What’s the value of a song?
Jammie Thomas-Rasset has spent the last few years in court debating that question. The Minnesota mother of four is being penalized for illegally downloading and sharing 24 songs on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Kazaa in 2006, but how much she owes the record labels has been in question.
The jury in her third trial has just ruled that Thomas-Rasset should pay Capitol Records $1.5 million, CNET reports, which breaks down to $62,500 per song. It’s a heavy penalty considering the 24 tunes would only cost approximately $24 on iTunes, which was Thomas-Rasset’ argument, too.
Thanks to Thomas-Rasset’s colorful case, she has become the public face of the record industry’s battle with illegal downloaders. In her first trial, in 2007, the jury demanded she pay $222,000 for violating the copyright on more than 1,700 songs by Green Day, Aerosmith and Richard Marx, to name a few. (Marx said he was “ashamed” to be associated with the “farcical” prosecution of an illegal downloader.) Thomas-Rasset maintained she wasn’t the computer user who did the file sharing, and her legal team cited an error in jury instruction to secure a second trial in 2009 that ended with a much harsher result: an astronomical fine of $1.92 million. However, earlier this year a U.S. District Court judge found the $1.92 million penalty against Thomas-Rasset to be “monstrous and shocking” and “gross injustice” before lowering it to $54,000, or $2,250 a song. Thomas-Rasset and her legal team decided to appeal that decision, too….
Still, Thomas-Rasset and her legal team are already making plans to appeal, setting the stage for a fourth trial. “The fight continues,” promised Thomas-Rasset’s lawyer Kiwi Camara. Even if Thomas-Rasset were to win the next trial, the RIAA would likely appeal that decision to ensure that copyright infringement without penalization won’t happen. This story has the potential to drag on well into the next decade — when for $1.5 million, all of Thomas-Rasset’s four kids could finish law school and take up the fight on her behalf.
Photo and text above courtesy of Y! News. See the full story at Y! News.
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The song in the commercial, while catchy-cute, is a little creepy.
thanks to @powerfm for posting the tweet/facebook status for the idea for the post. 89.7 PowerFM in Dallas is a great Christian Rock Station!
]]>But I do say that I enjoy the geeky side in me that enjoy the classic Back to the Future movies. I don’t know, but watching this video just made me happy. Enjoy!
“Ke$ha’s annoyingly catchy ‘Tik Tok’ won’t die, thanks in part to clever mash-ups like the Star Trek one and this “Tik Tok to the Future.” Set to scenes from 80s flick fave Back to the Future, the pop ditty gives a fresh perspective on the residents of fictional Hill Valley.”
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In high school, I took a physics class where we did a Rube Goldberg experiment. Everyone in the class did this by splitting up into groups and coming up with ideas for our projects. In simple terms, a rube goldberg project is something that takes many actions, to come out with one final action. Often the many actions use simple machines/tools (such as a wheel, wedge, weight, levy, etc.) to help produce your final end result.
(Our group, by the way, made up of Wilson Wise, David Townsend, and Amanda Gibbs (maybe?) put together a rube goldberg where the final result was to open a PEZ dispenser). It was fun, I think.)
When put to music, and done all in one take — wow! – you can get a great result! See this video from the band Ok Go. (This video, at the time of the posting, out after only 2 months has received about 13 million views on youtube. That is pretty outstanding!)
To learn more about the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg and how these fun projects have come to be known as “Rube Goldberg Experiments,” see the Rube Goldberg Wikipedia page.
]]>If he can live well and with such a good attitude about life, despite the difficulties — and if his dad can do it with such fervor and passion, what do we have to complain about?
Article from MichaelHyatt.com
Born without eyes and with a tightening of the joints that prevents his limbs from ever straightening, Patrick has been blind and crippled from birth. Yes, despite these “disabilities,” he was playing requests on the piano at age two. As he grew older, his musical genius became evident. Along the way, he also become an accomplished trumpet player.
As I watched this video, I jotted down three take-aways:
- Attitude is everything. Patrick doesn’t see his physical constraints as disabilities. In fact, he refers to them as abilities. Jason Fried, in his new book, Rework, says “Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.”
- Sometimes you just need a little help. The University of Louisville, where Patrick is a student, wanted him to play in the marching band. Only problem was that he couldn’t walk, let alone march. He was confined to a wheelchair. So, his dad agreed to attend all the practices and push him around the football field so Patrick could play his trumpet.
- You have to focus on what you have. Patrick says, “God made me blind and unable to walk. Big deal. He gave me the musical gifts I have and and the great opportunity I have to meet new people.” He doesn’t whine about what he doesn’t have. He is grateful for what he has. Unlike so many people today, there’s not an ounce of entitlement in his voice.
Stories like Patrick’s are inspiring. He is taking his “five loaves and two fish” and feeding a multitude with inspiration. How about you? What are you doing with what you have been given?
Question: What did you take away from this video?
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