By Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
Fair and balanced, too!
July 1, 2005, 4:41 p.m.-- Last
week's weblog
Oops. I dropped the link to the transcript of the David Foster Wallace commencement address I was urging you to read. I hate it when I do that. Please try again.
The beers of summer: Some of my projo.com colleagues
are guest-blogging early here, letting me get away for the long holiday-birthday
vacation while the sun is still shining.
Now that we've covered fireworks, what better topic for a 4th of July weekend
than... beer! Here we go:
Jack Perry: Ah, summer. Cookouts, fireworks, baseball, the beach. And
a chance to sample some summer brews.
For some, the hot, muggy weather demands a different kind of beer than the
cooler months. And it seems that plenty of brewers are crafting special summer
beers in the hopes of offering a tasty, refreshing option for those customers.
I'm making it a point this summer to sample a variety of these seasonal offerings
in an effort to uncover some bottled treasures. This serious research project
got off to a good start last week with Saranac's
12 Beers of Summer, a variety pack with six different beers.
I like the way this brewery in central New York makes and packages its beer.
It brews a lot of different types and often sells them in variety packs, so
you can sample a bunch with the purchase of just one six- or 12-pack.
I haven't tried all six of their summer offerings yet, but I especially enjoyed
the Summer Ale, which Saranac says is made with "generous amounts of wheat
malt for a light, refreshing taste."
I also liked the Belgian White, which Saranac describes as a classic Belgian-style "witbier," or
white beer..."smooth, tangy and very thirst quenching."
I looked forward to the Mountain Ale, "brewed with blackberries, raspberries
and sweetened with a touch of blueberry honey," but found it a little
too sweet.
I plan to spend at least part of my Fourth of July weekend sampling Saranac's
other offerings, such as its Hefeweizen and Golden Pilsener.
I uncovered another bottled treasure last week with Sierra
Nevada's Summerfest, described "as lighter in body than our ales
but just as complex in character, Summerfest quenches your thirst with big
aroma and a tangy hop bite."
I found both the Summerfest and Saranac's Sumer Ale smooth and tasty. I'll
just have to do more research this summer to decide which I like better.
Frank Carnevale: I picked up Otter
Creek's 'Otter Summer at the packie store last week and like it just
fine. The taste is a bit hoppy, but cool and crisp. My wife, Catherine, liked
it as well, but my sister Lisa didn't think it was very special. Otter Creek
Brewing started in 1991 and is based in Middlebury, Vermont. Support local
beer.
The other beer in the fridge, another good brew for the summer is Cerveza
Pacifico Clara. If you like Corona you'll like this beer. It's a pilsner
made by the same Mexican beer company, Modelo Group. Pacifico has a bit more
body, but is still light and smooth. Almost too smooth.
Also NYT had a
review of several India Pale Ales on Wednesday.
Sean Polay: Beer
Nut: Brews for partygoers I'm on a mission now. I must find Berkshire
Brewing Co.'s Steel Rail Extra Pale
Ale, as recommended by masslive.com's Beer Nut. His article today was on brews
that can please a wide range of beer tastes. In my house that's important.
My wife likes a limited number of beers, so I have been on an occasional a
quest to find some that we can both enjoy. Seems as if the Berkshire variety
could be the one. I'll report more later.
Link
to this item | Comment
Born
on the 3rd of July: Many of my earliest memories are of sparklers, and
of fireworks in the sky as the whole town celebrated my birthday. At least
that's what my parents told me the fireworks were for, and I believed them.
I still do.
I had the best parties, always with sparklers. (If there was a drawback to
this date, it was that many families were away at the beach or the mountains
for the weekend, so I couldn't have the big parties kids did whose birthdays
fell during the school year.)
If we share the same birthday, I'd love to hear from you with your tales of
being a firecracker baby.
I'll be off next week, still celebrating, and I hope more of my colleagues
will take up my invitation to guest-blog. I've promised to drink beer and report
by email. See you July 11.
Link
to this item | Comment
Consciousness call: Doc
Searls points to a doozey of a commencement speech by author David
Foster Wallace at Kenyon College. (I can't even remember my commencement
speakers, but I wish I'd gotten this one back then.)
Doc quotes
one part of it, I'll quote another -- not even the best part -- but it's
all good, so go read the whole thing, please.
...The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness
and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice
for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think.
The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the
constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing....
Thanks for the birthday gift, Doc: Soul food.
Link
to this item | Comment
Live8: The
site. You can listen
free at AOL (you don't have to be a member) and they'll be archiving
the concerts as soon as they've ended, as well. Can they handle the demand
for all those streams? They think so...
Technorati is pumping
out a feed of blogging
about Live8.
Happy birthday, U.S.A. And me.
Link
to this item | Comment
June 30, 2005, 7:23 p.m.
Instant front pages: The
Newseum now makes it easy to see newspaper front pages: At Today's
Front pages, put your cursor on an orange dot on the U.S. map and the
front page of that city's paper appears on the right side of the screen.
It's one of the better uses of Flash.
Link
to this item | Comment
Wickerpedia:
The parody: Wikipedia is the collaboratively
created Web encyclopedia, using software that permits many editors, i.e.
a wiki.
Wickerpedia is
not. It's
a parody of wikipedia.org, only with more of an emphasis on wicker (which
is terribly represented by wikipedia). The site features a more wickercentric
view of history, the news, and common wisdom, as well as a much improved
searching engine
Link
to this item | Comment
They Thought You'd Say This: Unlikely phrases from real
phrasebooks. "All the following sentences are culled from real phrasebooks," writes
Mark Rosenfelder, who compiled this
list of phrases, with translations into assorted tongues.
At first, it looks innocent enough. Then I got to this:
INDONESIAN
Lonely Planet
I have my own syringe.
Saya punya suntikan saya sendiri.
Do a lot of people want to say, "I have my own syringe" when they
arrive in Indonesia? Or "I'm going to prescribe some suppositories" in
Dutch? Or "She has excellent breasts" in Welsh?
More useful, perhaps, in Chechen, "Don't shoot!"
And the phrases in Somali are all just sad...
Link
to this item | Comment
Hooked on phonics: While I was putting together the
site's fireworks package for the weekend, I ran across a useful
and inadvertently funny FAQ at japanfireworks.com.
Check it out.
Link
to this item | Comment
The
sound barrier is visible? Amazing photos
of U.S. Navy planes breaking the sound barrier. The photo at right is
an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet over Korea
The site -- a Bible site, apparently, when not showing military photos --
notes,
Reaching the Sound Barrier, Breaking the Sound Barrier: Flying at Transonic Speeds – Varying
Near and At the Speed of
Sound (Supersonic) – Can
Generate Impressive Condensation Clouds Caused by the Prandtl-Glauert
Singularity.
1st Collection of P-G Cloud Photos at ChamorroBible.org » http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20040817.htm
2nd Collection » http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20040818.htm
3rd Collection » http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041216.htm
4th Collection » http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20041217.htm
Dr. Mark
S. Cramer Explains the Prandtl-Glauert (P-G) Condensation Cloud Phenomenon:
http://FluidMech.net » Tutorials » Sound
Barrier » P-G
Clouds
http://GalleryOfFluidMechanics.com » Condensation » Prandtl-Glauert
http://Navier-Stokes.net » Potential
Flows » Aerodynamics » Similarity
Laws
Link
to this item | Comment
More eminent domain news: Over at PledgeBank, an online
pledge site, the
following is raking in signatures -- and funny comments -- faster than
the spam hits my mailbox:
"I will pay to spend 7 nights in a hotel built on property seized from
David H. Souter but only if 10 other people will too."
Less humorous: WKYC in Cleveland reports (Eminent
domain: Progressive seeks man's land in Mayfield Village),
MAYFIELD VILLAGE -- It may be a local test of a big Supreme Court ruling
on eminent domain.
Cities can now take private property for other private use.
The Village of Mayfield is targeting land for a big Progressive Insurance
project.
Sam Costanzo is angry that he must fight Progressive and the Village of
Mayfield to keep his land.
"That's not America," Costanzo says.
Progressive wants Costanzo's eight acres and one office building. The building
contains his offices along with hundreds of motorcycles. He collects and
does research on them.
Progressive wants to build its third corporate campus on the site. Costanzo's
got the last piece of the puzzle for the project.
The village is playing hardball.
"This is not his home," Mayfield Village Mayor Bruce Rinker says. "We
look to this as a very fundamental public purpose from an economic standpoint
environmentally. It helps the schools; it represents a comprehensive land
use plan. It's a home run."...
And here's another
case (High Court ruling a blow to residents), in Long Branch, N.J., where
36 homes in Beachfront North are "to be razed and replaced with upscale
townhouses and condominiums," according to Atlanticville,
one of a dozen regional Greater Media Newspapers.
The
Supreme Court decision -- which a Seattle P-I editorial calls "Robin
Hood in reverse" -- has nearly everyone nodding their heads with dissenting
justice Sandra Day O'Connor:
...who among us can say she already makes the most productive or attractive
possible use of her property? The specter of condemnation hangs over all
property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with
a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory....
...Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party,
but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries
are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power
in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.
As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from
those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended
this perverse result.
But help may be on the way. The Washington Post reports today (Legislators
Move to Blunt Eminent Domain Ruling),
Key leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress vowed today to
use the power of the purse to negate this week's Supreme Court ruling allowing
local and state governments to use eminent domain to take private property
for economic development purposes.
Bills introduced in the House and Senate would yank federal funds from any
city or state project that forced people to sell their property to make way
for a project like a hotel or strip mall....
Link
to this item | Comment
Grokster
fallout: Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark
Cuban -- an internet billionaire perhaps best known for co-founding Broadcast.com
and then selling it to Yahoo, walking away with $1.3 billion -- reads
Wall Street's tea leaves on the High Court's Grokster decision that how
you market your file-sharing software matters:
Kaboom!
That was the sound heard throughout wall street as entertainment stocks
blast off into the stratosphere upon the mid day news that MGM got the best
of the Grokster decision. Wall Street traders and investors recognizing that
the decision would lead to certain demise for illegal P2P filesharing sites
and result in an explosion of music sales over the coming months and years,
pushed stocks such as Warner Media Group to all time highs on record volume.
Except that didn’t happen.
In the business world, one way to evaluate the financial importance of news
is by watching to see how Wall Street responds to it. If there is the slightest
glimmer of hope in a news announcement, at least one person is going to think
it will have some level of impact and make a bet on the stock and/or industry
impacted.
There wasn’t a Kaboom, there wasn’t a whisper in the market.
Not one buyer or seller of stocks gave a damn. Warner Music Group, probably
the only public company that is a pure play proxy for the music business,
traded almost exactly the same number of shares as it does every day. The
stock was down a nickel.
In other words, no one cared. No one on Wall Street thought that this decision
would impact the music business at all.
Of course that’s because it won’t....
Link
to this item | Comment
1:09 p.m
American Nobel Peace Prize nominees: Here are the
names of the Americans among the 1000
women jointly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (see yesterday's lead
item, or go to its
archive link here.) Home states of the nominess are not necessarily noted
in the short biographies at the links below.
Link
to this item |
Comment
June 29, 2005, 7:34 p.m.
1000 women jointly nominated for Nobel Peace Prize:
Here's the press
release:
This year 1000 women from more than 150 countries are jointly nominated
for the famous Nobel Peace Prize. The official nomination was submitted to
the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo in January 2005. As of today the
names of the 1000 women can be found under http://www.1000peacewomen.org.
The number 1000 is symbolic, as the 1000 nominated women represent innumerable
women worldwide who are engaged in the cause of peace and human dignity.
...
The project began in 2003, under the conviction that the commitment of women
working for peace should finally be acknowledged and made publicly known.
It began as a Swiss initiative, but has become a project supported globally,
thanks to the untiring work of coordinators and many voluntary helpers from
20 different regions of the world. They were responsible for the identification
and documentation of the women nominated in their regions, and they kept
the communication lines open.
...a book on the 1000 women will appear the end of this year. It will present
their work, their visions and their life stories. These biographies were
written by hundreds of journalists all over the world... A travelling exhibit
is planned, with texts and pictures documenting the 1000 women..... An interactive
online platform will improve the women's networking and make their biographies
readily available.
Put the keywords 1000 women nobel prize into Google News and you'll
see an upsurge of local pride worldwide:
Belgian
nun nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
91
Indian women in race for Peace Nobel
9
Nepali women in unique Nobel list
Albany
woman nominated for Nobel Prize
3
S'porean women on Nobel list
Four
local (Fiji) women nominated for Nobel Prize
Seven
women from Kyrgyzstan nominated to the Nobel Prize
4
women of Kazakhstan are applicants for the 2005 Nobel Prize
Six
Australians Among 1,000 ”Nobel Peace Women”
29
Pak women nominated for Nobel Peace Prize: The Network
27
Filipinos make list of 1,000 women eyed for Nobel
Swiss
peace workers receive recognition
4
Jordan women nominated for Nobel prize
The
idea: By Ruth-Gaby Vermot-Mangold, on the 1000 Women site. ("...people
from countries at peace must render visible the concrete work for peace done
by women. ")
The idea and the names of the nominees have been submitted to the Nobel Peace
Prize Committee in Oslo and the nominations have been accepted by the Committee.
The prize is awarded in October.
Among the nominees are 41 Americans, including Grace
Paley, Holly
Near and Cynthia
McKinney.
Link
to this item | Comment
Demand for rooms at Souter's old place: In the light
of yesterday's item (Private
developer seeks Justice Souter's N.H. property for hotel), reader Lyle
Jenkins of Cambridge, Mass., sent the following email to the members of the
Weare, N.H., Board of Selectmen, with the subject, "Hotel reservations":
Board of Selectmen
Weare, New Hampshire
Dear Selectmen:
My wife and I would like to book a suite in the "Lost Liberty Hotel" on
the former farm of Chief Justice Souter for opening night.
If still available, we would like to stay in the "Justice Souter Be
Careful What You Wish for Suite" on the top floor.
If that should be already booked, then please give us a suite with a balcony
overlooking the splendid views of the former Souter property.
Also please reserve dinner for us at the "Just Desserts Café."
Let us know which credit cards you accept. We would like to do our part
in bringing economic prosperity to your town.
Looking forward to getting out of the city,
Link
to this item | Comment
Spanish stepped in it: Reader Eric Lilius sends along
what he calls "the Spanish form of 'eminent domain'" from telegraph.co.uk: Spain
to scrap 'land grab' law and compensate Britons who lost homes:
Spain's notorious "land grab" law, under which hundreds of expatriate
Britons have lost homes on the Costa Blanca, is to be scrapped in three months.
Faced with the prospect of being hauled before the European Court of Justice,
Spanish provincial legislators have pledged to redraft the property laws
by September and work out a compensation package for homeowners and those
who have already lost their properties.
The move is a huge relief to thousands of residents on the Costa Blanca,
many of whom faced financial ruin after their homes were seized for far less
than their market value.
Under a loophole in the law, known as the Ley Reguladora de la Actividad
Urbanista (LRAU), property agents could compulsorily purchase prime rural
land by saying it was for urban development.
Owners were often ordered to contribute large sums for further improvements
in local development projects....
Link
to this item | Comment
Headlines:
Craigslist
founder: Internet proves 'people are OK': Nice interview with Craig Newmark
at CNN.
As
of today, after 25 years, I am no longer a Republican...
The Essential
Ghoul's Record Shelf: mp3 blog of ghoulish tunes. via boingboing
June 28, 2005
I've been a code monkey today, blog gets short shrift.
Private developer seeks Justice Souter's N.H. property for hotel: In the wake
of the recent court decision permitting
the city of New London to seize six
homes so a private developer could build a riverfront hotel, health club and
offices, another private developer and activist in Weare, N.H., is
seeking Justice Souter's home as a site for a hotel:
On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany,
the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire, seeking
to start
the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is
the present location of Mr. Souter's home.
Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will
certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34
Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.
The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature
the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the
public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead
of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas
Shrugged."
Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of
land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible
for destroying property rights for all Americans.
Here's a more traditional response from Ed Quillen, a former newspaper editor writing in the Denver Post:
...In a typical scenario, a corporation persuades a city government to go
along with its scheme. For instance, Wal-Mart tried to get Arvada to condemn
a
lake so it could be filled in for a parking lot - something our state Supreme
Court forbade, on a procedural issue concerning blight.
In another example, a baseball team wanted a new stadium and it persuaded
the city government to condemn the land. And not just stadium land, but a
few blocks next to it that would increase in value as a result of stadium
construction. After that, the team owners sold out for a handsome profit
on account of the fine new stadium - one of those owners, a Texan named G.W.
Bush, thereby parlayed a $600,000 investment into a $15 million profit and
a political career.
But in the New London case, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't really have much
choice, unless it wanted to federalize every eminent-domain case in the country.
Traditionally the federal courts have left it to the states to define "private
property" and to elected bodies, like legislatures and city councils,
to define "public use."
And that's basically what the court did this time - if the New London City
Council defined "condemning private homes so the property can be sold
to a hotel developer so that Pfizer has a spiffy place to put up visiting executives" as
a "public use," and the Connecticut courts agreed, then the federal
Supreme Court wasn't going to step into that.
So how to prevent the rich from using government to take anything they want?
Our legislature has put some limitations on its condemnation powers in recent
years, and that's a good step.
But it's best if local governments don't even try to condemn land for the
benefit of some multinational - and that means we should watch them closely,
vote carefully in local elections, and recall them quickly whenever they
confuse "public
use," like a school or road or park, with "public benefit," like
increased sales-tax revenue because a big box will generate more money than
a ma-and-pa hardware store. ...
Related: Freeport (Texas) moves to seize 3 properties
week164.htm# | Comment
Goof off: Flash miniature
golf is surprisingly addicting. via Robot
Wisdom, where Jorn Barger is, as always, dishing out the unusual links.
week164.htm# | Comment
Geometric Sculpture of George
W. Hart, mathematical sculptor
Roads Untaken
exotic hardwoods (yellowheart, paela, and padauk) with walnut
"grout,"
17 inch diameter
week164.htm# | Comment
Worth the bloodshed? The father of a soldier writes
a column in the weekly High
Springs (Fla.) Herald --
this
is conservative
north
central
Florida
-- with a suggestion for the President (I
got it! Bush should send his daughters to war) Here's how Ed Shupe, whose
son, as Bush once did, serves in the Air Force National Guard, ends it:
... I'm sure it would
be comforting to you to know your daughters, like many of our sons and daughters,
were over there doing their part.
You do have the reputation of being just one of us and a good Christian at
that. You wouldn't need to worry about your daughters barhopping like they
do here.
I do believe if you were to take my suggestion to heart, and your daughters
were over there, it might even help bring these wars to an end much more quickly.
Maybe with your daughters serving in the Armed Forces, recruitment would become
easier for our military, and we wouldn't need to resort to the draft or mercenary
soldiers from other countries.
Or maybe, Mr. President, you could try diplomacy instead of cowboy logic and
just end these wars and the killing of our sons and daughters by bringing them
home.
Concerning the direction our country is heading, Rev. Jim Wallis, an evangelical
who wrote the book Gods Politics, put it very well, in my opinion.
"You wonder how Jesus became pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American."
week164.htm# | Comment
Thought on file-sharing: There only needs to be one copy of any music, any
movie now. Manufacturing of vinyl records, tapes and CDs is simply a service
to those not yet knowledgeable about how to copy a digital file to their own
blank CD or tape.
What kind of business model is possible when only one copy needs to exist?
It's certainly not one based on head counts or unit sales. (What chaos will
ensue when the Star Trek replicator -- which can create anything out of raw
molecules -- is perfected? Money will become obsolete. What's beyond money?)
And, of course, Hungarian software companies aren't subject to our Justices'
decisions.
week164.htm# | Comment
Dropload: "Dropload is
a place for you to drop your files off and have them picked up by someone else
at a later time. Recipients you specify are
sent
an email with instructions on how to download the file. Files are removed
from the system after 7 days, regardless if they have been picked up or not.
You can upload any type of file, mp3, movies, docs, pdfs, up to 100MB each!
Recipients can be anyone with an email address."
This could be a very good idea for those with limited attachment sizes on
their email.
week164.htm# | Comment
Headline dump:
Balls
Out: How to throw a no-hitter on acid, and other lessons from the career
of baseball
legend Dock Ellis. Dallas Observer.
Goodbye: Shana Alexander, 79; Liberal Debater on '60 Minutes,' Author and
Columnist
Paul Winchell, whose
dummy Jerry Mahoney was much cooler than Bergen-McCarthy:
TV
Ventriloquist, Cartoon Voice And Inventor Paul Winchell Dies.
June 27, 2005, 3:54 p.m.
2:57 p.m. Could "swap responsibly" ads
get P2P software off the hook? WaPo: Supreme
Court: File-Sharing Firms Can Be Sued:
Distributors of popular software for sharing music and videos online can
be sued if they encourage their users to illegally swap copyrighted works,
a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled today.
The case hands a partial victory to the entertainment industry in its campaign
to shut down file-sharing systems that enable hundreds of millions of consumers
around the world to swap music, videos and software programs....
...Technology firms and consumer electronics companies also vigorously defend
the 1984 ruling, arguing that without such protection new technologies could
be killed at birth. Instead, they argued, efforts to halt piracy should focus
on the pirates, not the technology.
In the current case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit threw
out a lawsuit led by MGM Studios against two large file-sharing providers, Grokster
Ltd. and StreamCast
Networks. The appeals court ruled that the 1984 Betamax ruling absolved
the software makers of liability for contributing to piracy.
But the Supreme Court sent the case back for trial, ruling that the Betamax
decision did not provide cover for firms if they encourage piracy to build
their business.
Here's the 55-page decision (pdf)
The Court did not revisit the Betamax decision,
as the plaintiffs had asked.
Unlike Shawn Fanning's original Napster, which operated a central file server,
newer peer-to-peer distribution software simply facilitates exchanges between
files on users' computers. It's the "I'm not doing anything" defense.
Hollywood is basically saying, "But you're helping them break the law."
So the Court said the makers of Grokster and Morpheus software (StreamCast's
product) can be sued, and trial should proceed. Now it's up to MGM et al to
prove that Grokster and StreamCast intend us to use their product to break
the law.
The Court's unanimous decision was based on a narrow principle of "inducement" --
are these software makers inducing (encouraging) illegal uses of their technology?
The justices kept in place the essence of the 1984 Sony Betamax decision that
permits VCRs -- essentially, just because a technology may have illegal uses,
they're not inherent in the product but in the people who use the product.
(Or else there'd be no guns, right?)
Justice Breyer:
When measured against Sony's underlying evidence and analysis, the evidence
now before us shows that Grokster passes Sony's test, that is, whether the
company's product is capable of substantial or commercially significant noninfringing
uses.
Susan Crawford -- who teaches cyberlaw at Cardozo Law School -- at ScotusBlog:
...Now, that's not to say that there aren't some clouds here for technology
companies. If you've got a stated intent to help others infringe, and a bunch
of "bad" ads, and lots of other evidence of culpable intent, and
THEN someone writes to you and encourages you to adopt their filtering technology,
and you don't -- well, then you might be liable for inducement. There are
certainly ways that this opinion might spark litigation.
But for the moment, tech companies can breathe easy. Distribution of a general-purpose
copying device, by itself, is simply not an infringing act. And that was
the right decision. Happy summer vacation, Justices.
Also at ScotusBlog, Douglas Lichtman:
MGM won on paper today, but my first reading of the opinion makes me wonder
whether the victory will have any bite outside of this specific litigation.
Intent-based standards, after all, are among the easiest to avoid. Just keep
your message clear -- tell everyone, and I mean everyone, that your technology
is designed to facilitate only authorized exchange -- and you have no risk
of accountability.
"Drink responsibly" on beer ads comes to mind.
More: Ernest
Miller at Corante.com has notes on both sides' press conferences; WSJ's
Grokster
Roundtable; BoingBoing: The
decision travels via file-sharing; Freedom
to Tinker.
3:37 p.m. Update: A press release just received from R.I. Attorney
General Patrick C. Lynch, one of 39 state attorneys general who petitioned
the court
in favor
of the plaintiffs, is confusing:
With the issuing of today's unanimous decision by the United States Supreme
Court ruling that peer-to-peer (P2P) companies violate federal copyright
law when providing computer users with the means to share music and movie
files downloaded from the Internet, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch said
that the decision in MGM v. Grokster "strikes at the very heart of piracy,
privacy issues, and pornography, and is a clear and significant victory for
promoting lawful uses and benefits of P2P technology."
All the court did was say Grokster and StreamCast could be sued. "Providing
computer users with the means to share music and movie files" remains
legal. The "downloaded from the Internet" part is irrelevant. I could
buy a CD and rip it, putting one legal copy on my computer, and use this software
to let others know I have it and let them download it from my computer.
3:54 p.m.: I can
also put a copy of this decision on my computer (or a personal podcast --
n mp3 of bird calls recorded in my backyard or of me singing America the
Beautiful)
and use this software to let others know I have it and let them download
it
from
my
computer.
Ironically, the growth of podcasting has increased the number of legal files
traveling on the undernets.
week164.htm# | Comment
Sweet gig: On Thursday FishbowlDC complains
about Jim
Romenesko's must-read media-news blog ignoring bloggers (Things
You Might Have Missed If You Only Read Romenesko), and yesterday conservative
media blogger Mediacrity grumbles
about bias and publishes
Romenesko's salary (read the comments at the end of this one) from
the nonprofit journalism education center, Poynter
Institute, for his weekday blog: "$152,163 plus $17,024 in benefits
and deferred compensation. He was the highest paid employee of Poynter, in
fact."
And he does it from a Starbucks in Evanston, Ill. (Older
background story)
Good for you, Jim. If the Journal wants to pay me that much to blog from my
back porch, I'm there. Yesterday.
week164.htm# | Comment
Negative eBay feedback only: At Toolhaus,
feed an eBay user ID into a form and see only the negative feedback on that
buyer or seller.
week164.htm# | Comment
