on the matter, it is really great”

Talk on being sued and receiving cease and desist letters.

Full comment

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

RecommendsRendelloJan 2026

“gave a hilarious DEFCON talk called”

Hilarious talk about being sued for a huge sum.

Full comment

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 itreitzensteinmApr 2020

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The owner of the site gave a talk at DEFCON 17, "That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars" this video

Criticalmhh__Sep 2021

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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.