Free Republic

The recording industry secured a resounding victory last week when a Minneapolis jury awarded the four major labels $1.92 million in damages after unanimously finding that a 32-year-old mother had willfully infringed on their copyrights by downloading and sharing 24 songs on the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. But a question arose after the verdict about whether the sheer size of the damages could lead to a backlash against an industry that is already portrayed in some quarters as overreaching. Sony BMG attorney Wade Leak, who testified at the trial, said he was "shocked" by the damages award. No one expects that...

Debb Carlson may be the new face of the American worker. After a layoff, the former special-education teacher's aide is stitching together a living from four part-time jobs. They don't pay all the bills, but they help her survive. "I have been doing this since late September and I have still not found a full-time job. It's terrifying. I am in the fourth month of arrears on my home," said Carlson, 59. So she works in a day care center, then as a fitness instructor and a personal trainer, plus she's a personal-care attendant for a health care facility. She's...

Prince George's County Sheriff Michael Jackson said Friday deputies acted "in a professional and acceptable manner" when they shot two dogs inside the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last summer. During a press conference Friday morning in which Jackson made public selected details from an internal investigation, he said, "The release of today's findings are consistent with what I've felt all along — my deputies did their job to the fullest extent of their abilities." Calvo has filed complaints that police and deputies needlessly shot the dogs when they raided his house on July 29, 2008, after mistakenly...

It’s been almost 40 years now since the U.S. Air Force pulled the plug on Project Blue Book and essentially order the news media to shut up already about UFOs. And at a moment when America’s dazed free press is poised to take a knee on the canvas, De Void can’t help but wonder how one of journalism’s 20th-century giants would’ve responded to the challenges. For Edward R. Murrow, the CBS Radio lion who survived the technology transition to unmask Red-baiting demagoguery for what it was on national television, mastering a new medium was difficult. "This is an old team,”...

In a week, Susan Boyle has gone from karaoke and her local church choir to global fame and an invitation to the Oprah Winfrey show. The frumpy 47-year-old, who says she's never been kissed, has gained celebrity fans and millions of admirers including a fair number of men since she wowed judges on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent." Her fame has been fueled by new technology, with a clip of her performance viewed more than 12 million times on Google's YouTube video site. "Susan can't help herself, she just sings whenever she can sing," said Jackie Russell, the manager...

Villagers in the area around the city of Sibu in the Malaysian State of Sarawak on the island of Borneo got a real surprise when they looked up into the sky on January 17 2009. They noticed a slightly luminous, bright pink disc travelling across the sky. ‘We were standing in front of my home when I looked up and noticed something strange in the sky. At first we thought it might have been a meteor until we saw a second identical object move towards the first one’ Noted Mr Ong. ‘It was not flying in the manner of an...

An astonishing revelation regarding UFOs is being reported in some initial media reports relating to the very recent Japanese false alarm regarding an alleged North Korean missile attack. The entire population of Japan is in a state of utter panic and anger and an international crisis might well all be the result of irresponsible actions of extraterrestrial tourists flying a UFO from North Korea to Japan on a sightseeing expedition. As the story initially unfolded the remarkable information emerged that the highest levels of the Japanese defence establishment conceded that their most advanced radar system has picked up, in the...