It is clearly a slow news day when Rupert Murdoch himself has to step up to make a headline.

... and they are harbouring terrorists (aside: or was that terrorising harbours?)

If that didn't persuade you ... they also have biological weapons.

Well it is very useful for Microsoft - they can now go after the Pirate Bay for Copyright Infringement. All hail the DMCA.

I can already picture the Microsoft Lawyers - "THEY STOLE MY COFEE". It will be quoted in legal textbooks for years!

While the stated goal of copyright is to promote creativity, in practice copyright primarily creates a commercial system that has little practical relevance when applied to modern technology.

If the laws were actually intended to promote creativity, copyright systems wouldn't provide rights for Life + 70 years (AU).

Isn't the whole issue here risk management? If a cyber threat exists, what is the response we can/ will take?

The ITU took the possibility of cyber-threats seriously enough to to form IMPACT - The International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism.

I guess we didn't take Tom Clancy seriously enough.

The real question is how we assess Star Wars for historical accuracy.

...or just much bigger pockets.

I'm not tone deaf - I just sing in a low bitrate!

Never let your schooling interfere with your education.

Care to volunteer for open brain surgery instead?

Good point, but you aren't factoring in the costs of the legal battles seeking to invalidate any third party's later patents. For the most part, litigation is cheaper and less risky if you can point to an awarded patent than if you need to go through all of the discover phases to show sufficient similarity to your concept (unless you are incredibly organised and keep all of your notes in one quickly accessible place). You also carry the risk of a court saying 'too obscure' on your publication - particularly when an international corp steals your idea and takes it multi jurisdictional.

This constitutional argument completely ignores the requirement that to gain patent protection, one must disclose a working embodiment of the invention - that is they must publish how their invention works. To exclude the public from exploiting a software invention by patent does not preclude the public from understanding how the invention works, talking about it, experimenting with the ideas or even ultimately deriving a new invention based on the original that is sufficiently novel.

... or more importantly, when searching judicial decisions when appointing a new judge.

After all, judges decide 'fairly', just some decide more fairly than others.

...which means we should ban sysadmins from getting their own coffee, lest they see the passwords taped to the monitors. not that being able to change the password could give a sysadmin access to your account.