Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Odds And Ends

After my article about Radiohead offering free downloads of their new album, you'd think that some record company would get a clue. You probably will not be surprised to read that that record company will not by Sony. In testimony in a civil case, Sony BMG's head of litigation Jennifer Pariser opined that copying songs from a CD that you own to an iPod or your own computer constitutes theft:

Pariser has a very broad definition of "stealing." When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, "When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Making "a copy" of a purchased song is just "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy'," she said.

Sony BMG's chief anti-piracy lawyer: "Copying" music you own is "stealing"

Despite such sterling legal advice, Sony is steadily losing sales. (h/t Slashdot.)




As I mentioned in the update to Senator Feingold On Iraq, the Feingold-Reid amendment, which would have demanded that President Bush set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, was defeated 68-28.




Someone posted an interesting comment on the lyrics of Livin' In The Future. I've posted a link to the lyrics there.




A friend e-mailed a link to an article by Matt Ortega about the new logo for the 2008 Republican Convention. Matt observes:

The Half Hour News Hour train wreck showed us that Republicans just aren’t funny. Are they terrible at Photoshop, too?

I'm not an art critic, but I'd say so.




Apparently, people can get around the anti-spam measures at Blogspot if they are really determined. A bit of it showed up on an old article today. Spam, nonsensical comments (believe me, I'm talking not comprehensible, that kind of nonsensical), or comments that consist of nothing but insults will be deleted here. It's the only measure I have to control it, but as this is the first time I've used it I think it's clear I won't be doing that too often.


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