“Under the agreement…, the city will give SFMOMA the existing fire station on Howard Street. In exchange, the museum will build the city a state-of-the-art fire station on Folsom Street, a deal that essentially translates to a $10 million gift from museum leadership to San Francisco, the mayor’s office said.” San Francisco Business Times 02/22/10

“The Japanese parliament has passed an amendment to the existing Copyright Law that extends further protections to copyright holders and, for the first time, makes it illegal for private users to download copyrighted material that has been uploaded without the rights holders’ permission. The new statute will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2010 but contains several caveats that raise the question of how it will be enforced.” (Scroll down.) Billboard.biz 06/16/09

“A perceived split between Off Broadway’s MCC Theater and the org’s longtime writer-in-residence Neil LaBute appears to amount to little more than a production delayed for scheduling reasons. A previously announced staging of LaBute’s play ‘The Break of Noon’ did not appear as part of MCC’s recent announcement of its 2009-10 season, spurring speculation in print that LaBute and MCC … were parting ways.” Variety 06/17/09

The recent 10-day Muslim Voices festival in New York aimed to expand understanding of Muslim culture. “Yet nothing in the festival could ultimately fulfill the organizers’ agenda, because they presented as examples of Muslim-culture artforms that mostly Western or Westernized Muslims consume. How many Americans will believe — and why should they? — that any of this reveals the prevailing culture of the vast majority of today’s practicing Muslims?” Wall Street Journal 06/17/09

A federal judge yesterday “granted a 10-day temporary restraining order forbidding publication in the United States of a new book by a Swedish author that contains a 76-year-old version of Holden Caulfield while she considers arguments in a copyright-infringement case filed by [J.D.] Salinger. … ‘It does seem to me that Holden Caulfield is quite delineated by words, that is a portrait by words,’ Judge Batts told the lawyers. ‘It would seem that Holden Caulfield is copyrighted.’” The New York Times 06/18/09