Take a few minutes to read Take Another Little Piece of My Art by Derek Slater. It's worth it. Also his experiment with blogging using his analysis of the Napster case. Actually why not just take a run over to a copyfighter's musings and have a look for yourself at Mr Slater's recent thoughts. Some interesting ideas on Richard Posner's decision in the Madster case, in particular.

The US Senate has voted to cut off funding to the Total Information Awareness computer-surveillance program.

Kevin Poulson at SecurityFocus is reporting DirecTV dragnet snares innocent techies "In recent months the satellite TV giant has filed nearly 9,000 federal lawsuits against people who've purchased signal piracy devices. But some of those devices have legitimate uses, and innocent computer geeks are getting caught in the crackdown. "

Meanwhile the Grokster/Morpheus case is apparently being fast-tracked for review by the 9th circuit Court of Appeals.

Overture to a patent war? (via Corante) is worth a read.

I'm off to spend the next week at an Open University summer school, teaching first year technology students about the structures of bridges and planes, and the uses and limitations of mathematical, physical and computer models.