Word on the streets is that the RIAA has finally sued the Russian Mediaservices that owns AllOfMP3.com in a New York court for $1.65 trillion. That’s right, a Russian company in a New York court for upwards of Russia’s entire GDP. Considering AllOfMP3 is in complete compliance with Russian copyright law (pay 15% royalties to the ROM - Russia’s RIAA - and you’re set), how the RIAA plans to make them pay by suing them in New York is beyond me. AllOfMP3 even left what’s effectively an O RLY? to the RIAA on their blog, calling the suit imprudent and saying that they plan to keep operating legally under Russian law.

If the RIAA somehow does manage to get $1.65 trillion [$150,000 per song downloaded over the past several months. As an aside, the maximum under US law is $150,000 per media - meaning CD or movie. Shock factor aside, the RIAA ought only be able to ask for about a twelfth of that, if any at all] from AllOfMP3.com, two things could happen. The first is that Russia will instantly implode as all the money in their coffers is wired to the RIAA. The dollar will tank because of the gigantic influx of money into the American economy, and Washington DC in particular will have to be abandoned because of the inevitable thousand dollar loaves of bread and million dollar canteloupes as the trillions make their rounds around the RIAA’s headquarters. Europe will sink into the ocean, China will be launched into space, and the US will get hit by ungodly gigantic tidal waves on both coasts as the greatest continental shift since Pangea’s dispersal occurs.

The second possibility is even more disturbing: The RIAA could offer to absolve the debt in exchange for Russia’s nuclear stockpile. You were worried about Osama getting hold of nukes? You haven’t seen anything yet: Download a song? BOOM!

The terror alert level will skyrocket into the ultraviolet spectrum as every home in America with an iPod is systematically obliterated in the pirate holocaust. Two nukes if you buy music from independent record labels, and a third if you have a Myspace. Say goodbye to China and most of South Asia because we all know that everyone there peddles pirated music and movies like a transsexual hooker peddles whatever organs (s)he happens to have that day. Africa will be gone because everyone there is too poor to pay royalties for copyrighted music that they’ve almost certainly heard at some point. Nevermind that they don’t have computers; they must have heard explorers whistling while they hacked through the jungle. They were impaled and then boiled alive because they deserved it, dirty whistle pirates.

Obviously it’s of utmost importance both geographically and security-wise that AllOfMP3.com not incur this ginormous debt to the RIAA. But unless the RIAA somehow forces them to incorporate in the US and then sues them, I think we’ll be safe from RIAA-induced apocalypse.

In a battle between Satan and the Great Harlot, who do you root for?

I’ve long said that Myspace is a blight upon the internet. I’ve also said that the record labels are driving us towards societal destruction. But for all the flack that Myspace takes for its chaotic and mind-bendingly vapid communities, it does provide another, far more respectable service to the internet’s ecosystem: a distribution channel for bands around the record labels.

Naturally the record labels want to preserve their own monopoly on distribution. They can’t touch unsigned or independently signed bands, but the growing number of mainstream bands on Myspace is worrying the labels. Kids can’t stream our music from the internet! It’s unnatural!

But this distribution method is vitally important in a battle against the RIAA. It’s certainly the most visible and accessible method of free distribution (the bands control what songs they upload, and whether they’re available for download or just streaming), helped in no small part by its vast secondary community of non-musicians. Aside from the glaring banner ads everywhere, Myspace is completely agnostic to financial backing in its site capabilities. There’s no “Myspace Plus” for paying customers; the garage band down the street can use Myspace just as well as Nickelback themselves.

This is the power of internet democratization. We may get blinking text and animated GIFs, but isn’t that preferable to an Orwellian world of content controlled by copyright conglomerates?

Let me preface this by saying that I’m not an astronomer, and I don’t pretend to be one. I won’t even pretend to have a stake in this argument, but it is of historic significance, so why not.

Pluto (to left, pictured with its moon Charon) has just been demoted from full-fledged planet to a “dwarf planet” - something that’s like a planet, but too small. This comes from the International Astronomical Union’s new definition of the word “planet”, marking the first time there’s been a concrete definition of the word.

Earlier this month, the IAU tossed out another definition of ‘planet’ (a round body at least 500 miles in diameter, and a certain mass) after a sharp backlash from astronomers who didn’t like the possibility of dozens more “planets”, some larger than even Pluto, floating around in the Kupier Belt. And as sentimental as people are having grown up with 9 planets (The Magic School Bus even visited Pluto), a dozen or more planets simply aren’t feasible. There’s no way even the Magic School bus could visit 3+ more planets in half an hour.

Like I said, I’m no astronomer, but I’m behind this new definition: Pluto needs to go. Even the discoverer of ‘Xena’, the so-called 10th planet, says that neither should be considered such. And even with this new definition, bodies that satisfy criteria (a) and (b) but not (c) will still be considered ‘Dwarf Planets’ (Pluto fails (c) because its orbit crosses Neptune’s), so all is not lost for Pluto. It was simply lucky to have been the first of these objects to be discovered.