Supreme Court legalizes downloading music

Reuters, AFP, RT.com, Wisdom Quarterly

The United State Supreme Court has refused an appeal that would have made downloading music an infringement of Federal copyright law. Take that, Metallica (AFP/Andre Durao).

The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, or ASCAP, had been attempting to appeal to the Supreme Court an earlier ruling by an appeals court in New York that said a downloaded song constituted a public performance of the song under federal copyright law.

Attorneys for ASCAP were fighting to reverse that decision in hopes that they’d be able to collect additional royalties off of songs downloaded from the Web.

ASCAP had insisted that digital downloads were on par with public performances, which would thus allow copyright owners to receive compensation for each download. A federal judge and an appeals court had rejected that argument, however, and now the Supreme Court is also refusing to hear it.

According to the appeals court, “Music is neither recited, rendered, nor played when a recording (electronic or otherwise) is simply delivered to a potential listener.”

US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli agreed with the appeals ruling and that just because a song was transferred over the Internet did not mean that it was being performed, reports Reuters. More

"Actually, Butthead, I'm not into Metallica anymore. They suck ever since that Napster thing!" "Huh huh huh, you said 'suck,' Beavis." "Oh yeah, huh huh huh, huh huh huh, huh huh huh."

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Karma, Karma (explained)

Seven, Pa Auk Sayadaw, Bhikkhu Bodhi (Wisdom Quarterly)

The seeds of deeds are in other deeds. From a world to a world, we are led to a world. Mind precedes all states. Mind is their forerunner. From a word to a word, from a deed to a deed, we go on reaping. Every moment holds the possibility for realization/liberation. But with this rare opportunity to awaken, mostly we prefer to go on suffering.

Karma (intentional action capable of yielding results in the future) is very misunderstood. What we do in one life affects us in others. If people refuse to entertain the possibility of having lived countless lives, they are forced to explain everything within one life. We know "what goes around comes around."

But we insist that we know everything that went around in our lives. And most of us claim we are not responsible for anything before the age of 7 (the age of responsibility in various spiritual traditions) or 18 (or whenever society says adulthood begins). This is clearly nonsense.

We do not know what we have done. We are not a single "I." The person who was before is not now, yet the results keep coming. We ask no questions when what comes is pleasant and pleasurable. But whenever it is unpleasant, hard to bear, or terribly painful, we cry foul! We say there is NO reason for it simply we do not know the reason and cannot deduce it from our memory or understanding of how things SHOULD be.

Most motivations are mixed, and karmic results are convoluted.

Karma Works in Mysterious Ways
Things are not as we think they "should" be. And all the world is unfair. But it is fair, in a sense. It plays out according to laws, axioms, regularities. It is orderly in the grand scheme. (It seems terribly disordered in the short term however). If we develop serenity (samatha), absorption (jhana), and mindful-insight (vipassana) we can KNOW and SEE it (karma playing out in an orderly way) for ourselves.

It is directly visible, and always has been, to the uncontaminated mind. Depending on no one and nothing but our own direct knowledge, we can verify that karma as the Buddha explained it (which is quite different than the Vedic brahmin yogis were explaining it or how Hinduism and other traditions now try to explain it) is true. It is amazing.

It works in "mysterious ways" and most of the world simply attributes this "mysterious" force to God. God works in mysterious ways, they say. The God is inscrutable. This is no explanation, but it satisfies the need to know, like the "God of the Gap" atheists decry. Karma is imponderable in detail, but it is very ponderable, very knowable in individual instances. What one deed will go on to cause and be the effect of, that gets very complicated.

The trajectory of a deed (karma) -- what it goes on to cause, contribute to, or serve as a condition for -- is as complex and unpredictable as this neutrino track.

Secret to Abundant Happiness
If we want good (welcome, longed for, pleasant experiences) now and in the future, the motivations of our actions will be rooted in these broad categories: nongreed, nonaversion/nonfear, and nondelusion.

• These words should not be clung to or debated as to their English meaning because they are simply approximations of the ancient Pali/Sanskrit Buddhist terms alobha, adosa/abhava, and amoha.
  

There is no need to fool ourselves and say our motivations are good. Karma knows. There is no fooling karma anymore than fooling "God" in a monotheistic tradition.

Is that amazing? Then this should be more amazing. There is no suffering (dukkha, the range of unpleasant sensation ranging from agitation to agony) that is not rooted in craving, aversion/fear, delusion. Bringing these to an end is called realizing nirvana (the end of all suffering).

• Workings of Karma (paauk.org)
• The Law of Karma (panel discussion)
• The Buddha taught that because of karma beings are bound to the ever-turning wheel of rebirth. Only when a person stops [clinging to the deeply held belief in] the existence of a permanent and [independent] self can he or she become free from karma. Westerners often have trouble with this doctrine, for although they can easily believe that selfishness or ego-clinging causes suffering, it is harder to accept the existence of an invisible system of moral causality called karma. Likewise, since the dawn of the Christian era few Westerners have taken seriously the idea of many lifetimes, even though it was present in Pythagoras and some of Plato [and in original Christian doctrine and Shakespeare]. The word "karma" literally means "action." It is cognate with the most ordinary Sanskrit words for "to make" or "to do." ...And there is the famous Hindu practice of seeking liberation through selfless work, which is called karmayoga -- the yoga of activity.

Hollywood Stars are Happier than Us (video)

Wisdom Quarterly

(itn) Hollywood starlet and multi-millionairess Kirsten Dunst admits battling depression. Amy Winehouse lyrics prove testing. Brad and Angelina's new nest?

There may be only two states -- winning and learning. So all the time we are not winning is a time of learning, which does not happen so much -- at least in terms of personal growth -- when we are winning.

The winning will come: success, happiness, relief... it is all assured. There may be much to overcome before then. But there is no such thing as being doomed forever in Buddhism. And so long as there is a NOW, there is an opportunity to stave off, mitigate, and oftentimes remedy whatever may be coming.

There are heinous crimes (matricide, patricide, causing a schism in the Sangha, killing an enlightened person, injuring a Buddha). But even these do not result in a relentless future of misery. Much can be done NOW. In fact, NOW is the only time anything can be done.

Why wish, as we do, to be Hollywood stars? Why pine for millions when, at the root, what we really want is safety and security? Those are available without the millions. Those are available in spite of the millions. They may even be available with the millions. The thing is, the millions will not bring them. Nor would billions.

The fact is, good karma (merit) made at this moment puts us in a mental state where positive things flow. There is no suffering, no fear, no sense of loss except that we make it so. Therefore, we can make it un-so.

Pain (physical hurt) is inevitable; suffering (mental distress) is optional. Letting go is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Mindfulness is a choice.

What causes all distress? The three root poisons of the heart/mind: greed (craving), hatred (fear), and delusion (confusion). Letting go, being kind, and staying mindful of this moment for what it is -- immediately displace the three negative roots. Happiness is instant. Now, if someone would only tell Kirsten Dunst.

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"Playboy" and Men's Dreams

Crystal left Playboy's founder to make beautiful music with someone else, planning to cash in on a post "runaway bride" spectacle interview (FOX). Men's dream comes undone: Girls not included? Hefner a gay pandaka? Has "Playboy" been nothing but false advertising?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, dumped by his fiancee days before their wedding, said Wednesday he is affixing "Runaway Bride" stickers over her picture on the cover of the magazine's upcoming issue.

Hefner, 85, announced a day earlier that 25-year-old Crystal Harris had "a change of heart," and that Saturday's wedding ceremony for 300 people at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles had been canceled.

In an unfortunate coincidence, Harris appears on the cover of the July Playboy issue, hitting newsstands Friday, described as "America's Princess ... Introducing Mrs. Crystal Hefner."

In the interests of journalistic accuracy, Hefner has moved quickly to remedy the situation. More

• The story, of course, is much funnier and stranger. Crystal Harris planned on abandoning Hugh Hefner at the altar -- in view of cameras for a big pay off selling her interview afterward. And she may have been having an affair with Dr. Phil's son all along.

Mend's Dreams: Runaway Bride uses Porn King

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

The sad thing is that Hugh Hefner has essentially been living the life most men want. He has:

• a castle in Los Angeles
  
• millions coming in annually from destructive but exciting work
• potency-inducing pharmaceuticals
• gala parties
• and, best of all, an endless bevy of newly nubile "playmates" and "bunnies," Scandinavian twins in open marriages and group activities...

If Hef can't get it to work, what hope is there for the rest of us?

When lust (kamachanda, or tanha and lobha, "craving" and "greed") fails us, it suggests that maybe, just maybe, the Buddha was right:

Investing our energies and dreams in developing sensual desires -- and trying to satisfy them -- is not actually the way to happiness.

Craving, in fact, may be the problem causing our "suffering" -- our dissatisfaction, disappointment, and distress.

If that were true, freedom-from-craving would be the solution -- freedom-from-suffering (nirvana).

But what could be the path leading to such freedom? These four assertions are the centerpieces of Buddhism as a path to perfect liberation. But who will strive to be free without first realizing the disappointment of being enslaved to craving?

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"The Power of Nightmares" (watch free)

The myth of the monster Osama bin Laden is constructed; here's why.

(MD) "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" is a three-part BBC documentary film written and produced by Adam Curtis.

The films in the series compare the rise of our Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the supposed "radical Islamist" movement around the world, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two.

More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism -- as a massive, sinister organized force of destruction, specifically taking the form of al-Qaeda -- is a myth.

It is perpetrated by politicians in many countries -- particularly American Neo-Conservatives -- in an attempt to unite and inspire their populations to follow the failure of earlier, more Utopian ideologies.

Part 1: Baby It's Cold Outside
The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. It shows Egyptian civil servant Sayyid Qutb, depicted as the founder of modern Islamist thought, visiting the U.S. to learn about the education system, but becoming disgusted with what he saw as a corruption of morals and virtues in Western society through individualism.

When he returns to Egypt, he is disturbed by westernization under Gamal Abdel Nasser and becomes convinced that in order to save society it must be completely restructured along the lines of Islamic law while still using Western technology.

He also becomes convinced that this can only be accomplished through the use of an elite "vanguard" to lead a revolution against the established order. Qutb becomes a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and, after being tortured in one of Nasser's jails, comes to believe that Western-influenced leaders can justly be killed for the sake of removing their corruption.

Qutb is executed in 1966, but he influences the future mentor of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to start his own secret Islamist group. Inspired by the 1979 Iranian revolution, Zawahiri and his allies assassinate Egyptian president Anwar Al Sadat, in 1981, in hopes of starting their own revolution.

The revolution does not materialize. And Zawahiri comes to believe that the majority of Muslims have been corrupted not only by their Western-inspired leaders, but Muslims themselves have been affected by the disease of jahilliyah.

Thus both may be legitimate targets of violence if they do not join him. They continued to have the belief that a vanguard was necessary to rise up and overthrow the corrupt regime and replace it with a pure Islamist state.

At the same time in the United States, a group of disillusioned liberals, including Irving Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, look to the political thinking of Leo Strauss after the perceived failure of President Johnson's "Great Society."

They come to the conclusion that the emphasis on individual liberty was the undoing of the plan. They envisioned restructuring America by uniting the American people against a common evil -- and set about creating a mythical enemy.

These factions, the Neo-Conservatives, came to power under the Reagan administration, with their allies Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and work to unite the United States in FEAR of the Soviet Union.

The Neo-Conservatives allege that the Soviet Union is not following the terms of disarmament between the two countries. And with the investigation of "Team B," they accumulate a case to prove this with dubious evidence and methods. President Reagan is convinced nonetheless.

• Playlist of all three parts in order
• Support KPFK Free Speech Radio