Fascinating!: LimeWire to Record Industry: File-Sharing is Good for You! - From The Hollywood Reporter

By Eriq Gardner

The $1 billion legal case against LimeWire is turning into the modern day equivalent of the story of the judgment of King Solomon -- the tale of the Hebrew leader who told two women fighting over a baby to cut the child in half in order to determine which of the women really wanted to save the baby's life. Similarly, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood has been tasked with figuring out who has the best interests of the music industry at heart -- record labels or the allegedly villainous P2P service LimeWire -- in the midst of scorched earth litigation that's brimming with intrigue.

In recent months, we've reported that LimeWire, having been found guilty of copyright infringement by a federal judge, has been attempting to battle back some $1 billion in damage claims from record labels. To that end, LimeWire has been insisting that the record companies prove actual damages and produce information on costs such as royalty payments. The file-sharing company, which shut down after a judge's order, has also been creating havoc all over the new media universe, subpoenaing internal documents from Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Google, MySpace, and a host of other companies. who have vigorously objected to such demands.

The mammoth discovery process is ongoing, and has mostly been conducted under seal, but so far, multiple terabytes of data from e-mails have been collected, and plaintiffs have already turned over a quarter million pages of e-mails, and 22,000 pages of third-party research on the impact of peer-to-peer file sharing on the music industry.

The result so far?

In declarations to the court, LimeWire says the evidence shows that user downloads actually increased record industry revenues and therefore the subsequent shutdown of LimeWire has decreased those revenues. In other words, piracy is good.........

Eriq Gardner can be reached at eriqgardner@yahoo.com and can be followed on Twitter.


Read the full post on the hollywoodreporter.com

The Flaming Lips' Latest Songs Are Coming Out on the Revolutionary Candy Skull Format

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Yes, "...you eat the gummy brain embedded inside the skull. Then take the USB drive embedded in the gummy brain and plug that into your computer (don't eat it!). Enjoy your three new Flaming Lips songs, which should be out sometime next month. [Pitchfork]"

seems a little confusing - what's embedded? what am I eating???

Wow: Nintendo 3DS will stream content from Netflix- via NYTimes.com #infdist

Nintendo is moving beyond gaming with the 3DS, much as it has done with the Wii. Nintendo announced Wednesday that the 3DS would be able to stream content from Netflix. Users will also be able to pause a movie on the 3DS and restart it at the same point on a Wii, or vice versa. Nintendo is also working with movie studios to show 3-D versions of trailers on the devices. “Green Lantern,” which will premier in June, will be the first such trailer available.

Nintendo is also working to create a 3-D channel that will offer exclusive short form videos on the device. Mr. Iwata declined to provide specific information about the content, but said that channel would be live by midyear. The company is also working to create a version of the 3DS that will capture 3D video.

Read the full article on NYTimes

Super Cool: From a Brooklyn Startup, MakerBot, a D.I.Y. 3-D Printer - NYTimes.com

It was the end of a three-day binge of invention in March 2009. Bre Pettis, Zach Hoeken Smith and Adam Mayer had locked themselves in a bare cement room in Downtown Brooklyn pretty much around the clock. No one was hollering Eureka; they had to chase screws that rolled under the table.

They were building a three-dimensional printer, a machine that works like an inkjet printer except that it squirts molten plastic, not ink. The layers of plastic rise into almost any shape — bolts, tools, toys — based on digital models sent to the printer from a computer.

“We were making a machine that makes things,” Mr. Pettis said. “We’d say to people: ‘Right now, you can download books and movies. Someday you’re going to be able to download things.’ ”

Read the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/nyregion/05about.html?src=recg#