Unmarried Mass. Gay Couples Losing Health Benefits

Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture

In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained memo.

If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later.

The memo seems to counter the pre-Sept. 11, 2001, assumption that U.S. government personnel would never be permitted to torture captives. It was offered after the CIA began detaining and interrogating suspected al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the wake of the attacks, according to government officials familiar with the document.

The legal reasoning in the 2002 memo, which covered treatment of al Qaeda detainees in CIA custody, was later used in a March 2003 report by Pentagon lawyers assessing interrogation rules governing the Defense Department's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At that time, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had asked the lawyers to examine the logistical, policy and legal issues associated with interrogation techniques.

Bush administration officials say flatly that, despite the discussion of legal issues in the two memos, it has abided by international conventions barring torture, and that detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere have been treated humanely, except in the cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for which seven military police soldiers have been charged.

Still, the 2002 and 2003 memos reflect the Bush administration's desire to explore the limits on how far it could legally go in aggressively interrogating foreigners suspected of terrorism or of having information that could thwart future attacks.

In the 2002 memo, written for the CIA and addressed to White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, the Justice Department defined torture in a much narrower way, for example, than does the U.S. Army, which has historically carried out most wartime interrogations.

In the Justice Department's view -- contained in a 50-page document signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and obtained by The Washington Post -- inflicting moderate or fleeting pain does not necessarily constitute torture. Torture, the memo says, "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

By contrast, the Army's Field Manual 34-52, titled "Intelligence Interrogations," sets more restrictive rules. For example, the Army prohibits pain induced by chemicals or bondage; forcing an individual to stand, sit or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time; and food deprivation. Under mental torture, the Army prohibits mock executions, sleep deprivation and chemically induced psychosis.

Human rights groups expressed dismay at the Justice Department's legal reasoning yesterday.

"It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I've seen since this whole Abu Ghraib scandal broke," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of military doctrine and standards on interrogations."

But a spokesman for the White House counsel's office said, "The president directed the military to treat al Qaeda and Taliban humanely and consistent with the Geneva Conventions."

Mark Corallo, the Justice Department's chief spokesman, said "the department does not comment on specific legal advice it has provided confidentially within the executive branch." But he added: "It is the policy of the United States to comply with all U.S. laws in the treatment of detainees -- including the Constitution, federal statutes and treaties." The CIA declined to comment.

The Justice Department's interpretation for the CIA sought to provide guidance on what sorts of aggressive treatments might not fall within the legal definition of torture.

The 2002 memo, for example, included the interpretation that "it is difficult to take a specific act out of context and conclude that the act in isolation would constitute torture." The memo named seven techniques that courts have considered torture, including severe beatings with truncheons and clubs, threats of imminent death, burning with cigarettes, electric shocks to genitalia, rape or sexual assault, and forcing a prisoner to watch the torture of another person.

"While we cannot say with certainty that acts falling short of these seven would not constitute torture," the memo advised, ". . . we believe that interrogation techniques would have to be similar to these in their extreme nature and in the type of harm caused to violate law."

"For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture," the memo said, "it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years." Examples include the development of mental disorders, drug-induced dementia, "post traumatic stress disorder which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression."

Of mental torture, however, an interrogator could show he acted in good faith by "taking such steps as surveying professional literature, consulting with experts or reviewing evidence gained in past experience" to show he or she did not intend to cause severe mental pain and that the conduct, therefore, "would not amount to the acts prohibited by the statute."

In 2003, the Defense Department conducted its own review of the limits that govern torture, in consultation with experts at the Justice Department and other agencies. The aim of the March 6, 2003, review, conducted by a working group that included representatives of the military services, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the intelligence community, was to provide a legal basis for what the group's report called "exceptional interrogations."

Much of the reasoning in the group's report and in the Justice Department's 2002 memo overlap. The documents, which address treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, were not written to apply to detainees held in Iraq.

In a draft of the working group's report, for example, Pentagon lawyers approvingly cited the Justice Department's 2002 position that domestic and international laws prohibiting torture could be trumped by the president's wartime authority and any directives he issued.

At the time, the Justice Department's legal analysis, however, shocked some of the military lawyers who were involved in crafting the new guidelines, said senior defense officials and military lawyers.

"Every flag JAG lodged complaints," said one senior Pentagon official involved in the process, referring to the judge advocate generals who are military lawyers of each service.

"It's really unprecedented. For almost 30 years we've taught the Geneva Convention one way," said a senior military attorney. "Once you start telling people it's okay to break the law, there's no telling where they might stop."

A U.S. law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in the world. But the Pentagon group's report, prepared under the supervision of General Counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . . . [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."

The Pentagon group's report, divulged yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Post, said further that the 1994 law barring torture "does not apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel" at Guantanamo Bay.

It also said the anti-torture law did apply to U.S. military interrogations that occurred outside U.S. "maritime and territorial jurisdiction," such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. But it said both Congress and the Justice Department would have difficulty enforcing the law if U.S. military personnel could be shown to be acting as a result of presidential orders.

The report then parsed at length the definition of torture under domestic and international law, with an eye toward guiding military personnel about legal defenses.

The Pentagon report uses language very similar to that in the 2002 Justice Department memo written in response to the CIA's request: "If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," the draft states. "In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

The draft goes on to assert that a soldier's claim that he was following "superior orders" would be available for those engaged in "exceptional interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful." It asserts, as does the Justice view expressed for the CIA, that the mere infliction of pain and suffering is not unlawful; the pain or suffering must be severe.

A Defense Department spokesman said last night that the March 2003 memo represented "a scholarly effort to define the perimeters of the law" but added: "What is legal and what is put into practice is a different story." Pentagon officials said the group examined at least 35 interrogation techniques, and Rumsfeld later approved using 24 of them in a classified directive on April 16, 2003, that governed all activities at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon has refused to make public the 24 interrogation procedures.

Tsunami Orphans Adopted without Approval

Oh what a horrible thing...

L.A.P.D. Studies Facial Recognition Software

LOS ANGELES Dec 25, 2004 ? The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not identity people accurately.

"It's like a mobile electronic mug book," said Capt. Charles Beck of the gang-heavy Rampart Division, which has been using the software. "It's not a silver bullet, but we wouldn't use it unless it helped us make arrests."

But Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the technology was unproven and could encourage profiling on the basis of race or clothing.

"This is creeping Big Brotherism. There is a long history of government misusing information it gathers," Ripston said.

The department is seeking about $500,000 from the federal government to expand the use of the technology, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. Police have been testing it on Alvarado Street just west of downtown Los Angeles.

In one recent incident, two officers suspected two men illegally riding double on a bicycle of being gang members. If they were, they may have been violating an injunction that barred those named in a court documents from gathering in public and other activities.

As the officers questioned the men, Rampart Division Senior Lead Officer Mike Wang pointed a hand-held computer with an attached camera at one of the men. Facial-recognition software compared his image image to those of recent fugitives, as well as dozens of members of local gangs.

Within seconds, the screen displayed nine faces that had contours similar to the man's. The computer said the image of one particular gang member subject to the injunction was 94 percent likely to be a match.

That enough to trigger a search that yielded a small amount of methamphetamine. The man did turn out to be the gang member, and was arrested on suspicion of violating the injunction by possessing illegal drugs. The city attorney's office has not yet decided whether to charge the man.

The LAPD has been using two computers donated by their developer, Santa Monica-based Neven Vision, which wanted field-testing for its technology. The computers are still considered experimental.

The Rampart Division has used the devices about 25 times in the two months officers have been testing them. The technology has resulted in 16 arrests for alleged criminal contempt of a permanent gang injunction, and three arrests on outstanding felony warrants.

On one occasion, the computer was used to clear a man the officers suspected of being someone else, police said.

So far, the city attorney has filed seven injunction cases in arrests that involved the technology. A judge dismissed a case after questioning the technology, but it has been refiled. Suspects in two cases pleaded guilty.

Other experiments with facial-recognition software have had mixed results. Officials in Tampa, Fla., stopped using it last year because it didn't result in arrests. And a Boston's Logan International Airport in 2002, two systems failed 96 times to identify people who volunteered to help test it. The technology correctly identified 153 other volunteers.

Luis Li, chief of the Los Angeles city attorney's criminal branch, said the technology should not present legal problems because it was used only as an initial means of identification.

"If you are standing in the street, you have no expectation of privacy," he said.

Patriot Raid

A month ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.

That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to see the Broadway show "Rent." We had an hour to spare before curtain time so we stopped into an Indian restaurant just off of Times Square in the heart of midtown. I have omitted the name of the restaurant so as not to subject the owners to any further harassment or humiliation.

We helped ourselves to the buffet and then sat down to begin eating our dinner. I was just about to tell Asher how I'd eaten there before and how delicious the vegetable curry was, but I never got a chance. All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.

"Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.

I hesitated, lost in my own panic.

"Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.

I complied and looked around at the other patrons. There were eight men including the waiter, all of South Asian descent and ranging in age from late-teens to senior citizen. One of the policemen pointed his gun point-blank in the face of the waiter and shouted: "Is there anyone else in the restaurant?" The waiter, terrified, gestured to the kitchen.

The police placed their fingers on the triggers of their guns and kicked open the kitchen doors. Shouts emanated from the kitchen and a few seconds later five Hispanic men were made to crawl out on their hands and knees, guns pointed at them.

After patting us all down, the five officers seated us at two tables. As they continued to kick open doors to closets and bathrooms with their fingers glued to their triggers, no less than ten officers in suits emerged from the stairwell. Most of them sat in the back of the restaurant typing on their laptop computers. Two of them walked over to our table and identified themselves as officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department.

I explained that we were just eating dinner and asked why we were being held. We were told by the INS agent that we would be released once they had confirmation that we had no outstanding warrants and our immigration status was OK'd.

In pre-9/11 America, the legality of this would have been questionable. After all, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."

"You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.

"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation."

The USA PATRIOT Act was passed into law on October 26, 2001 in order to facilitate the post 9/11 crackdown on terrorism (the name is actually an acronym: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.") Like most Americans, I did not recognize the extent to which this bill foregoes our civil liberties. Among the unprecedented rights it grants to the federal government are the right to wiretap without warrant, and the right to detain without warrant. As I quickly discovered, the right to an attorney has been seemingly fudged as well.

When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month."

We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: "Go ahead and leave, just go ahead."

We remained seated. Our IDs were taken, and brought to the officers with laptops. I was questioned over the fact that my license was out of state, and asked if I had "something to hide." The police continued to hassle the kitchen workers, demanding licenses and dates of birth. One of the kitchen workers was shaking hysterically and kept providing the day's date, March 20, 2003, over and over.

As I continued to press for legal counsel, a female officer who had been busy typing on her laptop in the front of the restaurant, walked over and put her finger in my face. "We are at war, we are at war and this is for your safety," she exclaimed. As she walked away from the table, she continued to repeat it to herself: "We are at war, we are at war. How can they not understand this?"

I most certainly understand that we are at war. I also understand that the freedoms afforded to all of us in the Constitution were meant specifically for times like these. Our freedoms were carved out during times of strife by people who were facing brutal injustices, and were intended specifically so that this nation would behave differently in such times. If our freedoms crumble exactly when they are needed most, then they were really never freedoms at all.

After an hour and a half the INS agent walked back over and handed Asher and me our licenses. A policeman took us by the arm and escorted us out of the building. Before stepping out to the street, the INS agent apologized. He explained, in a low voice, that they did not think the two of us were in the restaurant. Several of the other patrons, though of South Asian descent, were in fact U.S. citizens. There were four taxi drivers, two students, one newspaper salesman -- unwitting customers, just like Asher and me. I doubt, though, they received any apologies from the INS or the Department of Homeland Security.

Nor have the over 600 people of South Asian descent currently being held without charge by the Federal government. Apparently, this type of treatment is acceptable. One of the taxi drivers, a U.S. citizen, spoke to me during the interrogation. "Please stop talking to them," he urged. "I have been through this before. Please do whatever they say. Please for our sake."

Three days later I phoned the restaurant to discover what happened. The owner was nervous and embarrassed and obviously did not want to talk about it. But I managed to ascertain that the whole thing had been one giant mistake. A mistake. Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl on their hands and knees, police officers clearly exacerbating a tense situation by kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control. A mistake. And, according to the ACLU a perfectly legal one, thanks to the PATRIOT Act.

The PATRIOT Act is just the first phase of the erosion of the Fourth Amendment. From the Justice Department has emerged a draft of the Domestic Securities Enhancement Act, also known as PATRIOT II. Among other things, this act would allow the Justice Department to detain anyone, anytime, secretly and indefinitely. It would also make it a crime to reveal the identity or even existence of such a detainee.

Every American citizen, whether they support the current war or not, should be alarmed by the speed and facility with which these changes to our fundamental rights are taking place. And all of those who thought that these laws would never affect them, who thought that the PATRIOT Act only applied to the guilty, should heed this story as a wake-up call. Please learn from my experience. We are all vulnerable so speak out and organize, our Fourth Amendment rights depend upon it.

Cloned Cat Sale Generates Ethics Debate

SAN FRANCISCO - The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is named Little Nicky, a 9-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.

The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was created from DNA from her beloved cat, named Nicky, who died last year.


"He is identical. His personality is the same," the owner, Julie, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Although she agreed to be photographed with her cat, she asked that her last name and hometown not be disclosed because she said she fears being targeted by groups opposed to cloning.


Yet while Little Nicky, who was delivered two weeks ago, frolics in his new home, the kitten's creation and sale has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning technology, which is rapidly advancing.


The company that created Little Nicky, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and Clone, said it hopes by May to have produced the world's first cloned dog ? a much more lucrative market than cats.


While it is based in the San Francisco Bay area, the company's cloning work will be done at its new lab in Madison, Wis.


Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000 each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses ? and even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia.


Several research teams around the world, meanwhile, are racing to create the first cloned monkey.


Aside from human cloning, which has been achieved only at the microscopic embryo stage, no cloning project has fueled more debate than the marketing plans of Genetic Savings and Clone.


"It's morally problematic and a little reprehensible," said David Magnus, co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University. "For $50,000, she could have provided homes for a lot of strays."


Animals rights activists complain that new feline production systems aren't needed because thousands of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of homes.


Lou Hawthorne, Genetic Savings and Clone's chief executive, said his company purchases thousands of ovaries from spay clinics across the country. It extracts the eggs, which are combined with the genetic material from the animals to be cloned.


Critics also complain that the technology is available only to the wealthy, that using it to create house pets is frivolous and that customers grieving over lost pets have unrealistic expectations of what they're buying.


In fact, the first cat cloned in 2001 had a different coat from its genetic donor, underscoring that environment and other biological variables make it impossible to exactly duplicate animals.


"The thing that many people do not realize is that the cloned cat is not the same as the original," said Bonnie Beaver, a Texas A&M animal behaviorist who heads the American Veterinary Medical Association, which has no position on the issue. "It has a different personality. It has different life experiences. They want Fluffy, but it's not Fluffy."


Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single clone.


Genetic Savings and Clone said its new cloning technique, developed by animal cloning pioneer James Robl has improved survival rates, health and appearance. The new technique seeks to condense and transfer only the donor's genetic material to a surrogate's egg instead of an entire cell nucleus.

Between 15 percent and 45 percent of cloned cats born alive die within the first 30 days, Hawthorne said. But he said that range is consistent with natural births, depending on the breed of cat.

Austin, Texas-based ViaGen Inc., which has cloned hundreds of cows, pigs and goats, also is experimenting with the new cloning technique.

"The jury is still out, but the research shows it to be promising," company president Sara Davis said. "The technology is improving all the time."

Genetic Savings and Clone has been behind the creation of at least five cats since 2001, including the first one created.

It hopes to deliver as many as five more clones to customers who have paid the company's $50,000 fee. By the end of next year, it hopes to have cloned as many as 50 cats.

The company has yet to turn a profit.

Lady said she didn't know police drove trucks, so she kept going

Nita Friedman, 66, led police on a puttering pursuit, driving at or under the speed limit for 15 miles through two counties.
The creeping chase on U.S. Highway 95 ended when three of Friedman's tires were blown out by a spike strip.
Police chief Mike Hutter said Friedman reported being confused because she was being pulled over by a four-wheel-drive Chevy Silverado pickup with lights in the grill. He said Friedman told Hutter she was from New York, and that in New York police drive cars.
"She just doesn't understand that she was doing anything wrong," Hutter said.
The chase started in Bonner County after Hutter got reports of a reckless driver.
Hutter said when he flipped on his lights and siren, it looked as if Friedman was pulling over. But she allegedly got back on the roadway and sped up to legal speeds between 50 mph and 60 mph.
Though Friedman never sped during the chase and even stopped behind a left-turning vehicle in Elmira, Hutter said he asked State Police to put a spike strip in the roadway.
When Friedman reached the spike strip, about three miles into Boundary County, she drove over it, stopped for a moment and then started driving again. But three of her tires were flattened, preventing her from getting far.
Friedman was charged with eluding police and reckless driving. She was jailed on $600 bail.

< They say ignorance of the law is no excuse, apparently now ignorance of every type of police procedure is no excuse either. >

Sex Tape on Internet Roils Indian Public

NEW DELHI Dec 21, 2004 ? It was a private act of two hormone-charged teenagers that lasted 2 minutes and 37 seconds on digital video.

But offered for sale on the Internet, the fuzzy images of the 17-year-old girl having oral sex with her high school sweetheart has sent shock waves through urban India, exposing the growing friction between the conservative middle class, its increasingly Westernized progeny and modern technology.

"It came to me as a surprise that kids are having sex so soon," Barkha Dutt, who hosts the country's most popular television talk show on social issues, said in an interview. "Even we are not aware of how much things have changed."

India may be the birthplace of Kama Sutra, the 6th century sex manual, but sex today is a generally taboo subject. Premarital sex is not widely condoned, and public displays of affection draw frowns.

Caught in the scandal's stinging sweep is Avnish Bajaj, the Indian-born American who heads eBay's Indian subsidiary Baazee.com, where the video clip shot by the schoolboy himself using his cell phone camera was put up for sale.

Arrested last week under an ambiguous Indian law on cyber porn, Bajaj was freed after posting bail Tuesday, but his U.S. passport remained confiscated.

Bajaj's arrest triggered a diplomatic spat between the United States and India and a threat by eBay executives to reconsider doing business in a country that would toss one of their top managers in jail as a scapegoat.

"This incident has certainly given us pause and raises concerns about the safeguards that are in place for businesses operating in India," said Henry Gomez, an eBay vice president in the United States.

"This situation is one of concern at highest levels of the U.S. government," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

Bajaj set up Baazee.com in 2000 and sold it to San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, the Internet's leading auction company, for about $50 million in June. The Harvard-educated executive has since headed the Bombay-based subsidiary.

The sex clip was recorded weeks ago and passed on by the bragging schoolboy to three of his friends and eventually made its way to video disc sellers in New Delhi. It did not draw much attention until an engineering student at a prestigious Indian college listed it for sale on Baazee.com.

Now the girl's parents have sent her off to Canada. The 17-year-old boy, the son of an affluent businessman, is now in a juvenile detention center. He went to Nepal to escape the media glare and was arrested at the airport when he returned to the capital on Sunday. A judge on Tuesday ordered him held until Jan. 4 for questioning to try to determine how the video clip reached the man who tried to sell it.

The controversy over the clip it's the talk of urban India, an obsession of newspapers and talk shows is typical of a society in transition, said Dr. Ranjana Kumari, the director of the think tank Center for Social Research.

India's recent economic boom has created unimaginable wealth among the tech-savvy urban population, who live in a globalized world dominated by the Internet, international brands and Western lifestyle with its relatively liberal sexual values.

Kumari says urban India is being pulled apart by these new values and its own centuries-old social conservatism.

"It is this transition which is resulting in a lot of confusion," Kumari said.

Observers like Kumari think a variety of people share the blame for grossly amplifying this sex scandal including the authorities who arrested Bajaj and the boy, who remains unidentified because of his age; the teenagers' parents, who weren't aware of their children's activities; and teachers, for sidestepping sex education in schools.

Many are outraged by the arrest of the schoolboy, who along with the girl attended one of the capital's best known private schools, The Delhi Public School.

"What are we trying to say here?" asked Dutt. "What do we believe is wrong? Was it that he had sex? Was it that he sent out the clip? Which part is the disturbing part?"

Of greater concern to many in the business community is Bajaj's arrest under the Information Technology Act of 2000. The law makes a criminal offense of "publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form, which is obscene." But it also says an Internet provider or Web site manager can't be held responsible if he acted diligently to remedy an electronic offense after learning of it.

Baazee.com maintains it yanked the sex video listing as soon as customer service managers noticed it, and Bajaj had traveled to New Delhi to cooperate with authorities.

Pawan Duggal, a cyberlaw expert, said Bajaj's arrest has serious implications, especially when Internet usage in the country is rapidly growing and foreign investors are increasingly looking to India for e-commerce opportunities.

"Ultimately we have to see bigger picture. We want to increase Internet penetration. All this will only happen if you allow service providers the freedom," he said. "The law needs to be more industry friendly and more pragmatic."

Feathering his nest proves illegal

Kerhonkson ? John Iorio is an out-of work, ex-Schrade guy who lives with his girlfriend, Sue, in a little house on Route 44/55.
He never thought the federal government would spoil his Christmas because he wanted to raise a little money for presents by selling a hummingbird nest on eBay. He was wrong.
It started as a lark. He spotted a guy selling nothing, literally, on eBay. Before the joke ended, the bidding soared to $18,000, Iorio said. An idea took flight.
Why not him? Christmas was coming. Money was tight.
From a cardboard box, he pulled a hollow pouch of gossamer thread and fibers dangling from a twig. This was his nest egg in disguise.
Three years ago, a Central Hudson utility crew had sliced out pieces of the four pine trees in his front yard. The nest tumbled to the ground. Two tiny eggs within shattered.
Iorio said he figured it had to be the nest of the hummingbirds that frequent his front yard. Brilliant flashes of red mark their flittings from summer flower to feeder and into the sheltering branches of the pines.
When he complained to environmental officials back then about the damage the utility crews had done to the nest, nothing happened, he said.
He took the nest inside and kept it until he got the idea to place it for sale on eBay.
"I don't really want to part with it, but times are tough right now. [I'm unemployed at the moment]," he wrote in the description to the listing. "I just hope someone else can get all the enjoyment like we do from looking at it."
The bidding was slow at first. But by Friday it climbed to more than $200. The closing high bid on Saturday was $330, more than enough to buy his girlfriend a present he had in mind.
But Iorio, 47, and Sue got different e-mails, too. One writer said the sale was illegal and threatened to turn Iorio in. He did.
"The sale or offer for sale of this nest is a violation of federal law," Robert Garabedian, a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albany, wrote to Iorio.
It's illegal to even take a feather of a covered migratory bird if it is lying on the ground in the woods. The same is true of dead owls, hawks or eagles.
"You can't do that," Garabedian said yesterday. "You have to have a permit."
The maximum penalty is up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine, he said.
Iorio spoke with Garabedian by telephone yesterday. "I told him I ain't going to argue with you. If it's against the law, it's against the law."
Iorio said he plans to donate the nest to a Pennsylvania state park near where the winning bidder lives. The law allows that.
Ironically, two experts told Iorio the nest may not be that of a hummingbird after all. With his luck, though, it would turn out to be some other restricted bird, he said.
In the meantime, he has no money for Sue's present. "I don't know how, but I will pay for it," he said. "It will come from somewhere."

< Protecting endangered species: good, everything they did to this guy and said about the situation: bad. I just really can't say enough about how fucking stupid this is. >

Eskimos Seek to Recast Global Warming as a Rights Issue

The Eskimos, or Inuit, about 155,000 seal-hunting peoples scattered around the Arctic, plan to seek a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the United States, by contributing substantially to global warming, is threatening their existence.

The Inuit plan is part of a broader shift in the debate over human-caused climate change evident among participants in the 10th round of international talks taking place in Buenos Aires aimed at averting dangerous human interference with the climate system.

Inuit leaders said they planned to announce the effort at the climate meeting today.

Representatives of poor countries and communities - from the Arctic fringes to the atolls of the tropics to the flanks of the Himalayas - say they are imperiled by rising temperatures and seas through no fault of their own. They are casting the issue as no longer simply an environmental problem but as an assault on their basic human rights.

The commission, an investigative arm of the Organization of American States, has no enforcement powers. But a declaration that the United States has violated the Inuit's rights could create the foundation for an eventual lawsuit, either against the United States in an international court or against American companies in federal court, said a number of legal experts, including some aligned with industry.

Such a petition could have decent prospects now that industrial countries, including the United States, have concluded in recent reports and studies that warming linked to heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions is contributing to big environmental changes in the Arctic, a number of experts said.

Last month, an assessment of Arctic climate change by 300 scientists for the eight countries with Arctic territory, including the United States, concluded that "human influences" are now the dominant factor.

Inuit representatives attending the conference said in telephone interviews that after studying the matter for several years with the help of environmental lawyers they would this spring begin the lengthy process of filing a petition by collecting videotaped statements from elders and hunters about the effects they were experiencing from the shrinking northern icescape.

The lawyers, at EarthJustice, a nonprofit San Francisco law firm, and the Center for International Environmental Law, in Washington, said the Inter-American Commission, which has a record of treating environmental degradation as a human rights matter, provides the best chance of success. The Inuit have standing in the Organization of American States through Canada.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the elected chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the quasi-governmental group recognized by the United Nations as representing the Inuit, said the biggest fear was not that warming would kill individuals but that it would be the final blow to a sturdy but suffering culture.

"We've had to struggle as a people to keep afloat, to keep our indigenous wisdom and traditions," she said. "We're an adaptable people, but adaptability has its limits.

"Something is bound to give, and it's starting to give in the Arctic, and we're giving that early warning signal to the rest of the world."

If the Inuit effort succeeds, it could lead to an eventual stream of litigation, somewhat akin to lawsuits against tobacco companies, legal experts said.

The two-week convention, which ends Friday, is the latest session on two climate treaties: the 1992 framework convention on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, an addendum that takes effect in February and for the first time requires most industrialized countries to curb such emissions.

The United States has signed both pacts and is bound by the 1992 treaty, which requires no emissions cuts. But the Bush administration opposes the mandatory Kyoto treaty, saying it could harm the economy and unfairly excuses big developing countries from obligations.

That situation makes the United States particularly vulnerable to such suits, environmental lawyers said.

By embracing the first treaty and signing the second, it has acknowledged that climate change is a problem to be avoided; but by subsequently rejecting the Kyoto pact, the lawyers said, it has not shown a commitment to stemming its emissions, which constitute a fourth of the global total.

The American delegation at the Buenos Aires conference declined to comment on Tuesday on the petition or the arguments behind it. "Until the Inuit have presented a complaint, we are not responding to that issue," a State Department official said. "When they do, we will look at what they have to say, consider it and then respond."

Christopher C. Horner, a lawyer for the Cooler Heads Coalition, an industry-financed group opposed to cutting the emissions, said the chances of success of such lawsuits had risen lately.

From his standpoint, he said, "The planets are aligned very poorly."

Delegates who flew to the conference from the Arctic's far-flung communities, where retreating sea ice imperils traditional seal hunts, said they planned to meet in Buenos Aires with representatives from small-island nations that could eventually be swamped by rising seas, swelled by meltwater from shrinking glaciers and Arctic ice sheets.

Enele S. Sopoaga, the ambassador to the United Nations from Tuvalu, a 15-foot-high nation of wave-pounded atolls halfway between Australia and Hawaii, said he still saw legal efforts as a last resort.

Tuvalu had threatened to sue the United States two years ago in the International Court of Justice, but held off for a variety of reasons.

When Shots Ring Out, a Listening Device Acts as Witness

IN an unusual application of neuroscience research, police agencies around the country may soon be able to equip street corners with microphones and video cameras to fight gun-related crime.

The system, based on work by Dr. Theodore Berger, director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California, uses the equipment and a computer to recognize gunshots, pinpoint where they came from and transmit the coordinates to a command center. It relies on software that mimics the way the human brain receives, processes and analyzes sound. The system has drawn the attention of several law enforcement agencies, including police departments in Chicago, Oklahoma City and Phoenix and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

"When you put in automated gunshot recognition in a highly visible format like this, the residents no longer have to fear reprisal and the police no longer have to depend on the residents for accurate information," said Bryan Baker, 56, chief executive officer of Safety Dynamics. He and Dr. Berger co-founded the company in Oak Brook, Ill., 20 months ago to produce the system, called Smart Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition and Identification, or Sentri.

Dr. Berger, 54, who is also chief scientist at Safety Dynamics, said the system was able to distinguish gunshots from voices, car traffic and construction. "You can find that brains can do it, but you can't find physical systems that can do it," Dr. Berger said. "It's very hard to corrupt the signal in such a way that we don't know what's going on."

The software is able to recognize sound by dividing it into small sections and matching them to known audio-wave patterns through a technique known as wavelet analysis. The system also examines the incoming sound as a whole, making sure that its components are heard in the proper order, even if one is obscured by other noises, such as a loud truck.

Over time, the system can learn to recognize certain sounds. "The gunshot has a particular unique signature, where you have the sound of the explosion when the firing pin hits the bullet and the sound of the bullet as it expels from the gun," Mr. Baker said. "You've got a little blip, and then a drop, and then a big blip, and with the training we've done now, we've picked it up so that both blips are part of what it has learned."

The system uses four microphones, contained along with the computer in a bulletproof box two feet by two feet by three feet. The system is able to determine quickly where a gun was fired, using the difference in time that the sound took to reach each microphone. The computer sends a signal to the video camera, which zooms in on the location. The system then transmits information and the video directly to law enforcement headquarters. The devices, which cost up to $25,000 each, can cover an area with a radius of about 200 yards.

Cmdr. Sid Heal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who is in charge of evaluating technology for the agency, said that the system is likely to provide greater "situational awareness." In about six months, the sheriff's department will test the devices, installing as many as 20 around Los Angeles County.

The information and video images can be immediately reviewed by officers at headquarters who may be able to determine the nature of the incident, he said. "Because of that we gain a tremendous tactical advantage before we arrive on the scene," he added.

Beyond standard urban law enforcement, the American military has taken notice of Dr. Berger's research. In fact, the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., has been financing his neuroscience research for the last 10 years.

In the summer of 2002, Dr. Berger had been working on applying his research to voice recognition software, and discovered that it worked even in very noisy environments.

The Office of Naval Research and Mr. Baker both approached him independently to discuss possible commercial applications. Dr. Berger said that the military had ideas for using his technology to monitor "security-breaching noises," such as the sound of a chain-link fence being cut, or to recognize human voices in unauthorized areas.

"It has a lot of applications," said Dr. Joel L. Davis, program officer at Office of Naval Research. "Any perimeter that you want to secure and you don't want to expend a lot of assets in guarding - you want to do it on a 24-hour basis - these systems are all good for that."

Dr. Davis envisions the day when the system can be incorporated in a hand-held device that soldiers could use in the battlefield.

Dr. Robert Sclabassi, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh and a member of a committee that reviews Dr. Berger's research, said that his work on voice recognition was "a major step forward in terms of what people have done." The gunshot-recognition system is based on the same technology, and while it is possible that it would not work as well, "I don't know why it wouldn't," he said.

Dr. Berger said that the next version of the system might also include the ability to recognize different sounds at once. For example, the ability to recognize a human voice, human footsteps, gunshots and the climbing of a chain-link fence, which in combination would paint the picture of an armed break-in. He also wants to upgrade the system's visual abilities so that it could track the shooter.

To do that, the system would have to recognize human shapes. "There are multiple things in an urban setting that can be moving," he said, "but we want to have form identification."

Florida county bans Christmas trees from public buildings

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. (AP) - Pasco County, Fla., officials have banned Christmas trees from public buildings after their county attorney decided they are religious symbols.

Dozens of people have complained to the county north of Tampa and a constitutional law group this week urged it to reverse its decision. "This whole thing is silly. It floors me," said Marijane Graham, 67, of Dade City. "I'm sure there are atheists celebrating Christmas somewhere just for the spirit of giving. I've never read about a Christmas tree in the Bible, or Santa for that matter."

The last of the Christmas trees was removed Wednesday, said Dan Johnson, assistant county administrator for Public Services. Trees in "semiprivate" areas, such as personal offices, were allowed to remain.

Previously, the county barred religious symbols from its buildings but allowed Christmas trees. The county attorney reconsidered that stance and decided the trees also were religious symbols, after a man sought to display a menorah in a public building, Johnson said.

"What you allow for one (religious symbol) you must provide for all," Johnson said.

The American Center for Law & Justice, a law firm founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, asked the county to reverse the decision, saying it was based on a flawed understanding of the law. The center said Christmas trees are legally considered a secular symbol of the national holiday.

The centre's chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, said in a news release "this is the most extreme example of censorship imaginable."

Johnson said the decision would stand through the holidays, but it would be reviewed next year.

The holiday season has brought with it a scattering of conflicts across the country in which some Christian groups have accused governments and businesses of trying to remove religious messages from their celebrations and greetings.

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered the Plano, Texas, school district to allow students to distribute gifts that include religious messages - such as Christian-themed candy canes - at school parties scheduled for Friday.

Parents had sued this week over a policy they said banned their children's religious expression from classrooms. School officials said that on Dec. 1 they had changed the policy to allow distribution of all materials - religious or otherwise - at Friday's parties.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday the town of Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., must allow a resident to display Christian decorations alongside a public Jewish holiday display.

Court Grants Bail to EBay's Indian Exec

NEW DELHI - The Delhi High Court on Tuesday granted bail to the head of eBay's Indian subsidiary, an American citizen who was jailed in connection with the online auction of a sex video involving teenagers.


Avnish Bajaj, the CEO of Baazee.com ? India's most popular shopping portal, now owned by California-based eBay Inc. ? was arrested Friday after the sale of images showing classmates at a New Delhi high school engaged in oral sex. His arrest drew rebuke from industry officials and legal experts and also the interest of the U.S. State Department.


In granting Bajaj bail, Judge Vikramjit Sen asked him to surrender his passport and not leave the country without the court's permission, the Press Trust of India (news - web sites) reported.


Police say they arrested Bajaj because he violated India's Information Technology Act of 2000, which makes a criminal offense "publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form, which is obscene."


But eBay, which bought Baazee.com for $50 million in June, said it was "outraged" by the police action. The sex video sale took place without the knowledge of company officials, it said. The seller violated the policies of Baazee.com and was deleted from the Web site as soon as the company became aware of the incident, eBay said in a weekend statement.


On Tuesday, the 17-year-old boy who made the video was ordered held for questioning in a juvenile rehabilitation center until Jan. 4. The boy, arrested Sunday, used a camera-fitted cell phone to film himself and his girlfriend having oral sex and then circulated the images to his friends.


Police believe his arrest will help track how the video clip reach its seller, a student at India's most prestigious engineering college in the eastern city of Kharagpur. He was arrested a week ago.


Meanwhile, industry officials and legal experts demanded that the government clarify the country's Information Technology Act. The law is ambiguous about who should be held responsible for such offenses.


In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday that American consular officials were providing help to the Indian-born Bajaj, a Harvard Business School graduate.


"It is a matter that we are paying quite a bit of attention to," Boucher said. "This situation is one of concern at highest levels of the U.S. government."


Some say Bajaj may have been the victim of overzealous Indian police, who wanted to appear on top of the case in the face of the widespread public outrage.


"This sounds like a gross overreaction," said Peter Morici, professor of international business at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md.


Morici, former director of economics at the U.S. International Trade Commission, said law enforcement agencies and the courts may have been responding to demands from wealthy Indians whose children attend the school where the scandal erupted.

< Just whatever you do, don't arrest someone who's actually done something wrong. >

Learning Early That Success Is a Game

WHEN my children push my buttons, they do it with an Xbox controller. As I watch the two of them staring at the screen, oblivious to the real world around them (specifically their mother standing nearby and talking about room-straightening), I fear for their future. What kind of juvenile delinquents am I raising? Who would ever hire someone whose proudest achievement is reaching the 70th level in Everquest?

Before you start composing your outraged e-mail messages, let me assure you that, yes, there are limits on the amount of time that Evan, 13, and Alex, 10, can spend playing video games. And, yes, we revisit those rules periodically as their life-schoolwork equation changes. But even the strictest limits would not mitigate my baseline worries.

Why are my boys so entranced with this world in the first place? What does it mean that they want to climb into this magic box instead of heading outside or joining a team or even talking on the phone for far too many hours? (For the record, I used a touch-tone Princess phone to press my parents' buttons.) Why can they look at a screen and see a world where they belong while I look at the same screen and get a migraine?

Just in time for gift-giving season (Evan wants Xbox Live, Alex wants the new Game Boy, but they are not getting them), John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade have come along to make me feel a little better.

Mr. Beck, a senior research fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, and Mr. Wade, a consultant to companies like Google and the RAND Corporation, have just published "Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever" (Harvard Business School Press). They collected 2,000 detailed questionnaires and conducted 200 additional interviews for the book. And they assure me that by playing video games my boys are actually training for the new world of work, not avoiding it.

Mr. Beck and Mr. Wade divide the world into two groups: those who grew up with video games (the gamers) and those who did not. The fault line, at the moment, is at about age 30, and the difference in worldview is so sharp that it is already transforming the workplace. "This new generation is completely different from the baby boomers, in the way they think and work," said Mr. Wade, who, like his co-author, is a nongamer in his mid-40's, "and all of this is directly attributable to gaming."

My first mistake - and the first mistake of many workplace managers, the authors write - is in thinking that these games are an oddity or a niche. "Game Boy and PlayStation aren't just a faintly embarrassing part of the economic landscape," they write. "They are a central, defining part of growing up for millions of people. The first massive wave of mainstream gamers are in their 20's and early 30's now. They think games are just another part of the real world."

So, my children are not social outcasts. But what are they learning? According to Mr. Wade and Mr. Beck, they are learning a lot more than how to steal cars (no, I don't let them play that one) or shoot aliens (yes, they do quite a bit of that). Among the author's list of lessons from the gaming world:

"You are the star. Unlike, say, Little League, where most kids will never be the star."

"You're the boss. The world is very responsive to you."

"There's always an answer. You might be frustrated for a while, you might even never find it, but you know it's there."

"Trial and error is almost always the best plan."

"It's all about the competition."

"Young people rule."

Now imagine how some of these messages translate into the work world. To start, gamers are 50 percent more likely than nongamers of the same age to describe themselves as "a deep expert in my work," a somewhat arrogant worldview for people in their 20's. The flip side of this arrogance, however, is a willingness to take a chance (60 percent of frequent gamers, compared with 45 percent of nongamers in the same age group, agree that "the best rewards come to those who take risks") and a view of failure as just part of the game.

"Sometimes you do everything right and you still die," Mr. Wade said. "So you pick yourself up and start again."

I can live with that message, even though I can't shake the feeling that it was designed to sell books to conflicted parents like me. I will let my boys continue to play their games, with restrictions. And I will hope that navigating the Legend of Zelda is somehow helping them navigate the world. What do I know? I am a dinosaur who can't even operate the controller.

Newlyweds told they need proof

New Paltz ? Advice for the newly married of New Paltz: Bring your driver's license to the Social Security office if you want to change your name.
Or bring your health insurance card. Or maybe your supermarket's Price-Plus card. Because if you were one of the 134 people granted marriage certificates by the New Paltz town clerk since Feb. 27, Social Security won't believe you're married ? a fact that all kinds of people outside the federal bureaucracy find unbelievable, discriminatory and just a little bizarre, even for a federal bureaucracy.
Feb. 27 was the date on which Village Mayor Jason West gained national notoriety by solemnizing 25 same-sex marriages. Because of the legal controversy surrounding gay marriage, Social Security says it won't accept any marriage certificates from New Paltz issued since then if a woman wants to change her maiden name.
"That's horrendous," said New Paltz Town Clerk Marian Cappillino, who, like every other town clerk in the state, has refused to issue certificates to gay couples.
"If a certificate has the name Marian Cappillino, I guarantee you it's legal," she said.
Doesn't matter, says Social Security spokesman John Shallman. It's all got to do with keeping the record straight and not discriminating against anyone.
"Social Security records are the key to many government agencies," Shallman said. "We have to ensure the security and accuracy of those records."
And because it doesn't differentiate between tradition pairings and gay ones, it's non-discriminatory," he said.
To which news West reacted with a dismissive hoot.
"This is so patently bigoted it's almost unbelievable," he said.
New Paltz isn't the only community on Social Security's hit list. San Francisco is there and also Asbury Park, N.J., as well as two counties in Oregon and New Mexico, where gay marriage is in dispute. Because gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, the restriction doesn't apply there.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey's office has filed a complaint about the policy with the agency, urging federal officials to rescind it.
The policy "is arbitrarily targeting individuals who have been legally married," the letter said, while denying "law-abiding citizens access to federal services routinely provided to other Americans."
Meanwhile, Susie Wilkening, the New Paltz newlywed who sparked the controversy when she tried to change her name using her marriage certificate, has refused to abide by the restriction.
"Anyone can change their name, but I can't prove I'm married until they change their policy," she said. "I want them to recognize my marriage ? I guess I'm just a little bit stubborn."

Teens Catch Molester On Video

The four victims wondered if the girl they were told they were having sex with for three years was, in fact, Stephen Hill.


The boys had a plan -- and they put it on home video.


In January, they sat down on a couch in front of a camera and one by one introduced themselves by name and age, ending with and I think Im being molested.


Then they told an unbelievable story.


Stephen Hill was inviting them over to have sex with a 20-year old girl named Dawn. But instead of a woman, the teens began to think they were actually having sex with Hill.

We could never see her, one boy says on the tape. She was supposedly 20 years old and she didn't want to know, she thought if we had seen her, we'd tell on her.


We got blindfolded, another boy said, and we could never see him at all and we never could touch her supposedly, Dawn. Her name was Dawn -- we could never touch her at all, not in the girl spots.


One of the boys says once he looked underneath the blindfold.


I lifted the shirt up a little bit over my eyes and when I stood up I looked down and I saw a man's -----.


Each boy claimed to have a different revelation.


We all got together and figured out all the facts came down to it not being a girl. It was a guy. It feels like it was a guy. All the observations come down to being a guy, which we think is him, Steve Hill.


I really feel violated. I feel like I've had my manhood taken away from me.

Me, too.

On the tape, the boys then described how theyre going to try to catch Hill in the act.

Were going to go back to Dawn -- supposedly Dawn, which we think is Steve Hill. We're all going to try to go together and we are all going to try to catch him on tape while he got us blindfolded.

So we are doing this tape and we are going to write individual letters, too, and let people know what's really going on in case he ends up doing something to all of us.

The victims did confront Hill, according to Hill's lawyer, Ken Lawson.

Stephen panicked. He was embarrassed, Lawson said. He ran out the room with the video camera, went to another room in the house. After he got himself together, he came back upstairs and that's when the boys said we want money, $5,000 each.

A few weeks after that confrontation, the boys began calling Hill and recording the conversations, looking for an admission..

Heres how one phone conversation went:

Boy: Hello, Steve?

Hill: Yep.

Boy: I'm getting real impatient, so I have to pop this question real quick.

Hill: You gotta what now?

Boy: Pop this question real quick off my mind.

Hill: Do what now?

Boy: I've got to pop this question off my mind right now.

Hill: OK.

Boy: Why did you have us think we was having sex with a girl when we were really having it with you?

Hill: I can't, I can't, Im in the middle of doing something now.

Boy: Can you answer the question real quick?

Hill: Not when I'm in the middle of doing something right now. You all going to be around tomorrow?

Boy: Yeah, we'll be around tomorrow.

Hill: OK.

A couple of days later, the boys get a call and the answers.

As shown on the tape, the caller ID on the phone lists the time and date of the call and the name: Stephen Hill.

Hill: Is the line clear?

Boy: Yeah, click over.

Hill: Hello? I don't have a good answer for you, all right? I don't. I'm seeing a psychiatrist now, all right? Do you know what a psychiatrist is?

Boy: Not exactly.

Hill: I can't hear you.

Boy: Not exactly.

Hill: A psychiatrist is somebody who sees somebody who has mental disorders, mind problems. What I did was crazy and it was wrong and I can't give you an explanation for it. It doesn't help you. You guys have every reason to be pissed with me and you have every reason to kill me, and if you are angry with me, stay angry with me. I've earned it. You hear?

Boy: Yeah.

Hill: What I did was wrong and you will have questions from now until the day you die.

Hill then tells the victims about getting them more money.

Hill: You guys, Ive got to give you guys more money. Its going to take me some months between paying, between giving you guys all that money and paying for the psychiatrist, and my insurance won't cover because I can't report it to my insurance company. Im broke. I am broke. I barely have enough money to go to, but I brought that on myself. I'm not complaining to you. I'm broke and Ive got to come up with some more money. Im working extra hours to come up with some more money. Ive got to pay off all that I gave you guys, then I'll have money for you guys. Possibly in about 6 to 9 to 12 months I'll have the rest of the money for you.

The conversation ends soon after one of the boys asks one simple question.

Boy: That camera that was in the room when we was having sex with you, did you put us on the Internet?

Hill: No, there was nothing in the camera, nothing in the camera. As a matter of fact, if I put you on there, I put me on there.

As we all know, Stephen Hill did tape the boys when they had sex, Jones reports, and he wasn't seeing a psychiatrist.

Three days after that phone call, Hill was arrested.

Hill pleaded guilty and agreed to a five-year prison sentence. On Thursday, a judge delcared him a sexual predator, meaning he will have to register his address and inform the community where he lives when he's out of prison.

Lawson says Hill has already paid the victims and their civil lawsuit should be dismissed.

The victims family maintains Hill gave the kids money to keep them quiet and they didnt ask for the cash.

Bush Prepares for Possible GPS Shutdown

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.

Any shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only the most remarkable circumstances, said a Bush administration official who spoke to a small group of reporters at the White House on condition of anonymity.


The GPS system is vital to commercial aviation and marine shipping.


The president also instructed the Defense Department to develop plans to disable, in certain areas, an enemy's access to the U.S. navigational satellites and to similar systems operated by others. The European Union (news - web sites) is developing a $4.8 billion program, called Galileo.


The military increasingly uses GPS technology to move troops across large areas and direct bombs and missiles. Any government-ordered shutdown or jamming of the GPS satellites would be done in ways to limit disruptions to navigation and related systems outside the affected area, the White House said.


"This is not something you would do lightly," said James A. Lewis, director of technology policy for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's clearly a big deal. You have to give them credit for being so open about what they're going to do."


President Clinton (news - web sites) abandoned the practice in May 2000 of deliberately degrading the accuracy of civilian navigation signals, a technique known as "selective availability."


The White House said it will not reinstate that practice, but said the president could decide to disable parts of the network for national security purposes.


The directives to the Defense Department and the Homeland Security Department were part of a space policy that Bush signed this month. It designates the GPS network as a critical infrastructure for the U.S. government. Part of the new policy is classified; other parts were disclosed Wednesday.


The White House said the policies were aimed at improving the stability and performance of the U.S. navigation system, which Bush pledged will continue to be made available for free.


The U.S. network is comprised of more than two dozen satellites that act as beacons, sending location-specific radio signals that are recognized by devices popular with motorists, hikers, pilots and sailors.


Bush also said the government will make the network signals more resistant to deliberate or inadvertent jamming.

Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future?

When HBO's "Six Feet Under" returns in 2005, it won't just be the end of a long-running hit series. It may also be a turning point for TV viewers who are in the habit of recording shows to watch weeks or even months later.

Sources at two different cable companies have told AllYourTV.com that discussions have begun which will may lead to a restriction of use for fans of several popular television shows.

The discussions are reportedly in very early stages, and the details are still very broad. But this is what I can confirm at this date.

A middle-level executive at Time Warner has approached several cable companies and broached the idea of restricting the ability of customers who use those company's Digital Video Recorders to record several popular Time Warner TV programs.

The term being used by the executive is"transitional fair use," and the scenerio laid out goes roughly along these lines:

Viewers would be able to record an episode with their DVR, but there would be a time limit on how long it would be available for viewing. The executive was pushing for an expiration date that coincided with the premiere of the next episode. The consensus of the cable executived was that it needed to be between 2-4 weeks.

Regardless, the episode would then be unavailable until they are offered as part of a "video on demand" package. There would also be restrictions on recording episodes via VOD, with the Time Warner executive pushing for the ability to completely prevent recording the VOD presentations. Cable executives argue that this restriction prevents time-shifting and limits the revenue upside for both parties.

Once again, the episodes would be unavailable until they were offered again on cable, at a date that closely matched the release of the DVD box set.

While I have been unable to get any of the parties to publicly comment on the talks, several sources have confirmed the informal talks. It's difficult to know how serious the discussions will be, but it is known that several studios have been eyeing a restriction on the ability of viewers to record video-on-demand and pay-per-view titles.

There is certainly no legal reason to prevent studios or networks from pursuing this 'transitional copyright' approach to TV viewing. But it's difficuult for me to see just how it serves the needs of the viewer or the producers. It seems to be a punitive approach to the problem of illegal file-sharing. And it seems doomed to failure in the long term.

< Every single measure they take in the name of anti-piracy effects the innocent and the marginal. The innocent outnumber the marginal 100 to 1. Absolutely none of these type of measures stop those "criminals" and they Do hurt massive amounts of innocent people far more than they have any hope of hurting any guilty. >

Australian police given green light to use spyware

Under the new Surveillance Devices Act passed last week in Australia, law enforcement officials Down Under will be allowed to use various spyware applications to gather evidence during investigations. After obtaining a warrant, police will be able to install malware such as keystroke loggers, trackers, and other unwelcome applications on PCs of those targeted in some criminal investigations. Under the Act, warrants can be obtained if an officer has "reasonable grounds" and feels such surveillance methods are necessary to gather evidence.

Australian civil rights groups have been quick to criticize the new law, saying that the legislation does not do enough to safeguard the rights of Australians. Fears have also been raised about police obtaining data such as banking passwords and other sensitive information. Even more disturbing, a keylogger could capture text from e-mails never sent, Word documents never saved, and other data that is never committed to a file. The possibilities are troubling.

"No, we didn't find anything in the defendant's possession, your honor. However, we did find that he once typed the words 'dirty bomb' at one point during a web browsing session several months ago."

Australia and the US have lately been on the same page when it comes to technology-related legislation. The free trade agreement signed last summer between the two nations required Australia to enact laws very similar to the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While the US has moved moved in a different direction with regard to the spyware issue, it wouldn't be too surprising to see similar powers granted to law enforcement in the US.

All the more reason to make sure your PC is free of malware and you have the best spyware removal tools.

Soldier's Bomber Costume Causes Alarm

LONDON (AP) -- A drunken soldier sparked a security alert when he left a costume party dressed as a suicide bomber, wearing a turban, false beard and a combat jacket stuffed with pretend explosives, British police said Friday.

A member of the public called police after seeing the sergeant in his costume walking along a road near the Aldershot army base in southern England on Wednesday.

Fifteen police squad cars, armed officers, dog handlers and members of the Royal Military Police were called to the alert.

The soldier, a member of the Coldstream Guards who had been attending a costume party celebrating his regiment's role in the 1815 battle of Waterloo, was arrested and spent the night in custody.

He was charged with a public order offense and fined around $150, police said.

What Price Privacy?

A huge spending bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday could create a new hot job-growth sector: chief privacy officers.

Every federal agency, regardless of size or function, will have to hire a chief privacy officer and employ an outside auditing firm biennially to ensure compliance with the nation's privacy laws, according to a little-noticed provision.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) included the language in the $388 billion spending bill.

Currently, only the Department of Homeland Security is required to have a chief privacy officer, though other agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, have had one for years.

The provision is given added weight by the intelligence reform bill -- awaiting the president's signature -- which says that Congress believes intelligence agencies should have privacy and civil liberties officers.

The officers will be charged with making sure new technologies do not impinge on civil liberties and that federal databases comply with fair information practices.

The job of a privacy officer, according to DHS's chief privacy officer Nuala O'Connor Kelly, is to "further an agency's mission by creating good rules for the responsible use of personal information."

While civil-liberties and open-government advocates have long pushed for high-level privacy officers, some worry that the new provision might actually be too broad.

Law professor Peter Swire, who served as President Clinton's chief counselor for privacy, argues that not all agencies are the same when it comes to privacy.

"Some agencies face major privacy issues, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department," Swire said. "Others really only have privacy issues for their own employees. The level of auditing and scrutiny should be much greater for the key agencies."

Outside audits could be enormously helpful in getting agencies to treat privacy as seriously as they do security, according to Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

"If privacy experts from the outside come in and say, 'Did you do X, Y and Z?' and those things were not on the agency's list, that's the only way you can improve a privacy project," Schwartz said.

Still, Schwartz hopes the Office of Management and Budget will issue guidelines that direct efforts toward agencies with the most information, so small agencies with little sensitive information will not drown in bureaucracy.

However, the OMB could decide that the provision only applies to the Treasury and Transportation departments, since the provision was included in the funding section devoted to those departments.

Shelby intended the bill to apply to the whole federal government, according to his spokeswoman, Virginia Davis.

The idea is not without its detractors, however.

On Monday, House Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis (R-Virginia) introduced a bill to repeal the provision outright.

Davis says privacy is the purview of chief information officers, which were required under a 2002 computer security law.

The intelligence-overhaul bill also complicates the question of jurisdiction by creating a privacy and civil liberties commission that will oversee the nation's intelligence efforts.

< What price no privacy? >

Police say teacher 'wed' 14-year-old girl in pagan ritual

SOUTH HAVEN -- A teacher and a 14-year-old former female student whom she is accused of sexually assaulting participated in witchcraft together and even "wed" in a pagan ritual, police said.

Elizabeth Miklosovic, 36, a teacher at South Haven's Baseline Middle School, was arraigned Thursday on a charge of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Van Buren County.

If convicted, Miklosovic faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. She was ordered held on $100,000 bond and remained in the county jail Friday.

Also Thursday, the Kent County prosecutor's office issued arrest warrants for Miklosovic on charges of first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct that accuse her of performing illegal sex acts with the student at the teacher's Grand Rapids home.

Miklosovic lives with another woman and their adopted son, authorities said.

The student told a classmate about the relationship and the classmate told school officials, who placed the seventh-grade language arts teacher on leave from her job. Miklosovic has worked for South Haven Public Schools for three years.

John Weiss, principal of the middle school, said he was surprised to learn about the charges. School administrators and counselors met with students and other teachers throughout the day Thursday.

"There have been a wide variety of reactions," he told The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph. "There are 550 students and 550 reactions, it seems."

The student told Michigan State Police that she and Miklosovic had about five sexual encounters from June to October in the teacher's home, a park in Van Buren County and a state park in Manistee County.

Although the girl was in Miklosovic's class in the past, the sexual contact did not occur until this year, authorities said.

Miklosovic has no previous criminal record in Michigan, state police records show.

She declined to answer reporters' questions after her arraignment.

James Becker has been appointed as Miklosovic's attorney. Contacted Friday at his Paw Paw law office, Becker declined to comment about the case, saying he had not yet seen the police report.

The girl's family said Miklosovic brainwashed the girl into thinking the two did nothing wrong. A relative told The Grand Rapids Press that the family initially believed Miklosovic's interest in the girl -- who was described as vulnerable and as having emotional problems -- was to help her.

Detective Sgt. Diane Oppenheim of the state police post in South Haven said the student came to trust the teacher so much, she agreed to "marry" the woman in a pagan ritual.

"They also participated in witchcraft together," Oppenheim said.

Miklosovic's preliminary examination on the Van Buren County charge is scheduled for Dec. 13.

< Life in prison, whew. The world is such a worse place because of this. >

Internet Connects Strangers in Cyber Suicide Pacts

The car, parked on a deserted mountain road near Tokyo, had its windows taped shut from the inside. In the car were small charcoal burners ? and the bodies of seven people.

Within a few miles of the scene, another car held two more bodies.

The suicide victims were five men and two women ranging in age from 34 to 20. They came from all over Japan. What drew them together was an Internet posting from the 34-year-old woman offering a suicide pact.

On Nov. 28, four men were found dead in a Tokyo apartment where they had gassed themselves. The next day, two men and two women were found dead in a car parked near a dam outside Tokyo. Police suspect the two unrelated groups met over the Internet.

Could it happen outside Japan? Psychiatrist Sundararajan Rajagopal, MD, thinks it might. His editorial in the Dec. 4 issue of the British Medical Journal sounds the alarm. Rajagopal is with the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust in London.

"In recent years there has been concern about the role of the Internet in normal suicide ? solitary suicide, people who take their lives on their own," Rajagopal tells WebMD. "There is evidence that the Internet can influence people to take their own lives. The term coined is 'cybersuicide.' What we are seeing in Japan may occur sporadically in other countries. We cannot rule out the possibility that people, who might otherwise have taken their lives on their own, will meet on the Internet to form suicide pacts."


Suicide Sites Easy to Find

Web sites dedicated to suicide are easy to find on the Internet. Here are some excerpts from one suicide chat room:

?"I somethings [sic] think I'd prefer myself dead. And then other times I do as well. And sometimes, I think I'd prefer myself dead. And rarely I don't not think I'd prefer myself dead.

?"You really want to die but on the good days you programmed yourself to know that on the bad days when you really want to die you don't really want to die and that you are thinking irrationally. But i want to die."

?"Now if you'll excuse me, i have a bus to catch."

"Catching a bus," on these web sites, is slang for killing oneself. Don't try to log on to save anyone. Those leaving antisuicide messages are banned from the sites.

Perhaps it was just talk and nothing serious. But psychologist Gerald Goodman, PhD, professor emeritus at the University of California in Los Angeles, says it's important to take talk of suicide seriously.

"Suicide oftentimes involves some sense of isolation," Goodman says. "Theorists say that the heart of it is meaninglessness. Meaninglessness without hope. When you look at why people do it, there are several things that add up: isolation, meaninglessness, and self-loathing ? disgust with oneself."

The Wrong Kind of Community Support

If isolation is part of the recipe for suicide, wouldn't a community ? even an Internet chat room of suicidal people ? keep people from killing themselves?

No, Goodman says. In fact, suicidal patients often tell him in chilling language that other people's suicides gave them "inspiration" or "courage" to kill themselves. It comes, ironically, from the human need to be known.

"The suicide wants company. The suicidal person thinks, 'I want to be known by you, and if you truly empathize with me there is no question you will want to talk me out of it ? because if you know me you know it is the right thing to do,'" Goodman says. "So the empathy on these web sites is not saying, "Oh, I really understand you.' Instead, they demonstrate that they know how you feel by adding to it. It is collaborative. It is mutual support for suicide."

Goodman notes that there are many more web sites dedicated to mental health, support, and professional help than there are to suicide. But the suicide sites offer something enormously powerful.

"Mutual support is more powerful as a change agent than psychotherapy," Goodman says. "Psychotherapy is one-way intimacy. But with mutual support, we are both in it together. You aren't going to try to talk me out of it. We want the same thing. I've heard the word inspiration twice in this context. Inspiration for suicide."

Since young people are at particular risk of Internet-supported suicide, Goodman suggests that parents monitor teens' Internet use. And Rajagopal suggests that doctors and psychologists should ask depressed patients about whether they have used the Internet to obtain information about suicide.

The good news, Rajagopal notes, is that very few suicides ? only about one in 100, even in Japan ? are linked to the Internet.

"Suicide pacts are a very small proportion of suicides, and the number of Internet-linked suicides is still very small," he says. "I don't want people to be unduly alarmed."

'We will be able to live to 1,000'

Aubrey de Grey: "The first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already"
Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why.

Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today.

I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing.

It is not just an idea: it's a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time.

And each method to do this is either already working in a preliminary form (in clinical trials) or is based on technologies that already exist and just need to be combined.

This means that all parts of the project should be fully working in mice within just 10 years and we might take only another 10 years to get them all working in humans.

When we get these therapies, we will no longer all get frail and decrepit and dependent as we get older, and eventually succumb to the innumerable ghastly progressive diseases of old age.

We will still die, of course - from crossing the road carelessly, being bitten by snakes, catching a new flu variant etcetera - but not in the drawn-out way in which most of us die at present.

I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already


So, will this happen in time for some people alive today? Probably. Since these therapies repair accumulated damage, they are applicable to people in middle age or older who have a fair amount of that damage.

I think the first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already.

It is very complicated, because ageing is. There are seven major types of molecular and cellular damage that eventually become bad for us - including cells being lost without replacement and mutations in our chromosomes.

Each of these things is potentially fixable by technology that either already exists or is in active development.

'Youthful not frail'

The length of life will be much more variable than now, when most people die at a narrow range of ages (65 to 90 or so), because people won't be getting frailer as time passes.

There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life

The average age will be in the region of a few thousand years. These numbers are guesses, of course, but they're guided by the rate at which the young die these days.

If you are a reasonably risk-aware teenager today in an affluent, non-violent neighbourhood, you have a risk of dying in the next year of well under one in 1,000, which means that if you stayed that way forever you would have a 50/50 chance of living to over 1,000.

And remember, none of that time would be lived in frailty and debility and dependence - you would be youthful, both physically and mentally, right up to the day you mis-time the speed of that oncoming lorry.

Should we cure ageing?

Curing ageing will change society in innumerable ways. Some people are so scared of this that they think we should accept ageing as it is.

I think that is diabolical - it says we should deny people the right to life.

The right to choose to live or to die is the most fundamental right there is; conversely, the duty to give others that opportunity to the best of our ability is the most fundamental duty there is.

There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life. To say that we shouldn't cure ageing is ageism, saying that old people are unworthy of medical care.

Playing God?

People also say we will get terribly bored but I say we will have the resources to improve everyone's ability to get the most out of life.

People with a good education and the time to use it never get bored today and can't imagine ever running out of new things they'd like to do.

And finally some people are worried that it would mean playing God and going against nature. But it's unnatural for us to accept the world as we find it.

Ever since we invented fire and the wheel, we've been demonstrating both our ability and our inherent desire to fix things that we don't like about ourselves and our environment.

We would be going against that most fundamental aspect of what it is to be human if we decided that something so horrible as everyone getting frail and decrepit and dependent was something we should live with forever.

If changing our world is playing God, it is just one more way in which God made us in His image.

< This has implications in that people must be allowed to choose their death, something that should be the case now but isn't agreed with by government. >

Utah Man Pays $82 Fine in Pennies

SALT LAKE CITY - A Manti man has a penny for Sanpete County's thoughts. About 8,200 of them, actually.

Grant Petersen withdrew that many copper coins from his bank and delivered them in a bucket to pay an $82 fine he got for driving with a burnt-out headlight.

Court officials are apparently not amused, and have asked Petersen to come back in and offer a more "acceptable" form of payment. They say state policy allows clerks to reject unusual forms of payment, and it's going to waste county resources for someone to count all that change.

Petersen says he doesn't plan on honoring that request. He says money is money, and U.S. law provides that coins are legal tender.

< Aside from the fact that it's Money he's paying, I don't suppose they thought it'd take them less time to bitch about it than to count out one stack of 100 and then just make 82 more stacks the same height? >

Teenagers fail to see the consequences

Juveniles may find it harder than adults to foresee the consequences of their actions. The finding may explain why teenagers act compulsively and take more risks. It has been seized on by campaigners who want to ban the death penalty for under-18s in the US.

We know teenagers can be a bit gawky while they are still learning to coordinate their bodies, says Abigail Baird, a cognitive scientist from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, US. ?We mustn?t forget that cognition is doing the same.? Teenagers take more risks, because they do not foresee the consequences as adults do, she says.

Several bodies, including the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, have submitted evidence in a test case before the US Supreme Court arguing against the death penalty for juveniles, and including some of Baird?s ideas. While 31 states ban the execution of juvenile offenders, 23 under-18s have been executed to date, more than half of them in Texas.

The test case concerns Christopher Simmons, who was sentenced to death for a murder he committed when he was 17. In August 2003, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his sentence on the grounds that it violated the Eighth Amendment?s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In July 2004, Simmons?s lawyers asked the US Supreme Court to uphold the lower court?s decision.


Swimming with sharks


In Baird?s experiment, carried out with colleague Jonathan Fugelsang, teenagers and adults were shown scenarios on a computer screen, such as eating a salad or swimming with sharks. The subjects had to judge whether each was safe or dangerous. Both groups took longer to decide a scenario was dangerous, but this difference was greater in teenagers. Adults took 1.6 seconds longer to reach a decision while teenagers took 1.75 seconds more.

Brain scans taken during the test show that the prefrontal cortex was more active in the teens, suggesting they were making a greater effort to judge the results of each situation. The adults had more basal ganglia activity, pointing to a more automatic response, Baird told a meeting on Law and the Brain at the Institute of Advanced Legal studies, part of University College London, UK, this week.

In light of Baird?s studies, US district judge Morris Hoffman from Colorado described two cases he had presided over involving a 16 and a 17-year-old, both had received mandatory life sentences for killing with no opportunity for parole. ?I ask myself, should our responses have been different?? he says, ?I?m embarrassed to say that I?m not sure I know.?

Although the Simmons case specifically addresses under-18s, Baird says there is a grey area in the late teens to early 20s. There can be big disagreements about how mature, say, an 18 to 21-year-old is. ?There is no way to know where a kid falls on this chart,? she says.

Battling the Copyright Big Boys

Lobbyists for movie studios and record labels have long dominated the copyright discussion in Washington, using their power and influence to help craft law favorable to their interests.

Now, a group of citizens in favor of a more consumer-friendly copyright policy have formed a political action committee in hopes that the interests of the public can be served, too.

"Copyright is supposed to be a balance in the Constitution," said David Alpert, president of IPac, which launched about a month before the 2004 election. "The government should not be in the business of preventing technology changes just because some companies are afraid it might hurt their existing business models."

IPac pledges to support candidates and elected officials who fight for a balance in copyright law: The group will support those who advocate for laws that will pay creators without limiting political expression, innovation or research and education, and back laws that foster new creativity. The group says it believes that intellectual property laws should be clear so technologists can innovate without being sued.

This past election, the nonpartisan group supported six candidates: Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia), Zoe Lofgren (D-California), Joe Barton (R-Texas), Christopher Cox (R-California), John Doolittle (R-California) and newcomer Oklahoma Democrat Brad Carson for the Senate. All five representatives won re-election; Carson lost.

While the $7,000 the group raised is a drop in the bucket compared with the entertainment industry's hefty coffers, IPac is encouraged by the interest it has generated in a short period of time. Over 500 people have signed on to support its mission.

"This was sort of a trial run to see if people will actually support candidates based on their intellectual-property policies, and they did," said Jason Schultz, an IPac volunteer. "We really felt there was a community out there that we could engage specifically on IP."

Alpert said IPac will research the records of legislators in Congress, provide people with information on how their legislators have voted, identify worthy candidates and help them with money and volunteers.

"I strongly support the effort IPac is making. It is important that a greater focus be brought to the need to balance the rights of copyright owners with the rights of the users," said Boucher, co-sponsor of the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (HR107), which would permit circumvention of digital locks on copyright content for non-infringing uses.

"The 1998 (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) makes it possible for creators of digital content to completely abolish fair-use rights with respect to that media," Boucher said. "The bill that I introduced ... would confirm fair-use rights for the digital era."

Boucher and his co-sponsor, Doolittle, are still in the process of collecting support to move the bill forward.

Boucher said that even though Hollywood and the record labels still have a lot of influence in Washington, consumers have gained ground since 1998. Now that the technology companies -- which believe tighter copy controls can chill innovation -- are aligned with consumer groups, there is a stronger presence for the public interest.

Earlier this year, the electronics companies, internet service providers and digital-rights groups successfully stalled the Induce Act, a bill cheered by the entertainment industry because it would effectively outlaw peer-to-peer networks. The music and film companies blame P2P for their piracy problems.

The Induce Act is only one example, Alpert said, of how content companies have tried to increase their power at the public's expense. Earlier this year, a small animation company was threatened with legal action when its This Land video, which lampooned both presidential contenders, used the tune to Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land."

"It's important for our democracy to be free to create videos like that," Alpert said.

Alpert also noted the entertainment industry's history of trying to stop the sale of VCRs, for fear of piracy. The device and the home video market turned into a boon for both consumers and the entertainment industry.

"We still have a long way to go," Boucher said. "The equation is still unbalanced."