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Mexican Lawmaker withdraws Copying Levy, 3 Strikes-> 3

Submitted by josech
josech writes "Mexican Deputy, Armando Baez Pinal retired two Copyright Law modification initiatives which pretended to impose a private copying levy and a 3 strikes policy heavily lobbied by the copyright collection society, Coalicion para el Acceso Legal de la Cultura (CALC). The private copy levy would be charged as an overprice for several media and electronic devices just as the infamous "Canon Digital" does in Spain. These initiatives caused rage amid mexican copyright activists which used twitter to spread the word using the #canonmx and #3strikes hashtags. #canonmx quickly became the most important trending topic in Mexico by June 4th. After a huge opposite reaction even from fellow Deputies from Baez's own Party (PRI), Baez finally withdrew both initiatives,announcing it first on twitter (June 8th) and then publishing an official communicate (June 10th). The reaction against these modifications to the Mexican Copyright Law is part of a series of protests against the ACTA negotiations, in which Mexico is participating."
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Moon

The New Moon Race 212

Posted by Zonk
from the make-the-jump dept.
An anonymous reader writes "News.com has a pictoral and editorial look at the quickly-heating second race to the moon. A Japanese orbital probe is expected to reach orbit of the satellite sometime today, just one of the dozens of projects now aiming to exploit Earth's orbital partner for scientific and business gains. 'The next lunar visitor may come from China. The Chang'e-1 spacecraft is scheduled to lift off near the end of October. It is slated to study the moon's topography in 3D and also investigate its elements. Chang'e-3 is a soft lunar lander that is scheduled to fly in 2010 ... If all goes as planned, the United States and India will have astronauts on the moon by 2020, China by 2022, and Japan and Russia by 2025.'"
Music

RIAA trial verdict is in: jury finds Thomas liable-> 1

Submitted by
jdogs60
jdogs60 writes "Duluth, Minnesota — After just four hours of deliberation and two days of testimony, a jury found that Jammie Thomas was liable for infringing the record labels' copyrights on all 24 the 24 recordings at issue in the case of Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas. The jury awarded $9,250 in statutory damages per song, after finding that the infringement was "willful," out of a possible total of $150,000 per song. The grand total? $222,000 in damages."
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The Courts

How should I have responded to RIAA lawyer? 10

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's lawyers are a bit jumpy these days since their standard "making available" boilerplate was rejected by the Court in Interscope v. Rodriguez. But I still never expected, when I initiated a dismissal motion in Elektra v. Schwartz, that they would be reaching out to me , of all people, for help. But so they did, asking me "in the interest of efficiency... what precisely Defendant contends is lacking from Plaintiffs' Complaint for Defendant to consider it sufficient. Perhaps Plaintiffs may be able to satisfy these alleged deficiencies and spare both parties additional and unnecessary motions practice." Unfortunately my response was not very helpful; I couldn't think of anything better than to say, more or less, that "Plaintiffs have no case whatsoever against Ms. Schwartz, and their case against her was frivolous in its inception. Accordingly, there are no facts they can allege that will satisfy the plausibility standard." On reflection, I'm feeling kind of guilty that I didn't give them a more creative, and helpful answer, and I thought to turn to my friends at Slashdot, who are (a) almost always helpful, and (b) always creative. What would you have said?"

Odets, where is thy sting? -- George S. Kaufman