Cnet has an article about the publisher of Perfect 10 suing Amazon over its A9 search engine.

The suit and another against Google by the publisher claims the operators of these search engines are infringing on Perfect 10's copyright by including images in their search results. To my non-legally educated mind, the suits don't seem to be such a huge deal. There are plenty of opportunities for Perfect 10 to protect their copyright. If as the article implies the suit has to do with Google indexing other sites that are hosting the infringing images then separate action against those sites will solve two problems at once. It seems from this seat on the sideline like a company looking for a way to squeeze money from the search engines that are making money.

The article notes in the last paragraph "The situation is more dire after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that companies can be held legally liable for copyright piracy that takes place on their online networks." Which leads me to say um, not really. Cnet needs to get their facts straight here. The Supreme Court ruled that there was enough evidence that the cases against Grokster and Streamcast should not have been granted summary judgement. They went on to describe a lot of actions that look like the companies were inducing users to violate copyrights of third parties. However, they also by way of example, suggested filters might be one way a company could help to show they are not liable for inducing infringement. It so happens that robots.txt is just one such filtering mechanism that Google, A9 and others support.

Yesterday brought the opportunity to take in a couple of shows at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The production the festival has mounted of Camelot is simply stunning. Three strong leads, Brian Vaughn as King Arthur, Christine Williams as Queen Guenevere and Michael Sharon as Lancelot, form the core of this excellent cast.

Finding the right place to start commenting on this production is hard. The staging, cast, choreography, and music were all outstanding. For example the joust scene with most of the cast on stage brings together the excellent talent, music choreography and staging into one crystalline scene. With each pass of the off-stage combatants the company moves in such fluid unison as to completely sell the idea they are indeed watching an event instead of looking into the audience.

Since I first visited the festival in the early 1980's I've seen dozens of plays and a handful of musicals produced by this excellent company. Camelot, however, ranks in the top few productions this elite company has put together.

The festival has been producing the works of Shakespeare since its 1962 inaugural season. In 1989 the festival opened the Randal L. Jones theater for presenting woks from the "Shakespeares of other lands." With the addition of this second theater the company expanded its repertoire to include annual musical productions.

Political Wire has a look at President George Bush's changing views on an exit strategy. In the second Bush-Gore debate Mr. Bush said:

"I'm going to be judicious as to how to use the military. It needs to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear, and the exit strategy obvious."

Now, five years later, he is saying:

"It doesn't make any sense to have a timetable. You know, if you give a timetable, you're — you're conceding too much to the enemy."

Many times Mr. Bush criticized President Clinton for not having a clear exit strategy in Kosovo during the lead-up to the 2000 campaign.