This judical conundrum don't just apply to movies, music and communication, it also affects life-giving and life-changing technologies like electric cars, environmental-friendly heating (think LENR) and of course patents.
I used to work for a company, Mentice, that got sued for software patent infringement. The patentability of the idea was so low that any fourteen-year-old with computer might accidentally infringe. The “unique” idea was simulating a stiff wire on screen. If you did so, the lawsuit said, you infringe on the patent: pay up!
The first six months of the lawsuit was spent moving it from Texas to Cleveland, since Texas is so corrupt you have no chance of winning. The Texas corruption is perfectly exposed by the coder who wrote the X-plane flight simulator:
The offices of those patent trolls looks like something I'd expect to find in the North Korean Chamber of Commerce: totally empty.
Srsly!? Is there even a single American politician who actually thinks that this is for the best of the country, the people or the world? I have a hard time believing anybody could be that dumb, so my inclination tells me it's just rotten through and through.
Mentice (the company I used to work for) had to spend so much money on proving that they abided by the law that they couldn't afford to keep half of their employees (me included).
Right now the biggest and best innovation since the combustion engine, the E-Cat, is held back by litigation. Here we have a product which once and for all can stop global warming and we let American law get in the way? If it would have been Russia, China or North Korea this madness would make sense, but please corrupt American politicians go fuck yourselves and then make amens. (And then finally it would be easy to watch movies with the kiddies when we're on vacation.)
