Bootlegging

Two men were arrested and charged with bootlegging tapes after the producers of "Great Performances: Dance in America" received a catalogue from "Mr. Tape" offering their own programs for sale, according to public television station WNET.

On Valentine's Day, a young woman wearing a button-down shirt, bicycle shorts and a Soviet-era Budenovka hat, along with an adhesive mustache, stood on the stage of the Bootleg Theater. Her name was Russky Business. Her father's Fabergé egg had been stolen, so she was doing arm-wrestling bouts to make money for the repurchase of the egg, always hoping that the right people would see her skills and she would earn that arm-wrestling scholarship to the prestigious Moscow State University.

A U.S. law criminalizing the sale of bootleg recordings of live performances is illegal because it doesn't limit the life of a copyright, a judge ruled in the case of a Manhattan man indicted on charges of selling concert tapes. U.S. District Judge Harold Baer struck down the law, which carries a five-year prison term. U.S. copyright law limits protection of a work to the life of the author plus 70 years, Baer said.

Eric Woodhead's music as Doldrums is a product of its times — skittish laptop electronica made from diced up samples and woozy, vibey synthesizers. But he's got a bit of pop streak that cuts through the digital fog. Bootleg Bar, 2220 Beverly Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Fri., $10. Foldsilverlake.com .

Police seized about 20,000 allegedly pirated videotapes and arrested six people during a three-day sweep of several San Francisco Bay Area video stores. Officials said the videos amounted to $1.3 million in lost movie industry revenue. "This is significant. This will have a big impact on video piracy," said David Dolson of the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

Taiwan has launched a crackdown on bootleg rice wine after tainted liquor killed at least five people in the last two weeks, police said. This week, police seized thousands of bottles of illegal rice wine, which sometimes contains poisonous methanol. Officials said people caught making the bootleg wine could be charged with homicide and receive the death penalty.

U.S. Customs Service agents have broken up what is believed to be the largest bootlegging ring in the world, seizing 800,000 pirated recordings and indicting 13 individuals for allegedly conspiring to manufacture, import and distribute pirated compact discs in more than a dozen countries, primarily in Europe. The indictments, handed down March 27 in Orlando, Fla.

Two biblical scholars published a "bootleg" volume of long-secret Dead Sea Scrolls Wednesday, boasting they had broken the monopoly of academics who hid the material from the public for decades. But the men in charge of the official publication of the 2,000-year-old scrolls denounced the tactic, saying it smacked more of betrayal than scholarship and hinted that legal action might be taken.

Dennis Cassity's beach house is a modest place, really. OK, so it's a garage. But such a cozy garage! Tiled bathroom, kitchenette--and all for about $100 a month less than thecheapest apartment in town. "Of course, I knew it was illegal," the 40-year-old computer repairman chuckled, recalling the day he found his Hermosa Beach apartment. "I was born and raised on the beach. I know a bootleg (apartment) when I see one." No matter. Cassity took the place anyway.

A few hundred paces from the Oktyabr movie theater, where "Gone With the Wind" opened last fall to packed houses, stands a modest little kiosk that is souring the plans of U.S. film distributors to exploit the commercial potential of the vast Soviet entertainment market. Located on Arbat Street, the privately owned kiosk sells pirate videos of foreign, mainly American films. Of the list of 181 films on sale, at least 90% are U.S.

I was drinking at King Eddy's, the skid row dive that's being made over into a hipster bar, when I overheard people say that a web of old bootlegger tunnels lay under downtown. A labyrinth, running from the old speakeasy beneath King Eddy's to Pershing Square and points beyond - even San Pedro? They had me at "tunnel. " I had to know more. The Los Angeles Department of Public Works didn't know about the tunnels. Map librarian Glen Creason of the Central Library told me that they were never mapped, for obvious reasons.

Americans downloaded nearly 760 million songs using the BitTorrent file-sharing network in the first six months of this year -- surpassing the number of digital tracks purchased over that same period, according to a new report. BitTorrent's technology allows Web users to share large files by downloading small pieces from many computers at once. Although not all music available on BitTorrent is pirated the majority of the songs delivered through the network are not licensed. The findings of London researcher Musicmetric suggest that turning to the courts to block access to sites that facilitate illegal downloads -- as happened earlier this year in Britain, where Internet service providers were ordered to block access to the Pirate Bay -- is doing little to deter piracy.

It must be quite a feeling to be 17 and realize your band is really, really good. That's probably what drove Chloe Chaidez to climb on top of the Bootleg's bar top and howl at the moon while her band Kitten tore off another round of shoegazy post-punk during its packed Monday night residency. While most hyper-young artists are working at the bleeding edges of dance music, Kitten's rich and atmospheric rock is surprisingly ageless. The quintet's sound pulls from the punk-funk rhythms of Public Image LTD with Smiths-y yearning and the blissfully brutal distortion of Ride and Slowdive.

Twenty years ago Billy Ray Cyrus was feasting on the fruits of his debut album, “Some Gave All,” which spawned the hit single “Achy Breaky Heart” and became the biggest-selling disc of 1992. On Friday night the country singer played a concert for approximately 200 people at the Bootleg, a funky indie-rock club near Echo Park. Yet this wasn't a case of a has-been music star sopping up the dregs of his residual fame. (Or at least it wasn't that entirely.) Cyrus, 51, was launching what he referred to as a world tour with his new band, Good Bad Habit, in front of a rowdy crowd populated by friends and family, including his daughter Miley.

MEXICO CITY - First there were four of them, lined up against the subway platform wall. Then five, then six, then 11 - all of them blind, all with retractable canes, all with bulging backpacks strapped to their torsos. Socorro Jimenez was among them, waiting her turn. The unwritten rule is one per train. Soon, hers came. This is how it always works on mornings such as this one: Few of the strap-hanging housekeepers or half-asleep students or impassive office workers will pay much mind to the 55-year-old, or her cane, or her nondescript black backpack.

Forget cinema, David Lynch's current passion is artist development. On Aug. 2, Lynch will step into his new role as a master of ceremonies, hosting a concert from Chrysta Bell, whose 2011 debut CD the filmmaker-musician produced.  Even Lynch fans ignorant of Bell's full-length "This Train" are likely already familiar with her work. Bell and Lynch composed the song "Polish Poem" for the director's most-recent full-length feature, the mysterious and experimental 2006 film "Inland Empire.

As soon as he was inside the hall, clear of the guards at the doors, Tapewyrm tended to his preparations with a burglar's stealth. This obsession of his was both an act of love and a crime, and to do it right, he had to take care. The 40-year-old communications technician headed to a bathroom. Inside a stall, he unpacked a tiny sound studio he had smuggled in beneath his flannel shirt. He fit dime-sized microphones under his hair, then readied a miniature digital tape recorder.

Upcoming films produced by Megan Ellison "Lawless" A Prohibition-era bootlegging drama based on the novel "The Wettest County in the World. " Director: John Hillcoat ("The Road") Stars: Jessica Chastain, Tom Hardy, Shia LaBoeuf, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska Debuts: May 19 (Cannes Film Festival); Aug. 31 (in U.S.) "Killing Them Softly" Gritty drama about a mob enforcer. Based on the novel "Cogan's Trade. " Director: Andrew Dominik ("The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford")

The way Louie Pérez remembers it, there was nothing more all-American than growing up Mexican American in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Yes, there were serious economic and social roadblocks to Latinos joining the middle-class mainstream. But Pérez and his friends danced to the same music as their non-Latino peers, wore the same clothes - Sonny and Cher furry vests, anyone? - and tuned in and turned on to the same groovy counterculture experiments. They stood shoulder to shoulder for the same social causes, and many of them died fighting in the same southeast Asian war. "The Chicanos in the '60s didn't live in a vacuum," Pérez, principal lyricist and multi-instrumentalist of the legendary East L.A. rock band Los Lobos, said recently.