The government already sanctioned Morgan Stanley twice for mishandling electronic messages under former Chief Executive Officer Philip Purcell. Last year, it paid a record $15 million to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission probe of deficient e-mail preservation. In 2002, the SEC and other regulators faulted the New York-based firm for destroying e-mails and backup tapes.

READ THE FULL NEWS ON Bloomberg

In every walk of life you can find examples of the 80/20 rule. You can get very simplistic and also very complex with the examples.
Some quick examples that are spoken of repeatedly in college textbooks are things like:

20% of customers produce 80% of the profits
20% of employees produce 80% of the real results
20% of the input creates 80% of the result
20% of a sales force produces 80% of the sales

You can also get more creative and look at these rules in the life as a blogger, digger or every day events.

80% of website visitors view only 20% of the web pages
80% of Digg Front-page items are by 20% of the Digg Users
20% of program features in a program like Word cause 80% of the use
20% of blog posts will create 80% of the traffic
20% of car repairs will cost 80% of your money

A well respected MIT professor named Noam Chomsky talks about the 80/20 rule in this video on YouTube here. Chomsky talks about how big business tries to figure out who the most profitable 20% of customers are and attempt to eliminate the rest of the 80% of customers to reduce costs.

It’s hard to argue with the facts of the 80/20 rule that were discovered back in 1906. The economist that broke this discovery lived in Italy and realized that 80% of the land in his homeland was owned by 20% of the actual population in Italy. His name was Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto and the 80/20 rule has been labeled as “Pareto’s Principle.” Pareto expanded his theory and applied it to many other things in life. Another interesting occurrence that Pareto found was the application of the 80/20 rule to gardening with peas. Pareto found that 80% of the peas were created from 20% of the pods.

READ THE FULL Article here: The Business SHRINK

Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.

They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, Aerosmith and others.

After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters.

The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services.

“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. “I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial.”

Still, it’s unlikely the RIAA’s courtroom victory will translate into a financial windfall or stop piracy, which the industry claims costs it billions in lost sales. Despite the thousands of lawsuits — the majority of them settling while others have been dismissed or are pending — the RIAA’s litigation war on internet piracy has neither dented illegal, peer-to-peer file sharing or put much fear in the hearts of music swappers.

Read the full story on WIRED Blog Network