More info about the accusations: http://radsoft.net/news/20101001,01.shtml

Doesn't look like the case has any merit unless Sweden has so batshit insane laws that no one should be extradited there.

I think professors should be required to teach with TeX, but maybe that's only me.

YOU sell widgets in a store, don't you? You and your store should definitely get paid for that. I write music for a living...I should only get paid for the first copy sold?

The plumber does plumbing for a living. Why should he only get paid once for the plumbing he did? Oh, wait...

Now ask yourself, if there was both more money in the bank following a previously successful product and a greater potential profit from any new project, does this make it more or less likely that new and innovative products will be given more of a chance?

My impression is: less likely, because why bother trying new and innovative products when you've seen that you can make a nice profit with a proven product? Riding it to death in the umptheenth installation, of course, but we've all seen this before. "New and innovative" products come with a risk, and potential profits with a risk attached don't fly well with established companies.

I don't get why MP3 patents are enforceable. If it was special hardware they are running on, I would understand it, but - for example -the Sandisk Sansa players, which were confiscated at Cebit some years ago and one of which I incidentally own, are generic hardware, simple MP3 decoding on the ARM CPUs of the player, no DSP or custom chip support. If that is enforceable, everything is. Or where is the difference to other software?

Please document your research and your findings on the web somewhere. Thanks.

The free market only has problems when:
1) People are allowed to do unethical things
2) Monopolies or oligopolies are created
3) There's a moral hazard

None of these conditions exist here.

You mean using DRM is not unethical? gee...

I just went to amazon.de and did a search for "Linux Netbook". It returned 20 results for computers. Yes, I got my eeepc 901go there, too.