Wow, Is It Me, or Was That Fast?

The jury in the RIAA's lawsuit against the file-sharing mom (24 songs!!! oh, the humanity!) came back with a verdict. In a surprising turn of events, or not, given the general way of things: the jury found in favor of the recording industry. She's been ordered to pay $222,000, which is better than a million dollars, but still, a nice and hefty sum to ensure she'll be paying it off for a good long time.

It all reminds me of that horse, barn-door saying, but seriously, this is the kind of stuff the RIAA has to do in this digital age to wield the iron fist of copyright enforcement:

This is not the first time the entertainment industry has gone over the top to try to enforce copyrights. A few years back, it had a Russian computer scientist arrested at an academic conference for presenting a paper that explained how the industry's encryption codes could be broken. It has gone into college dorm rooms and teenagers' bedrooms looking for evidence of unauthorized copies of recorded music. It has coerced colleges into having propaganda classes on the virtues of copyrights for incoming freshman (no doubt led by experts from North Korea). It has even prepared a new curriculum that seeks to indoctrinate kids as early as kindergarten in the merits of copyright protection.

I'm feeling especially bitter today about this ridiculousness, because I was dealing with my own copyright demons. I'm blaming Sonny Bono.