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The Supreme Court of the US has handed down its decision in the Grokster case. Kim has a good summary at Weatherall’s Law. In brief, the Court has reversed the 9th Circuit decision, in which it held that Grokster could not be liable for P2P file-sharing technology with substantial non-infringing uses. The case has been remanded for trial. The record companies that sued Grokster will have another chance, it seems.

GrokLaw recently posted a list, sorted by case name, law firm, and lawyer, of the litigation monitored on their website. It’s a handy list, at least for those of us interested in such things as SCO and open source.

Not everyone is very happy about Google these days. The Association of American University Presses believes that Google’s plan to digitise the libraries of Oxford University and others will result in widespread copyright infringement. And a journalist at Wired.com has warned readers that Google is doing its best to collect more and more information on its users, noting that “Google is big, bad, ubiquitous, and whipping Microsoft, the dominatrix of the desktop.”

Have things really become that bad? I for one do not mind the targetted advertising that I see when I check my Gmail account. If Google has a little information on me that it uses to create advertising, I don’t mind so long as it’s discreetly displayed on the side of my screen. It is certainly a far sight better than the pseudo-pornographic spam that I receive at Hotmail.