Over the past 50 years, the copyright monopolists have gotten almost everything they asked for in expansions of copyright:

1) The copyright act of 1976, which greatly expanded U.S. copyright’s scope and duration both.
2) The elimination of the renewal requirement in the early 1990s.
3) A levy on all blank digital audio tapes.
4) An open-ended anti-bootlegging provision [...]

After getting tangled up in the aftermath of a legendary hip-hop feud with millions of dollars at stake, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP has had enough. The law firm is seeking bankruptcy-court permission to cut ties with the creditor it’s representing in the Death Row Records bankruptcy case because more than $1.4 million [...]

Thanks to the Mechanics blog at Gapers Block, here are seven crimes that will get you smaller fines than file-sharing…
1. Child abduction: the fine is only like $25000.
2. Stealing the actual CD: the fine is $2,500
3. Rob your neighbor: the fine is $375,000
4. Burn a house down: The fine is just over $375,000
5. Stalk someone: [...]

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Personalized Internet radio stations got a boost Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that Yahoo’s Launchcast music service was not interactive enough to be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Launchcast did not offer its users so much control over [...]