Saving the Artistic Orphans

Valuable resources are being lost to students, researchers and historians because of sweeping changes in copyright law, according to digital archivists who are suing the government.

These resources -- older books, films and music -- are often out of print and considered no longer commercially viable, but are still locked up under copyright. Locating copyright owners is a formidable challenge because Congress no longer requires that owners register or renew their copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and Rick Prelinger, a film collector, want permission to digitize these so-called orphan works to create online libraries for free public access.

In a suit filed in March, the plaintiffs in Kahle v. Ashcroft argue that multiple changes to copyright law have essentially made it impossible for works to return to the public domain. They want to have these changes declared unconstitutional.

The copyright structure has changed so people no longer have to actively register and renew their work, meaning valuable historical resources stay protected by copyright, even though no one is marketing them. In the past, the scope of copyright was much narrower. When copyright expired, those works could then be used and built upon by future creators and were available to the public.

The law "imposes enormous burdens on speech without any countervailing benefit to anybody," said Chris Sprigman, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, who is representing the plaintiff. "It doesn?t benefit the public because it keeps creative works locked up, and it doesn?t benefit private rights holders because these works are out of print. These changes to the copyright law make it more difficult for rights holders to get some licensing income because it makes them more difficult to locate."

"We want some system in place to filter out works that have no reason for continuing copyright protection from works that do," said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School who also represents Kahle and Prelinger.

The government recently filed a motion to dismiss the case. The plaintiffs filed an opposition to that motion, and the government will file its reply in October. Judge Maxine Chesney of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California will hear arguments on the case on Oct. 29.

For most of the 20th century, copyright owners had to file a registration with the copyright office to secure copyright for 28 years. If an owner chose to renew, they received an additional 28 years. Those who failed to comply lost their copyright and the work went into the public domain, meaning anyone could use the work without permission, for free.

Copyright law was an "opt-in" system, Lessig said.

Decades later, the United States ended the registration and renewal process entirely in the Copyright Act of 1976. Now, as soon as a work is "fixed in a tangible medium" -- even something as innocuous as a doodle on a cocktail napkin -- the owner has copyright protection and never has to formally register or renew. The term of copyright was also changed to the life of the owner plus 50 years for new works.

Works registered before 1976 still had to renew. That changed again in 1992, when Congress mandated that all works pre-1976 were automatically renewed, locking up yet another group of works at a time when many would likely return to the public domain.

In 1998, the term of copyright was extended again to life of the author, plus 70 years.

These rules are especially frustrating now that the digital world makes it so easy to distribute content. Archivists say that digitizing these old books, photographs and films, for instance, could be a boon for research and education.

"Because of the indiscriminate nature of copyright today, the burden of copyright regulation extends to work whether or not the original author has any need for continuing protection," the lawsuit reads. "That unnecessary burden blocks the cultivation of our culture and the spread of knowledge."

Copyright was traditionally awarded to those who wanted to claim them.

"Formalities -- especially registration and renewal -- have historically been a part of the copyright law since the beginning," said Jason Schultz, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The registration and renewal served the purpose of a balance in copyright law and it's a balance that's required by the constitution."

Data shows that on average, 85 percent of copyright owners never bothered to renew their copyright after the first 28 years anyway, said Sprigman.

The plaintiffs are currently collecting examples of orphan works to bolster their case. In one instance, a university seeks to digitize all the newspapers in the state, but for some of the defunct papers, it is impossible to know who owns the back issues, Sprigman said.

In another case, an editor would like to re-publish the essays of Dr. Leo Alexander, who wrote articles that dissect Nazi ethics for criminology journals, but the author is dead and his heirs haven't been found to grant permission. Schism, a monthly magazine of fringe literature from the late 1960s and early 1970s, is another puzzle where the copyright owner is unknown.

Critics charge the lawsuit is a re-hash of the arguments in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which challenged the length of copyright extension terms and lost in the Supreme Court in January 2003.

"I think they've come up with a creative approach to try and re-litigate these issues," said Allan Adler, vice president for legal and government affairs for the Association of American Publishers.

Adler said that while the AAP does not support the lawsuit, it is interested in addressing the problem of orphan works.

The copyright office is also aware of the issue, but declined to elaborate on what action to take: "We understand that people may not be able to find the status of a work and we'd be interested in looking at ways to deal with the situation," said Jule Sigall, associate register for policy and international affairs at the U.S. Copyright Office. "We have an open mind on the ways to address it."

Kahle hopes the problem can be solved soon.

"These works are important parts of our culture, and now that students are shifting to using the internet as their library, we want to make sure they continue to have the breadth and depth of what people have created," Kahle wrote in an e-mail. If the case loses, "the libraries that we grew up with will be effectively shut to this generation of kids that use the internet as a major source of information."

Let's Burn The Flag

The FCC has approved 13 sets of broadcast-flag rules?and that?s just the beginning.


I trust the top headline got your attention. For the record, I wouldn?t dream of doing violence to the stars and stripes. However another flag, the broadcast flag, is in the news again with the Federal Communications Commission?s announcement that it has approved 13 different ways of implementing the copy protection technology.



Actually, isn?t the term ?copy protection? a bit vague? Whom does it protect? Not the consumer. The term ?copyright protection? comes a bit closer to the truth though the term ?digital rights management??copyright protection for the era of zeroes and ones?is becoming trendier. Perhaps we should just call a spade a spade and call it ?anti-copying? technology.



Anyhow, the broadcast flag got started as a way of preventing broadcast television programming from finding its way into the file-sharing moshpit. The assumption is that what flies through the airwaves must not be allowed to fly through the Internet. The controversial solution is to embed a code, or flag, in digital TV programming to prevent unauthorized use.



Of course this doesn?t make a bit of sense. Broadcast television programming, digital or otherwise, is free and it?s delivered over the public airwaves?which, as I?ve pointed out in a past column, are owned by you and me. Under the Supreme Court?s 1984 Betamax Decision, broadcast TV programs may be recorded for time-shifting purposes and personal use in general. File sharing of these programs seems a logical extension of that court-sanctioned right.



Nonetheless the entertainment industry is waging an indiscriminate war against file sharing in all its forms and has jawboned the government and the consumer electronics industry into accepting the broadcast flag. That?s the bad news.



The good news is that there?s some wiggle room here. Each of these 13 FCC-approved ?digital output technologies and recording methods? is designed to fit a specific type of product or technology?something the electronics industry would like you to buy?so various players have opened up various loopholes for various products.



For instance, JVC, the developer of the D-VHS VCR, lets you hook up two of these digital-recording products and dub flagged programming from one to the other. The kinds of programming you might legally dub would include broadcast TV or something you shot with your camcorder. To protect movie copyrights, JVC has built various kinds of anti-copying technology into D-VHS, but they won?t be triggered unless you try to do something you know you shouldn?t do, like dub a commercial copy of a movie.



Philips and Hewlett-Packard got approval for another form of flag compliance that would affect their Vidi recordable-DVD format. This scheme would bind content to the physical medium. In other words, you could copy flag-encoded material with a Vidi drive, but someone else?s Vidi drive couldn?t copy the copy. That one-generation-only loophole is the same one used by the Serial Copy Management System (or SCMS, pronounced ?scums?), which affects black-box CD-R decks.



What about networking? Thomson, better known for its RCA brandname, provides a flexible implementation of the flag in its SmartRight networking system. Flagged content is encoded as a ?private copy? that may be shared over a ?private personal network,? which might include up to 10 displays, and an unlimited number of storage devices, and could even extend to a second home, office, or boat.



In Microsoft?s Windows Media Digital Rights Management Technology, the idea is to limit streaming and storage devices with ?proximity controls? that cap the number of milliseconds the signal may travel. You could probably fling stuff to just about any corner of your home but wouldn?t be able to send it down the street.



You get the idea. Manufacturers are willing to accept some degree of copyright protection, but are not willing to give away all your fair-use rights, because they need you to buy their products. They?re looking for a compromise you?ll accept. If you want to know what a prospective purchase is capable?and not capable?of, you?ll have to read every word of reviews written by people like, say, oh, myself.



For the libertarians of the electronics world the best copyright protection is none at all. They assert that the broadcast flag is a Trojan horse for less acceptable anti-copying schemes. That?s why the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched the Digital Television Liberation Front (www.eff.org/broadcastflag) to encourage consumers to buy flag-noncompliant gear before flag compliance becomes mandated in new gear on July 1, 2005. In the meantime you?re free to buy a high-def-capable tuner card, like the pcHDTV HD-3000 (www.pchdtv.com), and an HD-capable video recorder like the one from MythTV (www.mythtv.org).



As an author of books, I do have at least some sympathy for the entertainment industry. Just as Hollywood needs revenue so that it can keep on making movies with those big-budget effects of which we?re all so fond, I need people to buy my books so that I can pay rent, buy health insurance, keep the fridge full?and keep writing books.



An author/publisher like myself has it relatively easy. Your basic tree-killing book is relatively hack-proof. Most people would rather buy a new book than use a photocopier or scanner to duplicate every page. There are loopholes?you might buy a secondhand copy for less money or check a book out of your public library for free. However, I accept those loopholes, and consider them fair use, partly because I read plenty of secondhand and library books myself.



Copyright protection is not so much a question of yes or no as a matter of how and what. We should accept it?in some reasonably fair form?so that the entertainment industry will feel secure enough to give HDTV, high-def DVD, DVD-Audio, and SACD the support they so richly deserve. These initial implementations of the broadcast flag contain some interesting ideas. Maybe we could live with some of them. Why not use proximity controls to allow networking on a limited basis?



Worse solutions are on the horizon?like the proposed Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, which would outlaw products we now take for granted such as unfettered CD-R drives. Any senator or congressman who approves such a draconian law is unworthy of your vote.



Letting the market decide would be healthier in the long run. Manufacturers know that if you don?t like something, you?ll take your business elsewhere, migrating to other forms of electronic entertainment, and make no mistake?these people want to sell stuff!



Digital rights management schemes that hit the sweet spot for program producers, manufacturers, and consumers alike will bring prosperity and give the breath of life to whole new product categories. Unacceptable ones contain the seeds of their own destruction.


Mark Fleischmann is the author of Practical Home Theater (www.quietriverpress.com).

Privacy bill unnessary, carriers tell US senate

Representatives of wireless telephone carriers planning a telephone directory service told a US Senate committee that legislation to protect their customers' privacy is not needed, because their plan already does.

Privacy advocates and some senators questioned, however, whether wireless carriers would protect customer privacy in the long term, without rules in place about how they handle the release of customer phone numbers.

"Chaos will reign when our constituents start getting calls on their mobile phones," said senator Barbara Boxer, co-sponsor of the Wireless 411 Privacy Act. "I urge you to not wait for chaos to rain down with these unwanted calls. There's going to a backlash, and then we'll have to deal with a mess."

Six of the seven largest wireless carriers in the US are moving forward with a plan to band together to offer a wireless directory called the 411 service. The directory could be available as early as 2005.

While most landline telephone numbers are listed in directories, most people expect privacy on wireless phones, said Boxer. People pay for the time they use on wireless phones, and a wireless directory could be used by stalkers to prey on teenagers who have wireless phones to use in emergencies, she noted.

The wireless industry plan calls for customers to opt in if they want their number listed in the 411 service, and the service will not be published in print or on the internet, said Patrick Cox, chief executive officer of Qsent, the company chosen by the wireless carriers to manage the service.

Instead of publishing numbers, the wireless carriers would require customers to dial a directory service to get a phone number. "The database on day one starts at zero [numbers]," Cox said.

Backers of the service, including the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), say customers such as small businesses are asking for the listing service.

Legislation to protect privacy is unnecessary because privacy protections are already in place, and because 97% of US residents can choose between at least three wireless carriers, said Steve Largent, president and chief executive officer of the CTIA.

Boxer, who noted that many wireless contracts already give carriers permission to publish phone numbers, disagreed that customers can easily switch carriers.

"People are concerned already, and they're stuck with two-year contracts," she said.

The Wireless 411 Privacy Act, introduced in November would put into law many of the privacy safeguards the wireless carriers are voluntarily proposing.

The bill would prohibit wireless carriers from including subscribers' phone numbers in published directories without their consent, and it would prohibit wireless carriers from publishing a wireless phone number directory. It would also prohibit wireless carriers from charging customers who want their names removed from a list. A similar bill was introduced in the house, also in November.

Cox, from Qsent, said those protections are already built into the directory plan.

But privacy policies can change, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Rotenberg noted several cases where internet companies have promised not to sell their customer lists to third parties, then changed their minds.

"Over time, business models change, and privacy bars drop down," Rotenberg said.

Among the wireless carriers participating in the 411 directory are Cingular Wireless, AT&T Wireless Services and Sprint.

However, Verizon Wireless is not participating. Patrick Strigl, Verizon's president and chief executive officer, told senators the directory service was a "terrible idea" that could expose wireless customers to unwanted sales pitches.

Chicago Moving to 'Smart' Surveillance Cameras

CHICAGO, Sept. 20 - A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley says it will also make them much safer.

"Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Mr. Daley said when he unveiled the new project this month. "They're the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot."

Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.

Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately.

Officials here designed the system after studying the video surveillance network in London, which became a world leader in this technology during the period when Irish terrorists were active. The Chicago officials also studied systems used in Las Vegas casinos, as well as those used by Army combat units. The system they have devised, they say, will be the most sophisticated in the United States and perhaps the world.

"What we're doing is a totally new concept," said Ron Huberman, executive director of the city's office of emergency management and communications. "This is a very innovative way to harness the power of cameras. It's going to take us to a whole new level."

Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to Chicago's surveillance system is designed to direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening.

Mr. Huberman, a 32-year-old former police officer who is also what one aide called "a techno geek," said this new system "should produce a significant decrease in crime, and from a homeland security standpoint it should be able to make our city safer."

When the system is in place, Mr. Huberman said, video images will be instantly available to dispatchers at the city's 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera's range to another's.

A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was "really a huge expansion of the city's surveillance program."

"With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and implemented," Mr. Yohnka said, "it really does raise questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives."

The surveillance network will embrace cameras placed not only by the police department, but also by a variety of city agencies including the transit, housing and aviation authorities. Private companies that maintain their own surveillance of areas around their buildings will also be able to send their video feeds to the central control room that is being built at a fortified city building.

The 250 new cameras, along with the new system dispatchers will use to monitor them, are to be in place by the spring of 2006. A $5.1 million federal grant will be used to pay for the cameras, and the city will add $3.5 million to pay for the computer network that will connect them.

This project is a central part of Chicago's response to the threat of terrorism, as well as an effort to reduce the city's crime rate. It also subjects people here to extraordinary levels of surveillance. Anyone walking in public is liable to be almost constantly watched.

"The value we gain in public safety far outweighs any perception by the community that this is Big Brother who's watching," Mr. Huberman said. "The feedback we're getting is that people welcome this. It makes them feel safer."

One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were "having an impact, no if's, and's or but's about it." Nonetheless, Mr. Jenkins said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to "infiltrate people's privacy in the name of terrorist attacks."

"I just personally think that it's an invasion of people's privacy," Mr. Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. "A large increase in the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market."

City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than curb the system's future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city's street-sweeping vehicles.

"We're not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."

VeriSign Touts Childrens' Online Identity Token

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - VeriSign Inc. (VRSN.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and a children's safety group unveiled a new technology on Thursday that they said would make it easier for children to avoid child predators online.
The i-Stik token, inserted in a computer's USB port, provides verification of a child's age and gender. Chatroom lurkers who can't prove their age will stick out like sore thumbs as more kids adopt the tokens, backers said.

"This doesn't guarantee everything, but at least it cuts the field down," said Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns at a Capitol Hill press conference that was attended by several other lawmakers.

The token will be available free to students in a handful of schools this fall. School administrators will provide a list of students, with their ages and genders, and VeriSign will encode that information onto the tokens.

The program will be expanded to thousands of schools across the country starting in the spring of 2005, said Teri Schroeder, president of the children's' online safety group i-Safe America.

The token, made by VeriSign, is also used to verify the identity of people logging on to corporate networks.

< This may be a step in the right direction... It's better to fetter the smaller group (if necessary), which is the children, than the larger group which has greater need for privacy and freedom. Also overall this will allow the annihilation of censorship on the net. If you're there Without a token it can be assumed you're an adult and can see whatever you damned well please. Not that we need to censor kid's eyeballs anyway. That's the parents job and they go too far anyway. >

Jail time for California file swappers?

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law Tuesday establishing fines and potential jail time for anonymous file swappers. The new law says that any California resident who sends copyrighted works without permission to at least 10 other people must include his or her e-mail address and the title of the work. Swappers who do not include this information will face fines of up to $2,500 and up to one year in prison.

Minors can be fined up to $250 for their first two offenses, and a minor's third offense can bring a $1,000 fine and a year in county jail. The law provides exemptions for people sending works to immediate family members and for the transmission of works inside a home network.

Naked yoga OK in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Nudists, grab your yoga mats and head for San Francisco.

City prosecutors Wednesday said it was not illegal to perform naked yoga in the city -- even at the crowded tourist destination of Fisherman's Wharf.

Prosecutors dropped charges against a limber nudist, known locally as the "Naked Yoga Guy," who made a habit of striking yoga poses in the buff in order to promote a book and his lifestyle.

The Naked Yoga Guy, whose name is George Monty Davis, had stripped to stretch nearby Fisherman's Wharf, prompting a public complaint. But prosecutors decided they had a weak public nuisance case against him because local laws do not bar public nudity.

"Simply being naked on the street is not a crime in San Francisco," said Debbie Mesloh, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

"To bring a case, a person would have to exhibit lewd behavior, block traffic or impede pedestrians on a sidewalk, something along those lines."

In another case involving a Los Angeles teenager who dropped his pants to expose his bottom, or "moon," passing motorists from a nearby sidewalk, a California appellate court ruled nudity itself is not a crime, Mesloh said.

Davis could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gun cabinet locks no match for pen

By putting two and two together, a Bettendorf father of three managed to break into his own gun cabinet using nothing but a Bic pen.

The man asked that only his first name, Mark, be used in this article, fearing that publishing his identity and the fact that he has guns in his home could invite trouble.

The company that made his gun cabinet was very familiar with Mark?s name after he made several calls to them this week.

When news broke last week about a popular, high-end brand of bicycle lock, Kryptonite, being susceptible to a simple break-in method, the Bettendorf man recognized the type of tubular lock and round key that were described in the story. It sounded just like the lock on the gun cabinet bolted to the wall of his bedroom closet.

After reading the story, the man called Wauconda, Ill.-based Stack-On Products Co., which made his gun cabinet. Even though a company spokesperson assured him his cabinet was secure and the lock could not be opened with a pen, he was not convinced.

?I used three different kinds of pens,? he said. ?I need to be thorough. I?ve got three kids living in my house.?

After doing a little research on the Internet and reading about the flaw in the Kryptonite locks, the man went to a Staples store to buy a box of the Bic pens that were specifically cited as the break-in tool. He pulled the ink cartridge out of a pen and widened one end of the barrel slightly by scraping it with his pocket knife, just like a Web site instructed.

?I had run home for lunch and was in a hurry,? he said. ?Within 30 seconds, I was into the safe with that pen.?

Another call went into Stack-On, he said, and, this time the same employee told him an engineer would be dispatched to Bettendorf to inspect his gun cabinet.

On Wednesday afternoon, the man demonstrated how he could move the locking mechanism on his gun cabinet with a slightly altered Bic pen.

?You can find more expensive gun cabinets that will protect your weapons from fire and all that, but all I really needed was to keep my guns away from my kids,? he said. ?It turns out I had a false sense of security.?

Susan Eckhoff, the vice president of administration for Stack-On, said the calls from Bettendorf launched the company?s engineering department into an investigation of the tubular locks. She would neither confirm nor deny that the locks may be faulty.

?Right now, they?re telling me they?ll have something on our Web site next week ? Monday or Tuesday,? she said. ?Not everything is finalized.

"(The Bettendorf man) is the only phone call we had,? she said. ?We?re very grateful that he did call.?

To hear some area retailers tell it, many gun owners have become increasingly security-savvy and are investing in more expensive gun safes and cabinets that use combination or electronic locks rather than the tubular locks. The less expensive models, such as the Stack-On cabinet that was opened with a Bic pen, are not as popular as they used to be, retailers say.

In fact, some stores have stopped stocking the tubular-lock models made by Stack-On.

?Security is a definite concern and that?s why we stopped selling them,? said Matt Meyer, a manager at K&K Hardware in Bettendorf. ?If I wanted to keep my young children out of it, I would choose the heaviest-duty gun cabinet I could find.
.
?I have two kids and I wouldn?t buy a cheap one.?

The cabinets can range in price from less than $100 to well over $1,000, but, regardless of price, manufacturers boast that all of their cabinets are secure. In fact, the model the Bettendorf father owns is one of the products pictured on the Stack-On Web site, where it notes that the cabinet is ?California Department of Justice Certified.?

Even so, Kevin Nyberg, the manager of the Gander Mountain sporting goods store in Davenport, said an increasing number of gun owners are willing to pay the extra money for heavy-duty gun safes and cabinets. He estimated that, in the past six months, his store has sold only a couple of the Stack-On models that use a tubular lock.

Nyberg also said he is confident Stack-On will correct the problem.

?I wouldn?t doubt at all that they?ll be sending lock upgrades ? or complete return-to-vendor offers,? he said. ?Stack-On is a stand-up company, and I?m sure that when their engineers figure it out, they?ll do something to fix the problem.?

While the Bettendorf man said he is most alarmed by the apparent vulnerability of tubular locks on gun safes, he wonders how many other products are at risk.

?I?m guessing we?ll be seeing Bic pens sticking out of vending machines, pay phones and file cabinets all over the place,? he said. ?But security doesn?t get any more important than when you?re talking about keeping guns out of the hands of children.?

< Sublimely rediculous. Of course the man went to a lot more trouble than a kid would probably bother with. And of course neither the cabinet nor the pen makers could be held responsible for not tesing their product with the other. But the real problem here is that in the past letting kids have access to guns wasn't that big of a deal or problem. Perhaps that's what they should start looking at instead of pen-play? >

Jury Duty? I'll Drink to That!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Yorkers dreading jury duty take note: it's OK to be drunk on booze or high on pot or cocaine while doing your civic duty.

So said a New York judge on Wednesday, who refused to set aside the verdict on a retired city firefighter convicted of swiping souvenirs from Ground Zero, citing the U.S. Supreme Court to back her ruling.

Samuel Brandon, 61, found guilty in March of petty larceny for stealing personal items from the ruins of the World Trade Center, asked for a new trial after a juror told him after the verdict that he had been drinking during deliberations.

But Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Ellen Coin cited a 1987 Supreme Court decision which rejected the argument that jurors consuming alcohol, smoking marijuana, snorting cocaine and falling asleep constituted an "outside influence" on jurors.

Coin said being drunk on jury duty was "reprehensible," but that there was little she could do about it given the Supreme Court ruling.

"However severe their effect and improper their use, drugs or alcohol voluntarily ingested by a juror seem no more an 'outside influence' than a virus, poorly prepared food, or lack of sleep," the Supreme Court said in its decision.

Brandon faces up to one year in jail at his Sept. 27 sentencing.

Porn companies fined over condoms

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- California officials fined two adult film companies more than $30,000 each for allowing actors to perform without using condoms, the first time the state has taken such action.

The fines against Evasive Angles and TTB Productions follow an investigation into a complaint filed by a porn industry worker. The companies have 15 days to appeal the decision Wednesday by the state Division of Occupational Health and Safety.

Susan Gard, agency spokeswoman, said the companies violated California law when actors performed sex scenes without using condoms. She said state law requires employers to protect workers who are exposed to blood or bodily fluids on the job.

"Any bodily fluid is considered infectious," she said. "That means barrier equipment must be used."

Four actors were diagnosed earlier this year with HIV, prompting state officials to say they would investigate whether state laws were being followed. Officials at Evasive Angles and TTB Productions could not immediately be reached for comment; calls to them went unanswered early Friday.

The companies were also cited for not notifying authorities about actors who contracted HIV on the job, officials said.

It is a widely held belief among adult film producers that condom use hurts profits because customers would rather see unprotected sex. However, some large adult film production companies require actors to use condoms.

Having Sex Until the Cows Come Home

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - What's a big cud-chewing Scottish cow have to do with preserving public decency?
According to the mayor of a small Dutch town, allowing Highland heifers to graze in a nearby nature reserve will help deter couples who have scandalized the upright citizens of Spaarnwoude with their open-air sex antics.

Mayor Ellen van Hoogdalem-Arkema said the brazen behavior of amorous outdoor enthusiasts has angered and embarrassed people walking their dogs in the reserve or taking their grandchildren for a stroll.

"Visitors experience great annoyance from people having sex in public and apparently the presence of the cows turns the people off having sex," the mayor said.

The idea of using cows to cool passions in the park originated from another nature reserve south of Amsterdam, which saw an unexpectedly serendipitous reduction in sex prowlers after allowing the cows to graze in its fields.

Van Hoogdalem-Arkema said that the reserve's status as public land made problem tricky to solve and urgent.

"I just got off the phone with a man who was cycling in the area with his children, when suddenly two naked men came running across the road." she added with a sigh.

Restaurant Customer Arrested For Tipping Under 18%

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y -- A New York City man accused of leaving an inadequate tip at a restaurant was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed for a mug shot.

Humberto A. Taveras, 41, faces a misdemeanor charge of theft of services after he and his fellow diners argued with Soprano's Italian and American Grill managers over the legality of requiring an 18 percent tip for large parties.
Discussion: Arrested For Small Tip

"They chased us down like a bunch of criminals," Taveras said. "It killed our weekend."

Taveras and eight others had pizza at the restaurant in this resort village Sunday night. He told the Glens Falls Post-Star they weren't completely satisfied with the food and left a tip of under 10 percent. Taveras said they also were not told of a mandatory 18 percent gratuity for parties of six or more and did not see notice of it on their menus.

Restaurant owner Joe Soprano said all the menus have the notice, and the waitress informed the group. He said he did not choose to pursue charges because of the money, but because Taveras' group was obnoxious.

"It's unfortunate it has come to this, but this guy was rude and abrasive. They practically threw food at us," Soprano said.

Taveras plans to fight the charge. He was issued an appearance ticket and was scheduled to appear in town court Thursday.

The arrest raises the issue of whether the gratuities that restaurants automatically tack on for serving large groups are legally enforceable debts.

Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland said he did not believe the issue had been litigated before in New York. He said the case could turn on whether the person is notified of the tip requirement beforehand.

"It's not a black-and-white issue," Cleveland said. "It will be very interesting to see where it goes in court."

How eight pixels cost Microsoft millions

Microsoft's lack of multicultural savvy cost the Redmond behemoth millions of dollars, according to a company executive.

The software giant has seen its products banned in some of the biggest markets on earth--and it's all because of eight wrongly colored pixels, a dodgy choice of music and a bad English-to-Spanish dictionary.

Speaking at the International Geographical Union congress in Glasgow on Wednesday, Microsoft's top man in its geopolitical strategy team, Tom Edwards, revealed how one of the biggest companies in the world managed to offend one of the biggest countries in the world with a software slip-up.

When coloring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft colored eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. "It cost millions," Edwards said.

Another social blunder from Microsoft saw chanting of the Koran used as a soundtrack for a computer game and led to great offence to the Saudi Arabia government. The company later issued a new version of the game without the chanting, while keeping the previous editions in circulation because U.S. staff thought the slip wouldn't be spotted, but the Saudi government banned the game and demanded an apology. Microsoft then withdrew the game.

The software giant managed to further offend the Saudis by creating another game in which Muslim warriors turned churches into mosques. That game was also withdrawn.

Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between "not specified," "male" or "bitch," because of an unfortunate error in translation.

Microsoft has also seen its unfortunate style of diplomacy have an effect in Korea, Kurdistan, Uruguay and to China--where a cartographical dispute saw Chinese employees hauled in front of the government.

Edwards said that staff members are now sent on geography courses to try to avoid such mishaps. "Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said.

Electric Bullet

Inspired By Tragedy

Dreams presaged Amadou Diallo's death. His brother dreamt of grabbing a hand outstretched for help. His grandmother dreamt of a cow that couldn't feed its calf. His mother dreamt in slow motion that she could feel Amadou even though he was in New York and she in Guinea, Africa.

"I felt him, I felt him, I felt him," Kadiatou Diallo, Amadou's mother, says of a sleep filled with sensations she had shortly before he died. "And I said to myself, 'I miss him. I want to see my son.'"

By the time she booked a flight, Amadou's body had absorbed 41 shots discharged by four New York City policemen who fired at an unarmed Diallo even as the velocity of the bullets spun him in an eerie dervish.

As often as they horrify, such deaths inspire. The circumstances surrounding Diallo's 1999 demise were an odd combination of mortification and inspiration: a shocked mother became an activist, an appalled rock star penned a tribute to him, and an idea took life for inventor John LeBourgeois, who created a bullet that he told Discover Magazine he hopes will prevent such tragedies from recurring.

"I was reading the New York Times, the story of Amadou Diallo," recalls LeBourgeois. "I said there had to be a better way to resolve those problems."

The bullet is constructed of piezoelectric material, used in car starters and stove or cigarette lighters, where a spark ignites gas. "We've taken a larger piece of that material and encapsulated it in a bullet," LeBourgeois explains. On impact, it discharges from a live round of ammunition and has the capacity to be lethal.

Why the need for such technology? Standard police training teaches officers to shoot advancing suspects armed with edged weapons within 21 feet, something called the Tueller Rule. Police shoot until a suspect drops. Diallo didn't, probably because the velocity of the bullets kept him spinning, LeBourgeois theorizes. An electric bullet would have sent a charge through his body equal to 100 to 125 percent the strength of an external heart defibrillator, dropping him immediately, he says.

"Fixing one or two holes in him would've been much easier for the doctors to do than something where every organ has been hit," Le Bourgeois says.

But a similar technology?the Taser gun?was the subject of a CBS news report that showed some 40 individuals have died after being stunned with 50,000 volts of electricity that course through the Taser's 21-foot long wires.

Steve Tuttle, Taser International spokesman, said that the gun has been cleared in all but three of those deaths, where it was listed as "contributing to the cause of death." Several independent medical examiners hired by the company have since found fault with the findings regarding those three deaths, he says.

The weapon saves lives, Tuttle insists. Over 40,000 police departments use it, including Arizona's Phoenix Police Department. It credits Taser with a drop in police-involved shootings, which fell from 28 in 2002 to 13 in 2003, a 54 percent decrease, and fatal police shootings, which decreased by four, from 13 in 2002 to 9 in 2003, a drop of 31 percent.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine cardiac electrophysiologist Davendra Mehta stresses that indiscriminate shocks can kill. Five percent of the time the heart is in a very vulnerable cycle, he says. "There is no doubt a danger to people getting these shocks because if it's in the vulnerable period it could induce a cardiac arrest," Mehta explains. "Police will have to be trained to give these patients a second shock from an external defibrillator to resuscitate them."

Despite such concerns, a company called ShockRounds, has agreed to produce LeBourgeois's bullets. Company spokesman Chris Nichols believes the technology will help more than hurt law enforcement and the public. "We're trying to provide police with non-lethal approaches to dealing with dangerous situations," he says.

Kadiatou Diallo is skeptical. "It's like electrocution," she says. "If you try to electrocute someone that can cause heart attack...Is that the solution?" Instead, she believes it's good police work more than anything that saves lives.

In the five years since his death, Mrs. Diallo has tried to clear up misconceptions surrounding the case, namely that her son might not have understood English well enough to follow police orders. Fluent in five languages, Diallo had lived all over the world before immigrating to America. To honor his journey Mrs. Diallo wrote a book, My Heart Will Cross this Ocean, detailing her struggles to raise him and how along the way she lost him. She also started the Amadou Diallo Foundation, through which she funds scholarships for African immigrants, speaks to police and community groups, and uses her son's death to prevent similar tragedies.

"I am thankful to God that I did not sink in bitterness," she says. "Of course, I'm angry. But I'm not bitter because if you are bitter it's like a cancer. It's finished. I'm using my energy to do something positive for Amadou."

John LeBourgeois hopes his electric bullet will do the same: "I would like to see it save lives."

National Call-In Day for Betamax

Betamax is the bill, from back in the day, which allowed us to have VCRs and other types of recording devices.

Facing the Copyright Rap

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work ? even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.

Lower courts had already ruled that artists must pay when they sample another artists' work. But it has been legal to use musical snippets ? a note here, a chord there ? as long as it wasn't identifiable.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati gets rid of that distinction. The court said federal laws aimed at stopping piracy of recordings applies to digital sampling.

"If you cannot pirate the whole sound recording, can you 'lift' or 'sample' something less than the whole? Our answer to that question is in the negative," the court said.

"Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."

Some observers questioned whether the court's opinion is too restrictive, especially for rap and hip-hop artists who often rhyme over samples of music taken from older recordings.

"It seems a little extreme to me," said James Van Hook, dean of Belmont University's Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business. "When something is identifiable, that is the key."

The case at issue is one of at least 800 lawsuits filed in Nashville over lifting snippets of music from older recordings for new music.

The case centers on the NWA song "100 Miles and Runnin," which samples a three-note guitar riff from "Get Off Your Ass and Jam" by '70s funk-master George Clinton and Funkadelic.

In the two-second sample, the guitar pitch has been lowered, and the copied piece was "looped" and extended to 16 beats. The sample appears five times in the new song.

NWA's song was included in the 1998 movie "I Got the Hook Up," starring Master P and produced by his movie company, No Limit Films.

No Limit Films has argued that the sample was not protected by copyright law. Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records, which claim to own the copyrights for the Funkadelic song, appealed the lower court's summary judgment in favor of No Limit Films.

The lower court in 2002 said that the riff in Clinton's song was entitled to copyright protection, but the sampling "did not rise to the level of legally cognizable appropriation."

The appeals court disagreed, saying a recording artist who acknowledges sampling may be liable, even when the source of a sample is unrecognizable.

Noting that No Limit Films "had not disputed that it digitally sampled a copyrighted sound recording," the appeals court sent the case back to the lower court.

Richard Busch, attorney for Westbound Records and Bridgeport Music, said he was pleased with the ruling.

Robert Sullivan, attorney for No Limit Films, did not return a phone call to his office.