Topic: Software Licensing

The history of software licensing is traced back to WordStar creator Seymour Rubenstein in the late 1970s. Rubenstein's vision of an "iron-clad" licensing agreement eventually evolved into the modern shrink-wrap license and digital Terms of Service. The hosts joke about the legal binding of these contracts and the inevitability of everything from books to television being licensed rather than owned.

The hosts express frustration over a discovered 50-peer limit on BitTorrent Sync, which hinders its use for large-scale podcast distribution. They speculate that the company is moving toward a paid enterprise model similar to Dropbox, contradicting the decentralized nature of the technology.