Still thinking through this one, but great talk. My favorite quote: “There are more Farmville players than there are TWITTER ACCOUNTS.” True comedy…

And yet another sordid chapter in software patents begins, as Winksite files suit in Manhattan federal court for  infringment of yet another highly vague software patent, this time over using a mobile phone to connect to social websites.

Winksite, which I had never heard of until yesterday (and I bet you didn’t either), describes itself as:

As reported all over the net this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a number of other Facebook execs have been awarded US Patent #7,699,123: Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a
social network, yet another highly vague, general software patent.  The abstract:

So as CNN is reporting today (yeah, a bit late), that evidently you CAN get sued for libel for a tweet. Sounds ridiculous? Yeah to me too. But really, it’s not so much ridiculous as it is yet another sad disjunction between the 1st Amendment, various traditional libel / slander laws, and all this new-fangled technolowhatsis that has been coming down the pike for the last few decade.

CNN Article: “Can the law keep up with technology?”

This is the same sort of thing that has been going on for ages; I’m sure that the first wheel maker was roundly condemned by the Porter’s Guild for stealing their livelihood.  But that’s really just something that happens whenever someone invents a better widget.