I can think of quite a few actually.

Of the top of my head, Google's purchase of YouTube ended up working out very well. I honestly think that without Google's support, YouTube would have died by now (or at least be a few orders of magnitude smaller entity).

Another one I can think of is IBM's purchase of OTI, which led to VisualAge then to Eclipse, which is now used as the platform for just about every IBM software product, from Lotus Notes to WebSphere.

TAG! Now you are.

No one said that satire is illegal. What was said is that using someone else's copyrighted material without permission as part of the satire is not protected by fair use. Big, BIG difference.

- Using clips of a movie to make fun of that movie = parody = fair use
- Using clips of a movie to make fun of something else entirely = satire = not fair use

You can agree or disagree with the above, but that's where the courts currently stand on the issue.

(As an aside, Twain, et al, didn't use other people's copyrighted works in their satires)

Really, the only thing you are saying here is that you like YOUR big, bloaty thing over someone else's big, bloaty thing. There's really nothing insightful about that at all.

You have a set of tools you are comfortable with, and others have theirs. Each have their merits and each have their drawbacks. What is new is not necessarily an improvement and what is old is not necessarily the best. To discard either out of hand on their "whiz-bangedness" or "tried-and-truedness" rather than on its merits is the mark of a fool.

Except it has been tested in court. Many times.

Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Technology - EULA Invalid
Vault Corp. v. Quaid Software Ltd. - EULA Invalid
ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg - EULA valid
Microsoft v. Harmony Computers - EULA valid
Novell v. Network Trade Center - EULA valid

So wait, guys trying to get illegitimate access to my machines and/or steal my identity and calling through "unavailable" VoIP lines from Russia and Nigeria are going to respect the US's Do Not Call list? Get real.

Also, even though my contact information is unavailable TO YOU, it is not unavailable. If there is an issue, my registrar does have my full and complete information (and they are required by ICANN to confirm it is correct periodically, which they do). Perhaps not all registrars follow the ICANN rules, but that's ICANN's problem, not mine. Getting rid of private domains won't solve that problem at all. If a registrar is sloppy enough to not keep the full information on file, I'm pretty sure they are sloppy enough to put fake information in WHOIS too, so what's the point? It solves nothing and harms only the legitimate domain owners.

For the record, I didn't complain. I solved the problem by removing my WHOIS information from a public database. There's no reason for it to be out there. If there's a legitimate issue with my domain, my registrar is required by ICANN to contact me on their behalf. If there is not a legitimate issue with my domain, people don't need to know my information at all.

Getting rid of "private" domains won't do a damn thing except INCREASE the amount of spam that domain holders get. Spammers don't hide behind private domains, they hide behind huge botnets!

I used to not hide my whois information. In fact, I was proud to display my contact information in my whois entry when owning my own domain was a novel thing. Then the spam started on the contact accounts. Annoying, but I could handle it. Soon after, I started getting phone calls from people who barely spoke English claiming to be from my "hosting company" or from NetSol and they need access to my host right away or there was a "billing problem" and they need my credit card information to resolve it.

I set my domain information private right after that and never looked back.

No thank you. I use private domains to HIDE from spammers and scammers.

Oh the irony! So, let me get this straight: if we don't buy things the way _you_ want us to, _we_ are enemies of freedom?

You must be new here. Welcome to the Internet! Enjoy your stay.

Actually, you are spinning the argument by misrepresenting the parent's point.

You are arguing that the application software is completely agnostic. This is true, but ultimately irrelevant. The software wasn't sued, Newzbin (the company) was.

The parent is correctly arguing that while the application software is completely agnostic, the people running that software knew damned well what that software was indexing and, in fact, pointed it out explicitly in their user guides and marketing as a feature.

If you went to the terminal and saw this file

I suspect that you would naturally say that that file is about 17 gigs. Actually, it is 16 GiB exactly.

However, just looking at the file, no one would ever instinctively say that file.big is 16 GiB. The reality is that base-10 is what people naturally use and so it makes sense for the user interface to reflect that.

This sounds an awful lot like the semantic web. Specifically, this sounds exactly like what WebFountain does (and has done since 2003).