I have some answers for you:

Third-tier newspapers. Neighbourhood and college newspapers tend to be members of "newswires". That membership will grant the publication permission to print stories which are posted on the wire. Whenever a story in your city newspaper is prepended by "REUTERS" or "CANADIAN PRESS" or whatever, is a story from the wire. The Associated Press isn't forming NewsRight to chase community papers, because (at least the legitmate or mainstream papers) are already paying customers, and have been for decades.

Paraphrasing. In both American and Canadian copyright law, facts cannot be copyrighted — only creative works conveying facts (i.e. the writing itself). So paraphrasing a story is "okay" it's considered weaksauce journalism, but not illegal. Keep in mind that proper paraphrasing isn't trivial; it involves telling the story your own way, not just changing a couple of words in the original and passing it off as your own. That's "plagarism" (read: copyright infringement) and definitely illegal.

It's worth remembering that there are cases where permissive licenses are attached to text, either implicitly or explicitly. Companies want newspapers to reprint portions of their press releases (although again, "weaksauce journalism"), and occasionally there's a piece of relevant writing licensed under the Creative Commons (though these tend to be opinion pieces and columnists, not news. It's a bit more common for photos.)

I'm happy to try and answer any more questions. (I was the editor-in-chief of a university newspaper.)

"With modern technology, if all there is is music, we don't need musicians to do it. ... Get 'em to do it once, put it on the Web, and fire the musicians."

Careful where you go with that line of thinking. And if anyone says, "there's a difference between a physics lecture, and something creative like music," I would respond that you've never had a good physics teacher. Physics is very creative, once you start getting into the upper levels.

Eric Mazur gave a talk here at the University of Waterloo, and his talk was not about getting rid of lectures, per se. That's something the NPR reporter seems to assume, to the point where (s)he inserted soundbytes from an entirely different physics prof. Mazur's focus is about making the classtime much more interactive, to give students feedback about whether or not they really grasp the concepts. Again, it's about guided creativity. And no, you can't get rid of the professor in that situation.

(Yes, I was a physics major.)

The younger you are, the younger it's possible for you to have gotten email. Old hat techies who were born in 1940 wouldn't be able to break the 50% mark no matter how hardcore they are, but anyone born 1990 or later will probably be able to truthfully pick one of the latter two options.

It's funny, because this is the opposite of how these polls usually go.

What are they thinking? The doctors aren't thinking outside the box enough. Really, instead of getting people to sign old-fashioned contracts, they should emulate the EULA. You know, by putting up a plaque in their office which says something like this:

By entering this building, you agree to transfer to this establishment copyright on all creative works you own including but not limited to written works, drawings, photographs, spoken-word works, in perpetuity.

Amateurs.

Without arguing that social hygene is a good idea or in some way fair, don't you have to be at least a little stupid to get involved with hiding Jews knowing that you could spend your days alternating between having to telemarket and being pounded in the ass as a result?

I mean, there's lots of things I'd like to do that I don't agree with the laws on, but orange jumpsuit is a terrible look for me and so I don't.

I know I've Godwin'd the thread, but it illustrates my point: it's a bad idea to blindly follow the law, and it's poor critical thinking to blindly condemn those who don't. There are good arguments for not getting involved with drugs, but that's not one of them.

I remember that. There were only a few of us who signed onto the local BBS, and only one other who was playing LORD as regularly as I was. But it made for a compelling reason to log on every day. "If I don't dial in and take my turn, that other guy is going to kill me."

You're right. Taxes are evil and useless. Everyone knows that the infrastructure which enables modern civilization, like roads and plumbing, are paid for with leprechaun gold.

And the military to defend that civilization is created with pixie dust.

Blockbuster's selection sucked. If you only rented the most popular of movies, you'd probably never notice. But they'd have an entire wall of DVD-release-of-the-week, while completely lacking titles which were only a little out of the mainstream.

Have you ever found Mystery Science Theatre 3000 in a Blockbuster? I haven't, and people looked at me funny when I asked. But it's available at this little local rental place with shelves, stuffed floor to ceiling, with movies. They also have a basement full of obscure anime. That's the rental place which is going to stick around. Places like Blockbuster which trade only in common content will have their lunch eaten by NetFlix and download services. But the stores run by actual local movie nerds offering every obscure title under the sun will still have a reason to exist.

Buh-bye Blockbuster. I won't miss you.