You Can Say Thad Again

Over at Blogcritics, Thad Anderson has posted A Brief Overview of the Grokster Decision.

The Bag And Baggage Podcast, No. 14

The latest installment of the Bag and Baggage Podcast is available, head on over the the podcast page for the MP3 and show notes.

Go on, subscribe!

[Update:] BitTorrent users: The Bag and Baggage Podcast now has a torrent, thanks to Prodigem. Now I'm still a little confused about this. That torrent is for all the shows; it's probably better to torrent-ize them one at a time, huh? Also, will this feed from Prodigem do the job for people who want to subscribe via the torrent? (There's no content in it yet, maybe that takes time?)

Grokster: A Chairman's Thoughts

Jason Calacanis, Chairman of Weblogs, Inc., sums up his impressions of the Grokster decision in The day entrepreneurship died (or What the Grokster case means: top entrepreneurs to flee the US): "I've heard from a number of entrepreneurs who are looking into starting companies off-shore...."

And elsewhere in the Weblogs, Inc. network, Mark Cuban writes:

[...]

The good news is that at least the SCOTUS kept the focus on how technology is marketed rather than what it does. The bad news is that the MPAA and RIAA will jump all over the slightest double technolgy entendre that any marketing blurb or item could have.

I'm not sure how companies are going to protect themselves against it.

How are companies who invest in technology going to protect themselves and their investments against it?

[...]

Meanwhile, there's also Marty Schwimmer, soothsayer: "I was advising my clients not to actively induce infringement before Grokster came out."

Sesame Street And Remix Culture

Here's the description of Sesame Street episode 4038:

Big Bird Writes A Story

Big Bird has written a story and everyone is excited to hear him read it out loud. Big Bird begins to read the story to all of his friends on Sesame Street and as he reads we see his friends acting out the story. As Big Bird nears the end of the story everyone waits with obvious anticipation. Then, Big Bird has no ending! He can't figure out how to end the story. The problem is solved, however, when everyone comes up with their own possibilities for story endings. Everyone has a chance to tell their own ending and finally Big Bird comes up with his very own ending that combines everyone's great ideas.

More reason to think time is the friend of sensible copyright law and policy.

Noninfringing Torrents

Thad Anderson emails some more anecdotal data about the public interest material available thanks to outragedmoderates.org via BitTorrent:

In the 48 hours since I put the Grokster decision on the BitTorrent network, 523 people have downloaded it, totaling over 28,000 pages downloaded. Over 1,624 people have downloaded the 181 MB "Return of the Fallen" torrent of Pentagon photos, representing 293 gigs of data transmitted. Another 1,300 people have downloaded the torrent of World War II documents (which includes the Surrenders of Germany and Japan, and FDR's notes for his Pearl Harbor speech), and another 630 have downloaded the torrent of American Revolution documents (includes the Constitution, Declaration of Ind., original Great Seal, etc.).

All told, during the three-month period from March 27 to June 27, the total number of pages of documents downloaded from outragedmoderates.org via P2P was just over 3,000,000, along with several hundred hours of audio files (the Betamax oral arguments and Deep Throat's phone call with Nixon).

Since the Supreme Court found the Sony test did not apply where there were sufficient indicators of inducement to infringe and/or intent that users will infringe, it's not clear that any amount of noninfringing use would immunize a software maker from liability where enough of those kind of indicators are present. However, noninfringing uses certainly can't hurt, especially in close cases, and certainly in cases where it's not possible to show inducement or intent they may determine the outcome of the case. That's why it's good that Adam Curry will be supporting BitTorrent. I'm also going to create a Prodigem torrent for The Bag and Baggage Podcast as soon as I get a bit of free time in the next few days.