Don't I wish.

A cynic might argue that the key difference in this case was that, for a change, the ISP's, and not merely defendants, were challenging the subpoenas; but of course we all know that justice is 'blind'.

An ingrate might bemoan the Court's failure to address the key underlying fallacy in the "John Doe" cases, that because someone pays the bill for an internet account that automatically makes them a copyright infringer; but who's complaining over that slight omission?

A malcontent like myself might be a little unhappy that it took the courts ten (10) years to finally come to grips with the personal jurisdiction issue, which would have been obvious to 9 out of 10 second year law students from the get go, and I personally have been pointing it out and writing about it since 2005; but at least they finally did get there.

And a philosopher might wonder how much suffering might have been spared had the courts followed the law back in 2004 when the John Doe madness started; but of course I'm a lawyer, not a philosopher. :)

Bottom line, though: this is a good thing, a very good thing. Ten (10) years late in coming, but good nonetheless. - R.B. )

Although I largely agree with the sentiment you are expressing, there is a similar confusion here as well. I read through the article you linked and what they are talking about transporting is normal crude that has a high paraffin wax compnonent in it. This too, though, is different from the kerogen bearing rocks in the green river shale. There are a couple clues throughout the article that this is what they are talking about, but the most telling is this blurb from the last paragraph...

"For better or worse, Uinta Basin oil and gas production is increasing and expected to double by 2022 to the equivalent of 50 million barrels a year. Much of that growth is expected to come from tar sands and oil shale, which exists in abundance in the basin but has yet to be commercially developed."

Notice that they say that the tar sands there and the shale have yet to be produced commercially. Tar sands (depending on the depth and the oil content) generally can be produced commercially (it is an ugly mess but we can do it) since the job is merely to separate the thick, viscous oil from the sand. The kerogen in the green river shale (and many other shale formations) is a different beast entirely. For tar sand you heat the oil/sand mixture to soften up the oil and separate it out, but the conversion oil has already been done by heat from the earth. With kerogen, you need to heat the kerogen for a period of several years at something like 500 to 1000 degrees (usually done by pumping superheated steam into the ground). Then after this heating process is complete, you separate the oil in a manner similar to tar sands. This extra heating step at the beginning is why this will almost certainly never be used.

Hope this clears up the confusion about these various resources.

-AndrewBuck

The green river shale is a different kind of thing. The monterray and Bakken shale formations contain actual oil, the Green River formation contains kerogen -- a waxy substance that will turn into oil if you heat it to several hundred degrees for a period of years (yes years).

The best analogy I have heard to put this into perspective is that the Bakken is something like a rock that has been left soaking in a bucket of oil for a while and the oil has seeped into the pores of the rock. The green river shale is more like a brick that has had candle wax dripped on it. Both contain energy which can be extracted, but one yields oil directly whereas the other is merely a feedstock to make oil.

The last I had heard, no one has ever made a commercially successfull attempt to convert kerogen into oil. It can be done, just not anything like economically, and the environmental costs of doing so would be massive. Now of course the "free market" folks will say, "well the price will just rise until the kerogen is extractable", and they are right, the price will rise to something like 1000 dollars per barrel, and then we will have lots of that "cheap" green river shale oil available on the market, something like 3 trillion barrels worth.

-AndrewBuck

excellent point, all comments to the FCC are part of the public record.

The cards are stacked against us, but if enough people ask them to reclassify Internet broadband as common carriers the FCC will cave and do the right thing.