In early November I attended the pod casting discussion at BloggerCon.  Toward the end of the pod casting session, Larry Lessig pointed out that it would be great if technologists driving the design of podcasting software could do it in such a way as to make the entire domain of pod casting hard for would-be naysayers to grok.  Essentially, his point was that technology creators and facilitators should think about the larger societal context in which pod-casting operates in order to keep the copyright fun sponges out of the picture. 

Too often designers and technologists completely avoid asking the question "Who will expend energy actively blocking this innovation of mine?".  It would be a great thing if that question started getting asked with more frequency.  Even better would be to involve legal types in the early design phase of a new technology so as to design in barriers to prevent the naysayers from dictating how people should and can use a particular technology innovation.