They offered to settle for what worked out to around $2 or so per song shared (note: she was sharing around a couple thousand songs--the trial only concerned 24 for technical and practical reasons). That's a lot less than someone would normally pay for a license to redistribute songs to an arbitrary number of untracked people for a flat rate. Note also that even though they only sued over a small fraction of the songs she was sharing, the minimum possible statutory damages would be quite a bit larger than the settlement offer. She knew she was guilty, and should have known they could prove it, so should have jumped at such a reasonable offer.

Then, after she stupidly decided to fight, and lost, and got caught tampering with evidence and perjuring herself (things that do not endear one to a jury--the same jury that will be deciding the damages), and got hit with damages much larger than the settlement offer, the RIAA again offered to settle, again for a reasonable amount. Again she refused, got another trial, lost again, and that jury went for an even bigger amount of damages.

I believe there was a third settlement offer after that.

I question the ethics of her lawyer. I think he's putting satisfying his legal fantasy of winning a stunning case at the Supreme Court ahead of his client's best interests.

That's ridiculous. If the punishment for an illegal act is simply what it would have cost to do the act in the first place, then there is no reason to ever do the act legally. Doing it illegally always has a better expected outcome than doing it legally.

Furthermore, you didn't even calculate the costs correctly under your flawed model. $24 would be the cost to legally download 24 songs for personal listening. The cost for a license to legally download 24 songs and redistribute them to an arbitrary number of strangers for no addition fees and with no tracking or reporting requirements would be a lot more than $1/song.

No serious neckbeard used a 300 baud modem. The modem of choice was the Telebit Trailblazer.

For someone who was tricked into exposing herself when she was 12??!?!

What a sad, sad person you are.

I wish I could mod you up.

No, he's trying to tell you that cyclotrons and nuclear reactors are completely different things. What you said was inaccurate.

It was designed to find potential infringement on consumer-oriented sharing services where people can sign up and post or stream video without any screening beforehand. On such services, the fast majority of videos that get caught will in fact be blatant infringement, not fair use.

There are two ways to stream on UStream and avoid the risk of a false positive. First, you can use the paid service, instead of the ad-supported service. They assume that people who are actually paying are probably not pirates, and disable the automated copyright checking. Second, if you are using the ad-supported service you can notify them in advance of broadcasts of this kind and they will disable the checking. The organizers of the Hugo ceremony did not do this.

The fact that the songs normally retail for $0.99 is completely irrelevant. It would perhaps be relevant if he were merely downloading songs for his own personal enjoyment. That's not, however, what he was doing. He was downloading and then redistributing.

The relevant price comparison should be to the cost of a fixed price license that allows the licensee to make unlimited copies and redistribute them without restriction to anyone in the world, with no requirement to track or report on any of this to the licensor.

That license is going to cost a lot more than $0.99 per song.

How in the world does that make any kind of logical sense?

What he posted was a series of links to NY Times articles. Would your knowledge of his employer have changed your interpretation of those New York Times articles, which he didn't author? If the stories he linked to are accurate, would your knowledge of his employer have changed the conclusions you would draw from them?

I might have some sympathy for this argument if he'd posted an extended opinion piece; but he didn't.

The truth is this: his point-of-view is an unpopular one one here, and so people (for example, you) are going to seize on anything they can to smear him, even if irrelevant. It's one step up from "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

Don't forget the black helicopters that have been hovering near your house since you posted!

I'd go for the tinfoil if I were you, man.

How have GRACE GPS radio occultation results compared with TEC data from other observations at the same time and along nearby paths (from GPS ground sites, from other radio occultation observations from e.g. C/NOFS or COSMIC, etc.)? Is the GRACE GPS R/O data publicly available? If so, with how much delay? Thanks.

You were mostly correct; but Horace Silver definitely did.

Why would you say that only 8 chords are possible in a key? All chords can be played in any key you choose; they're just in different positions in the mode (whichever mode that might be). For instance, if you really want, a C#m7 can appear in your tune no matter what key you're playing.

There is some disagreement in legal circles as to whether or not it is possible to put a work into the public domain in some countries (including the United States). In US copyright law, a work that otherwise would be copyrighted can be in the public domain because the law explicitly says it is not copyrighted (e.g., works authored by the US government) or it can be in the public domain because its copyright expired. There's nothing in there that says you can actually put a work into the public domain.

Better to go with a permissive license like BSD and be on firm ground rather than trying for public domain and having to live with uncertainty.