Good ole Prof Lessig tries to answer the question, "Why extend the copyright on works that no longer have commercial value?"

Here he argues to only extend the copyright, Bono-style, on things that still have value, so to speak, to the original copyright owners. Allowing someone -- anyone -- to make such a distinction is A Very Bad Idea.

In other news, I just checked my RSS reader (JNN, fwiw) and saw one of the $499 headless Mac rumors. You know, now we're getting somewhere. Here's some hopeful text in the explanation:

Indications are Apple has been working mostly on finding the right mix of price, performance and features that would motivate Windows users to consider a Mac, and less on the actual engineering of the product. (emphasis mine, of course)

That's good stuff. At $500, I think I'd have a great chance at convincing friends and relatives to give the Mac a shot. They cringe at a $1300 iMac, act interested with an $800 eMac (but want something smaller -- not ironically more iMac like), and if they're in the laptop market, often bite at $999 for the iBook. Half the iBook price for the same hardware (which is just enough to run OS X well) in an ultra-small desktop means Apple's finally hitting the economy digital hub niche -- the luxury niche they've been doing quite well for some time. Still happy I shelled out for my [now old] G4 iMac with 17" screen and Superdrive, but if I hadn't, this would be beyond tempting; it'd be a great buy.