Reader Jay pointed out in the comments an article from The Root that goes through who gets paid what for music sales, and the basic answer is not the musician. That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40.

Going back ten years ago, Courtney Love famously laid out the details of recording economics, where the label can make $11 million... and the actual artists make absolutely nothing.

So think of that the next time the RIAA or some major record label exec (or politician) suggests that protecting the record labels is somehow in the musicians' best interests.

Steve Ballmer says Microsoft is "hardcore" about making Windows 7 slate computers like the iPad.

The focus of the speech was on Microsoft's cloud operations, but Ballmer did say Windows 7 phones and slates were coming this year.

"We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP (internet content provider) licence and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China," Google's lawyer David Drummond said in an e-mailed statement.

In January, Google said it might pull out of China following what it called a "sophisticated" cyber attack originating from the country.

"But many of the issues around why Google shut down its Chinese search page in the first place are still there."

According to Gertner, they trampled the Constitution's "Due Process" clause. In a ruling today, the judge slashed the $675,000 award by a factor of 10, to $67,500.

If it sounds like a familiar result, it should. In Minnesota, Judge Michael Davis used a different legal approach called remittitur to lower Jammie Thomas-Rasset's liability from $1.9 million to $2,250 per song.

In addition to irritating the RIAA, the ruling can't be good news for the US Copyright Group, which has filed 14,000 similar lawsuits in 2010 alone, targeting those who swap independent films online.

The really, really, really simplified version is that Hollywood sets up a separate corporation for each movie with the intent that this corporation will take on losses.

This isn't new or surprising, but it's getting attention because the income statement for the movie was leaked online, showing just how Warner Bros. pulled off the accounting trick.

In that statement, you'll notice the "distribution fee" of $212 million dollars. That's basically Warner Bros. paying itself to make sure the movie "loses money."

Now it appears that Hollywood Accounting is coming under attack in the courtroom... and losing.

With these lawsuits exposing Hollywood's sneakier accounting tricks, and finding them not very convincing, a number of Hollywood studios may face a glut of upcoming lawsuits over similar deals on properties that "lost" money while making millions.

The US is to deport 10 people who spied for Moscow in exchange for four people convicted of espionage in Russia.

Prosecutors said the accused had posed as ordinary citizens, some living together as couples for years, and were ordered by Russia's External Intelligence Service (SVR) to infiltrate policy-making circles and collect information.

Always stop to buy lemonade from kids who are entrepreneurial enough to open up a little business.

Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

"Oh, no," they replied in unison, "they're all free!"

"No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things -- the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."

The Declaration of Independence promised "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It didn't promise anything free.

In today's Woot offering, they mock the Associated Press for its coverage of the Woot acquisition, because the AP just happens to have also copied text from the awesome Woot letter.

The same AP that threatens bloggers for copying headlines and snippets. The same AP that insists it needs "hot news" to protect others from "free riding" on its work. And, most importantly, the same AP that has a famously ridiculous pricelist for quoting five words or more from an AP article.

And thus, the smart folks at Woot calculated that the AP owes Woot $17.50 for quoting Woot without permission.

Today, Blizzard announced that it intends to require usage of the real names of Battle.net posters for its StarCraft II forums before release, and for its World of Warcraft forums shortly before the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

"These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm."

"The internets completely over. I dont see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They wont pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they cant get it."

"Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that cant be good for you."