FTPWelt.com: First criminal proceedings initiated against users:
Parallel to the investigations against the users, the prosecution of the four alleged masterminds from southern Thuringia and Munich is being prepared, Germerodt announced.
Exactly. Before nailing down the masterminds, one first goes after the much more lucrative end users. Reassuring that in Germany too the focus is always on the petty criminals (if such a term is even permissible for FTPWelt users) and not so much on the masterminds ...
Culture Committee in the State Parliament abolished?:
If this were the case, cultural policy in NRW would only be in the hands of the state government, criticizes the German Cultural Council. Because: The committees in the state parliament have the task of parliamentary accompanying and controlling the work of the government. Thus, cultural policy is actually democratically legitimized in the cultural committee, its abolition would cause considerable damage to this legitimacy, according to the Cultural Council.
Well, with such culturally barren barbarians in the state government, it is by no means surprising that culture no longer gets an appropriate place ...
Hubble spies lord of the stellar rings - Saurons Auge guckt aus dem Weltraum auf uns. Und nur aus einer Entfernung von 25 Lichtjahren - das ist praktisch um die Ecke von hier. >The ring is composed of dust particles in orbit around Fomalhaut, a bright star located just 25 light years away in the constellation Pisces Austalis – or the Southern Fish. A recent image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope - which makes the system look uncannily like the Great Eye of Sauron from the blockbusting Lord of the Rings trilogy - confirms that Fomalhaut’s ring is curiously offset with respect to the star. Interessanter als das eigentliche Aussehen (wobei das wieder mal ein Beweis für die Notwendigkeit des Weiterbetriebs des Hubble Teleskops für mich ist) ist natürlich der vermutete Grund für das Aussehen: der Stern könnte ein Solarsystem ähnlich dem unseren haben. Also mehrere Planten in unterschiedlichen Entfernungen - möglicherweise sogar relativ kleine Planeten.
Supreme Court rules against P2P, Apple to benefit?:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of studios and record labels, saying that peer-to-peer software companies should be liable for the copyright infringement of people using their products
Presumably, hammers, cars, and curtain cords will also be banned in the USA next. Oh no, that's not possible - murder isn't such a serious crime as copyright infringements ...
I would be interested to know how the court wants to maintain such a decision in the context of a network like freenet - where there is no central instance or company. But facts seem to be completely irrelevant in the entire copyright discussion around the film and music industry anyway.