Supreme Court Decisions

I'm a little disappointed in the some of the Supreme Court decisions announced recently. A list of their opinions for the last several months can be found here. In one of them (docket 3-1500), Texas is being sued for displaying the ten commandments. The Supreme Court rules 5-4 that it was ok for them to display the ten commandments in a historical context. In another, however, (docket 03-1693) Kentucky is being sued to remove the ten commandments from a display in front of a courthouse. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that this was NOT ok, which is a little ironic considering that there is a giant depiction of Moses receiving the ten commandments hung in the Supreme Court. To discuss the next decision that I am concerned with, you must be familiar with the term "eminent domain." According to Wikipedia (I still suck at giving definitions), "In United States law, eminent domain is the power of the state to appropriate private property for its own use without the owner's consent." The important part of that definition is "for its own use." Under existing law, the government can take your property to do something that will benefit the society that they live in. A good example from this K5H article is the building of a highway. I quote, "Society sees the need for a highway, for example, that benefits everyone. Unfortunately, highways cannot be built in the air, so someone's house has to be destroyed." According to a recent Supreme Court decision (docket 04-108), your property can be seized to build something that will draw more tax revenue. I totally disagree with this decision because of it's potential for abuse. An office complex can be built over your home (at least in theory) because that office complex might generate more revenue for the government than your house did. I'm sure Barrett will have plenty of comments about this decision and I hope he won't just boil it down to "Bush sucks!!" The final decision that I was to discuss is the one that I have been most worried about. I'm talking about the MGM vs. Grokster case (docket 04-480). The justices decided unanimously that businesses ARE responsible for their user's copyright infringement if they don't actively try to prevent it. DRMBlog has a nice article on what this could/will mean for software writers. In short, it means that producers of software such as BitTorrent (which actually has quite a few legal uses) will now be held liable for the illegal downloading of copyrighted material by their users. That's like holding gun manufactures liable for deaths in shootings or car manufactures liable whenever a new driver gets in an accident. I want to talk more about this, but DRMBlog did awesome in explaining everything that needs to be explained. There are two more things I'd like to discuss, but I will publish this now and make a new post for them.