Monolith is a computer program that creates a data file given 2 other files. The resulting file has no data related to the original files but can be reconstructed from one of the original files.
As the author says, "Things get interesting when you apply Monolith to copyrighted files."
UPDATE: lots of good discussion and comments of this on Copyfight.
This is really really interesting and I like how the author provides extensive philosophical and logical account of the implications for file sharing and other copyright issues. This is one more example of how digital technology will probably eventually make copyright pretty close to irrelevant, though of course the bad guys are working on their technology to prevent that. ironically their efforts are also making copyright irrelevant, as Lawrence Lessig has pointed out many times, the situation that brought him to coin the phrase "copy duty" in his first book - the idea that IP owners have an obligation to make their works available to a certain extent. Technology will allow them to lock it up much tighter than IP law has ever expected, which means culture starts to suffocate.
(via alx.)
Posted by steev at June 10, 2004 04:44 PMAll of you people should be ashamed of yourselves! MicroSoft is the reason
there are so many people in my IS department, and the reason half of us have
jobs. If Sun had won, we could probably get by with two people sleeping like
the Maytag man. But because of MS, there are eight people gainfully employed as
highly paid contracters, looking busy, feeding their kids. And the way it
looks, I stand to be employed and wealthy for a long, long time.
-- From Slashdot.org
Posted by: lipi at August 4, 2004 10:57 PM