An amazing New York Metro article on child abuse at the Boychoir School. Prominent Stanford IP Lawyer Larry Lessig acknowledges the abuse he suffered at the School while taking a case to the New Jersey Supreme Court for another child abuse victim. Powerful stuff. Julie Leung has more.
Daily Archives: May 27, 2005
Our Tax Dollars at Work: Saving Hollywood…
The Motion Picture Association of America:
The U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security today announced that they have shut down one of the world’s largest BitTorrent websites, Elite Torrents. Carrying out what is known as Operation D-Elite, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed search warrants against prominent members in Elite Torrents’ membership. Elite Torrents was one of the first peer to peer networks to post an illegal copy of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith before the movie officially opened in theaters last Thursday.
I’m not making this up….. Visit Elite Torrents and check out the home page, which now features US DOJ and DHS logos….
Copyright is important to some fair degree (Congress, via Hollywood money has greatly distorted the copyright law…). However, spending our tax dollars to save the latest Star Wars film is simply absurd. Let’s use some of that money for education or debt reduction.
Memorial Day Weekend Recipe
Texas Monthly posted an intresting Cornmeal Crepe recipe, “an exceptional lowfat, lowcarb alternative to the tortilla”.
Giving Electronic Books Away Increases Paper Book Sales
Gray was asked to study the publishing strategy of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in South Africa. This research institution had a traditional strategy of publishing lots of research books, and selling them. Gray convinced them to change their strategy — to give away all their research books for free online, and offer a high quality print-on-demand service for anyone who wants the paper version. The result: “the sales turnover of the publishing department has risen by 300%.” As she concluded her presentation, “giving away books and lead to an increase in our book sales.” There’s much much more in her interesting analysis.
Download the pdf.