I’ve been intrigued by the copyright infringement case that Columbia brought against the guys who run Web site TorrentSpy last year. The latest development in that case has the potential to change the way parties to a lawsuit gather evidence during its “discovery” period. Usually, you can only subpoena evidence that existed prior to the lawsuit during discovery. But in the TorrentSpy case, Columbia convinced a California judge that she should order TorrentSpy to create new evidence during discovery by saving data about their users that they hadn’t previously kept. Columbia’s lawyers argued that TorrentSpy had essentially already been saving this data because it flashed through their servers’ RAM — the part of computer memory that’s temporary and never gets saved to disk. So generating this new data was really more like recreating what should have already existed.

The judge’s ruling could open a door for plaintiffs to force, say, VoIP telephone companies to start saving audio files of people’s phone calls as evidence during discovery since those audio files existed briefly in RAM when they happened before the case was brought. In some ways, the ruling suggests that if you can save data on your users, you should — because if you don’t, a judge might order you to start. It’s a bizarre, wide-reaching decision that demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of technology and creates a dangerous loophole that allows parties to a case to spy on each other during the discovery process. Read my column to find out more creepy details and unintended effects of this weird copyright ruling.

Last week, Huffington Post ran a strangely geeky gossip item about how Gawker Media might be launching a science fiction blog, and poaching a Wired writer to run it. This week, C|Net reveals all, or at least a skewed version of it. Yes, it’s true. I will be the lead editor for Gawker’s new blog, which will focus on science fiction, pop futurism, and speculative knowledge. No, it doesn’t have a name yet. No, we don’t have a launch date, but I guarantee you’ll see it before 2008.

Yes, I am totally psyched.

And yes, I will continue to be a contributing writer at Wired. Also, you’ll still see my weekly syndicated column Techsploitation all regular-like. But now you’ll get to read my bloggy thoughts all day, every day. And it won’t matter if you don’t like them at first, because I’ve got a mind-control ray embedded in your RSS feed. YOU . . . MUST . . . READ . . . BLOG! And don’t give me that “Blog? What is blog?” crap. You will be assimilated.

No, really, Google Street View is pissing me off. It’s a new application that’s part of Google Maps that allows users to view street-level pictures of homes and businesses — using arrows, you can literally “walk” down a street, and catch glimpses of everything from local coffee shops to a guy peeing in the bushes. (The images were taken from a van that drove city streets, shooting 360 degrees of photos as it went.) Sure it’s fun to walk around in a virtual neighborhood, but there’s really no use value to this app that I can see, other than sheer voyeurism.

And voyeurism is what you get. Already, people have turned up countless pictures of people caught naked or semi-naked, somebody getting arrested, people groping each other, etc. Just because I might be willing to make out with my sweetie on a street corner doesn’t mean I want the image posted in public forever by Google without my permission. This is just another way Google is invading privacy and candy-coating it with a fun but useless app. Read my column this week to find out more about what’s wrong with Google Street View.

Yesterday I was on Cranky Geeks, talking about everything from TorrentSpy to my love/hate relationship with Google StreetView. Check it out!

I love Wikipedia — as many people have noted, it’s an incredibly well-maintained public resource of information written by its users. What makes it such a valuable resource is that everyone who contributes can bring their own area of expertise to bear. No piece of knowledge is left out, as long as it’s truthful and sourced. And yet there is one giant flaw in the system. Entries can and are frequently deleted due to “lack of notability.” In other words, if one Wikipedian decides that a minor artist of the early twentieth century isn’t “notable,” he can tag it for notability and it will be deleted speedily and without discussion.

The question I ask in my column this week is why? Given that there is an unlimited amount of space on Wikipedia, why should we worry about whether something is “notable”? If it’s true and it’s sourced, it’s a piece of knowledge that should be in Wikipedia. Why should only the famous and “notable” be preserved for future generations? Read more about this problem with Wikipedia in my column.