The latest in the recent spate of RIAA subpoenas seems to have been served to a 12 year-old girl from New York, America. Realising the unwanted publicity this could generate, the RIAA quickly settled with the girl’s mother for $2000 (several times less than most suits). The child had allegedly downloaded more than 1000 songs using the popular P2P program KaZaA – it sounds like many parents are going to have to have yet another one of “those” discussions with their children. However, this is one issue that many parents simply don’t understand.
Several volunteers have stepped up to help cover the costs of the settlement. The settlement (and the wider litigation campaign) appears to ahve had little overall deterrent effect: overall usage of file-sharing networks is supposedly up by 25% since 1 September. This comes despite the RIAA’s new amnesty program. Perhaps the only reason file-sharing took a downturn last month was because most American teenagers were on school holidays.
The EEF also has a petition (useless though they may be) up on their site protesting the use of invasive and unconstitutional techniques to combat music piracy.
Some hunting around over the weekend also revealed several interesting NASA sites containing obcenely high-resolution satellite imagery of earth. These video zooms are also cool (thanks Kashi). A little less inspiring are these images of an unfortunate accident involving a satellite. As one forum-goer put it in a much-overused commercial parody: Cost of Satellite? $50 million. Watching it topple over when you forget to screw it down to the transport vehicle? Priceless!
