Man, this is the kind of stuff that makes you sick: Nike shits all over Dischord Records. Never mind that Nike has made billions upon billions of dollars and has become the establishment in the sneaker industry… they must have felt that the holdouts in the indie arena either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care if they co-opted an image from one of the greatest punk albums ever, whose rightsholders wouldn’t have granted permission in a billion years.

The Grokster decision, handed down by the Supreme Court today, says that infringing technologies’ creators can be held liable if the technology is clearly labelled for illegal use. Which means that the little-guy innovators will have to run scared from the Hollywood machine even if their intentions and marketing were not geared towards illegal use, because the Hollywood machine is desperate to preserve that failing business model. But when the big guys clearly steal from the little guys… well, no one is going to raise much of a stink about that. Especially if your government is the one stealing from you.

Update: Winckles has some good thoughts on what Grokster really means.