Rhymes with goatse
Not to be obsessed with Jammie Thomas-Rasset, but here’s a lot of related content:
G.R. Anderson Jr. interviews copyright attorney Mick Spence who then gets hammered in the comments
Negotiating through lawsuits (labels work to actively impede the evolution of “legal” online distribution)
Pixar granted a dying wish but had the little girl watched an illegal download would the MPAA have sued?
More on how the record labels cheat artists out of royalties owed
How the labels change their arguments to suit the opportunity
Masnick on the Constitutionality of huge fines
Strapped universities find it hard to comply with onerous anti-file sharing laws
Another study finds weaker copyright is beneficial to society and artists
Japan caves in to corporate copyrightists
Hot band says their music is better because of piracy
Brian Lambert has been adding extra snark into The Daily Glean:
Being a precedent-setter can be a bummer sometimes. Thirty-two-year-old Jammie Thomas-Rassert of Brainerd has earned herself a permanent place in music and internet trivia by getting walloped with a $1.92 million judgment for downloading 24 songs via the Kazaa music sharing site. For the math-impaired, the Pioneer Press runs Steve Karnowski’s Associated Press story which calculates that to $80,000 per tune. The trial, the second, after the judge ordered a re-trial, is the only one of its kind so far. Karnowski reports that “Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA [the recording industry association], said the industry remains willing to settle, but she refused to put a figure on it.”
The Strib’s Alex Ebert covers the same story and quotes the defendant, Ms. Thomas-Rassert, a mother of four, reacting to the judgment with a terse, “Good luck getting it from me.’”
As I mentioned in the comments at MinnPost, I’m not shy about admitting my transgressions but with a credit report like mine I could digitally steal the Library of Congress and still end up paying the same as if they nailed me for my current collection. I guestimate $3-4 billion in fines right now, and I’m as likely to pay that as the trillions of dollars or so that a copy of the LoC would run.
What’s really sad is that as someone recently pointed out (Masnick?), we’re just five years away from an iPod that could hold the Library of Congress! Why should lawyers keep technology from achieving that insanely great goal?
Especially not given the pervasiveness of this “thing of ours.” Read that post and tell me a crime wasn’t just committed per our newly revised and strengthened copyright laws. Deep pockets theory would hold PZ, Scienceblogs.com, and the University of Minnesota Morris liable for this heinous bit of timely information distribution with intent to teach it to others.
When did that stop being a good thing?
Business people and their hirelings should never be allowed to serve in government. All the incentives are wrong and they’ve accumulated alarmingly.
Kill copyright before it kills us.
-
The other links:
Ed Brayton on Mark Kirk’s “super reefer madness”
If you haven’t watched the video of the tornado near Austin yet, it’s worth checking out
The irksomely deadly annoyance that is deer/roadkill
Anil Dash’s corollary to Scott Rosenberg’s tech-etymology rap
Thanks to WolframAlpha I now know that I’m 20,585 days old and was born under a waning crescent moon [OK, the weird thing about any kind of hidden process is that you had no way of knowing that this post was massively interrupted by my visit to WolframAlpha and that since typing that link the dishes have been washed, a new batch of black bean salsa is cooking on the stove, I’ve listened to Bear in Heaven, Lito Barrientos Y Su Orquesta, Big Youth, The Necks, Kitty Brazelton and Dafna Naphtali, Asylum Street Spankers, Ratatat, Bigoudi, Astor Piazzolla, Sisters of Mercy (great segué that), “various artists”, HBC, Electric Six, Fantomas, and right at this very moment Sula Bassana & the Nasoni Pop Art Experiment, and so now you know the rest of the backstory)
-
Been playing with google. It occurred to me that it would be fun to see the Google Images results when you put in non-Roman search terms. บ้าบอ led me to this:
Goatse or not goatse? I have no context for this picture other than บ้าบอ means “crazy” in the beatnik/eccentric kind of way. About 7 pages into the search results which were otherwise mostly of Thai album covers and pop stars.
Vote in the comments.
And yes, I know I’m a perverted old man. I’m just trying to get a sense of the popularity of that perspective late on a Friday night. Morning people don’t get to vote and rhymes for goatse are encouraged.
Tags: ambulance chasers, bloodsuckers, corporate criminals, extortionists, goatse, leeches, predators, RIAA, whores
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
June 20, 2009 at 6:27 am
So much for late night contests after everyone’s gone to bed!
June 20, 2009 at 7:07 am
Carl Sagan said:
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.