The BBC reports that a court in the US has ordered a woman to pay $222,000  in damages for illegally file-sharing music. The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 32, from Minnesota, to pay for offering to share 24 specific songs online - a cost of $9,250 per song.  Record companies said she had illegally shared a total of 1,702 songs. Ms Thomas, who denied the charges, was the first person accused of illegal file-sharing who decided to fight the case in court. Each year, millions of households...

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Well, not really. But during testimony in a file-sharing legal case today, Jennifer Pariser, Sony's head of litigation, made some odd statements (which close aids have attributed to an overly tight necktie). The story on Ars Technica goes like this: Pariser has a very broad definition of "stealing." When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading...

Yay Ron! Average donation: $40.00. Update: This is a "Jaw-Dropping," turn of events according to ABC News.

The Times/Reuters LAGOS Five members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) were arrested on suspicion of gang-raping a teenage girl. The 17-year-old was abducted and raped ten days ago in Ilesa, Osun state, after she refused to testify against an opposition party at an election tribunal, it was reported. Hundreds of petitions are being heard across the country to resolve disputes arising from elections held in April that were so badly rigged they were deemed not credible by...

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10/1/07 Q Do you have any reason to believe that junta leaders will meet with the U.N. Envoy? MS. PERINO: I don't have any reason to believe one way or the other. We -- he is there waiting to meet with him and as soon as we have an update, we'll provide it. Q And the protests, themselves, seem to have been stilled. What do you make of that? MS. PERINO: Well, unfortunately, intimidation and force can chill peaceful demonstrations. And reports about very innocent people being thrown into...

Check out my Q&A with Scott on my blog.  We touched upon libertarian ideas and the candidacy of Ron Paul.

In its ongoing struggle to disinflate its own economy and drain some of the trillion-plus devaluing American dollars that it holds, China's leadership has apparently authorized the hush-hush creation of a US$200 billion "super fund" that will purchase raw materials around the world, according to FMNN sources close to the Chinese top leadership. The report comes on the heels of a previous FMNN report that Chinese banks have begun to cautiously trade down China's horde of American dollars via...

from ADEBlog Leave it to a socialist to provide the International Monetary Fund with its new agenda, basically the same old agenda. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance and economics minister in French politician Lionel Jospin’s ‘Plural Left’ government, ‘said overhauls he intends for the IMF will allow it to adapt to ’a new balance of power in the world’ and ’to the new kind of financial crisis’ that has hit financial markets recently,’ according to the Wall Street Journal. Of course,...