[Music]
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
This week, find out why Hollywood lawyers went after
this Racine Grandpa's wallet to the tune of $600,000.
I'm founded.
I said, you know, I said if I couldn't pay $4,000, it's very
highly unlikely that I could pay $600,000.
Everybody ready?
Go on a hunt with this Dane County woman for an aggressive,
invasive threat to our wild places.
I think you've got to have a warrior spirit to
tackle something so big.
Enjoy these folks in Green Bay for a high-tech treasure hunt.
That's a lot of times people will do a little happy
dance when they find it.
All that plus will introduce you to a Niagara man who spends
his time creating a lot of fish tails in Wisconsin.
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For many people, especially those who weren't born into the
computer generation, internet technology is dizzying.
As fast as you can learn the latest, it changes.
That helps explain what happened to a recene grandfather.
The Hollywood movie industry slapped the retiree
with a giant lawsuit.
After his 12-year-old grandson copied some popular films
onto the home computer.
As Frederica Freiberg reports, his case serves
as a warning that while there may be no business
like show business, Hollywood really means business when
it comes to copyrights.
I told my, I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't even know how to go about that.
I said, I'm not real computer-ed-literate person.
Retiree Fred Lawrence was in the dark when Hollywood lawyers
first contacted him about pirating first-run
films off the internet.
But it turned out Lawrence's 12-year-old grandson, Ben, had
downloaded four movies on the family's home computer.
I downloaded four movies.
I wrote about the grudge, gotten, and the incredible.
The boy quickly fasted up, but says he believed it when the
internet site where he found the films declared the
download's 100% legal.
I didn't watch it.
Why did I download them?
Because they're out and I wanted to see them.
Big mistake.
The film industry first asked Ben's grandpa to pay $4,000 to
avoid a copyright infringement suit.
When Fred Lawrence explained he couldn't afford that,
the stakes got higher.
Three movie studios slapped the recene grandpa with a $600,000
lawsuit, $150,000 for each title.
And that's where it stood until a Milwaukee copyright lawyer
came to the family's rescue.
She negotiated a settlement that threw out the lawsuit in return
for Ben speaking to others his age about the
dangers of downloads.
I downloaded the four movies and sooner or later my
grandpa got a lot of trouble.
Ben was not the only child who's downloading and this is not
the only family that is involved in litigation for music
or video downloading.
Because the movie industry is dead serious when it comes to
illegal downloads or internet piracy.
The motion picture industry has lost $5.4 billion in 2005
alone so these are huge numbers.
But how exactly do you know when something
is an illegal download?
It's not always easy to tell.
The Motion Picture Association has these tips.
They say watch for titles that are too new to be true,
like movies that are still in the theaters and you
get what you pay for.
Low prices for movies are another indication
of pirated titles.
The Motion Picture Association says there are legitimate
online services including movie link, cinema now, iFilm,
movie flicks and vongo.
To stem its losses the industry is pushing hard to get the
word out about internet piracy.
You find it on the internet and you download
it and nobody's looking.
Is that legal?
You know he's looking, he's looking for cans.
This national internet safety expert works with
the movie industry to clue kids in to piracy.
Perry FTAF got middle school students and suburban Milwaukee
talking about what she calls the high price of free movies.
Somebody may show up knocking your door and sue
you for a lot of money.
First tab traveled to Wisconsin in connection with
the settlement agreement and the film industry's
lawsuit against Fred Lawrence.
I want you to meet Ben.
Ben, come on up here sweetheart.
I'm here today because I want you to know that it's not worth
getting movies free online.
I'm not how cool the movie, game, music, whatever.
You can get in big trouble and get a lot of people
in a lot of trouble also.
Most of the kids listening to Ben's warning could relate.
Do you guys have experience with downloading?
And yet these teenagers were not aware of the consequences.
I didn't know the punishment was so bad either.
I mean it's so much money you can get sued for.
We don't want to take money out of people's
pockets by any means.
What we want to do is we want to educate.
We want to empower.
We want to let people know about the dangers
of certain file sharing networks and the consequences
of piracy which is why we're so fortunate that the Lawrence
has agreed to help us out on this and educate people.
Yes, the Lawrence has agreed to help the movie industry in
return for the more than half million dollar
lawsuit being dropped.
The educate instead of litigate route is a new direction
for the film industry.
And it was tried out for one of the first
times here in Wisconsin.
The movie is directed at young teenagers.
The group largely responsible for illegal downloading.
And this case of a 12 year old and his grandfather was
right out of central casting.
In this case we were dealing with a child, not an older teen
or an adult but someone who was 12 years old at the time.
And I think this child did not understand that what
he was doing was wrong.
But through programs like this other children
in the sage group will.
And I know that this is going to be helpful.
The word gets out that hey you know this could
happen to you too.
Besides Fred Lawrence says even full priced store bought movies
don't pinch the pocketbook like the one to punch
he managed to dodge.
Even if you pay $20 for a film it's a lot
cheaper than $600,000.
We're told the music industry is coming down even harder than
the film industry on illegal downloading.
But it's hope that educating people about copyright laws
can help stem the problem.
We have links to more information on our website
at wpt.org/inwisconsin.
The woman in our next story doesn't have a $600,000 problem.
Her problem is priceless.
Tammy Bieberstein is on a mission, a mission to rid
parks of an aggressive invader.
Producer Joanne Garrett caught up with Bieberstein
as she rallied her troops for an environmental
fight. A woman.
A plant.
Stop and run.
Everybody ready?
A quest.
Okay, off to the garlic mustard.
Tammy Bieberstein is the founder of a new growing group.
The Madison area weed warriors.
The plant.
Garlic mustard.
The goal.
We go back and forth as you pull up and get the rut.
Get rid of it.
So this is anybody who doesn't know this is
second year garlic mustard.
And down here, this first year garlic mustard, some
of it is bigger over there.
And we're interested in getting the second year stuff out.
Is that the stuff that's going to create the seed?
The seed.
This seemingly sweet plant has created a
nightmare for the state.
It's taking over Wisconsin's woodlands, starting in the
south and spreading north.
It's non-native invasive, with three devastating advantages
over our native wildflowers.
It starts earlier, grows taller and produces bocus seed.
It's the thing that can remain viable for up to
seven years in the soil.
It's a recipe for disaster, fitting for an out of
control cooking herb.
Garlic mustard is a plant that was brought to North
America as a cooking herb.
Rust hefty is the conservation resource supervisor
for the Madison parks.
And it'll completely carpet the ground and outcompete
the native wildflowers.
And in some areas, be such a carpeted green that negates our
use of fire because it basically is, you've got all these green
plants with all that moisture and they basically stop the
fires. Fitting for a botanical
that hefty has described as the plant from health.
It's a plant out of place.
It's okay where it normally comes from.
That's being from Northern Europe.
It has, I read on the internet, it has, well, something like
53 natural biological predators that go after it.
I say it needs every one of them.
With no natural predators in Wisconsin, like the shoot-mining
weevil or the root feeding flea beetle, it's up to us.
I think you've got to have a warrior spirit to
tackle something so big.
That's how bebrasteine sought and so began her quest.
This is very like mustard here.
Five years ago, she approached Russ hefty and others in the
Madison park system with this idea.
She would recruit citizen volunteers to adopt
parks and green spaces in their neighborhoods
and gather Saturday mornings early in spring to pull
the plant before it flowers.
I was nicknamed "Crazy Tammy."
It was crazy Tammy, you know?
That was like the second year of pulling garlic mustard.
I had visions of when I was planning on doing this.
I was thinking we're going to get everybody in Madison to
get out there that first summer and get rid of all the
garlic mustard and it ended up only being four of us.
We're out there every day pulling garlic mustard.
It's not exactly the most glamorous thing in the world
to do on a Saturday morning.
No, it has annoying invasive plant making me crawl around
on my hands and knees smell.
Last year we had about 161 people show up that I counted
and we're surpassed that already this year and we're only halfway
through our official season.
She just has a natural infectious enthusiasm that
people just grab onto.
Okay, we also have Madison area weed warrior buttons for
those that didn't get a button.
Just a great passion and enthusiasm for natural
areas and a great passion for sharing her knowledge
and appreciation.
Watch her work these two total strangers that
she just met on the path.
I'm in phone number if you ever have any questions.
If you take a big and you see some garlic mustard along
the way here, feel free.
Thanks. So that's why she's very
successful in getting folks to come out and
pull the garlic mustard.
15 minutes later we find them down the path pulling.
Now if everybody knew how much fun it was,
everybody had to eat.
And that's Bieber Steins goal, her quest.
I would actually like to see this become as big.
Activities like this become as big as sports
in our school system.
I think it would be a neat way to teach kids
a sense of cooperation and community at working
together. Something happens sometimes
when people work together.
There's an outgrowth of community connections.
Bieber Steins is self-educated in botany and the wild world.
This is Birdac.
Second year Birdac.
It's another one of those biennials.
I didn't know that Birdac ever grew up to be gay.
Oh yes.
What a punk.
Bieber Steins has a degree in education, but she
works now as a crossing guard and a groundskeeper
for a church.
And part to carve out time for this quest.
These Saturdays are a chance for her to educate others.
This is why I wanted a plant where we're working on trying
to save and there's next month there'll be a little
white flower coming out.
And then here's one of our Solomon seals and
here's our wild geranium.
So it's really an important issue.
And if you lose the native plants well then what's going to
support the native insects, the native birds and all the other
creatures that require and evolved with the native plants
that belong in Wisconsin?
This is a kidney leaf buttercup.
This is one of the plants we're trying to save
from garlic mustard.
Boy. But it's one that people
could mistake it for garlic mustard if they easily.
Yeah. It's Bieber Steins hope that
this knowledge about invasive species and the idea of service
will spread like seed before our woodland wildflowers are lost.
Yeah, actually I find it to be kind of healing to the soul.
It just feels good to be able to give back to the planet.
Tammy Bieberstein tells us that this year she's gotten a lot
more support including five new volunteer leaders for the
garlic mustard pulling parties.
You can find out more information about the efforts of
the Madison area weed warriors on our website at
wpt.org/inwisconsin. There's also info on
our site about another group out to whack weeds.
The Department of Natural Resources created a
statewide weed watcher program in partnership
with the Wisconsin State or Barium.
That group is on the lookout for more than 20 invasive species.
Our next story is also about a hunt of sorts.
Reporter Andy Suth discovered that people across Wisconsin
and the nation are latching on to a locating device
that turns them into high tech treasure hunters.
It's a summer day in downtown Green Bay.
But it's clear these are no ordinary pedestrians.
After one thing they're taking an unusual interest
in trash cans and dumpsters.
They're among 150 participants in a citywide geocaching event.
This has all your coordinates and what you
need to do for each cash.
It's a kind of high tech scavenger hunt with caches
hidden all over Green Bay.
Geocaching is possible due to the popularity
of products like this.
A handheld GPS device capable of receiving signals from multiple
global positioning satellites.
The GPS device triangulates signals from the satellites and
can give you your exact location on Earth.
Or it can help you find something hidden
by another GPS user.
A geocache.
Enter the coordinates of a geocache into a GPS
and it can tell you how close you are to it.
Once you've found the cash you can take a souvenir and exchange
for something you leave.
There's a logbook to sign and geocache activity is
also logged on the web.
That's where you can learn the coordinates of
caches hidden near you.
There are also virtual caches where the assignment
is to take a picture.
The hobby has developed its own culture with team names,
nicknames and special events like the Green Bay Challenge.
For many it's become a fun pastime.
It's the decoding key.
For others it's treated more like an addiction.
And we were just in Ohio last weekend.
Resurried the weekend before so we do.
Meet the Jensen Mullen family that are known among geocaches
as Earth Angel, do a list, princess and the professor.
Together they are the eco-rangers.
It's us.
It's only a short time they've logged over 4,000 total
geocache finds more than anyone else in Wisconsin.
And they're ranked 18th in the world.
It'll be 2 years in October.
So we're at a rate of finding 6.5 cash as a day
since today we started.
I spent the day following the eco-rangers and their friends
on the Green Bay Challenge and it was clear.
They were on a mission.
There's one up here, still three head north,
then with the round.
So it's only to get what you're going for today.
To get them all.
Get them all.
Diane Sexton is also known as Bushwacking Queen.
Getting them all today will add 58 to her goal of 2001 year.
So you want to take a look and see where it was?
Run, Jake!
Jake! Run here!
That's 2000 times feeling like this.
I'm so sorry about how that felt.
I found it.
Nice people wondering what we're doing.
It's the thrill of the hunt.
So you're hunting a tough one and you'll find
it and it's like, woo!
You know, a lot of times people will do a little happy
dance when they find it.
It's so good that we can't explain it.
It's trying to go on.
Earth Angel of the eco-rangers says geocaching has provided
the satisfaction she used to get from doing triathlons.
I was swimming laps at the Y every day, going for a 15-20
mile bike ride by myself every day, going on a 3-6 mile jog
every day and I didn't like being away from my family.
And then when my husband came across geocaching,
it's just like, wow, this is so cool to do.
But I can be with my family.
We can get our exercise and be competitive and go hiking and
see the wonders of Wisconsin.
Whether those wonders are Lambo Field or this original 1959
McDonald's sign, geocaching is one high-tech hobby
that at the very least gets people off the couch.
You can do it at your own pace, you can do it at your own
level, but it gets people out there doing something and
that's a big part of it.
Geocaching gets people out there.
As we first brought you that report, Diane
Sexton, the Bushwacking queen, has surpassed her
original goal of 2,000 cash fines and is now
beyond the 3,000 mark.
[Music]
We head north now to Niagara in Marinette County.
Just for Roger Newhouse spends his days telling fish stories.
Newhouse really doesn't need to make up stories about catching
the big one though because he's able to simply carve
the perfect fish.
[Music]
Roger Newhouse loves to fish.
He also loves to tell fish tales.
My mother said that when I was born I had
a fish pole in my hand.
Newhouse followed his first love since he was a child.
At the age of 55 he fell in love again in
love with fish carving.
Now I have the best of both worlds.
I can fish and I'm not carving and I can carve
when I'm not fishing.
[Music]
Newhouse talked himself out of carve these
highly realistic fish.
He remembers learning a few lessons the hard way.
In the beginning I did a fish and I started at the tail.
It looked beautiful all the way up to the head and I found
out I had some problems with the head.
Had I did the head first I didn't have all that work that
I had the throw away preceded.
So my best advice is for anybody carving or learning to carve.
Always do the head or face first.
Frozen fish pose as models for his art.
I've just fallen carving from real condavers.
I just have made a lot of mistakes.
Fish don't lie to me.
I try to get as much detail off of a real fish into a
pattern to incorporate that into my fish carving itself.
Newhouse hooks ideas for his work everywhere.
You last been Franklin one time.
Where do you get all your ideas for all your inventions?
And he said I just pluck them out of the air.
And that's kind of the way it is with me with my carving.
I see something and it connects to a carving
and then I'm on my way.
Yeah, sounds like a wonderful idea.
Newhouse took to fish carving like a fish to water.
And in 2001 entered his work in the World Fish Carving
Championships in Illinois.
He brought home a row of intermediate level ribbons.
Two years later at the World Championships he snagged an
even more impressive prize at the expert level.
He won best of category for his realistic blue gill.
Well, I was just so fine, so I just couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe it was happening to me.
Inspiration for the winning entry came from the sea.
That was really inspired by the movie Mjanna
Bouni with Marlon Brando.
I was watching that film one day and I seen an old sailor at
a helm of a ship and I thought it would really be cool
to do a wall mouth and make a ship's wheel.
And then in the center of that wheel display
a wall mouth carving.
The blue gill was a knot or a burl on a butternut
slab that I picked up free from the mill over
here. So I came home and I
cut that knot off and it was large enough.
I got into it and fell out of it with a lot of
pretty crazy green running.
So that was what I carved my blue gill out of.
Winning top honors at the fish carving show was a dream come
true for Roger Newhouse, but his real reward comes
from pleasing the people.
When people come up to the show and they see your carvings
and they really admire them, they say, "She's it
looks like it could just swim off by itself."
To me that's more important than any ribbon I could
win or anything like that.
It's just a joy to see the expression on people.
It's a great gift to be given and to share with the public.
? I'm a gon' fishin' yes I'm gon' fishin'
I'm gon' fishin' too
?
Roger Newhouse tells us that he's thinking about entering
the international wood carvers competition held
in Iowa this June.
And that's our program for this week.
Join us next time when we'll introduce you to a man who
patrols the streets of our state's largest city.
But he's not watching for crimes against people.
He's on the outlook for crimes against trees.
That's next week.
In the meantime we leave you with a spring walk near Rush
Creek in Crawford County for In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
Have a great week.
? ?
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a lion's energy, delivering safe, reliable,
and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
A lion's energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
UW Health, providing specialty and primary care for all
ages throughout Wisconsin.
Information on UW Health Physicians and Clinics and on
University of Wisconsin Hospital is available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing the people of
Wisconsin with the knowledge and skills they'll need for
the economy of tomorrow.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, communities first.
? ?