LIBRARY’S FREE,
LEGAL MUSIC
DOWNLOADS
Eugeneans now have the chance to take something
from the library and never give it back. On Dec. 7 the
Eugene Public Library began offering a music lending
service, “Freegal Music.” Freegal provides free and
legal MP3 files to all library cardholders.
As EW goes to press, Eugene’s number one
download is Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” followed by the
Glee cast’s cover of Adele’s “Rumor Has It” and
“Winter Wonderland” by Ukulele Christmas in the
third spot.
The content of Freegal’s online database is based
on a license with Sony Music Entertainment, and it is
OCCUPY CONTINUES
SANS CENTRAL CAMP
PHOTO BY ROB SYDOR WWW.DIGITALLATTE.COM
If 4,000 people were homeless after a natural disaster
such as a tsunami, that would be an emergency, Occupy
Eugene volunteer Chris Calef said Dec. 22 as the Occupy
camp slowly shut down. Around him Occupiers packed,
sang and put up a tree-sit. However, as the chant goes,
“Occupy will never die; evict us, we multiply!” and it
appears that Occupy Eugene might have lost its camp at
Washington-Jefferson Park, but not its spirit.
Calef was echoing comments he’d made at a Eugene
City Council meeting earlier this year. He pointed out the
fact that about 4,000 people (according to the last homeless
count) are houseless and in the cold in Lane County because
they are poor is something most people ignore. But if a
natural disaster hit, the city would be offering long-term
camping, bathrooms, showers and everything else the
victims might need.
Instead, Occupiers said, many of the county’s homeless
Occupiers circle before
starting to take down camp
6 DECEMBER 29, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
available to libraries all over the country. More than
500,000 songs are available for download in every
genre, from current hits to classics, and the database is
growing every day. The library pays an annual sum
based on its number of cardholders for the service.
To download music, library patrons can log into the
Freegal Music on the library’s website using their
library card number and password. The songs download
to a variety of music software, and no special program
is needed to access the database. Once you have a
song, it’s yours to keep — there is no digital rights
management on the music files, although other
copyright laws do apply for all music downloaded.
Each cardholder is allowed three downloads per week,
with the week’s allotment turning over every Sunday
at 6 pm.
Connie Bennett, the director of the Eugene Public
Library, hopes that this new service will attract new
people to the library’s services. “If we offer a service
like this, people will notice that the library is still
relevant to our entertainment and information needs,”
she says. “Log in now and you can get three songs
before Sunday!”
— Caitlin McKimmy
KIDS TAKE
CLIMATE
TO COURT
found themselves back on the street only days before
Christmas. They protested this at Councilor George Poling’s
lawn at 8 pm Dec. 25, putting up tents, ringing his doorbell
and making noise. Poling was targeted not only for his vote
to close the camp, but specifically for blocking the campers
from using heating fires. Four people were arrested for
trespassing.
Poling said in an earlier interview with EW that he
blocked having an immediate public hearing and action on
the fire issue because he did not know that the issue would
“have received a fair and impartial ‘public hearing’ due to
the fact that other than one person that I know of, the rest of
the people in attendance were either city staff or folks from
the camp” at the time the council was making the decision.
Geneva Martin, who sat in a tree at the edge of
Washington-Jefferson Park on Dec. 22 as Occupiers
celebrated the solstice and protested the camp shutdown,
said “I have friends that have been evicted from a warm
place to sleep three days before Christmas.” Eugene police
officers at the Occupy Eugene camp, in a marked turn
around from previous responses to downtown tree-sits, let
Martin remain in the tree until she came down on her own
the next day. Police and firefighters also put out attempts to
start warming bonfires without fanfare.
OE held a candlelight vigil Dec. 23 for Rick Youngblood,
the Florence man who died last week after an altercation at
Washington-Jefferson Park. And for Christmas, Occupiers
delivered socks full of coal to five banks in Eugene: Bank
of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and
Umpqua. Next to each sock hung a chronicle of the bank’s
actions that OE said “made them part of Santa’s naughty
list.” The coal came from the wood stove used at the
Occupy Eugene site.
Occupy Eugene is currently cleaning up the park
campsite and offering to participate in its restoration,
planning protests against corporate greed and working to
end homelessness. The Occupiers have an office at the
Growers Market near the train station and have another
space at 7th and Polk.
A “living, evolving” vision statement for Occupy Eugene
can be found at http://wkly.ws/15f
— Camilla Mortensen
Eugene’s Western Environmental Law Center
(WELC) has filed a brief on behalf of climate scientist
Dr. James Hansen, which was part of a lawsuit that will
now be reviewed by a U.S. district court in Washington,
D.C.
The lawsuit was filed by members of Kids vs. Global
Warming, a nonprofit organization led by 15-year-old
Alex Loorz, in an effort to force federal and state
governments to reduce carbon emissions by 6 percent in
the U.S. each year by 2013.
Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for
Space Studies and is an adjunct professor of Earth
Sciences at Columbia University. He gave his opinion
in what is known as an amicus curiae brief, which was
filed by WELC attorney Daniel Galpern. In this form of
legal brief Hansen is not part of the lawsuit, but a
volunteer offering information he has on climate change
CONTINUED P. 8
An occupier waves an upside down
flag, which is a distress signal
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