Tuesday, April 8, 2003

Downward Facing Blog Bikram Choudhury, "creator" of a popular type of yoga, is now claiming a copyright in the style and demanding royalties. No word yet whether the estates of the authors of the Upanishads -- or for that matter, the entire subcontinent -- will counter-sue. See a lively and amusing discussion on Metafilter. [Creative Commons: weblog] Good golly! Even yoga can't cleanse you of your litigious thoughts. This probably marks the peak of the yoga craze. 3:39:50 PM

RIAA to Student: You Owe Us $97.8 Million Heather Newman at the Detroit Free Press reports that the damages sought by the RIAA in just one of the four lawsuits they filed on April 3 against college students total the unbelievable sum of $97.8 million (incorrectly stated as trillion in the article). This calculation results from multiplying the maximum damages per copyright violation ($150,000) times the over 625,000 songs the RIAA contends were pirated. The RIAA has certainly chosen an attention grabbing strategy in a campaign that will probably not be limited to actions against college students alone. See also this article on Princeton student Dan Peng '05 who was sued by RIAA. [beSpacific] Of course you know this means war. Predictions that the RIAA would eventually sue their own customers have been pondered since the beginning, and it is so sad to see it come to fruition. So which will it be, a marketplace for music dominated by the RIAA, or the demise of the RIAA with a completely new market model spearheaded by musicians and listeners directly? 3:37:55 PM