Actually, Microsoft has given ~$2.00 per shareholder since 2007 (The same time period as bing). With 8.38B shares, that's $16.76B dollars... So yeah, they actually gave about 86% more to the shareholders than they invested in Bing.

Actually, in this particular context, I believe he was speaking to the lord of terror. Offering his soul for D3 beta.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zewb8PcL5cs

This is great advice for a writer, but the problem with game design is that there are many people working on the same text and story. So there are many different visions of the world working on a single video game, and it's difficult to get a team to have a unified sense of meaning. Possible, but definitely difficult.

Everyone sing: The internet is for.... steaming video-on-demand services

True. But since you aren't selling a derivative work, you don't need permission. The idea is this: Once the customer has the exact copy, you sell them your own, unique patch that does not violate any copyright laws. Essentially making 2 separate sales that accomplish the same thing. I think this could be a way around the issue, but only in a very dry reading of the law. It's pretty clear what the spirit of this law is, despite the loopholes in the letter. As such, I doubt the courts would let such a defense succeed.

This Proposal seems rather Modest.

If anyone is interested in some serious copyright reading, check out Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig. Given the current state of copyright issues in the U.S. I would not be at all surprised if YouTube did not put the video back.