Non-Grokster news

Yesterday's Dilbert on patents. While I was looking this up (originally saw it in local paper here), I noticed that when you go to the Dilbert site it shows you today's clip, and then a button, "Buy this clip." Now there's a concept for you. It would deserve further comment, except that the Court today seemed to take it as a given that massive infringement doesn't necessarily significantly harm profits.

Yummy, alpha. Social PDF bookmarking service. And they link to another service, PrintFu. Both cool services. Both might actually pass the Grokster test.

More software patent bruhaha.

The Register gets it wrong, sort of. "and that the P2P firms made little to no effort to curb illegal file-trading." While they did say this, as I summarized before, making little effort to censor the network by itself does not appear to be sufficient evidence of intent. It will be interesting to see how this case continues to play itself out in the media.

"A sacked TV pilot about a large number of people who stay in touch through an underground data network has popped up on ... well, an underground data network."
"The pilot's unauthorized distribution is "unacceptable and illegal ... no matter what the underlying motives" and said the company hasn't ruled out taking legal action "when it comes to stopping the illegal distribution of our copyright material."" No lessons learned....

Our news world narrows again. Reading only channels which support your view is becoming a bigger and bigger problem, but now you can filter out anything that possibly isn't related. Kind of worrisome, but like all interesting new tech, has great potential for good as well.

Slate does another great in-depth examination of Hollywood financing.

--Ari