An estimated 40 million Americans use peer-to-peer networks to share often unauthorized audio and video files. Judith Lewis of LA Weekly reports that the record and film industries, anxious for a solution to their copyright woes, look to "distributed networks" for a new model that will allow users to compensate artists, labels and studios for their downloads.
Q: Which employee on the eastern Washington state public payroll makes the most money? A: Washington State Cougar football coach Mike Price. With a salary of almost $440,000 in 2001, Price is far and away the highest-paid public worker in the region. How do we know? Tom Grant of The Local Planet Weekly compiled 60,000 public employee wages from eastern Washington and northern Idaho into a simple database small enough to fit on a floppy. Readers can e-mail the newspaper to receive a copy of the database. Requests began arriving before copies of the accompanying article even hit the racks.
There are new victims of Sept.11. After escaping terror in a brutal civil war, a refugee family booked on a flight to Sacramento were stopped in their tracks by new restrictions. No one told their son. This Liberian immigrant has waited 15 long years to be reunited with his refugee children and parents. He thought that was long enough, but he was wrong. Tom Walsh of the Sacramento News & Review talks to Amos Gbeintor.
"I think we've all had enough of me," Riverfront Times founder Ray Hartmann says as he bids adieu to the paper after 25 years and one million words. "Through the years, we have fought a lot of fights, told a lot of stories. We challenged the elitist, closed Father-knows-best decision-making process of Civic Progress," Hartmann writes in his valedictory column. "We challenged their siphoning of millions of dollars in tourism funds to something called the VP Fair. There were environmental issues, race issues, social issues. Most recently, there was a five-year battle against the late, great stadium scam, arguably my favorite issue ever." Hartmann says the RFT flourished because it reflected "the real St. Louis."
Boston Phoenix Publisher Stephen Mindich faces a June 4 contempt hearing for his refusal to turn over his e-mails in a case involving his wife, Superior Court Judge Maria I. Lopez, the Boston Herald reports. A Massachusettes judicial commission investigating Lopez' handling of an attempted rape case issued the subpoena for Mindich's e-mails. Mindich's lawyer, Harvey Silvergate, says he has advised his client not to comply with the subpoena. ``When a court order is unconstitutional, one has a right to appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court,'' Silvergate tells the Herald.
