why the contracts-are-sacred argument is not a good one

The major argument for paying the boni to AIG execs seems to be that contracts are sacred, and if you start breaking them, all hell will break loose. Especially if it is the government breaking them.

We're seeing a lot of credit card defaults (contract breaking). We've been seeing a lot of foreclosures and jingle mail (contract breaking) and short sales (renegotiation). Bankruptcy court is _all about_ contracts all being broken.

If we're going to unwind all this real estate crap, we're going to have to write down principal, and we're going to have to force the senior tranches to co-operate in renegotiating mortgages wholesale. All that requires contract breaking.

We might as well get used to it now, and set up a framework for doing it fairly. Which does _not_ involve paying out big boni. I'm pretty sure about that.

Discovery Communications sez AMZN's kindle infringes patents

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/03/amazons-kindle-targeted-by-patent-infringement-suit.ars

The analysis in the last paragraph is appalling, in that it assumes the trigger was v 2.0. In fact, the trigger was almost certainly that bright young thing who noticed in Sprint's filing the 500K new users signed up with some unspecified device that was surely the kindle and concluded how many kindles must have sold. Which of course triggered a bunch of re-analysis of how much money AMZN must be making.

It only makes sense that a patent holder would sniff money and come over to chow down.

There's an embedded link to the patent via Google Patent Search:

ETA: much better link:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=AIOXAAAAEBAJ

Having looked it over fairly carefully, especially the flow-charts for how it would work, I cannot imagine this sucker being settled in Discovery Communications favor any time soon. If ever. If it _does_ get settled in Discovery Communications favor, this should also suck in Sony Reader, the iPhone in conjunction with Google Books (just cause you do it for free doesn't mean you don't have to pay a royalty!), any netbook in conjunction with any eBook, etc. ad infinitum.

A particularly creative person might be able to make it so the entire web is covered by this patent.