Doesn't a contact lens sit closer to a human eye than anyone could ever actually focus their eyes on? In fact doesn't it sit on the focusing element? I guess the retina is different from the lens, but they are not very far apart IIRC, and can probably be considered one optic. IANAO (O = opthamologist) as you can tell, but I know a thing or two about optics. You cannot just display an image (either by absorption of the backlight or emission from tiny LEDS) onto an imaging lens (human or mechanical) that looks like what you want to display the way you can with a HUD or a computer monitor. What you percieve as spatially separated regions in your view map to different angles of incidence of light rays impinging on your lens. Each "pixel" in your eye (or literal pixel in a camera) collects light passing through all regions of the lens, but only at one angle. So to create a 256x256 display on a contact image that appeared in focus, the lens would have to emit light over a controllable grid of 256x256 angles.

I don't know that the technology is theoretically impossible, but I think articles like this usually gloss over this not at all minor technical difficulty. Transparent circuitry is much easier because of this same phenomenon. If you cover up 50% of the area of a contact lens with completely opaque circuitry, you won't see the circuits in your vision, you'll just see a reduced intensity as if you were wearing sunglasses, because the circuitry will be so out of focus it will appear uniform. If your circuitry is only covering 10% of the area, you probably won't even notice the difference.

It sounds a little silly, but how different is it from other copyrights? I think most people would agree that culinary arts are as as much an exercise in creativity as visual or audio art. A particular combination of available flavors creates whole greater than the sum. Certainly copyrighting a recipe doesn't seem any different to me than a piece of software code. I guess the weak part in Malaysia's claim is that they seem to be trying to retroactively pull public domain works (recipes that have been around for generations) back into the copyrighted realm, but even that is nothing new. If they can get back the rights to their ethnic food, it seems like Beethoven's descendants should be able to continue collecting royalties on his works.

Unless you can prove the programmer intentionally released the buggy program out of malice, I doubt you could recover damages for bugs in software you didn't purchase. Perhaps you should be able to in an extreme case like your example; it's a reasonable debate I suppose, but I don't see anything in the original article suggesting that's how the new rule would apply, except from the BSA representative who's primary interests are commercial software vendors. It just seems more like the commercial software equivalent of a lemon law. There should be a minimum level of functionality a customer can expect when they purchase software.

"...they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions,'...but where would this idea leave free software coders?"

I get that free as in beer != free as in speech, but there is a pretty high correlation, and really this article is trying to imply that if I give software away for free as in beer I can be liable to the person who "purchased" my software license. Are they really trying to suggest that the ubiquitous line in almost every free as in beer software along the lines of "hey I'm giving you this software for free, so I'm not liable" isn't legally valid? I mean if the only condition I ask of you when you use my free software is that you not expect it to be bug free, how can you sue me for damages? I didn't make anything remotely resembling a guarantee. You still have the choice not to use the software, just like you have the choice not to purchase any software with licensing conditions you are not willing to accept.

I mean I didn't read the text of the proposed law itself, but does seem like the idea that it will affect people who give away software for free is kind of a paranoid worst case scenario, and should be assumed to be false unless otherwise clearly stated, not the other way around. The text that was quoted in the article, "Licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions." hardly seems controversial or applicable to free software. Sure, if you sell software for mission critical / safetly applications and your buggy software gets people hurt, you should held liable. Alternately, if you give away for free a DVD player which skips, ignores every other button and dies after 4 weeks, you can't be sued for damages.