Mark Your Calendars

One week from today, MGM v. Grokster is going to be heard before the Supreme Court. In a nutshell, close to thirty entertainment behemoths sued various companies (Morpheus, Kazaa, and Grokster) who wrote P2P file-sharing software for copyright infringement. The defendants held up rather well thus far, but the plaintiffs appealed, and the case has ended up in the hightest court in the country. If the Supreme Court overturns the lower court decisions, life as you know it will change. What do the plaintiffs seek? To make any technology that could possibly allow a user to infringe upon copyright illegal. P2P computing aside, just think of all that affects. Stumped? Go here: www.eff.org/legal/cases/betamax/countdown/index.php.

On a similar topic, I'm currently reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. I just got it, so I'm not very far into it yet. I imagine I'll have a lot to say about it once I'm finished, but if this blog continues as it has been of late, I'll make some huge post and then save it as a draft and never publish it. I have dozens of posts "saved as draft." I have a fear of publishing without extensive editing. I'm trying to get over that.