Man arrested in Texas for trying to cash $360 billion check 

Charles Ray Fuller must have been planning one big record company. The 21-year-old North Texas man was arrested last week for trying to cash a $360 billion check, saying he wanted to start a record business. Tellers at the Fort Worth bank were immediately suspicious — perhaps the 10 zeros on a personal check tipped them off.

Fuller, of suburban Crowley, was arrested on a forgery charge. He was released after posting $3,750 bail.

Fuller said his girlfriend’s mother gave him the check to start a record business. But bank employees who contacted the account’s owner said the woman told them she did not give him permission to take or cash the check.

In addition to the forgery count, Fuller was charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possessing marijuana. Officers reported finding less than two ounces of marijuana and a .25-caliber handgun and magazine in his pockets.

Just off the AP News: 

By MELISSA EDDY, Associated Press Writer

Fri Dec 7, 7:06 PM ET

Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the most important and controversialpostwar composers who helped shape a new understanding of sound through electronic compositions, died at his home in western Germany. He was 79. Stockhausen, who gained fame through his avant-garde works in the 1960s and ’70s and later composed works for huge theaters and other projects, died in the town of Kuerten on Wednesday, his publisher, the Stockhausen Verlag, said Friday. No cause of death was given. At La Scala, the famed Milan opera house, conductor Daniel Barenboim said Stockhausen “will have an influence on music history.” “The force of his music will be very much missed,” Barenboim said. Stockhausen’s electronic compositions were a radical departure from musical tradition and incorporated influences as varied as psychology, the visual arts and the acoustics of a particular concert hall. He was considered by some an eccentric member of the European musical elite and by others a courageous pioneer in the field of new music. Rock and pop musicians such as John Lennon, Frank Zappa and David Bowie have cited him as an influence, and he is also credited with having influenced techno music. So taken were the Beatles by Stockhausen’s music, they asked permission to use his photo on the cover of the 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” He appears fifth from the left in the back row. Not everyone’s admiration was so great. British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, who founded the London Symphony Orchestra, was famously quoted as answering a question of whether he had ever conducted any Stockhausen by saying, “No, but I believe I once trod in some.” Stockhausen sparked controversy in 2001 when he described the Sept. 11 attack on the United States as “the greatest work of art one can imagine.” The composer, who made the comment during a news conference in the northern German city of Hamburg, where several of the suicide pilots had lived, later apologized but insisted he had been misquoted. Stockhausen was born in the village of Moedrath near Cologne in western Germany on Aug. 22, 1928. His father was killed in World War II and his mother also died, leaving him orphaned as a teenager. After completing his studies in musicology, philosophy and German literature at the University of Cologne, he studied under composer Olivier Messiaen in 1952-53 in Paris, where he also met his French contemporary Pierre Boulez. In 1966-67, he served as a guest professor for composition at the University of California at Davis. In 1971, he was appointed professor of composition at the National Conservatory of Music in Cologne. That same year, his work “Hymnen” debuted in a performance by the New York Philharmonic. Stockhausen wrote 362 individually performable works, according to his publisher, including more than 140 of electronic or electro-acoustic music, and brought out more than 100 albums. In one of his lager-scale operas, “Licht,” Stockhausen tried to capture all of the facets of the world with sound and noises and set them in relation to the human spirit, speech, smells and colors. The piece, which took 25 years to compose, is an enormous sonic representation of the seven days of the week. So large is the work’s scope that multiple scenes needed to depict Thursday alone last four hours. “Licht” is to be performed in its entirety for the first time next year at the European Center for the Arts Hellerau in Dresden, Germany. The composer is survived by six children from two marriages. The funeral service will be Dec. 13 in the Waldfriedhof cemetery in Kuerten, near Cologne. A commemorative concert is to be held at the Suelztalhalle in Kuerten, his publisher said, but details had not been announced. “Stockhausen always said that GOD gave birth to him and calls him home … for love is stronger than death,” read the release on the publisher’s Web site.On the Net: http://www.stockhausen.org 

From Yahoo News:

Those hours practicing piano scales or singing with a choral group weren’t for nothing because people with a background in music tend to have a higher education and earn more, according to a new survey.

The poll by Harris Interactive, an independent research company, showed that 88 percent of people with a post-graduate education were involved in music while in school, and 83 percent of people earning $150,000 or more had a music education.

“Part of it is the discipline itself in learning music, it’s a rigorous discipline, and in an ensemble situation, there’s a great deal of working with others. Those types of skills stand you well in careers later in life,” said John Mahlmann, of the National Association for Music Education in Reston, Virginia, which assisted in the survey.

In addition to the practical skills gained from studying music, people questioned in the online poll said it also gave them a sense of personal fulfillment.

Students who found music to be extremely or very influential to their fulfillment were those who had vocal lessons and who played in a garage band. Nearly 80 percent of the 2,565 people who took part in the survey last month who were still involved in music felt the same way.

“That’s the beauty of music, that they can bring both hard work and enjoyment together, which doesn’t always happen elsewhere,” Mahlmann added in and interview.

This just came off the Yahoo News:

Most fans paid $0 for Radiohead album

By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer 55 minutes ago

Radiohead let its fans decide how much to pay for a digital copy of the band’s latest release, “In Rainbows,” and more than half of those who downloaded the album chose to pay nothing, according to a study by a consumer research firm.

Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded “In Rainbows” in a four-week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6, according to the study by comScore Inc.

Radiohead broke with its past practice of releasing its music in CD format and through a major record label when it released its seventh studio album online itself. The biggest wrinkle was the band’s decision to let fans pay as much or as little as they wanted to download a copy.

The results of the study were drawn from data gathered from a few hundred people who are part of comScore’s database of 2 million computer users worldwide. The firm, which has permission to monitor the computer users’ online behavior, did not provide a margin of error for the study’s results.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 29, about 1.2 million people visited the Web site the band set up for fans to download the album, comScore said Monday. The research firm did not say how many people in its study actually bought the album.

Among U.S. residents, about 40 percent who downloaded the album paid to do so. Their average payment was $8.05, the firm said.

Some 36 percent of the fans outside the U.S. who downloaded the album opted to pay; on average, those fans paid $4.64, according to the study.

Radiohead’s U.S.-based publicist said Tuesday the band had no comment on the study.

The online release sent shock waves through the recording industry, with some hailing it as a shrewd move at a time of declining CD sales industrywide and others writing it off as a publicity stunt that amounted to the band giving away its music.

The band, which also offered fans the option of buying a lavish box set for about $82, plans to release the album in CD format some time next year.

The interesting part is the lack of actual data or sales figures (dowloads) from the band itself. No margin of error was provided, nor was the band involved in the study. The entire study was based on the users that were associated with comScore. What should be of notice is comScore’s list of clients that include:

AOL
Best Buy
Borders
Clear Channel Communications
Columbia House
Ticketmaster, LLC
Viacom International

They are all companies that would stand to lose money if more groups like Radiohead decide to self-release their music without the need of a “middle-person”. The article again, did not say comScore that they collected the actual sales data from the band, but merely surveying their own users, and only a few hundred of them, and without providing a margin of error. What is also of interest is that Yahoo is also a client of the comScore. Coincidence? We are not that paranoid, but you have to wonder why would they place this article in their top stories, when after reading, it doesn’t have much (at least according to us) credibility. Like everything else being posted, read it and decide for yourself.

Yes, we decided to slash prices on our CDs and MP3s.
Cortex Bomb’s music is now $8.99 for CDs and $7.99 for MP3s from CD Baby (Cortex Bomb)

Caliche Con Carne’s music, the same: $8.99 for CDs and $7.99 for MP3s from CD Baby (Caliche Con Carne)

A.P.E, or Adult Party Experience, the same as the rest: $8.99 for CDs and $7.99 for MP3s from CD Baby (A.P.E.)

And the Juice, or Jesus Contreras and his music. After some arm twisting and making and an offer that he couldn’t refure, he finally agreed to a price slash
CDs $7.99, and MP3s $6.99 at CD Baby (Jesus Contreras)

IN OTHER NEWS

James and Raquel of Caliche Con Carne are currently traveling somewhere in the jungles of South America. This is for real. They are currently somewhere in Venezuela since September. We are still waiting to hear from them and hopefully they are safe and sound, and they return to the Arizona desert with new stories and new songs. We will be releasing the new album (CD) in the near future.

From the NYT

By EDUARDO PORTER
I didn’t pay anything to download Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” last Wednesday. When the checkout page on the band’s Web site allowed me to type in whatever price I wanted, I put 0.00, the lowest I could go. My economist friends say this makes me a rational being.

Apparently not everybody is this lucid, at least not in matters related to their favorite British rock band. After Radiohead announced it would allow fans to download its album for whatever price they chose, about a third of the first million or so downloads paid nothing, according to a British survey. But many paid more than $20. The average price was about $8. That is, people paid for something they could get for free.

This phenomenon is not new. It’s called tipping. We do it when we go to the restaurant or the barber, or when we ride in a taxi. Though one could argue there are real tangible reasons for this payment — like not losing an ear the next time we get a haircut — the practice of paying more money than we are legally bound to do is still mystifying in an economic sense. For instance, why tip a cabdriver you will probably never see again?

“Since we economists don’t understand tipping, we can’t really say whether this new scheme will work,” Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor of economics, said in an entry on his blog. He is not the only economist who is fascinated by the phenomenon. His Harvard colleague, Dani Rodrik, asked his blog readers, “Has Radiohead gone bonkers?” He concluded, “Not at all.” Radiohead will make money. But those who are paying for the download may truly be nuts.

One could argue that rationality isn’t everything. Radiohead fans might just be altruistic beings who out of the goodness of their hearts would like to give some money to a spectacularly successful and probably stinking rich rock band. But somehow, that doesn’t work as an explanation.

Or does it? Some economists suspect that what is going on is that people get a kick from the act of giving the band money for the album rather than taking it for free. It could take many forms, like pleasure at being able to bypass the record labels, which many see as only slightly worse than the military-industrial complex. It could come from the notion that the $8 helps keep Radiohead in business. Or it could make fans feel that they are helping create a new art form — or a new economy. People who study philanthropy call it the “warm glow” that comes from doing something that we, and others, believe to be good.

Mr. Rodrik tested some of this with an experiment of his own. He offered his blog readers the opportunity to get a copy of his new book on globalization and economic growth for whatever price they wanted to pay, and said proceeds would go to the charity Save the Children.

The response suggested that “warm glow” is in demand. A third of the people offered nothing. But the average bid was $21, and he received bids for as much as $145, more than four times the list price. The most interesting part was to hear bidders explain themselves. Those who bid little felt it necessary to provide a reason, like being a poor student. But those who bid high justified it too: many said they liked saving children.

This is all good news for Radiohead, which has boosted its indie credibility, while all the attention might actually boost its revenues. The band also offered online a package of two CDs, two vinyl records and a booklet for about $80, and it plans to release “In Rainbows” as a single CD in January for fans who would rather hear the music with a better resolution than the medium-quality MP3 file available for download.

It is also potentially comforting news for the recording business. The industry has been struggling to find a business plan that will work in an online market in which — despite billions invested in antipiracy measures — fans can pretty much get their music for free if they want to.

Today, music lovers are left but two options: pay list price for an album, or perform what a fan might call a free download and a record company would call theft. Radiohead’s experiment suggests a third way out: let fans pay what they want and give them lots of touchy-feely reasons to want to give as much money as they can.

So kids, don’t try this at home if you’re downloading music illegally, according to a Federal jury in Minnesota.

By JOSHUA FREED, Associated Press WriterFri Oct 5, 6:15 AM ET

The recording industry hopes $222,000 will be enough to dissuade music lovers from downloading songs from the Internet without paying for them. That’s the amount a federal jury ordered a Minnesota woman to pay for sharing copyrighted music online.

“This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK,” Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies that sued the woman, said Thursday after the three-day civil trial in this city on the shore of Lake Superior.

In closing arguments he had told the jury, “I only ask that you consider that the need for deterrence here is great.”

Jammie Thomas, 30, a single mother from Brainerd, was ordered to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs in all.

It was the first time one of the industry’s lawsuits against individual downloaders had gone to trial. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars, but Thomas decided she would take them on and maintained she had done nothing wrong.

“She was in tears. She’s devastated,” Thomas’ attorney, Brian Toder, told The Associated Press. “This is a girl that lives from paycheck to paycheck, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her paycheck garnished for the rest of her life.”

Toder said the plaintiff’s attorney fees are automatically awarded in such judgments under copyright law, meaning Thomas could actually owe as much as a half-million dollars. However, he said he suspects the record companies “will probably be people we can deal with.”

Gabriel said no decision had yet been made about what the record companies would do, if anything, to pursue collecting the money from Thomas.

The record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn’t have a Kazaa account.

Since 2003, record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores.

During the trial, the record companies presented evidence they said showed the copyrighted songs were offered by a Kazaa user under the name “tereastarr.” Their witnesses, including officials from an Internet provider and a security firm, testified that the Internet address used by “tereastarr” belonged to Thomas.

Toder said in his closing argument that the companies never proved “Jammie Thomas, a human being, got on her keyboard and sent out these things.”

“We don’t know what happened,” Toder told jurors. “All we know is that Jammie Thomas didn’t do this.”

Copyright law sets a damage range of $750 to $30,000 per infringement, or up to $150,000 if the violation was “willful.” Jurors ruled that Thomas’ infringement was willful but awarded damages in a middle range; Gabriel said they did not explain the amount to attorneys afterward. Jurors left the courthouse without commenting.

Before the verdict, an official with an industry trade group said he was surprised it had taken so long for one of the industry’s lawsuits against individual downloaders to come to trial.

Illegal downloads have “become business as usual. Nobody really thinks about it,” said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, which coordinates the lawsuits. “This case has put it back in the news. Win or lose, people will understand that we are out there trying to protect our rights.”

Thomas’ testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer’s hard drive after the sharing was alleged to have taken place — and later than she said in a deposition before trial.

The hard drive in question was not presented at trial by either party.

The record companies said Thomas was sent an instant message in February 2005 warning her that she was violating copyright law. Her hard drive was replaced the following month, not in 2004 as she said in the deposition.

“I don’t think the jury believed my client regarding the events concerning the replacement of the hard drive,” Toder said.

The record companies involved in the lawsuit are Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.

Check it out . . . it was posted prior to moving to a new webhost, but was lost in the move.

etherbomb.com

You won’t be sorry. . . . yet.

From Yahoo News

By JOSHUA FREED, AP Business Writer
An amateur musician and 11 other jurors were seated Tuesday in the trial of Jammie Thomas, accused by the recording industry of sharing music online in violation of copyrights.

Thomas, a 30-year-old mother of two, is the first of 26,000 people sued by the industry whose case has gone to trial. An industry group and three recording companies claim she illegally offered 1,702 songs for free on a file-sharing network.

Her trial offers the first chance for both sides in the debate over online music sharing to show a jury its version of the facts. Opening statements were expected Tuesday morning.

Her lawyer says the record companies haven’t even proven that Thomas, who lives near Brainerd, Minn., and works for the Department of Natural Resources of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, shared the songs.

Most of the 26,000 people the record industry group has sued have settled by paying a few thousand dollars.

“We think that speaks to the clarity of the law here,” said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America.

But lawyers for the defendants say they’ve settled because trials cost tens of thousands of dollars. Thomas’s lawyer, Brian Toder, said she was determined to fight. He declined to make her available for an interview.

“She came into my office and was willing to pay a retainer of pretty much what they wanted to settle for,” he said. “And if someone’s willing to pay a lawyer rather than pay to make it go away, that says a lot.”

There have been no claims that either of Thomas’ children — ages 11 and 13 — were involved in music sharing.

Thomas is at risk for a judgment of more than $1.2 million. The recording association is seeking damages set under federal law, of $750 to $30,000 for each alleged copyright violation.

“We repeatedly offer out-of-court settlements far less than what the law allows,” Lamy said. The lawsuits aim to “communicate that there are consequences for breaking the law and encourage fans to turn to legal online services.”

Jury selection starts Tuesday in Duluth, Minn., and opening statements are expected the same day.

The record companies claim that on Feb. 21, 2005, online investigators at SafeNet Inc., found 1,702 files shared under what they said was a Kazaa account being used by Thomas. The songs included Swedish death metal band Opeth, German industrial group VNV Nation and American rock band Chevelle.

“This individual was distributing these audio files for free over the Internet under the username ‘tereastarr@KaZaA’ to potentially millions of other KaZaA users,” according to court papers.

Capitol Records Inc., Warner Bros. Records Inc. and Sony BMG are among the companies suing Thomas.

In addition to filing the lawsuits, the industry group has sent 4,000 pre-lawsuit letters, Lamy said.

The recording industry persuaded a federal judge in 2001 to shut down Napster, which made copyrighted music available on its own computers. Since Napster re-opened, it has charged users for music.

The file-sharing programs that emerged to take Napster’s place point users to files available on a variety of computers and servers. But their impact has been the same: Millions of songs are being downloaded for free instead of purchased legally.

So the recording industry began naming individual file-sharers users in lawsuits in September 2003. The industry association says the lawsuits have helped. But the number of households that have downloaded music with file-sharing programs has risen from 6.9 million in April 2003 to 7.8 million in March 2007, according to industry tracking.

“I think by most any metric you choose it’s been a failure,” said Fred von Lohmann, the senior intellectual property attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.

He questioned whether the lawsuits are much of a deterrent because the 26,000 cases have targeted only a small percentage of music downloaders.

“The vast majority of people will never know anyone who’s gotten sued for this,” he said.

Toder, Thomas’s attorney, plans to start with the basics — making them prove they own the songs at all. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Michael J. Davis threw out 784 pages of documents produced by the record companies to show they owned a sample of the songs. Toder had argued that the documents were produced seven months late.

From Yahoo News

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press WriterTue Sep 25, 5:45 PM ET
Two rappers, sitting side-by-side in a House hearing room, went in different directions Tuesday on the need for hip-hop artists to expunge their work of sexist and violent language.

One, Master P, apologized to women for past songs that demeaned them, while another was defiant.

Former gangsta rapper Master P, whose real name is Percy Miller, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that he is now committed to producing clean lyrics. The angry music of his past, he said, came from seeing relatives and friends shot and killed.

But he said now that he doesn’t want his own children to listen to his music, “so if I can do anything to change this, I’m going to take a stand and do that.”

“I want to apologize to all the women out there,” he said. “I was honestly wrong.”

But rapper and record producer Levell Crump, known as David Banner, was defiant as lawmakers pressed him on his use of offensive language. “I’m like Stephen King: horror music is what I do,” he said in testimony laced with swear words. “Change the situation in my neighborhood and maybe I’ll get better,” he told one member of Congress.

The two rappers were joined by music industry executives and scholars. They disagreed over who was to blame for sexist and degrading language in hip-hop music but were united in opposing government censorship as a solution.

“If by some stroke of the pen hip-hop was silenced, the issues would still be present in our communities,” Crump said. “Drugs, violence, sexism and the criminal element were around long before hip-hop existed.”

At the hearing, music videos showing scantily clad women were played; music executives in dark suits testified on the uses of the “B,” H” and “N” words, and black civil rights leaders talked of corporate exploitation.

“From Imus to Industry: The business of stereotypes and degrading images” was the title of the hearing, referring to former radio host Don Imus, who lost his job after making derogatory comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. The Imus incident has sparked debate within the music industry about black artists using offensive, misogynist and violent language.

“This hearing is not anti-hip-hop. I am a fan of hip-hop,” said subcommittee chairman Bobby Rush, D-Ill., who gained national prominence in the 1960s as the founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers. But he said there was a need “to address the issue of violence, hate and degradation that has reduced too many of our youngsters to automatons.”

Record company executives defended the parental guidance labels and edited versions they said keep the more controversial material away from children and stressed that uniform standards or censorship won’t work.

In the ’50s people were deeply offended by Elvis Presley, and a decade later many were scandalized by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, said Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group.

“We have a responsibility to speak authentically to our viewers,” said Philippe Dauman, president & CEO of Viacom Inc., which owns such cable networks as MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and BET.

He said his company takes an active role in editing obscenities out of music videos and excising gang symbols or portrayals of violence, but “we also believe that it is not our role to censor the creative expression of artists.”