June 2005 Archives

For any of you following the debate, I searched and searched and finally found:
Don't Stop Grokkin' @ Reason Magazine
I am thoroughly disgusted by the hollow reporting on this matter. Even the Wall Street Journal did a horrible job in discussing the ruling (in High Court Sides With Studios in Grokster Case).
I myself am not sure where I stand on some of these issues. I believe content creators should have a right to copyright their works and keep others from blatantly stealing their work, but on the other side (and as mentioned in the Reason article), content providers like MGM have yet to really come up with a viable and convenient model for distributing content and yet protecting the creator's rights. They also continually push the envelope in their quest for eternal copyrights, which do nothing but harm knowledge that ought eventually reside in the *free* public domain. Let that issue not cloud the current one at hand, though. It looks like the victory was, indeed, somewhat hollow. Too bad, though, it will scare enough hobby/garage inventors away from bringing ideas to market which may cause or be a gateway for infringing activities.

We're (Steffi and I) in Amsterdam (the Netherlands, for those who may be geographically challenged) visiting Kathrin and lo and behold, a free wireless network with a fast connection to the net. Whoever is running "battle of waterloo" around Wilhelminastraat 191, I'd love to give you a hug. You've made my week.