Sharing Or Stealing

Have you ever downloaded a song from Kazaa or another of the file sharing, free download sites? Well, I have. It's been a few years since I have done it. I stopped after the U.S. Courts determined file sharing is "stealing property rights" from musicians or movie makers. I have about 75 songs I downloaded and they remain on my hard drive. After that court ruling in 2003 or 2004 (I can't remember the exact date) I stopped downloading.
But millions continue and as a result, record companies are attempting to catch them and make them pay. In a way I find a bit intrusive, perhaps illegal, those record companies are spying on computers to check for the downloads. Though I stopped using sharing sites when the U.S. Courts ruled them illegal, and am not worried about being sued, many other Americans (you are lucky. The record companies aren't attempting to extort "damages" from non U.S. down loaders) are being confronted with demands from the companies to pay damages or be sued.
The reason I am writing to you about this subject is because of an interesting case involving that kind of file sharing. Patricia Santangelo, 45, of White Plains, New York is one of 16,000 being sued by the record industry for stealing their music. But Patricia is innocent and angry that she has been named in the suit. She says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer, isn't a member of a a file sharing program and has no idea how to download that music anyway since she is barely computer literate. "I assumed that when I explained to them who I was and that I wasn't a computer down loader, it would just go away," said Patricia. "But they just kept on insisting on a financial settlement."
In her case, they want $3,500 to drop the suit. But unlike thousands of others who have paid damages, Patricia won't. An at the court hearing now on gong allegations that she downloaded, among others, teen favorites as Third Blind Eye's "Semi- Charmed Life" and Godsmack's "Whatever" just doesn't seem likely. Patricia said she has no proof of how those songs got on her hard drive but thinks it was a teenage friend of one of her five children who did it. So Patricia will probably win the case.
Not a single person has been successfully prosecuted in court by the record industry for file sharing, though 3500 "pirates" have paid damages to the industry to avoid being sued. Patricia has spent almost $25,000 to defend her self and the attention of the case may inhibit those record industry lawyers a bit. I just don't see how they can prove the file sharers guilt, given there is no "evidence" of the crime other than files on the person's computer. To prove that the individual being charged with pirating did the deed is not an easy task.
Despite the revelations of this case relative to file sharing, I won't so it again unless courts here rule it a legal practice, but if Patricia wins her case and the media reports flaunt it, the game the record industry plays of intimidating PC users with threats of lawsuits may just be a losing one for them. Any comments about file sharing?
2006 is looking like it may be a sacrilegious time. You see, The Nun Bun has been stolen! You don't know about the Nun Bun? It's that cinnamon bun that allegedly looks exactly like the late Mother Theresa. And someone has stolen it. In 1996 the Nun Bun appeared to us all at a coffee house in Nashville, Tennessee when a customer there ordered a cinnamon roil for breakfast, but just as he was about to munch, noticed he was going to eat Mother Theresa herself.
Seeing the publicity value of this coffeehouse owner Bob Berbstein quickly switched buns for the customer, has Mother Theresa (the bun, not the lady) shellacked to preserve her and phoned the media to report the "revelation" of what he called The Nun Bun. Subsequently, the Nun Bun was featured i media articles, appeared on TV Shows and ....yes...you guessed it...Bob put out for sale a line of Nun Bun T-shirts, prayer cards and mugs with the Nun Bun image. After the real nun, Mother Theresa, heard about this commercialism she wrote to Bib and demanded he cease the profiteering.
So Bob did stop selling his Nun Bun merchandise, keeping the real Nun Bun on the counter at his coffeehouse. But now someone has taken the Nun Bun. "They went for the bun," said Bob in explaining that nothing else was taken in the robbery. "Unfortunately, I think it's somebody who wanted to take it to destroy it.
Cheer up, Bob. You still have your over and can create a new bun to merchandise. How about a George Bush Bun. People would love to bite off the head of that one.