We sometimes hear people say that BitTorrent as a technology is only good for infringement. We know that's not true, but then people will point to examples of how frequently it's used for infringement. Of course, that's meaningless when you look at both the larger picture and the nature of trends. When new distribution technologies are introduced, it's not surprising that they're used that way because there's so little legitimate activity on the system. But that changes over time. Remember, when the VCR first came about, nearly all activity on it was described as "infringing" by some, because there was no legitimate content being offered. However, obviously, over time that changed and more and more legitimate content was offered.

Over the years, we've certainly seen an increase in content being offered via BitTorrent, but today there's a big addition: the Internet Archive has enabled over one million torrents of books, music and movies from its collection.

The Internet Archive is now offering over 1,000,000 torrents including our live music concerts, the Prelinger movie collection, the librivox audio book collection, feature films, old time radio, lots and lots of books, and all new uploads from our patrons into Community collections (with more to follow).

And while some ignorant organizations may declare that the Internet Archive is a "rogue site," I think most people recognize that it's a wonderful repository of all sorts of legal content, much of which is now available using the rather efficient distribution technology BitTorrent.

We've written about the ridiculousness of the ongoing auction over Kodak's patents -- the final sad legacy for the once giant company. However, it's getting even more ridiculous. On Monday, a bankruptcy court judge approved about $6 million in "performance" bonuses for execs, including some that are based on how much the company gets from these auctions. Think about the ridiculous incentive structure here. You have executives who are running a bankrupt company, who are set to make millions (in a court approved manner), for handing off the company's patents to trolls, so they can go out and sue the actual innovators.

The execs make out like bandits. The buyers likely make out like bandits after shaking down some companies. The lawyers (of course) make out like bandits. And... who gets screwed? Oh yeah, the companies who are actually innovating successfully in the market and the public (who we thought the patent system was supposed to benefit).