Jury Orders Student To Pay $675,000 For Downloading Music

“Jurors ordered Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, effectively finding that his actions were willful. Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum’s case was $4.5 million.”

LA County Museum’s Closing Of Film Program Is “Dismaying”

“The news that the L.A. County Museum of Art’s director, Michael Govan, has decided to close down the museum’s expertly managed film program is so dismaying — and don’t believe for a moment that this hiatus is designed to refresh and strengthen film at LACMA. As Times’ movie critic Kenneth Turan observed in his angry, excellent article Thursday, that sounds like a slick rationale from a culturecrat in a smart suit.”

Merce Cunningham And The Meaning Of Greatness

“The tone of Cunningham’s obituaries is significantly different from that of Cage’s. When he died in 1992, less than a month before his 80th birthday, Cage was widely credited for being among the most original music thinkers of all time and among the most influential and charismatic musicians of his day. But no one dared call him the greatest composer of his time.”