I agree that this is a subtle point. I always assumed that these scammers were taking a shotgun approach and trying to get as many responses as possible. I always thought it was about volume and not efficiency.

I agree with one caveat. Since he is telling the story, he gets to spin it to his advantage. I noticed that he only quotes her and not himself. He may not have been as reasonable as it sounds.

You can't talk about crushing innovation in the abstract. First, what affect if any does patent protection have on this type of "invention"? Absent a patent, would somebody have done this anyway? You can't crush the inevitable. Second, the question in this context is whether this patent should be entitled to patent protection. Stated another way, is this a patent to an idea or an application of that idea? Is this a special way of allowing users to watch a pre-roll advertisement or is it the idea itself? One deserves patent protection and the other does not.

As strange as this may sound, Judges are supposed to use their experience but not their knowledge. Technically speaking, knowing computer programming may present a bias in this case. Taking an extreme example, a Judge shouldn't precede over a murder trial that he or she witnessed. Here, the Judge is basically saying, "I know difficult code. I have written difficult code. And, this sir, is not difficult code." Since, Oracle's argument depends in-part on the value of this code, the Judge has arguably decided that issue, which may come up if Oracle is not happy. I don't disagree with the Judge, but he is not supposed to be making these kinds of factual findings.

Even in the face of no opposition, a Plaintiff doesn't automatically win. The Plaintiff still has the burden of proving entitlement to a favorable judgment. Unlike a forfeit in sports, you still have to play the game in Court.

At least you can't accuse them of fabricating evidence.

True, but it would have to be a lieutenant that didn't otherwise have access to the information.

Sony wants to sell licenses to use software that happens to be distributed via physical media. In contrast, consumers think of themselves as buying physical media containing software. In other words, consumers believe that any license is attached to the media, whereas Sony wants the license to attach to the person. Because there is no physical media associated with digitally distributed content, consumers don't have any trouble with that concept in that arena. However, in the case of physical media, Sony wants to screw consumers on both sides. If you lose the disc, you can't play the game anymore and if you sell the disc to someone else they can't use it.

If Sony wants to switch to solely licensing software, they should stop selling discs. Otherwise, they should anticipate consumer revolt and rightly so.

According to the article, the City of Boston had a policy allowing officers to arrest people in those circumstances. No one will get fired for following this type of policy. I'm thinking the punishment will be an informal finger wag.

You may get your wish, but not today.

The Supreme Court didn't rule on the patentability of genes. The Supreme Court sent the case back down to the Federal Circuit with instructions to try again in light of a different and recent Supreme Court case, Prometheus v. Mayo. Ordinarily, this would be RTFA, but since the article is wrong, it would be RTF(case), but I'm guessing the writer isn't here.

He probably wants to spend more time with his family.

Linking is slightly different in that it may direct people to copyrighted material. In this case, Hotfile provides an empty box that people may fill with copyrighted material. To me, this is similar to a storage facility. People could store stolen goods at the facility, but it is difficult to say that this is the storage facilities fault.

This is a very interesting question. I think there is a big gap between Sarah Palin and a historian of American history. However is is not clear how one generally declares a source to be authoritative. Is a graduate student enough? Untenured professor? Tenured professor? Tenured for X number of years? Obviously, there are cases where all of the recognized experts and neophytes agree. However, when it comes to issues of interpretation, there will likely be disagreement. For the time being, we just have to play it by ear.

Of course, the declaration of authoritative sources could be an area of research. I'll leave that to others.