Grokster Loses

Grokster and Streamcast lost today, but it looks like a win for P2P. Although today's decision squashes two very popular networks, it does so only because these networks were pretty open about the true intention of their software (copyright infringement). A quick reading of the opinion gives the impression that it might very well be Ok to distribute P2P software provided you market it as a general purpose tool (eg, BitTorrent).

It was nice to see how the Court pointed out that the lower court's opinion rested on an erroneous reading of Sony and left it at that. Rather than trying to settle the question for good, they issued a very narrow decision and left themselve's plenty of wiggle room for future decisions.

Mastering the Najdorf

My brother and Javier Moreno recently finished a book (my brother's first), titled "Mastering the Najdorf". The content is rather cryptic (it's an advanced book on chess), so I just keep it on the shelf and page through it now and then (maybe hoping some of it will sink in subconsciously). Nonetheless, it's very cool to see my little bro's name on the binding.

US generosity

In his Monday post Juan Cole looks into the generosity of the contributions of Middle Eastern countries relative to the US (taking into consideration population and per capita income). His conclusion is that countries like Saudi Arabia are more generous than the US. However, I think he omits one very important difference. The US government contributes with authority granted to it by the US public (via elections), whereas the Saudi government for instance, contributes with no legitimate authority at all. The relatively few members of the Royal Family are giving away what they've basically snatched from their people. Comparing the per-capita contributions of two countries implies that the decision to contribute is itself "per-capita" (roughly speaking). In the case of Saudi Arabia or Libya it obviously isn't.

However, the simple analysis when applied to Australia and Turkey does seem to hold. But even in this case, the analysis is too simple. Comparisons of US contributions to those of other countries should consider ALL costs the US bears: operation of US naval vessels and aircraft involved in rescue operations, proportion of UN funding that comes from the US, contributions by private US organizations, US military costs that benefit other countries, etc.