DISQUS

I agree with Tim that Picker caught Lessig pulling a fast one this time. The Betamax doctrine is court-made law in the first place - it was (unfortunately) never codified. So there's nothing contradictory about the Supreme Court deferring to Congress on the (terrible) decision to extend copyright law, while feeling free to tinker around the edges of the Betamax doctrine.

Regarding Henry Miller's comment - I agree that Congress is slowly becoming aware there are two sides to this issue. Last year, I sent my Congressman (a prominent CBC member for whatever that's worth) a modified EFF email urging rejection of the Broadcast Flag. I wasn't expecting anything in return but I got a well-written email describing his concerns with the Broadcast Flag's possible impact on educational programming. It was a pleasant surprise, considering the guy doesn't really need my vote (he won with ~80% in the last election). And look, here we are two years after the courts struck the Broadcast Flag down and Congress still hasn't put it back in place.

Finally, I've got a question, or maybe a challenge, for Tim. Tim has defended the Grokster decision in the past. I'd like to know what he thinks of the interpretation of Grokster that Epstein/Picker acolyte Doug Lichtman put forth in his L.A. Times op/ed piece. I think Lichtman's interpretation is monstrous and comes close to defining a new category of thoughtcrime. I'd really like to know what Tim thinks.

The DMCA anti-circumvention clause is the rankest sort of protectionism, pure and simple. To dress it up in free-market rhetoric takes some serious chutzpah.

Props to Castle for realizing that doing the right thing for "his people" means making his peace with the unprotected format that the industry has tried so hard to suppress for the past 10 years. If the industry had made their peace with MP3 back in the late 1990s, Napster and illicit file sharing would not have been the only game in town for years, and perhaps the digital transition would have been far less painful for the music business.

I do wish Castle would rachet down the bitterness toward the tech community a few notches, but he would probably say the same about my feelings toward the entertainment biz.

I think LimeWire would probably fall somewhere between Grokster and YouTube on the "inducement" spectrum. I'm not sure if they deserve to lose, because I have no idea what the Supreme Court meant by "inducement." Hopefully this case will provide some clarity.

Regarding the whole anti-trust angle, I think LimeWire may have a stronger point that you think, although I'm not sure "anti-trust" is the right term to use. The RIAA isn't simply refusing to do business with LimeWire, the way the major labels have refused to do business with eMusic. If eMusic were to sue the majors under anti-trust law, I would be skeptical. Here, however, we have the RIAA members directly using the law to put a company out of business, because that company will not use a technology dictated by the RIAA. In the RIAA's press release announcing a suit against LimeWire, they specifically complain about LimweWire's "lack of interest in adoping a legitimate business model." That is fundamentally different from complaining about LimeWire's own "bad" business model. Essentially, the RIAA is claiming that if you want to provide a platform for decentralized distribution of music on the Internet, you MUST incorporate a proprietary technology dictated by the RIAA. Don't you find that somewhat chilling?

Let's see - RIM and Apple stuck paying out 100s of millions of dollars to failed competitors wielding dubious patents, you don't think that shows some sort of a problem out there? The software industry, acting no doubt in their own self-interest, is asking Congress quite loudly for patent reform. This isn't a bunch of open-source developers asking for help, it's Microsoft, Adobe and Autodesk (PFF's idea of the "good guys") saying there's a real problem.

I don't know if there are any "good" software patents out there, or if it is feasible to eliminate software patents as a category. (Certainly if it were up to me I'd try to eliminate patents on gene sequences, medical tests and business processes before going after software patents.) But it is pretty obvious that:

there are a LOT of really bad software patents out there;

some of these bad patents are doing real damage to successful companies;

some sort of reform is needed to curb these bad patents; and

patent reform had better go beyond just asking the PTO to do a better job (having worked in and around government I'm pretty sure the PTO can't and won't do a better job, not now and not ever).

Whether or not you agree that all software patents should be eliminated (I am still undecided on that position), it's clear that Tim's series is helping to illustrate a serious problem.

Sure, that's why Microsoft is dominating all rivals in supercomputing. Not.

Color me skeptical.