Eh, I have a real problem with prosecuting the people for "making available." Prosecuting people that share their music for having enabled copyright infrigement is essentially like prosecuting people for leaving their doors unlocked and having enabled burglary.

Because it's not legal in the U.S., nor is there any precedent of case law to suggest Tenenbaum's actions were legal? In fact, all the case law to date only reinforces the concept that what Joel did was illegal, and essentially sets fire to any and all copyright law that's ever existed.

This "defense" cooked up by Neeson's retard students is absolute malarkey. The judge's ruling against fair use as a defense is spot-on. There's no "fair use" here, only some kid violating copyright for the hell of violating copyright. This is going to end badly for Joel, and his crybaby defense scheme is only going to set bad precedent. Someone somewhere will only extend this case's outcome to further wreck the place. The whole thing stinks to high heaven of a bunch of whiny Harvard assholes who simply didn't get what they want and would rather push a shitty agenda rather than work through rational means.

Here's a concern. Given the degree to which morons are let enter data to run-of-the-mill DBs like the one in the article, what's the level of accuracy? How many times has some nimrod phoned you up to generate harassment due to bad data? How many times have you yourself called to correct something only to be told "well, the computer says so, it must be right!"

People will make serious policy decisions based on this bad data.

Voluminous quantities of stupid and failure are certain to follow.