Jump to content
Mudcrutch Farm Will Be Shutting Down - Read More...

Mary Jane 49

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    1,802

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Mary Jane 49

  8. Posted · Report reply

    Single-mother fined record £100,000 for illegally sharing internet music in landmark case

    JammieThomasAP_228x299.jpgFined: Jammie Thomas

    A woman has been ordered to pay a massive £110,000 in compensation to six giant recording companies for illegally downloading 24 tunes on the Internet in the first case of its kind to go to trial.

    The payout means the songs cost 30 year-old single mother Jammie Thomas £4,500 each. She was warned that had the companies sued her for all 1,700 songs they found in her computer she could have faced a bill of £125 million.

    Miss Thomas, a supermarket clerk, left the court in tears. Her lawyer, Brian Toder said: "She's devastated. This is a girl who lives from paycheque to paycheque, and now all of a sudden she could get a quarter of her wages withheld for the rest of her life." The companies, including Sony, Arista and Capitol, had offered to settle with Miss Thomas for about £1,000 – as they have done with 26,000 other offenders across the US.

    But she vowed to fight saying she had done nothing wrong. Hers was the first case to go to a full trial.

    Last night the companies hailed the decision as a major breakthrough in their battle with record pirates. They say illegal Internet file-sharing, when songs and tunes are swapped free over the Internet has crippled the music industry since it took off four years ago because people are buying fewer CDs. Music downloading is legal if it is done through websites like iTunes which pay royalties to the record companies. But the court heard Miss Thomas used an illegal site that pays no royalties in breach of copyright.

  15. Posted · Report reply

    News The first artificial life to be created in weeks by US gene pioneer

    0610VenterDM_228x274.jpgControversial figure: Genetics researcher Craig Venter

    The first artificial life form may be created within weeks, it's been reported.

    American scientists have made a synthetic chromosome built out of laboratory chemicals. From that they believe they will be able to create cells which can divide and multiply - displaying all the characteristics of life.

    A chromosome is one of the threadlike packages of genes and other DNA in the nucleus of a cell. Different life forms have different numbers and shapes of chromosomes.

    The controversial researcher Craig Venter and a team of 20 scientists have already constructed a synthetic chromosome using artificial DNA. The sequence has 381 genes and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.

    Now this artificial chromosome, Mycoplasma laboratorium, is to be transplanted into a living bacterial cell. It is expected to take control of the cell - and therefore become a new life form.

    The result would bring scientists a step closer to creating 'designer' microbes. These lifeforms could lead to the creation of bacteria which could help mop up excessive carbon dioxide and help combat global warming or provide biofuel or remove carbon.

    The researchers have already transformed one type of bacteria into another using a similar technique.

    They managed to swop the entire genome - the genetic software containing information for life - of a bacterial cell with one from a different, but related, bug.

    Given a completely new set of genes, the bacterium's species was effectively changed.

    Dr Venter, of the J Craig Venter Institute, in Rockville, Maryland, said: 'We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before. We feel this is good science.'

    He told The Guardian: 'We are not afraid to take on things that are important just because they stimulate thinking.

    'We are dealing in big ideas. We are trying to create a new value system for life. When dealing at this scale, you can't expect everybody to be happy.'

    But bioethics organisations criticised the research. Pat Mooney, director of the Canadian bioethics organisation ETC Group, said: 'Governments and society in general are way behind the ball.

    'This is a wake-up call - what does this mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?

    'It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge threat to humanity such as bio-weapons.'

    DNA researcher Mr Venter is best known for his involvement in the controversial race to decipher the human genetic code.

    Earlier this month, the controversial decision was made to give the go-ahead for embryos containing both human and animal material to be created in British laboratories within months.

    A shortage of human eggs led scientists to seek permission to make hybrid embryos from human skin cells and animal eggs such as those from cows, plentiful in slaughterhouses.

    Two teams of scientists are poised to start making cowhuman hybrids for research into incurable diseases.

×
×
  • Create New...