Month: January 2008

Now RIAA wants $1.5 million if you copy a CD

Now RIAA wants $1.5 million if you copy a CD:

Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. In the RIAA’s perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendant $1.5 million if done willfully. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn’t mean it won’t become law.

The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up for consideration in Congress. We’ve reported on the bill before, noting that Google’s top copyright lawyer (and the man who wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject of copyright law), William Patry, called the bill the most “outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.”

The industries pushing it (music, especially) have an “unslakable lust for more and more rights, longer terms of protection, draconian criminal provisions, and civil damages that bear no resemblance to the damages suffered,” he said.

Photos Uncategorized 2007 10 02 Communism

David Lee Roth Vocals and NWA in high school

David Lee Roth Vocals and NWA in high school:

The folks over at Chunklet Magazine (prior guests on Tom Scharpling’s Best Show on WFMU – real audio link) have uncovered this highly entertaining isolated vocal track of David Lee Roth singing Running with the Devil. (via Coudal)
Also of possible interest: The C.I.A 12″ over at BAF in the event you want to hear sketchy quality recordings of what NWA sounded like as RUN-DMC-loving high school students.
If only I had some Oingo Boingo tracks to share I would have a “Los Angeles adolesence in the 80s” trifecta…
Dave_kick

Area 51 has a new name

Area 51 has a new name:
Area 51, the Air Force’s infamous top secret test site and UFO landing strip in Southern Nevada, apparently has an official new name: Homey Airport. (For a fun cultural history of Area 51 and its mystique, I highly recommend Phil Patton’s great book Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51.) From the AirForceTimes (image from the Wikimedia Commons):

Wikipedia Commons 8 87 Wfm Area 51 Landsat Geocover 2000
“Homey Airport” now appears as the official name for a certain air base near a certain dry lake bed in Nevada, according to reports in the Web site of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, as well as the Daily Aviator blog and others. New editions of flight planning software and civilian aviators’ GPS gear lists the name and the official designation “KXTA” — which online wags have speculated stands for “extraterrestrial airport.” (The “k” designation indicates only that the field is in the U.S., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.)

Capt. Jessica Martin, a spokeswoman for Nellis Air Force Base, which sits 85 miles south of Homey Airport and is responsible for the airspace and any ground facilities, said that “we already know about the designation, but it doesn’t have any effect on operations at the base.”

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

15 Sons and Daughters of Country Western Stars Who Were Named After Radio and TV Personalities And Died Tragically

15 Sons and Daughters of Country Western Stars Who Were Named After Radio and TV Personalities And Died Tragically:

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1. Steve Allen Lewis – Drowned in pool
2. Jack Benny Lynn – Fell off horse and drowned
3. Groucho Marx Twitty – Stillborn
4. Bocephus Williams – Braindead
5. Fibber McGee Parton – Jumped off cliff
6. Fred Allen Wynette Jones – Drowned in cereal bowl
7. Eve Arden Cash – Impaled on miniature golf windmill
8. William Bendix Sovine – Electrocuted
9. Joe Besser Haggard – Imploded
10. Richard Deacon Acuff – Drank Strychnine
11. Imogene Cocoa Tillis – Autoeroticism
12. Liberace Scruggs – Helicopter mishap
13. Klondike Kat Judd – Microwaved
14. Red Buttons Whitman – Stepped on third rail at Space Mountain
15. William Shatner Jennings – Died of Embarrassment