Asteroid Warnings Toned Down

Astronomers have significantly softened the wording of the Torino scale -- an asteroid risk-assessment system for evaluating the danger of Earth-bound meteors.

Akin to the Richter scale, the Torino scale goes from zero to 10, with zero representing no risk and 10 warning of an impact that could wipe everything off the planet. But scary phrases from the old warning system like "localized destruction," "regional devastation" and "certain global climatic catastrophe" have been modified.

Scientists hope the rewording will better explain to the public what these phrases mean without causing concern.

"This has been an ongoing effort to try to come up with reasonable ways to communicate discoveries when we find an object that's going to pass close to the Earth," said Richard Binzel, professor of planetary science at MIT, who drafted the new Torino wording.

The outdated wording, agreed upon in 1999 in Torino, Italy, by the International Astronomers Union, used alarming language sometimes resulting in doomsday headlines like the Kansas City Star's "Look! Up in the sky! A big asteroid is heading our way!!" (registration required).

Although astronomers are happy to make their findings public, they don't want to scare the public unnecessarily, said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office.

"It certainly isn't meant to be frightening," he said.

Many of the potentially threatening objects tracked by astronomers have independent orbits that may cause them to collide with Earth at some point. Some objects, like Halley's Comet, swoop through the neighborhood only once a century or so.

In the old wording, a level 4 asteroid was described as an object with "a 1 percent or greater chance of collision capable of causing regional devastation." The new version explains that the object merits only the concern of astronomers and continued observation would probably reassign the comet to a level zero -- in other words, the asteroid likely will whiz by.

Although there is still a 1 percent chance of a level 4 asteroid hitting Earth, the general public is now told not to worry when NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office issues a warning.

"It's a good thing that astronomers keep track of these low-scale events, but there is no need for public concern," said Binzel.

Like the Department of Homeland Security's terror alert system, the Torino scale uses five different colors that correspond to the severity of a potential impact. The colors haven't changed from the old system, but the explanation of what each color means has. Asteroids in the green section used to be deemed "events meriting careful monitoring," but now are considered "normal." And a level 6 object was described as capable of causing "global catastrophe." Now these, too, only merit the concern of astronomers.

Governments are specifically advised not to prepare for a disaster from a level 6 warning unless the collision is within the decade.

Not all the changes paint a rosier picture. Under the old system, a level 10 warning used to be described as "causing global climatic disaster." The new description reads "a certain collision capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it."

But the changes in wording will have little effect on astronomers. That's because the calculations used to determine how threatening a comet is will remain exactly the same.

Astronomers often need time before they can know for sure where an asteroid is headed and the risk it poses.

"When we discover an object, the most likely outcome is that when we have enough data the object will go away," said Binzel. "The previous system didn't communicate that."

Critics have blamed the Torino scale's alarming scientific talk for causing media frenzies.

"It was written by scientists and reviewed by scientists but I can see that for folks not familiar with this topic it might have looked a little frightening," said Yeomans.

To date, the highest level a comet has been rated is 4. In December 2004, an asteroid had a 1 in 45 chance of hitting Earth by 2029. Newly analyzed data caused that warning to wane.

Scientists suspect there are 1,100 celestial objects large enough to cause a doomsday impact. NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office says 765 come close to crossing Earth's orbit.

Neither Binzel nor Yeomans believe we are presently at risk.

With images from movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact fueling the public's fears, astronomers hope the new Torino wording will do a better job of explaining data about asteroids and quell overreaction to initial findings.

"It's not even a warning system," said Binzel. "It's better thought of as an information system."

< Interesting phenomenon here. Is this unnecessary censorship because the original plan said what it meant and meant what it said? Or is the concession to usability, as in people can't deal with the simple truth, the proper thing to do? Only time will tell... >

AOL Sued Over Claim Chat Room Monitor Seduced Girl

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A 19-year-old Los Angeles woman has sued AOL saying that a former monitor of its "kids only" chat room seduced her online when she was a lonely teenager, persuading her to send him nude photos of herself and to engage in phone sex.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, also says that Matthew Wright sent sexually explicit videos of himself and planned to drive to California to meet the girl for a weekend together on her 17th birthday.

AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX - news), said it fired Wright immediately after the company learned of his online relationship with the teenage girl in April 2003.

AOL immediately contacted the FBI in Oklahoma City, where Wright worked in a company call center, and in Los Angeles, said Nicholas Graham, AOL spokesman.

The company also alerted police in Kern County, north of Los Angeles, where the girl, Lesli Reed-Brennan, lived, he said.

Neither side in the lawsuit could say whether Wright, also named as a defendant, had faced criminal charges. He could not be immediately reached for comment.

AOL, the world's largest Internet service provider, has marketed itself in part on the strength of what it calls its "state-of-the-art parental controls" for families.

The lawsuit, which was filed on April 1, claims those protections failed. It seeks damages of more than $25,000 for emotional distress, negligent supervision and false advertising.

Wright, the lawsuit claims, was 23 and married when he began an online relationship with Reed-Brennan, then 15.

According to the suit, the two exchanged explicit photos and ultimately engaged in "orgasmic phone sex."

The lawsuit described Reed-Brennan as "a latchkey kid" whose parents divorced and who grew up "moving from town to town."

She "turned to the Internet as a source of continuous social contact with friends around the country," first joining AOL as a subscriber at the age of 10.

Her lawsuit accuses Wright of committing "one of the most heinous crimes in society today: to solicit sexual favors from a minor -- a minor who he was hired to protect."

AOL's Graham said that company rules prohibit chat room monitors from interacting with members online.

AOL employees are subject to criminal background checks, some take drug tests, and all face "rigorous screening and training," he said.

< First of all, it's hard to take a major corporation's side in anything, but here we must. Think about it this way: you have a million friends, they're out looking for a girlfriend/boyfriend for you, and you're resposible for everything they say and do while they're on the hunt.

That said, the particulars of the case itself are ludicrous. "One of the most heinous crimes in society today" they say... Let's take a look at what happened. Two people had fun together. Hmm. Sounds mighty heinous doesn't it? We'll say it again, society has NO LOGIC with regard to "sex crimes". There was absolutely no harm done here. The most they could have reasonably gone with was his infraction of the rule of no interaction. But they'll string him up and torture him for the worst crime that can exist instead. >

Opinion: My Name Is Billy-Bob -- Or Is It?

Good morning. My name is Billie...uh, Barbara...and I'm an online liar.

And if you're smart, so are you.

Like all Web surfers, I am constantly being asked to register in order to gain access to online information. Many, if not most, of these registration requests are perfectly legitimate -- they are from organizations that want to track the number of individuals using their site, or want to get some information about the kind of people who are using their site, or who simply want to make sure that there is some rudimentary way to contact their users in case of problems.

However, there are also less savory sites that want the information in order to sell spam lists, or send spam themselves -- or worse. These sites may look like legitimate personal or professional sites, but if you give them your e-mail address, you are going to find yourself inundated with "useful" messages about products, services, and offers. If you're taken in to the extent that you give them more information -- say, your phone number, or address -- then you may really have problems.

As a result, I've established an "alias" e-mail account with a free service, which I use to register with any site that I am not already very familiar with -- or, for that matter, that I don't intend to use more than once. I try to be fair -- if I find myself regularly visiting a site that is both useful and legit, I will often re-register using my real name. But I must admit that I'm registered at a lot of sites in the name of my alias.

Is this fair? Perhaps not. I recently had an email exchange with the owner of a site which had been attacked by hackers, spammers, and other impolite users, and which, as a result, is asking registrants for not only their real names and emails, but home addresses and phone numbers as well. I expressed my appreciation of his difficulties, and explained why I was unwilling to give personal information to an unfamiliar site. He, on the other hand, thanked me for the explanation, and complained about the "culture of lying and deception" that made his rules necessary.

What is the answer? I'm not sure there is one. The Web, like the rest of the world, is always going to contain a certain percentage of thieves, con artists, and liars. I guess we're all going to have to do our best to live with the necessary -- and unnecessary -- Internet lies.

GPS-enabled school uniforms hit Japan

With GPS-enabled school uniforms on the way in Japan, the timeless parental refrain "don't forget your jacket" is about to assume new significance.

According to gizmo hub Engadget, the jackets, in addition to letting parents track their kids, sport a panic button that children can push in an emergency, immediately summoning a security agent to their exact location. The GPS-enabled blazers are made by school uniform maker Ogo-Sangyo, with GPS technology provided by Secom, which previously teamed up on a kids' backpack with built-in GPS.

RFID tags have been used to track kids in Japan before, and they've been considered elsewhere, including the United States.

But the notion of electronic IDs in schools has proven more than a little controversial, with some calling them a cutting-edge way to monitor attendance and keep kids safe and others assailing them as an assault on the youngsters' right to privacy.

The student tags employ the same technology used in building access badges commonly issued to employees for security purposes.

Drivers who sign up for quick-pay toll programs use similar devices to cruise by toll booths. And RFID technology has recently been found in chain stories, libraries and casinos.

Surveillance Works Both Ways

SEATTLE -- Surveilling the surveillers. It's an idea that Number 6, the nameless hero of the classic British TV show The Prisoner, would have loved.

In an attempt to establish equity in the world of surveillance, participants at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Seattle this week took to the streets to ferret out surveillance cameras and turn the tables on offensive eyes taking their picture.

Following wearable computing guru Steve Mann into a downtown Seattle shopping mall, about two dozen conference attendees, some of them armed with handheld cameras, snapped photos of smoked-glass ceiling domes in Nordstrom and Gap stores, which may or may not have contained cameras.

Companies have been known to install empty camera domes to save money while giving the impression of surveillance.

The idea of surveillance that's powerful even if it's not actually present was in line with the theme of this year's CFP conference -- the Panopticon. The Panopticon was a model prison envisioned by philosopher Jeremy Bentham that used a smoked-glass oval guard tower to induce discipline and good behavior in prisoners who could never be certain if they were being watched.

The mere possibility that someone might be watching prisoners would be enough to alter their behavior, ensuring, in the words of French philosopher Michel Foucault, that the effect of surveillance would be ongoing even if the surveillance itself wasn't. The mere perception of power would "render its actual exercise unnecessary."

Mann, a University of Toronto professor who helped found MIT Media Lab's Wearable Computing Project, has made it a mission to make people more aware of the surveillance around them -- in the form of cameras concealed in store smoke detectors, smoked-glass domes, illuminated door exit signs and even stuffed animals sitting on store shelf displays -- by engaging in what he calls "equiveillance through sousveillance."

The opposite of surveillance -- French for watching from above -- sousveillance refers to watching from below, essentially from beneath the eye in the sky. It's the equivalent of keeping an eye on the eye.

With that in mind, Mann conducted his tour with conference participants to see how those conducting surveillance would respond to being monitored.

Mann sported his signature camera eyewear, while some of the other participants wore CFP conference bags around their necks. The bags had a dark plastic dome stitched on one side -- modeled after store surveillance domes -- which they pointed randomly at passersby, unnerving them. Conference organizers had outfitted a handful of the bag domes with wireless webcams -- they wouldn't say which bags contained cameras -- which transmitted and recorded live streaming video to monitors in the conference lobby.

In the stores, as conference attendees snapped pictures of three smoked domes in the ceiling of a Mont Blanc pen shop, an employee inside waved his arms overhead. The intruders interpreted his gesture as happy excitement at being photographed until a summoned security guard halted the photography.

Mann asked the guard why, if the Mont Blanc cameras were recording him, he couldn't, in turn, record the cameras. But the philosophical question, asked again at Nordstrom and the Gap, was beyond the comprehension of store managers who were more concerned with the practical issues of prohibiting store photography.

At the Gap, photographers were told they couldn't take pictures because the Gap didn't want competitors to study and copy its clothing displays. At Nordstrom, an undercover security guard who looked like Baby Spice and sported a badge identifying her as Agent No. 1, summoned a manager who told Mann that customers would be disturbed by the handheld cameras.

Illogically, she didn't have a problem with participants pointing their conference bag domes around the store to take photos, just with the handheld cameras.

Mann said that duplicity is often necessary in order to mirror the Kafkaesque nature of surveillance.

He has designed a wallet that requires someone to show ID in order to see his ID. The device consists of a wallet with a card reader on it. His driver's license can be seen only partially through a display. And in order for someone to see the rest of his ID, they have to swipe their own ID through the card reader to open the wallet.

He also made a briefcase that has a fingerprint scan that requires the fingerprint of someone else to open it.

Mann quoted Simon Davies of Privacy International, a London-based nonprofit that monitors civil liberties issues: "The totalitarian regime is the regime that would like to know everything about everyone but reveal nothing about itself," Mann said.

He considered such a government an "inequiveillant regime" and likened it to signing a contract with another party without being allowed to keep a copy of the contract.

"What I argue is that if I'm going to be held accountable for my actions that I should be allowed to record ... my actions," Mann said. "Especially if somebody else is keeping a record of my actions."

Lease a classic muscle car?

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - If you just love the idea of owning a 1970 Plymouth Superbird but you have trouble with the $100,000 price tag, some auto financing companies offer a different approach: leasing.

It still isn't cheap -- an estimated $1,080 a month for '70 Superbird, according to one company -- but it at least saves you from having to lay out all that cash up front. And if you're willing to part with your dream car after 3 years or so, you may never have to lay out the entire cost at all.

Leasing classic or exotic cars is different from leasing ordinary new or nearly-new cars. The major difference is that payments on an ordinary lease, one on a new Lexus or Honda, say, are based on the expected loss in the value of the vehicle during the term of the lease.

If you lease a moderately priced new car for three years and the car is expected to be worth $15,000 less at the end of that time than it was when new, you pay a total of $15,000 plus a percentage called the "money factor" and other fees, over your three years of lease payments.

As long as it stays in good shape, a popular collectible car will lose little or no value over a few years. In fact, there is a good chance it will actually be worth more as time goes by.

As a result, in a classic car lease, you generally agree with the leasing company on an amount of money that will remain unpaid at the end of the lease term. You make a substantial upfront payment, take physical possession of the car, then start making your regular monthly lease payments.

At the end of the lease term, you can elect to either purchase the car, refinance the remaining buy-out amount and keep making monthly payments until the full price is paid, or allow the car to be sold.

If you elect to sell the car, the leasing company will take the agreed upon buy-out amount from the proceeds of that sale. The remainder goes to you.

If the car had increased sufficiently in value, you could actually end up making money on the deal. Since leasing costs substantially more than simply financing an outright purchase, however, the car would have to increase considerably more in value to make a profit possible.

Also, there's no guarantee that any car will go up in value at all. And. if the car is poorly maintained or damaged, if could lose value.

Two companies that lease classic and high-end exotic cars under terms like these are Premier Financial Services and Putnam Leasing. (CNN/Money has not investigated and does not endorse either company.) Other companies offer similar programs.

Both Premier and Putnam say their customers are more often interested in leasing new or late model exotic cars, like Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces. Exotic car buyers typically keep their vehicles for only a few years, making a leasing product like this simply a more convenient way of doing what they usually do anyway.

Leasing can appeal to someone who's always dreamed of having a certain car in their garage but isn't sure they're ready for the commitment of owning a classic car for the long haul. Or they may simply not want to tie up a lot of cash in something they may tire of after a few years.

If you are interested in leasing a classic car, it's up to you to find the car. You would then apply to a leasing company.

The leasing company will purchase the car at an amount agreed upon by you. If the car is being sold at an auction, you would bid on the car, with all payments calculated based on the amount of your winning bid.

Once the sale price is decided, it's the leasing company that actually purchases the vehicle. You would pay the leasing company a percentage of the purchase price up front, take physical possession of the car and start making your monthly lease payments.

The leasing company maintains legal ownership of the vehicle until the term is completed, just like any other lease.

If you decide to try leasing a collectible car, it's important to get every financial detail and option in writing, said McKeel Hagerty of Hagerty Insurance, which specializes in insuring collectible cars and also offers standard, non-lease, financing for car collectors.

It's especially important to get the terms of a possible early termination of the lease in writing, said Hagerty. Both Premier and Putnam say their customers can back out of a lease early with or swich cars with little penalty.

Drunk? Your Car Will '86' You

SANTA FE, New Mexico -- Chris Romero hops into his blue-and-white Ford pickup, clicks the ignition on and then off again, and reaches for what looks like a black cell phone hanging from his dashboard.

Romero blows for about four seconds into a short plastic tube that sticks out of the top, then hears a beep. He has passed the test ? the screen says, "Drive safely."

The twice-convicted drunken driver is, indeed, driving safely these days ? thanks to his determination and the help of an ignition interlock, which would prevent him from starting the truck if he had been drinking.

"I just think it's a really good thing," said Romero, 42, who gave up alcohol after the device was installed three months ago. "It's almost a safety net."

With about 2,600 offenders a year ordered by courts to get interlocks, New Mexico has more of them currently installed per capita than any other state.

And that number could skyrocket. All convicted drunken drivers ? nearly 13,000 annually ? will be required to get interlocks under a new law Gov. Bill Richardson planned to sign on Wednesday.

While interlocks are employed to varying degrees in more than 40 states, New Mexico will be the first to require such broad use.

"What's unique about it is that it's the entire state, and a mandate for first offenders," said Paul Marques, senior research scientist with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Maryland. Marques says that studies point to a big drop ? 40 percent to 95 percent ? in DWI re-arrests while interlocks are in use.

New Mexico has been grappling for years with an intractable DWI problem. New Mexico had the sixth highest rate in the nation for alcohol-related highway deaths in 2003. There were 213 fatalities and 3,500 alcohol-involved crashes, according to state officials.

The new law requires interlocks for one year for a first conviction, two years for a second, three years for a third, and for a lifetime ? with appeals at five-year intervals ? for a fourth or subsequent conviction.

Opponents say the new law is too punitive and would disproportionately affect the poor, who they argued are more likely to get convicted.

Advocates acknowledge that the system is not foolproof. Some judges don't order interlocks ? even when the law says they must. And some offenders ignore interlock mandates, or install them and then drive other vehicles.

But Karen Sprattler, national director of public policy for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says officials have learned that revoking licenses won't stop drunken driving.

"It doesn't take a piece of plastic to start a vehicle.... We need to do something that goes beyond that," she said.

State Sen. Phil Griego, a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for four years, used the device for more than a year after his second DWI arrest.

"It really helped me when I got the urge to drink, knowing that if I had a drink I couldn't start my truck," he said.

During an hour-long lunch break from his job at a print shop, Romero's interlock demands that he test two more times, five minutes after he starts the truck and about 40 minutes later.

He has six minutes to comply with the retest demand, or else his horn honks until the truck turns off. Some interlock systems can shut off vehicles, but New Mexico doesn't allow that.

Without a license after his arrest last summer, Romero often ended up walking the five miles between home and work. His interlock has made it easier to keep his job.

"Some people call it an inconvenience," he said. "I say that it's just exactly the opposite, because you're still able to live your life."

Vt. Teen Accused of Stealing Corpse's Head

MORRISVILLE, Vt. (AP) -- A 17-year-old Morrisville youth was being held on $100,000 bail after police said he raided a tomb in a cemetery and removed a head from a corpse.

``We had a person voice their concerns about information they had heard on the street,'' said Chief Richard Keith of the Morristown Police Department.

Keith said police at first could not believe what they had heard. But when they went to Morrisville Cemetery and investigated, they found that someone had broken into a tomb, broken open the casket and removed a man's head.

``We had the funeral director come to the scene and we pulled the casket out. Yes, indeed, we found remains and they had been disturbed,'' Keith said.

Nickolas Buckalew, 17, later was arrested and charged with unauthorized removal of a dead body. He pleaded innocent to the crime.

Police believe they have a strong case against Buckalew because remains and evidence were found in a silo near the suspect's home outside the village and one-fifth of a mile from the cemetery.

``Within minutes we found the duffle bag with the remains in it and tools that were used to enter the tomb and the casket,'' Keith said.

The victim's widow, the only family member in the area, was told of the vandalism.

``The widow was in shock,'' the chief said. ``She did not want any information. She did not want to know any details.''

Authorities are not sure of the motive of the crime. Court documents said the suspect allegedly talked of using the man's head as a bong or a pipe for smoking marijuana.

Wis. Considers Legalizing Cat Hunting

MADISON, Wis. - Feline lovers holding pictures of cats, clutching stuffed animals and wearing whiskers faced-off against hundreds of hunters at meetings around Wisconsin to voice their opinion on whether to legalize cat hunting.

Residents in 72 counties were asked whether free-roaming cats ? including any domestic cat that isn't under the owner's direct control or any cat without a collar ? should be listed as an unprotected species. If listed as so, the cats could be hunted.

The proposal was one of several dozen included in a spring vote on hunting and fishing issues held by the Wisconsin Conservation Congress. The results, only advisory, get forwarded to the state Natural Resources Board.

Statewide results were expected Tuesday.

La Crosse firefighter Mark Smith, 48, helped spearhead the cat-hunting proposal. He wants Wisconsin to declare free-roaming wild cats an unprotected species, just like skunks or gophers. Anyone with a small-game license could shoot the cats at will.

At least two other upper Midwestern states, South Dakota and Minnesota, allow wild cats to be shot ? and have for decades. Minnesota defines a wild, or feral, cat as one with no collar that does not show friendly behavior, said Kevin Kyle with that state's Department of Natural Resources.

Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, according to state officials. Despite the astounding numbers, Smith's plan has been met with fierce opposition from cat lovers.

Critics of Smith's idea organized Wisconsin Cat-Action Team and developed a Web site ? dontshootthecat.com. Some argue it is better to trap wild cats, spay or neuter them, before releasing them.

In Madison, about 1,200 people attended the Monday evening meeting at the Alliant Center ? more than the 250 or so in a typical year, but less than the 3,000 or so who took part in a debate in 2000 over whether to allow hunters to shoot mourning doves.

One of the attendees was Katy Francis, who wore cat ears, whiskers, a cat nose and a sign that read, "Too Cute to Kill." For Francis, "The cat hunting thing brought me out because it was very extreme."

When blogging can get you locked up

Javad Gholam Tamayomi, Omid Memarian, Shahram Rafihzadeh, Hanif Mazroi, Rozbeh Mir Ebrahimi, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh and Fereshteh Ghazi are some of the most courageous people you've never met.

Not exactly household names, but each deserves a standing ovation.

During a crackdown against Iran's nascent online press last year, these sundry online journalists and bloggers got chucked into jail. The cyber seven were subsequently released but continue to invite the periodic and not-so-tender attention of the local police.

A blogger named Mojtaba Saminejad, also arrested on trumped-up charges at the beginning of November after condemning the jailings in his blog, is still being held in prison.

Increasingly, it seems, blogging can get you in big trouble. And as the number of Web logs and Internet news sites grows, journalists and bloggers regularly find themselves at odds with governments that are unenthusiastic about freedom of expression.

What's more, many governments now routinely filter the Internet, even though that's a clear violation of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which promotes access to information as an entitlement. Truth be told, the litany of examples of Internet repression around the globe makes for dreary reading.
In this post-Patriot Act age, we're all walking on terra incognita.

A recent report written by Gamal Eid, the executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, was appropriately entitled, "The Internet in the Arab World: A New Space of Repression?" Among other conclusions, the report found that many Arab governments view the Internet with ambivalence. "From the governments' point of view, the disadvantages of the Internet stem from its very advantages. This attitude has affected the growth, or the lack thereof, of the Internet in the region."

So it is that some Middle Eastern regimes regularly use Domain Name System redirection or Internet Protocol-blocking techniques to prevent certain Web pages from loading. It's not difficult, and the measures are fairly effective. For example, Saudi Internet surfers looking for sites about Israel receive messages telling them the information has been blocked.

Elsewhere, China, the odds-on favorite to become the fastest-growing economy of the decade, is also the odds-on favorite to become the biggest Internet filterer of them all.

The Chinese government has developed an e-mail interception and Internet censorship technology that is as state-of-the-art as they come. Any cyberposters who stray from the straight and narrow risk a lot: Reporters Without Borders describes China, which, at last count, held 61 Internet users in detention last year, as the world's biggest prison for cyberdissidents.

In Kazakhstan, the government has periodically blocked access to opposition Web sites since 2002. The authorities have since called on one of the country's two main Internet service providers--Kazakhtelekom which is state-owned--to cut off access to sites deemed to be "destructive," or pose a threat to the state.

In the good ol' United States, things haven't gotten that out of hand--at least not yet. But who knows? In this post-Patriot Act age, we're all walking on terra incognita.
The business world doesn't produce heroes, but we should expect its leaders to occasionally demonstrate guts.

In the meantime, journalists and bloggers in the states are in no position to brag about their First Amendment rights. Just this month, we were treated to the spectacle of a bullying corporate entity--Apple Computer--going after a student Web publisher it wants to silence. Free speech, anyone?

From my little perch in Northern California, I'm amazed at Silicon Valley's studied silence when it comes to the subject of Internet freedom. With few exceptions, there's little enthusiasm for doing much beyond selling gear. I know business and politics mix like oil and water. But isn't there something more the technology industry can do?

Get a backbone
Internet infrastructure providers can't plead willful ignorance anymore. In China, for example, Cisco Systems routers do the heavy lifting for the country's surveillance infrastructure. Internet traffic passes through only five hubs, making it oh so easy to snoop on Web surfers and read private e-mails.

I'm not suggesting that Cisco was complicit in setting up a spy system, but the company's engineers did help program the equipment. Wouldn't it have been something if CEO John Chambers had shown more interest in how his company's technology was going to be used? Who knows--maybe Cisco could have extracted even a small concession from the authorities in Beijing. The business world doesn't produce heroes, but we should expect its leaders to occasionally demonstrate guts.

Do no evil
If a foreign regime is intent on blocking sites that carry "sensitive" news, there's not much an Internet provider can do. So goes the claim. Very well, but at least avoid being complicit.

"Even in the US, you do not have complete freedom of speech. When your speech violates the rules established by the government, you become a criminal. When that speech betrays the government, it is treason. It would be nice if these people had fewer restrictions, but the great debate is whether or not we can help them reclaim those rights. "
--David Arbogast

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who has done a remarkable job since taking over as company boss, has a reputation for being a tough manager. It sure would have been nice if he had demonstrated some of that legendary intestinal fortitude when the Beijing authorities put the squeeze on Yahoo. Instead, he wimped out.

Yahoo agreed to control its discussion forums and rig the Chinese version of its search engine to prohibit certain hot-button search terms, as defined by the sensitivities of the government.

Bad precedents like these won't make things any easier for the people who literally risk their lives to reveal the truth. Keeping the flow of information free and unfettered is going to become a struggle in the new century. It is an issue begging for Silicon Valley's attention--all the way from a jail cell in Iran. So far, the response has been studied indifference.

Stopping Spam

Copyright Reform to Free Orphans?

Veteran filmmaker Robert Goodman is working on a documentary about the first pop culture phenomenon of the 20th century: American picture postcards. But securing permission to use many of these works -- photos and illustrations that are around 100 years old -- is an impossible task, as many of the original owners are unknown or dead, or the publishing companies no longer exist.

The uncertainty of copyright ownership means Goodman, an Emmy-nominated director with a long career in film, photography and writing, is facing substantial costs, a lot of tedious research and, if he's really unlucky, lawsuits.

"There's no good copyright clearinghouse to go to and say, here's all the people who copyrighted their materials and here's how you find them," said Goodman. "You're left with trying to find their relatives, and we live in a society where people, on average, move every seven years. It's an impossibility."

Stories like these about so-called "orphan works" -- items still locked up under copyright but where the owners are unknown or impossible to locate -- are leading the U.S. Copyright Office to try to fix the problem.

The office is soliciting reply comments until May 9, and has already collected and posted more than 700 initial comments from artists, academics and copyright owners.

Jule Sigall, associate register for policy and international affairs for the copyright office, said the office will hold public hearings this summer and report its findings to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the end of the year. It's possible that Congress will address the orphan works issue with legislation.

"We're hoping to get a good factual record of what the problems are (and) what obstacles people are running into," Sigall said. "We also asked people to propose solutions. There seem to be a lot of good suggestions as to the type of mechanisms that could be used to solve the problems."

The copyright office wants to find a solution to satisfy those who want to build on orphan works without jeopardizing copy protection for owners.

Even if the risk of a copyright infringement claim is low, creators who build on another's work do not want to take the risk of getting sued. Copyright owners can ask for up to $150,000 damages per work infringed.

Among the suggested solutions: establishing a database of current copyright owners who want their works protected (under current law, copyright owners are not required to register). Or, if a person can prove that she made a reasonable effort to find the owner and could not, she could use the work without fear of incurring costly penalties.

Before crucial changes in copyright law in 1976 and the 1990s, driven by Disney and other powerful copyright holders, many of these resources would likely be in the public domain, available for anyone to use after copyright expires.

For most of the 20th century, copyright owners had to register and were granted protection for 28 years. They could opt to renew for another 28 years. Research cited by the copyright office shows that "less than half" were renewed under this system, leaving a flourishing public domain.

Now, copyright protection is given as soon as an item is in a fixed medium, and the term has been extended to life of the author, plus an additional 70 years. In 1992, works created before 1976 were automatically renewed, locking up many works just as they would have returned to the public. Plus, copyright owners are no longer are required to register.

In Goodman's case, he must get permission for each of the estimated 800 to 1,500 images that the film will use in its final cut. That involves reviewing the law to determine what images are likely still protected by copyright, and then using tools like the internet, phone books and public records from small towns to locate the presumed owner or that owner's heirs or estate. Filmmakers also comb through company records, some of which are out of business or bought out. And plenty of the postcards are not labeled at all, making it impossible to know who took the picture and the picture's copyright status.

And Goodman is just one example.

According to comments submitted to the copyright office, one married couple couldn't get a wedding photograph repaired: The photography shop would not scan and reprint the photo because it was taken by a professional and the shop was afraid of violating copyright, even though the photographer was out of business.

"For heaven's sake, this is a photograph of me and my wife, and I can't have it legally repaired!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong!" wrote William Haynes.

Bil Corry wanted to publish old issues of Desert magazine to the web, because it included interesting historical information about the people, places and plants of the American southwest. He thought it would be a free, useful resource to others. The magazine, published between 1937 and 1985, had gone bankrupt and its assets were sold, but he had no way to track down who owned the assets or the contents of the magazine.

"I thought about it, I registered a domain to do it, and then I started to look at the legal issues and I decided not to proceed," Corry said. "For a hobby it was just too much work."

Determining the copyright status of out-of-date software programs and games, old sheet music and out-of-print books on histories of families and towns for genealogy research are a handful of the other scenarios that have baffled the public. Some fans of old-time radio would like to broadcast or perform old radio plays but can't find the copyright owners. Amateur singers who want to record songs they've sung in church are turned away because the studio doesn't have the staff to research who owns the various copyrights.

In the meantime, those who want to build on old creative works will work to track down whatever copyright owners they can find.

"It's a lot of horrible grunt work because it's mostly dead ends," Goodman said. "I will have to hire a couple of people to do this research. I don't know how long it will take. It could take six months to research one image to make sure that we're safe. That adds (an) enormous amount of expense to the project."

And yet, for some, there is no guarantee they will be free from liability.

"We will do everything in our power to cross all our t's and dot all the i's, and we're still going to get nailed. Somebody's going to come out of the woodwork," Goodman said.

He added: "At what point do you eliminate my ability to comment on popular culture because of copyright issues?"

Politician Urges Golf with Cane Toads

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australians in the country's Northern Territory should start smashing cane toads to death with golf clubs and cricket bats in a bid to stop the spread of the toxic creatures, a government politician urged Monday.

David Tollner, the member for the Northern Territory seat of Solomon, said the cane toads -- which have highly poisonous sacs behind their head that quickly kill native animals that prey on them -- should be eradicated by "any means possible."

Australia has for decades fought unsuccessfully to stop the spread of cane toads, imported from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed attempt to combat greyback beetles which were threatening the country's tropical northern sugar cane fields.

"(When I was a child) we hit them with cricket bats, golf clubs and the like. Things were a bit different, most kids had a slug gun or an air rifle and we would get stuck into them with that sort of thing as well," Tollner told Australian radio.

"If people could be encouraged to do it rather than discouraged the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of northern Australia."

Cane toads, which now number in their millions, are so toxic that crocodiles, death adder snakes and wild dingo dogs can die of cardiac arrest within 15 minutes of eating a toad.

Australia's cane toad population now spreads west from the northeast coastal sugar cane fields into the fragile wetlands of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory and are steadily marching toward the territory's tropical capital city of Darwin.

Animal welfare groups discouraged people from taking up Tollner's call to arms, saying freezing the animals to death was more humane.

"We don't want children picking up their golf club or their cricket bat in the backyard and having a go at any animal," a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) told Australian radio.

Female cane toads can lay 8,000 to 35,000 eggs at a time and may produce two clutches a year. The toads reach maturity within a year and have a life span of at least five years.

Yahoo! Nazi auction trial finally reaches an end

More than four years after the start of the Yahoo! Nazi auction trial, the end to the whole business looks to be in sight. It concerns what is doubtless one of the last decisions of the case - at least in respect to the French tribunals.

The Paris Court of Appeal has confirmed the former president of Yahoo!, Timothy Koogle, has been cleared. He had been accused by Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié des peoples (Movement against racism and for understanding between peoples) and a group of survivors from Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Both had accused the US boss of 'justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity', for having permitted the sale of Nazi objects on its auction site. One of the charges had already been rejected in 2003. The court of appeal used the same arguments this week to order the acquittal of the former Yahoo! CEO.

While Yahoo! has been spared any charges in France, a barrage of cases is still being pursued in the US. The US tribunals will have to decide if the decision of a French judge can equally be used in the States.

Smelly Money Lands Indiana Man in Jail

GREENSBURG, Ind. - A man who went to the sheriff's department to bond out his brother-in-law also ended up in jail when police realized the money he handed them reeked of marijuana.

Timothy Richards, 45, of Columbus, went to the Decatur County Sheriff's Department and when he handed dispatcher Julie Meyers $400, she counted it and then noticed something unusual.

"When I walked back toward the jail I noticed the money was damp and smelled funny," Meyers said.

A jailer who sniffed the money told her it smelled like marijuana, she said.

Indiana State Trooper Chip Ayers was nearby and asked for the money, she said. He smelled it and then asked Richards for consent to search him and his car, Meyers said.

Ayers found a pipe and a small amount of marijuana and charged Richards with possession. If convicted, he could face six months to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Richards remained in jail for several hours Tuesday ? until his brother-in-law made bail and came back to pay his own $250 bond.

Congress may extend daylight-saving time

WASHINGTON (AP) -- If Congress passes an energy bill, Americans may see more daylight-saving time.

Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.

"Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, who along with Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, co-sponsored the measure.

The amendment was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is putting together major parts of energy legislation likely to come up for a vote in the full House in the coming weeks.

"The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use," said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

Video game rating board don't get no respect

The 11-year-old self-regulatory body whose job it is to rate video games attracts flak like a magnet, the latest salvo coming from Congressman Joe Baca, D-Calif., who is demanding that the Federal Trade Commission review that ratings system; he believes it may be allowing adult material to fall into the hands of younger gamers.

But wait! If the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is soft on sex and violence, you wouldn't know it from speaking to game makers. At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco last month, developers speaking out at a roundtable sponsored by the International Game Developers Association's (IGDA) Anti-Censorship Committee related one tale after another about how unrelenting the ESRB is when it comes to ratings. One developer summed it up nicely: "The ESRB is a pain in the butt."

"I hope they also say that we're fair," remarks Patricia Vance, president of the Manhattan-based ESRB, who prides herself on the fact that the board's standards are designed to reflect those of today's parents. She describes a process that involves annual "mall-based research to determine what parents think about our ratings and whether they agree with them or not. What we find is that they consistently agree with our ratings across all of our rating categories, whether that's "T" (for Teen; 13 and older), "M" (for Mature; 17 and older; "may contain mature sexual themes, more intense violence, and/or strong language"), or "AO" (for Adults Only; 18 and up; "may include graphic depictions of sex and/or violence")."

However, Rep. Baca believes that the ESRB's raters are slapping "M" ratings on games that should be rated "AO."

"Parents are buying games that are inappropriate for their children, not knowing that they may contain sexually explicit and highly violent content," said Baca. "Some of these games depict sex with prostitutes, cop killing, robbery and assault of individuals including women and seniors."

Similarly, last month, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) called for Congress to launch a $90-million investigation into the effects of games on children, singling out Rockstar Games' M-rated "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for its emphasis on crime.

But Daniel Greenberg, a freelance game developer and the chair of the IGDA's Anti-Censorship Committee, scratches his head and asks, "Are they talking about the same ESRB?"

"For as long as I've been running these roundtables -- which is about eight years now -- they've been dominated by developers griping about their horrible experiences trying to get games through the ESRB," Greenberg relates. "They expect to get 'T' ratings and get 'M's or they believe they'll get an 'M' and they come out with an 'AO.' And that sends their marketing departments into a panic. The games have to be redone and are frequently sent back to the ESRB two, three, even four times, which is an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Our industry has a difficult time contending with the rating system. Which is why it's staggering to me that people say the ESRB isn't tough, because we get numerous complaints every year about how tough it is."

The issue Greenberg describes is one involving dollars and cents: Almost every single retail chain chooses not to sell "AO" rated games, period. In just the same way that many movie theaters will not show films branded with an "NC-17" rating, the "AO" severely limits a game's distribution, to put it mildly.

Indeed, the Wilton, CT-based Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association (IEMA), which represents the nation's largest videogame retailers, believes itself to be "directly responsible for the rate of acceptance of the rating system being as high as it is," says president Hal Halpin. "That's because our members have chosen not to stock any titles that are not rated. Nor will they sell AO-rated games, a decision that runs parallel to their policy not to display X-rated music or NC-17-rated movies. It's just not appropriate for their product mix."

(From left) Cyberlore Studios' "Playboy: The Mansion" contains nudity that was deemed to be in context to the brand and allowed, while Volition had to delete some scenes of violence in "The Punisher" to achieve an "M" rating, including the one pictured.

"That's why we had every intention of building an M-rated game, which is the equivalent of an R-rated movie, " says Joe Minton, president of Northampton, MA-based independent developer Cyberlore Studios. His company created "Playboy: The Mansion" for Scottsdale, AZ-based publisher Arush Entertainment, which released the simulation game for PlayStation 2 (PS2), Xbox, and PC in January. "Besides, Playboy -- which worked closely with us -- likes to position itself brand-wise more on the sophisticated, classy side than on the Hustler side."

In "Playboy: The Mansion," gamers play Playboy founder Hugh Hefner who must build a mansion, throw parties, entertain people who respond by contributing content for Playboy magazine, which can then boost its sales, enabling the expansion of the mansion, which brings in more guests, and so on.

But Minton says his company had to go through three rounds of changes in the game without which, he's convinced, the game would have gotten an "AO" rating.

"The ESRB agreed that the topless nudity we had in the game was absolutely in context," he explains, "and that nobody would purchase a Playboy game mistakenly thinking that there wasn't going to be nudity. We also have characters having sex, because that's part of the mystique of the Playboy mansion, but it's done in a very humorous, cartoony style to make it funny. And still we needed to make changes, specifically removing some of the sex scenes that were ruled too explicit."

Minton agrees that the ESRB has to set the line on what can be shown and what can't, but what ultimately ended up in the M-rated game doesn't come close to what can be seen in an R-rated movie, he contends.

"If you look at the small, cartoon characters in our game with their topless nudity, and then compare that to, say, a scene from the R-rated movie "Original Sin" with Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie going at it, it's like comparing 'Pong' to 'Halo 2,' " he says. "So, in that sense, I'd say that the ESRB is 100 times stricter on games than the MPAA rating system is on movies."

If Cyberlore thinks it went through a grueling time with the ESRB with its sexy sim, they should hear what the folks at Volition endured when the developer began transitioning the ultra-violent Marvel Comics character The Punisher to the videogame world. ("The Punisher" also became an R-rated 2004 movie vehicle from Artisan Entertainment.)

Comic book fans know that The Punisher is a "Death Wish"-style vigilante out to clean up the streets by "interrogating" and then punishing criminals. When publisher THQ bought the license to turn the comic into a third-person action shooter, Dan Cermak knew he'd be pushing some boundaries. Cermak is vice president of product development at Volition, THQ's Chapaign, Illiois-based development studio.

And so, last January -- one year before the game was scheduled to be released in January, 2005 for PS2, Xbox, and PC -- Cermak decided to approach the ESRB to discuss whether the game was likely to get the "M" rating that THQ's marketing department was seeking.

"Our concern was that the game contains interactive violence," Cermak says. "Lots of games have body parts flying around -- somebody shoots someone in the head and it blows apart or you shoot an arm or a leg off. They call it 'gibbing.' But our game had 70 different kinds of interrogations and, by moving the joystick, the gamer can literally determine how much pressure to put on the bad guy. I don't think that's ever been done before and we were concerned that the ESRB might find that beyond what is acceptable in an M-rated game."

As it turned out, Cermak was right. The ESRB had rarely before seen such "creative" violence -- heads were decapitated by ceiling fans, people were thrown into woodchippers, bodies were impaled by charging rhinos.

"We saw an early version of the game," says the ESRB's Patricia Vance, "and right away we told Volition that there was going to be a problem." As Cermak had suspected, it was the player control element that tipped the scales and was about to punish his game with an 'AO' rating.

"The irony is that if you saw the movie 'Fargo,' a man is thrown into a woodchipper," says Cermak. "But that's a movie, it's not interactive, and it was the ESRB's feeling that when the player is in control of the characters, it's very different. We are held to a higher standard. Is that frustrating for game developers? Oh, my gosh, yeah."

Cermak describes several rounds of "turning down the gore" before the ESRB made its final determination -- swapping black-and-white interrogation scenes for full color, adjusting the "camera" so the mayhem can sometimes only be heard but not seen, adding a penalty for players who needlessly kill victims who have just confessed. "The Punisher" got its 'M' rating.

"We definitely ended up with a lot less overt violence," concedes Cermak. "But am I happy with the way the game turned out? Let's just say it's not the game I designed. And if I had had a better picture of what the guidelines were, we might not have had to go through all this."

While Cermak compliments the ESRB on helping parents protect their children from adult material, he believes what many industry observers like to point out -- that the average age of gamers is now in the mid-20s and they are looking for games that feature more mature themes.

"I am making games that aren't for kids. That's why they get 'M' ratings -- meaning they are for people 17 and up," says Cermak. "So why am I being held to a standard that is far more protective than the movie or TV ratings? There needs to be some process that allows me to create my game and make what I want to create for my audience and permit me to sell it in a marketplace that currently doesn't allow anyone to sell 'AO' games in stores."

The ESRB's Vance has heard that argument before and doesn't disagree.

"Publishers and developers are free to create more mature games and older gamers are free to buy them," she says. "Of course, many retailers may not want to carry 'AO' product, but that's their own policy. The 'AO' rating wasn't created as a market mechanism to prevent the sale. The reason we established an 'AO' rating was so that we could assign it. And when we do, publishers don't want it, and so they'll have to make accommodations in their products in order to resubmit it and try to get a less-restrictive rating."

And if the developers feel stores should be selling 'AO' product?

"Then they have to work with the retailers to try and get them to understand that there is an older audience now who might want some of those products," advises Vance. "But, to date, at least from what I can tell, there's been no proven demand for AO products. So the developers may want to be creating it, but if no one wants to buy it, hey, not my problem."

Pay Phones: A Dying Breed?

Long gone are the phone booth's golden days when Superman metamorphosed inside and anonymous informers called in tips from the street corner.

But even as the plastic cracks, the cords are snipped, and wads of old chewing gum jam the coin returns, a modest movement to preserve the phone booth is rippling through state legislatures. To the phone booth's defenders, it is more than a matter of simple nostalgia: It cuts to the roots of social equality, public safety, and common sense.

That's why state Rep. Herbert Adams (D) of Portland has sponsored legislation to preserve or create "public interest payphones" (PIPs) in designated areas where a lack of phone access poses a risk to residents' safety, health, or welfare. His bill follows similar actions from Alaska to Indiana to save the venerated pay phone when it is deemed in the public's best interest to do so.

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the number of pay phones in the US dropped to 1.5 million in 2003, down from 2.1 million five years earlier - as the number of cellphone users surged. In Maine during that same period, the number of pay phones declined by almost half, says Mr. Adams.

Yet not all Americans, especially older Americans, have cell phones or live in places where coverage is available or adequate. Not to mention the human factor: inadvertently leaving a phone at home or forgetting to recharge the battery.

For many, though, the fight boils down to a battle for equal access.
Even in this age of BlackBerries and camera phones, of blinking and beeping pocket accessories of every stripe and sound, 6.5 percent of American households have no telephone. Many use pay phones as their primary means of communication. And supporters say that resisting the demise of the pay phone - even as cellphone coverage continues to expand and costs go down - is an attempt to close the gap between the technological "haves" and "have nots."

"Demand might be low, but the people that need pay phones really need them, and that's the point. That's why the state has to step in," says Wayne Jortner, senior counsel at the Maine Public Advocate's Office.
The first public coin telephone was installed in 1889 in a Hartford, Conn., bank. Throughout the 1900s, they proliferated on America's streets - opening up phone access to millions.

But the removal of pay phones, driven by a decline in their revenue from $2.2 billion in 1999 to half that last year, according to the FCC, can leave entire towns without a single public phone. That is a discomforting prospect for Adams, whose alternator once blew during a night trip. He walked to a phone in the nearest town, two miles away. But "if that phone had not been there, it was 15 miles to the next town, with logging trucks blowing by."

His bill requires that pay-phone providers notify the state if they plan to remove a phone and allows residents to petition for phones in places that would otherwise be unprofitable - from island communities, to battered women's shelters, to dock landings. In the first year, $50,000 of support would come from the state's Universal Service Fund.

Peter Reilly, the Maine spokesman for Verizon, a major phone-service provider for the state, says the business has grown more competitive and having the phone companies pay for PIPs could mean less profit, and therefore fewer phones, in the future. "We can't subsidize those [pay phones] that are not carrying their own weight," he says. "It's a rare occurrence when someone who needs [a pay phone] can't find one that's convenient."

For those who have seen such rare occurrences, however, pay phones can be vital. Last year the phone on Cliff Island, Maine, an hour's ferry ride from Portland, was pulled because it wasn't generating enough revenue.
Jane McClarie Laughlin, president of the Casco Bay Island Development Association, witnessed an accident on the boat dock last summer. Someone happened to have a cell phone - but coverage is so spotty that a connection is no guarantee. "People think that there aren't any isolated places anymore," she says. "But there are."

Elizabeth Ostrander, hanging up a pay phone receiver outside a Portland movie theater, says she owns no cell. "I'm very dependent on pay phones when I come here [to Portland]," says the resident of Eastport, on the northeast tip of Maine.

In 1996, the FCC put states in charge of setting up and funding PIP programs. Mr. Jortner says that at least five other states have moved to put similar programs in place. It's a number that many expect will grow if pay phones keep disappearing - although those without phone connections may be the least aware of their options. "I think there is a lot more dissatisfaction than the complaint ratio would suggest," says Jortner.

In New Hampshire the legislature set up a PIP program, which will take effect in July. It couldn't come soon enough for Mike Lewis, proprietor of the Stinson Lake Store in Rumney, N.H., who has let customers use his phone in a pinch ever since the pay phone was removed. "They have no heart," says Mr. Lewis of the phone company's decision. When his store is closed, "people have to go door to door trying to find people who have a phone."

There are others who insist that the pay phone is not a dying breed.
Mark Thomas, a New York pianist who runs a website (www.payphone-project.com) to help people track the locations of pay phone numbers, says that as long as people need them, pay phones will endure - and that they should not be required to be profitable any more than streetlights are.
Says Mr. Thomas: "Those things are lifelines to some people."

Exploring the Right to Share, Mix and Burn

The tickets for the event Thursday sold out in five minutes on the Internet, and on the evening itself the lines stretched down the block. The reverent young fans might as well have been holding cellphones aloft as totems of their fealty.

Then again, this was the New York Public Library, a place of very high ceilings and even higher cultural aspirations, so the rock concert vibe created some dissonance. Inside, things became clearer as two high priests of very different tribes came together to address the question of "Who Owns Culture?" - a discussion of digital file-sharing sponsored by Wired magazine, part of a library series called "Live From the NYPL."

Both Jeff Tweedy, the leader of the fervently followed rock band Wilco, and Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor who has opposed criminalizing file sharing, seemed to agree that just about anybody who owns a modem also owns - or at least has every right to download - culture products.

"I don't think anybody should make any money on music," Mr. Tweedy said at one point, only half joking. "Maybe we would pay audiences."

It is a curious sight when a rock star appears before his flock and suggests they take his work without paying for it, and even encourages them to. Mr. Tweedy, who has never been much for rock convention, became a convert to Internet peer-to-peer sharing of music files in 2001, after his band was dropped from its label on the cusp of a tour. Initially, the news left Wilco at the sum end of the standard rock equation: no record/no tour, no tour/no money, no money/no band. But Mr. Tweedy released "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" for streaming on the band's Web site, and fans responded in droves. Wilco then took on the expenses of its tour as a band.

The resulting concerts were a huge success: Mr. Tweedy remembered watching in wonder as fans sang along with music that did not exist in CD form. Then something really funny happened. Nonesuch Records decided to release the actual plastic artifact in 2002. And where the band's previous album, "Summerteeth," sold 20,000 in its first week according to SoundScan, "Yankee" sold 57,000 copies in its first week and went on to sell more than 500,000. Downloading, at least for Wilco, created rather than diminished the appetite for the corporeal version of the work.

Both Mr. Tweedy and Mr. Lessig used their talk to say that the Web, in an age where conglomerated FM radio has squeezed out virtually all possibility of hearing anything worthy and new, is where fans are best exposed to music they might want to buy. And during the presentation (which was streamed live on Wilco's Web site), Mr. Lessig added that the decision to outlaw downloading would have a profoundly inhibiting effect on the creation of culture. He said that in every instance, from the player piano to radio to VCR's to cable, the law had landed on the side of the alleged "pirates," allowing for the copying or broadcasting of cultural works for private consumption. Thus far, both the music industry and the film industry has succeeded in making it illegal for consumers to download their products .

Mr. Lessig said that "the freedom to remix, not just words, but culture" was critical in the development of unforeseen works of art. He pointed to "The Grey Album," produced by the D.J. Danger Mouse, a remix of the Beatles' "White Album" and Jay-Z's "Black Album" that resulted in a wholly new and unexpected piece of music.

"What does it say about our democracy when ordinary behavior is deemed criminal?" he asked. Mr. Lessig and the moderator, Steven Johnson, a contributing editor at Wired, made much of the fact that the discussion was taking place in a library, where much of the Western cultural canon is available free.

Mr. Tweedy has little sympathy for artists who complain about downloading. "To me, the only people who are complaining are people who are so rich they never deserve to be paid again," he said.

Mr. Lessig, one of the philosopher kings of Internet law, and Mr. Tweedy, the crown prince of indie music, traded places more than a few times during the presentation, with Mr. Lessig, who has argued copyright cases before the United States Supreme Court, enthusiastic about the artistic possibilities the Web engenders, and Mr. Tweedy making sapient pronouncements on the theoretical underpinnings of ownership.

"Once you create something, it doesn't exist in the consciousness of the creator," Mr. Tweedy said, telling the audience that they had an investment in a song just by the act of listening. Later, at a dinner at Lever House, Mr. Tweedy suggested that downloading was an act of rightful "civil disobedience."

All of it - high and low culture, Supreme Court rulings and mashed-up video clips ridiculing the president - was eagerly lapped up by the audience, which included musicians like David Byrne and D.J. Spooky, along with a throng of fans who would show up to hear Mr. Tweedy read from a digital phone directory.

Afterward, Alex Sherwin, a 36-year-old graphic designer, said, "It would have been better with a guitar, but I still enjoyed hearing what he had to say." Mr. Sherwin said his favorite CD was a live Jeff Tweedy performance in Chicago, one that had been recorded and distributed with the artist's happy assent.

Sixth-grader accused of counterfeiting

WEST SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A sixth-grader and two of his friends were suspended after being accused of using phony dollar bills made on a home computer to buy food in the school cafeteria.

On Monday, a cafeteria worker at James Madison Middle School found a dollar bill that didn't look or feel like the real thing. Seattle School District spokeswoman Patti Spencer said people in the lunch room were told to watch for more counterfeit bills.

An assistant principal called Seattle police the next day after a sixth grader tried to use one of the fake bills to buy beef jerky from the cafeteria.

Seattle Police spokesman Sean Whitcomb said the boy made 20 fake dollar bills on his aunt's computer, brought them to school and shared them with his friends.

The King County Prosecutors' Office is reviewing the case and deciding whether to file charges. School officials suspended the three boys for several days.