XXX-DVDs a new hazard for drivers

While a majority of motorists do not choose to play explicit movies in their cars, the few that do are causing a stir.

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- Andrea Carlton hadn't planned on telling her daughter about the birds and bees until she was 8 or 9. But that changed the night 4-year-old Catherine spotted a porno movie flickering on a screen in a minivan nearby.

"Just like there's no windows in a strip club, you shouldn't be able to see inside windows in a car when they're watching X-rated movies," said Carlton, a 26-year-old from Gurnee, Illinois.

More and more Americans are buying vehicles with DVD players, usually to keep the kids entertained. But an increasing number of other people on the road are catching a glimpse through the windows of more than just "Finding Nemo" and "SpongeBob SquarePants."

Depending on where they are driving or parked, motorists could face fines and even jail time for screening X-rated stuff. But where the law may not be clear, some are calling for tighter regulation.

"Residents should not be subjected to those obscenities," said Flint City Councilwoman Carolyn Sims, who is examining whether an ordinance packing a $500 fine is needed. "They do have a right to have peace and tranquility and not to have this exposure to sex in their face."

A driver in Schenectady, New York, was arrested last month after rolling past police with a DVD titled "Chocolate Foam" playing on the passenger-side sun visor in his Mercedes-Benz, authorities said. The movie also was rolling on screens set into the car's headrests.

The driver was accused of breaking state laws prohibiting watching TV while driving, as well as another law making it illegal to exhibit sexually explicit material in a public place.

"The detective had a clear view of what was playing through the window. Anyone walking by on the street could have seen it," Schenectady police Lt. Peter Frisoni Jr. said of the nighttime traffic stop. "If he had dark, tinted windows where you couldn't see in, that wouldn't be a public display."

As for Carlton, she was driving in the Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove with her daughter when Catherine glimpsed the sexually explicit movie. The experience last fall upset the girl and angered Carlton.

Carlton and her husband sat down with Catherine and offered the best explanation they could. Since then, Carlton has spotted other motorists with explicit movies playing, including a couple watching from the back seat of their car in a store parking lot.

"You're not allowed to have sex in your car, so why are you allowed to watch it?" Carlton asked.

Most states, including Michigan, have laws that make it illegal to watch TV while driving. Laws governing the exhibition of pornography vary by state, but experts say they could be applied to drivers as well.

"I think those restrictions would apply if the content is located in a vehicle," said Jeff Matsuura, director of the law and technology program at the University of Dayton. "You have effectively moved beyond the privacy of your own home."

During the day, it is often difficult to see what is playing inside another vehicle. But at night, the screens are easily visible from a passing car or a vehicle stopped alongside at a traffic light. The screens are also getting bigger.

In Flint, Sims took up the issue after hearing from a woman who was driving with her 5-year-old when she spotted porn playing on a vehicle's 13-inch TV screen. A police officer who happened to see the display pulled over the driver, Sims said, but let him off with a warning.

To Sims, a 23-year police veteran who retired in 2001, playing an explicit movie in view of other motorists or pedestrians is akin to flashing or having sex in a public place.

But Michigan State Police, who have not had any cases of in-car porn, say playing an X-rated movie might not be easy to prosecute unless it can be proved that the motorist intended for others to see it.

Quantum codes debut in real world

Quantum cryptography has emerged from the laboratory and into the real world.

Using properties of quantum physics, the technique encrypts data with keys that reveal if they have been intercepted or tampered with.

US company Magiq and Swiss firm ID Quantique have already sold hardware to several customers keen to protect data with quantum cryptography.

Governments and armed forces are thought to be among the first users of the technology.

Costly codes

Encryption usually involves scrambling data with long numeric keys that stop other people reading it.

Once you can guarantee the key is secret, you can use that for encrypting the data or for any other cryptographic tasks you want to do

Dr Andrew Shields, Toshiba
The information inside the message is effectively kept secure because of the time it would take an eavesdropper to sort through all possible keys used to scramble the data.

But quantum cryptography scrambles data in a different way by using the strange properties of the quantum world to guarantee that keys have been swapped securely.

Information about the key is encoded on to a single photon of light.

Quantum physics guarantees that the properties of the photon will change if anyone intercepts it and tries to read the information off it.

Once two parties have swapped a key that they know to be safe they can be sure that the messages they are sending each other are secure.

"Once you can guarantee the key is secret, you can use that for encrypting the data or for any other cryptographic tasks you want to do," said Dr Andrew Shields, leader of the Quantum Information Group at Toshiba's Cambridge laboratory.

Bob Gelfond, chief executive at Magiq, said the improvements in security offered by quantum cryptography were proving popular even though its QPN Security Gateway cost between $50,000 and $100,000.

Once connected to a fibre-optic network the Magiq hardware allows companies to set up a virtual network they can use to send data encoded with quantum keys.

Mr Gelfond said quantum cryptography had been established in laboratories for years but Magiq's engineers had worked hard to turn it into a commercial device.

"I think a lot of people thought it would happen later rather than sooner because of those engineering challenges," he said. "That was our challenge; making the system robust enough so it would work in a typical technology environment."

Distant obstacles

Although the technology is already in use, there are still some limitations to iron out.

For instance there is a limit to the distance that photons can travel before they lose coherence which makes it impossible to read key information.

The current record for long-distance quantum key distribution is 120km.

Mr Gelfond said now the basic technology was established costs of components and optics would fall.

Magiq was also getting a lot of interest from net service firms, said Mr Gelfond, who wanted to use quantum cryptography to create ultra-secure lines they could sell for a premium.

Mr Gelfond said his company was working on quantum memory chips, single photon sources and quantum repeaters to help with its long-term goal of creating a commercial quantum computer.

$1 million?bill leads to arrest

Alice Regina Pike faces forgery charges.

COVINGTON, Georgia (AP) -- A Georgia woman who tried to use a fake $1 million bill to buy $1,675 worth of merchandise at Wal-Mart was arrested, and police later found two more of the bills in her purse.

The U.S. Treasury does not make $1 million bills, but similar-looking currency is sold in some souvenir shops. The fake bill featured a picture of the Statue of Liberty, police said.

"It looks real, but of course there's nothing real about this," said Stacey Cotton, police chief in Covington, about 30 miles southeast of Atlanta. "People do crazy things all the time."

A store clerk immediately noticed the bill was fake when 35-year-old Alice Regina Pike handed it to her on Friday, Cotton said.

Pike then tried to use two gift cards worth only $2.32 to buy the merchandise, but when that did not work she again asked to cash the $1 million bill, Cotton said. The store then called police.

Pike was jailed on forgery charges. A woman who answered the phone at the jail said she did not know if Pike has a lawyer.

ISP's Protecting you From Yourself at the cost of basic functionality?

With the volume of troublesome traffic bouncing around the web, many ISP's have taken the steel barrier approach to securing their networks and those of their customers. Some argue that measures such as blocking ICMP or in/outbound port 25 TCP traffic eliminates much needed functionality. -

In the hopes of blocking spam, more and more ISP's are turning toward blocking either inbound or outbound port 25/tcp traffic, which is utilized by the SMTP protocol for sending mail. Comcast, Cox, Earthlink and many other major providers now block outgoing port 25 traffic (though sometimes on a region by region basis). By forcing residential customers to only send mail via ISP mail-servers, companies can keep a lid on the volume of mass-mailing originating from their residential customers (either intentionally or due to infection).

Other ISP's take that tactic a bit further, blocking inbound port 25 traffic. Some claim this less common tactic is usually done to prevent users from running a mail server; forcing them to upgrade to a more substantive business account for the privilege. The ISP's themselves suggest that's often the general consensus, but blocking inbound port 25 traffic really helps them keep inadvertent open relays to a minimum, and therefore off of blacklists.

Aside from the port 25 debate, some ISP's have turned to blocking various flavors of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) traffic - another ongoing debate that has been reheated thanks to recent activity by MyDoom and its variants. The practice became particularly more common after the Nachia/Welchia outbreak.

ICMP, a sister of the UDP and TCP protocols, is an error reporting and management protocol. As an integral part of IP and the internet itself, the protocol is utilized to exchange error, diagnostic, and control information among cooperating networked systems.

Each ICMP message has a "type" which indicates its purpose, and - for instance - the familiar "ping" utility sends an ECHO_REQUEST packet and looks for the ECHO_REPLY response from the other end. By measuring the time difference between the two, it knows your round-trip time.

Depending on which ICMP message types an ISP blocks, users can find various basic monitoring functionality impaired. The tactic is often employed by ISP's to reduce the bandwidth impact of worms or hackers utilizing ICMP "Smurfs", pings of death, ICMP flood or Nuke attacks. Cable and shared networks are particularly susceptible, since such messages are transferred to every member of the network. By blocking ICMP echo request/reply traffic, the bandwidth load and impact of so-called "ARP storms" are minimized.

The decision to block ICMP traffic is often un-noticed by less experienced users, but is a growing topic of debate among those who utilize the protocol for various reasons. RCN users discovered their provider was doing it last month, with technicians not exactly quick to admit it. It was likewise a hot topic of debate among Optimum On-line users last fall.

Another round of debate over the practice has broken out among Adelphia users, who've been waiting for ICMP functionality to be restored for quite some time. Users have found alternatives to direct pings, but there are ongoing complaints that the filtering of such traffic eliminates basic internet functionality. One user gripes "After 4+ years I'm tired of the endless struggle and being told everything I want to do is unreasonable for one reason or another."

New Ways to Skirt DMCA … Legally

Busting open a digital lock to get hold of copyright works normally is forbidden, but the Librarian of Congress ruled Tuesday that there are exceptions.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, prohibits, among other things, bypassing any technology that controls access to copyright material. This provision is criticized frequently by digital-rights groups because they say it stifles many legitimate activities in the process, including academic research, competition and innovation.

But the controversial law also recognizes that there are certain cases when circumvention should be permitted. Thus, it mandates that every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress review and grant exceptions to the anti-circumvention provision.

Those who are exempt from the rule are those who are "adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make non-infringing uses of that particular class of works," according to the DMCA.

Basically, those who have a non-infringing, fair-use reason to circumvent copy protections should be allowed to do so.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Copyright Office released the four "classes of works" exempted from the anti-circumvention rule. People may bypass a digital lock to access lists of websites blocked by commercial filtering companies, circumvent obsolete dongles to access computer programs, access computer programs and video games in obsolete formats, and access e-books where the text-to-speech function has been disabled.

One programmer who testified at the Copyright Office rule-making proceedings in April was jubilant that the filtering exemption was renewed.

"How sweet it is," said Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and anticensorship activist. "Without the exemption, the DMCA would make it a violation to decrypt the blacklist to find out what (filtering companies) are actually censoring. The actual contents of these blacklists are an important censorship issue.

"The Copyright Office has recognized the importance of fair use in this area affected by the DMCA," Finkelstein said. "It's not a blanket declaration of being legal, but it's an ability to argue fair use."

Filtering advocates had hoped the exemption would be dropped.

"I'm disappointed because I thought we had made it clear that the exemption is unnecessary to conduct meaningful evaluations of filters," said David Burt, a spokesman for Secure Computing, which purchased N2H2, a filtering company.

He cited extensive studies from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Consumer Reports and the Department of Justice, among others, in his testimony and said that "these methods are adequate for evaluating filters."

Gwen Hinze, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the group was pleased that the Librarian of Congress renewed and granted important exemptions, but was disappointed that exemptions the EFF proposed on behalf of consumers were not granted.

The digital-rights group asked that the Copyright Office allow consumers to do the following:


defeat copy-protection technology on CDs that do not play in certain devices, like PCs, in order to make them play;


circumvent region coding on DVDs from outside the United States so they play on U.S. DVD players;


circumvent Content Scrambling System protection on DVDs to access public-domain motion pictures, and skip advertising on DVDs they own.

"There are millions of Americans who are affected by copy protections in digital media," Hinze said. "We're disappointed that those people aren't going to get any benefits out of this rule-making process."

"This underscores the need for legislative reform of the DMCA," she said.

Porn, prostitutes not covered by Welfare

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court rejected a legal bid on Friday by an unemployed man who wanted the state to provide him with free pornography and trips to brothels because his wife is in Thailand.

The court in the southern town of Ansbach ruled that social services did not extend to satisfying the 43-year-old's sexual needs after he attempted to sue his local welfare office because it had refused to finance his appetite for prostitutes and porn.

"He wanted them to pay for four trips to the brothel a month, eight porn films a month, plus condoms," said court spokesman Peter Burgdorf. "He also wanted some sort of appliance for self-gratification to use when watching porn."

The man had earlier asked the Foreign Ministry to fly his wife back from her native Thailand, to which she had returned in 2002, saying that he could not afford the ticket.

"He said he needed the services to keep himself fit and healthy because his wife wasn't available," said Burgdorf. "Now he's planning to contest the decision in the court of appeal."

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I'm Sorry, Dave, You're Speeding

02:00 AM Mar. 04, 2004 PT

MELBOURNE, Australia -- At the Melbourne Motor Show last week, Toyota unveiled a controversial concept car that would very closely monitor, and in some cases restrict, the actions of its driver -- including refusing to turn on.

To drive the sleek Toyota Sportivo, a driver would have to enter a memory card into its console to turn on the engine. Based on the driver's experience and driving record, the car adjusts its engine performance, cutting back for motorists with less experience or spotty driving records.

"Drivers of the future who have grown up in an electronic age of heavy remote speed camera enforcement measures and electronic tollway charging systems are accepting of new technology that assists their lifestyle as well as monitoring it," a Toyota press release about the car says. "It is essential for drivers to be fully and accurately informed in this era of increasing electronic surveillance."

While some say a car that would second-guess its drivers' abilities might have limited appeal, Toyota says the purpose of the electronic logging and authentication isn't to snoop, but to inform.

"What we're suggesting is the driver's license in the future will be a smartcard, and it's embedded with all the data required to operate the car more safely and efficiently," Toyota project manager Paul Beranger said.

Toyota said it doesn't have plans to put the concept car on the road. The carmaker built the prototype to highlight Australia's local car-designing talent. But the vehicle does introduce some concepts that would shake up governments and vehicle bureaucracies.

With the Sportivo, there wouldn't be separate numbers for the license plate on the car and the license in a driver's wallet. Instead, a screen on the car's rear bumper would display a number linked to the driver's license, which would be encoded on the smartcard.

One advantage would be that the actions of drivers would be tied exclusively to their licenses, not the car. Since at any given moment many drivers on the road don't own the cars they're driving (because they either rented or borrowed the vehicle), the electronic logging would allow motor vehicle departments to charge the driver for speeding violations, parking tickets and unpaid toll charges -- not the owner.

"It's ultimately not the owner who's responsible for the car when it's on the road, it's the driver," Beranger said. "If the car is caught for speeding, the ticket goes to the driver, not the owner."

The driver-based record keeping could also change laws for young motorists. In Australia, new drivers are automatically placed on probation for three years when they get their license. Because of the new logging capabilities introduced in the Sportivo, the probationary period could be based on the number of hours behind the wheel, much like the way airplane pilots are licensed.

The power output of the engine can be restricted according to the license grade, and drivers whose licenses have been suspended would be unable to operate the car at all.

In addition, one Australian state, Victoria, requires vehicles to have alcohol breath analyzers tied to an engine lock for some serious and repeat drunk drivers. And Australia's federal government has considered a universal ID, called the Australia Card. The proposed card would store a wide array of personal information, and Australians would have to carry it at all times to obtain employment, health care and government services.

While the Australian senate twice turned down the proposal and public outcry killed the idea, privacy organizations say the smartcards needed to operate future cars look suspiciously like the universal IDs.

"We have a problem with the smartcard licenses because they will not stop with just dealing with speedsters," said Irene Graham, executive director of civil liberties organization Electronic Frontiers Australia. "They're proposing that the new licenses will be used over the Internet to identify people when dealing with government departments. We are concerned that businesses will come up with all sorts of reasons for identifying yourself."

While Toyota views its concept car as nothing more than a showcase for cool gizmos, its electronic logging functions would creep into everyday life, giving more surveillance powers to the government, critics say.

Still, the car is packed with more-conventional, less-ominous gizmos. The same smartcard would store each driver's preferences for seat position, mirror angels and favorite radio stations. Its speedometer reads signals from speed signs on the road and displays the speed limit in comparison to the car's velocity. Phone and GPS devices let the driver keep track of friends' whereabouts. And it would sport a 240-horsepower engine.

The Sportivo would be equipped with all-wheel-drive and a high-performance PBR braking system, putting it on par with Japanese turbo rockets like Subaru's WRX.

Now Hear This: Beat It

09:49 AM Mar. 03, 2004 PT

NEW YORK -- U.S. soldiers in Iraq have new gear for dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants. It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam.

The equipment, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called non-lethal weapon developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.

The devices have been used on some U.S. ships since last summer as part of a suite of protection devices.

Now, the Army and Marines have added this auditory barrage dispenser to their arms ensembles. Troops in Fallujah, a center of insurgency west of Baghdad, and other troublesome areas often deal with crowds in which lethal foes intermingle with non-hostile civilians.

The developer of the LRAD, American Technology Corp. of San Diego, recently got a $1.1 million contract from the Marine Corps to buy the gadgets for units deployed to Iraq. The Army also sent LRADs to Iraq to test on vehicles.

Some of the Iraq-bound devices will be used by members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, both recently deployed to the western province of Al Anbar, a largely barren, predominantly Sunni Muslim area.

Though not officially part of the military's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, the 45-pound, dish-shaped device belongs to a developing arsenal of technologies intended to deter rather than kill.

Another such weapon, expected to be tested in the field soon, is the Active Denial System. It seeks to repel enemies with a painful energy beam.

Carl Gruenler, vice president of military and government operations for American Technology Corp., said LRADs are "in the beginnings of being used in Baghdad," though he said he lacked "initial feedback" on how they are working.

Dubbed "the sound of force protection" in a company brochure, the devices can broadcast sound files containing warning messages. Or they can be used with electronic translating devices for what amounts to narrowcasting.

If crowds or potential foes don't respond to the verbal messages, the sonic weapon, which measures 33 inches in diameter, can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD's operators or others in the immediate area are affected.

The devices "place distance between the Marine and their threat, giving him/her more time to sort out a measured and appropriate response," Lt. Col. Susan Noel, force protection officer for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said in an ATC statement announcing the contract.

Gruenler compares the LRAD's shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder. It can be as loud as about 150 decibels; smoke detectors are in the 80 to 90 decibel range.

"Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there," said Gruenler, adding that the device is recommended for a range of 300 yards or less.

Hearing experts say sound that loud and of that high a frequency -- about 2,100 to 3,100 hertz -- could be dangerous if someone were exposed to it long enough.

"That's a sensitive region for developing hearing loss," said Richard Salvi, director of the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the University at Buffalo. "The longer the duration, the more serious it is."

Gruenler concedes that permanent hearing damage is possible if someone were exposed to the sound for lengthy periods.

But he said the high-pitched tone is intended to only be used for a few seconds at a time.

Court: DeCSS ban violated free speech

Court: DeCSS ban violated free speech | CNET News.com

Video game's R rating a first for Ontario

TORONTO -- The Ontario Film Review Board has rated its first video game, slapping a "restricted" rating on it to keep it out of kids' hands. Manhunt, a PlayStation 2 game that features extreme gore and language, can no longer be sold, rented or distributed to anyone under 18 in Ontario.

Consumer and Business Services Minister Jim Watson said he agrees with the board's decision to rate the "disturbing" video game.

"Going around and murdering people and assaulting people -- it was quite disturbing, I'd never seen anything like it before and I thought it was quite distasteful," he said yesterday.

In Manhunt, the player assumes the persona of a death-row inmate who escapes and kills his enemies. Top scores are earned by turning up the terror, which, while enticing to fans, was a factor in its R rating.

Watson said it's the first time the province has placed an R rating on a video game.

In Manhunt's case, he added, it's an attempt to keep the "vile and violent" game out of kids' hands.

"If you've seen this video, you realize, quite frankly, it's really disturbing."

Review board chairperson Bill Moody said the video game came to the board's attention after New Zealand banned it.

Video games are considered films under the Theatre Act and can be rated, but this is the first time it's happened in Ontario, he said.

Videos are rated in the U.S. by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. But the voluntary U.S. rating isn't enforceable -- only a suggestion to parents, Moody said.

Any underage person in Ontario who buys or rents the game risks a maximum fine of $25,000 or up to one year in jail.

Anyone selling Manhunt to minors faces fines as high as $100,000.

Moody said the raters found Manhunt contained course language and sexual references, but it was the extreme violence that earned the R rating.

The player gets extra points for escalating the violence, such as smashing in the skull of a dead victim.

The film board wants to help parents guide their children to good choices, Moody said.

"I'm not sure that some kids don't get so immersed in the world of imagination that they sometimes have difficulty recognizing when they leave the game and enter real life," he said.

Moody said he has received no negative reaction, just positive calls from supporters of the R rating.

Manhunt's publisher, Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., issued a brief statement saying it would fight the classification.

"Rockstar Games is appealing the decision with the Ontario Film Review Board," the company said.

The violence in Manhunt prompted the ban in New Zealand last December, where it was called "injurious to the public good."

Any underage person who buys or rents the game risks a maximum fine of $25,000 or as long as one year in prison.

Anyone selling Manhunt to minors faces fines as high as $100,000.

The rating was applied by the Ontario Film Review Board -- an arm's-length agency of the Consumer and Business Services Ministry -- after its panel reviewed the game, in part because of parents' complaints, said board chairperson Bill Moody.

The board usually accepts the video game industry's voluntary classification system as determined by the New York-based Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Manhunt was given a Mature rating by the New York board that pegged it as suitable for those 17 and older.

But the voluntary U.S. rating isn't enforceable; it's merely a suggestion to parents, Moody said.

"We felt the only way we could control the thing was to put the R rating on it," Moody said, shrugging off suggestions of censorship.

Manhunt's publisher, Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., issued a brief statement saying it would fight the classification.

"Rockstar Games is appealing the decision with the Ontario Film Review Board," the company said yesterday.

The violence in Manhunt prompted a ban in New Zealand last December, where it was called "injurious to the public good."

Australia also considered a ban, but Ontario won't go that route, said

Moody said the province has never banned a video game.

"We're not banning it all," Moody said, noting Manhunt's content is comparable to an R-rated film. "We're trying to protect our kids.

"Most parents, unfortunately, don't know what they've just given their kids for Christmas."

Hands Off! That Fact Is Mine

02:00 AM Mar. 03, 2004 PT

Imagine doing a Google search for a phone number, weather report or sports score. The results page would be filled with links to various sources of information. But what if someone typed in keywords and no results came back?

That's the scenario critics are painting of a new bill wending its way through Congress that would let certain companies own facts, and exact a fee to access them.

Ostensibly, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act (HR3261) makes it a crime for anyone to copy and redistribute a substantial portion of data collected by commercial database companies and list publishers. But critics say the bill would give the companies ownership of facts -- stock quotes, historical health data, sports scores and voter lists. The bill would restrict the kinds of free exchange and shared resources that are essential to an informed citizenry, opponents say.

The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill and the commerce committee is expected to review it on Thursday.

The bill's biggest backers are the Software and Information Industry Association; Reed Elsevier, which owns the LexisNexis database; and Westlaw, the biggest publisher of legal databases.

Art Brodsky, spokesman for public advocacy group Public Knowledge, says the bill would let anyone drop a fact into a database or a collection of materials and claim monopoly rights to it. This would contradict the core principle of the Copyright Act, which states that mere information and ideas cannot be protected works.

Under the terms of the broadly written bill, a public-health website could be deemed in violation of the law for gathering a list of the latest health headlines and providing links to them on its home page.

Google would be in violation for trolling media databases and providing stories on its news page.

An encyclopedia site not only could own the historical facts contained in its online entries, but could do so long after the copyright on authorship of the written entries had expired. Unlike copyright, which expires 70 years after the death of a work's author, the Misappropriation Act doesn't designate an expiration date.

"The law of unintended consequences in this case has the potential to be huge," Brodsky said.

Commercial database companies say they invest millions of dollars in collecting, editing and organizing information for their customers, but don't have adequate protection to prevent someone from stealing the information to compete with them. They say the public will lose access to information if companies are deterred from building databases because of theft.

But critics say that letting companies own facts would take information out of the public domain and make it accessible only to those who could afford it. They also say that copyright laws and usage agreements already protect databases.

Keith Kupferschmid, vice president of the intellectual property and enforcement division of the Software and Information Industry Association, says critics have mischaracterized the bill and exaggerated its reach. He cites 10 criteria that would have to be met before a company could claim misappropriation of its data. The list includes proof of injury.

Kupferschmid says the law doesn't apply to bits of information taken from a database, such as in the case of a researcher working on an academic paper.

"The bill only applies where someone takes a substantial portion of the database and uses it in a way that causes commercial harm to the provider of the data. You have to prove an injury, and it needs to be significant," he said.

But Joe Rubin, executive director of technology and e-commerce for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says the bill's threshold for proving "commercial harm" is very low.

He cited the example of a financial planner who gathers information from several sources, like Securities and Exchange Commission filings, public documents and the Dun & Bradstreet business database.

"If he assimilated the information and put it into a report for his client, under this bill that activity would be illegal and would subject him to lawsuits from every company whose website he accessed," Rubin said.

He also says that despite Kupferschmid's characterization, the bill puts no limit on the amount of information someone needs to take from a database to violate the law.

"The bill mentions databases and subsets of databases. A subset could be any bit of information in a database," Rubin said.

A 1997 case between Motorola and the National Basketball Association could serve as an example. After Motorola sent basketball scores to its customers' pagers, the NBA sued the company for misappropriating its property. A U.S. Appeals Court, however, ruled against the NBA.

Opponents of the bill include Yahoo, Google, the American Association of Libraries and a host of technology and financial-services companies such as Verizon, Bloomberg and Charles Schwab.

"All of the companies opposed to the bill produce some of the most massive databases in the world, yet they feel they already have adequate protections for them," Rubin said. "There really is no necessity whatsoever for this legislation."

RFID Tags in New US Notes Explode When You Try to Microwave Them

< We have found no evidence this is true, but imagine the future... Serious fucked up implications here folks (thanks pistoleirao) >

Why Your E-mail Requests Are Ignored

March 1, 2004

Sending e-mail requests for help or information to multiple people will get you an answer more quickly, right? Wrong. Greg Barron on the importance of personalized e-mail.

We've all done it. We need a piece of information quickly, or we want to get immediate attention from IT support. So we send off an e-mail to multiple recipients?the more lures in the water, the faster we catch a fish, right? Well, not exactly, says Greg Barron.

Barron, the CLER Research Fellow at Harvard Business School, and research partner Eldad Yechiam, a post-doctoral research fellow at Indiana University's Department of Psychology, have studied why online help requests are sometimes ignored. Barron discusses the research and its practical applications in this Q&A.

Wendy Guild Swearingen: Your research into online and e-mail help requests and responses is fascinating. How did you become interested in the topic?

Greg Barron: Like our first paper's fictitious hero, Sarah Feldman, I wanted responses to my e-mail. I was looking for an address and I knew of two people I could ask. The question was, how many e-mails (asking for the address) to send, one or two? One e-mail addressed to both people is obviously the most efficient option in terms of both my time and the net's bandwidth. However, my intuition, and that of my co-author Eldad Yechiam, was that two individually addressed e-mails would be more effective. Our reasoning was that one e-mail addressed to both recipients could lead to a diffusion of responsibility where each recipient assumes that the other will respond. We couldn't resist testing the hypothesis empirically and so these experiments were born.

Q: It seems counterintuitive that the more people that are queried for help, the fewer respond. Were you surprised by your results?

A: We demonstrated that the more people queried, the lower the proportion of responses. While we were pleased with the clean results, we were not surprised. Social psychologists have been studying the diffusion of responsibility effect ever since Darley and Latané's (1970) influential studies that were motivated in part by the murder of Kitty Genovese in full view of thirty-eight bystanders who did nothing to help. It seemed natural for us to assume that the effect could be generalized to e-mail requests.

Q: Can you explain a little bit about social cueing theory and how it applies to your research?

A: Latané and Darley explained their findings in terms of the bystander's cue value?the belief, conveyed by verbal or nonverbal communication, that others are capable of helping. Accordingly, if an e-mail sent through a discussion group is evaluated by its recipient as being sent to many individuals that are capable of responding, the diffusion of responsibility effect would imply a decreased tendency to respond.

Q: Do you think there is a way to "unlearn" the diffusion of responsibility and, if so, could the change be implemented in service-based industries? On that note, have you found that there is a certain personality type that is more prone to answer online help requests sent to multiple e-mail addresses?

A: Economists model diffusion of responsibility as a ''volunteer dilemma'' where the probability that a rational person will volunteer to produce a public good decreases with group size. The fundamental part of this dilemma is that the utility of not volunteering is higher than the utility of volunteering, assuming that someone else has volunteered. The key to making the dilemma (and the diffusion of responsibility) disappear lies in increasing either the cost of not volunteering (i.e., of shirking) or the personal gain from choosing to respond. The easiest way to do this is simply to designate responsibility. In this context it is interesting to note that responsibility literally means the ability to respond.

Managers need to keep their e-mails personalized whenever possible. It's that simple.
? Greg Barron
While we have not looked at specific personality types, we did find that requests sent under the female name, Judy Lamson, had a slightly, but significantly higher response rate than requests sent under the male guise, George Lamson. This finding is consistent with Eagly and Crowley's (1986) meta-analysis on the effect of gender on helping behavior. Specifically, they found that people tend to help women more than men. Our study cannot conclusively support this result since we examined only two senders' names.

Q: In my own experience, when I have a computer-related problem I often "cc" many people in a group assuming that the more people I include, the quicker the response will be. Obviously, this is a mistake. How can groups, such as IT help desks, insure that help requests have been answered?

A: The effect of additional addresses in the cc field on the recipient is an interesting empirical question that we have not looked at, but note that in terms of cue value, the cc field is very different from the To field. Almost by definition, recipients in the cc field are not expected to respond to the e-mail so we would not expect a diffusion of responsibility to occur. As for customer service operations, it's all about designated responsibility. It must be crystal clear who has the responsibility to respond to a call, no matter how many copies of the call go out. This is a good example of increasing the cost of not volunteering, but for the one person whose job it is to respond. The person who has the responsibility cannot afford not to respond. Clearly, the cost here is in the context of professionalism and a good work ethic.

Q: How can business managers incorporate your findings into their day-to-day operations?

A: Managers need to keep their e-mails personalized whenever possible. It's that simple. The idea that a personalized communication has a larger impact is supported by a large body of both psychology and marketing literature besides our own line of research. While this all sounds intuitive, I never cease receiving e-mails addressed to undisclosed lists. The fact that some of these e-mails are actual commercial offers suggests that potential profits are being lost by not following this intuitive guideline.


Learning to Ignore Online Help Request



There is a bit of a technological barrier here. Most e-mail clients are simply not equipped to send out personalized e-mails based on a list. This is not surprising since the need here, for the personal touch, is not technological but psychological. Paradoxically, we need e-mail clients that can do the job less efficiently from a technological perspective.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Broadly speaking, I am interested in both decision-making and strategic interaction and in their application to managerial contexts. As for this particular line of research, I am looking at implicit signals of an e-mail's value. Value in this context might refer to the quality or importance of information in the e-mail or to the desirability of an e-mail offer.

In biology, and more recently in economics, the theory of honest signaling provides some possible insights. According to the theory, signals that are costly to produce and send provide a mechanism by which two parties can have reliable communication despite conflicting interests (Zahavi's handicap principle). Examples include male peacocks that use costly ornaments to display quality to potential mates and baby birds that use costly begging calls to display hunger. Eldad Yechiam and I think that there are analogous costly signals in e-mails that signal their quality and, as a result, increase our tendency to read and respond to their message. In the near future we will be running an experiment that examines this hypothesis empirically.

Two Tough Questions...

Question 1:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates.

Candidate A -
Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two Mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B -
He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in
college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.

Candidate C -
He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks
an occasional beer and never cheated on his wife.

Which of these candidates would be your choice?


Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Candidate B is Winston Churchill.

Candidate C is Adolph Hitler.

And, by the way, the answer to the abortion question: If you said
yes, you just killed Beethoven.

BadBlue OfficeSurfer Help Center

Scientific Ignorance Dooms Democracy

Increasingly hi-tech nations need informed citizens, making scientific literacy a human right and scientific illiteracy a disability
12/22/2003

I recently put a painting on my fridge door by my six-year old son, Lucas. In this particular composition, Lucas portrays a scientist diligently working in his "nanotechnology lab," operating what appears to be (to me anyway) a molecular assembler. When I asked Lucas if he knew what nanotechnology was, he replied, "Sure, Daddy, it's technology and robots that work at a microscopic size."

The kid's in grade one and has already picked sides in the Drexler-Smalley debate. He can also already describe the human digestive system in detail. And he knows that humans evolved from apes, that the fastest that anything can travel in the Universe is the speed of light and that hypotheses aren't set in stone—he acknowledges that the current theory of how the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago is just that, a theory. So passionate is he for science that once, at an observatory open house, he overheard an astronomy professor teaching a class and felt compelled to correct him about how many moons orbit Saturn.

In addition to his insatiable appetite for all things scientific, Lucas has the advantage of a scientifically inclined father and exposure to excellent educational programs such as Bill Nye the Science Guy and The Magic Schoolbus, as well as Websites such as BrainPops.

With all this, I don't have to worry that Lucas will grow up scientifically illiterate. It's good to know that he'll be able to count off facts and figures, and even more comforting to know that he'll grow up with the broader, softer skills that science teaches, namely skepticism, empiricism and a dedication to formal methodologies. In other words, through learning about science, my son is becoming a critical thinker.

But he's probably in the minority. Ignorance of how science and technology works is rampant in our society, leading to a stunningly dependent, suggestible and ill-informed populace.

We all need to know about science. Without this knowledge we are powerless, forced to live in a fog about how things work. Without it, we are utterly dependent on others to form our opinion. Without it, we cannot properly participate in society as informed, critical and responsibly opinioned citizens. Moreover, in today's hi-tech information age world, democracy cannot work without a scientifically literate society.

On my way to work each day I pass a bus shelter ad that reads, "Literacy is a Right." Well, I'd take that further and declare that today scientific literacy is a basic human right. As with the inability to read, the inability to understand science and scientific methodology is nothing less than a disability.

Embarrassing ignorance

Most of those who live in the West, particularly North Americans, are guilty of an anti-intellectual bias. Scientists are supposed to be nerds, right? And who wants to be a nerd? This sentiment, combined with a general suspicion of science and the predominance of aggressive theological and pseudoscientific memes, has resulted in much of the scientific illiteracy that now pervades our society.

It doesn't help that the educational system is in shambles and without focus, and that fatuous postmodernism and its insistence that nothing can truly be known now dominates many disciplines at most universities. Consequently, too many people wear their ignorance like a badge of honor, as if being clueless about science is something to be proud of.

Well, there's nothing noble about ignorance, and if anything scientific illiteracy should be considered downright embarrassing. A 2001 poll conducted by the National Science Foundation in the US revealed the pervasiveness of the problem. Results showed that only 48% of Americans knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as the dinosaurs, and that only 22% could properly define a molecule. The survey also showed that only 45% knew what DNA was and that lasers don't work by focusing sound waves, and that 48% knew that electrons were smaller than atoms.

Just as significant, only 21% of those surveyed were able to explain what it means to study something scientifically. Slightly over half understood probability, and only a third knew how an experiment is conducted.

Cognitively disabled

The trouble with ignorance is not so much what people don't know but what this causes them to believe.

There is a direct correlation between scientific illiteracy and a propensity for belief in superstitions, religion, the paranormal and pseudoscience. Those unacquainted with science also tend to be more prone to scam artists, unwise investments, fiscal schemes and bogus health and medical practices. On this last note, a number of opportunistic hucksters are beginning to take advantage of the hype created by pending life extension technologies and stem cell research, making grand promises to hopeful people that can't possibly be fulfilled; the scientifically illiterate make for easy targets.

It's safe to suggest, therefore, that those with a deficiency in scientific comprehension have underdeveloped critical thought faculties. In other words, they might as well be suffering from some kind of cognitive disorder.

A consequence of this disability is that some will be left behind. As neuroscientist Steven Pinker has noted, "As our economy comes to depend increasingly on technology, and as modern media present us with unprecedented choices—in our lifestyles, our workplaces, and our political commitments—a child who cannot master an ever-increasing body of skills and knowledge will be left farther and farther behind."

Crippling society

The late Carl Sagan similarly worried about the effects of a scientifically illiterate society. "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology," he lamented. "We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

Indeed, scientific illiteracy cripples culture, justice, democracy and society in general. When you have misinformed individuals you get unhealthy societies.

The way the media works today, with its problematic approach to "balanced" reporting instead of accurate reporting and its propensity for sensationalism, it is guilty of much of the misinformation and frequent fear-mongering that imbues news and pop culture.

Similarly, the judicial system is not immune to the problems posed by a scientifically illiterate populace. Judges and jurors, with little background in the hard sciences, tend to be easily swayed by so-called expert witnesses who, despite taking sworn oaths, spew weak and bogus science to help lawyers defend their case.

Scientific illiteracy also has political implications, resulting in such things as the rise of the religious right in the Bush administration and the prominence of orthodox office holders at all levels of its government. A misappraisal of science has also resulted in backwards legislation in the US, Canada and Europe for stem cell research, cloning and genetically modified foods. A recent Eurobarometer poll revealed that 60% of Europeans believe that ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes while genetically engineered tomatoes do, while 50% believe that eating genetically modified fruit can cause a person's genes to become modified.

As early as the 1950s, scientist and novelist C.P. Snow was already sounding the alarm about increasingly ignorant electorates. Snow coined the term "two cultures" to refer to the growing divergence between those in society who understand science and technology sufficiently to make informed choices and those who do not.

Biologist and education critic Stephen Schneider recognizes the threat that a scientifically illiterate society poses to a functional democracy. "We all share a strong belief in democracy," he notes, "but it can only function well when the people understand the choices they need to make and are in a position to make trade-offs rationally." He believes that as issues get increasingly complex, "ignorance decouples the people from the knowledge they need to help guide policy choices that can shape our future."

Psychologist Barry L. Beyerstein agrees. He contends that it is essential for a well-functioning democracy that "we all be conversant with the basics of science so that we can cut through political rhetoric and the daily news when these issues arise."

Science fuels democracy

Like the right to vote, those living in a democracy should demand the right to scientific literacy so that they may become informed and discerning citizens. As Carl Sagan noted, "Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works." A central lesson of science, argued Sagan, is that to understand complex issues, people must try to free their minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, contradict and experiment. He strongly believed that arguments from authority were unacceptable.

Skepticism is one of the greatest tools that a person can have, and science teaches this as a matter of course. But the business of skepticism can often be dangerous. As Sagan observed, skepticism challenges established institutions. "If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of skeptical thought, they will probably not restrict their skepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials, and 35,000-year-old channelees," wrote Sagan, "Maybe they'll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they'll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?"

Science helps us to be free of gross superstition and gross injustice. "Often, superstition and injustice are imposed by the same ecclesiastical and secular authorities, working hand in glove," Sagan argued. "It is no surprise that political revolutions, skepticism about religion, and the rise of science might go together. Liberation from superstition is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science."

Indeed, as Schneider has observed, science literacy is not just about the "facts"—knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology or economics per se. "More important for non-specialists," says Schneider, "is to understand the process of science, and how science interacts with public policy issues and gets communicated via the media."

What can be done?

All this begs the question: What can be done?

First and foremost there must to be a push for education reform. According to Pinker, most high school and college curricula have barely changed since medieval times mostly because "no one wants to be the philistine who seems to be saying that it is unimportant to learn a foreign language, or English literature, or trigonometry, or the classics." He worries about how classroom practices are set by "fads, romantic theories, slick packages, and political crusades." To alleviate the problem, Pinker believes that a scientific mindset needs to be applied to the educational process and a renewed commitment to the sciences, including the fields of economics, biology, probability and statistics.

Education reform also rests with the scientists themselves. Education critic Neal Lane, the former assistant to the US president for science and technology, has proposed the idea of the "civic scientist." "What we need," says Lane, "is the science community's leadership to educate the nation about the value of science and technology to our national well-being." Neal envisions a proactive and socially active scientific community.

We also need educational systems that are accountable—ones that respect the human right to a liberal education and high academic standards. It's preposterous that Creationism is still taught in some schools. This issue has nothing to do with freedom of religion and everything to do with one's right to be free from religion. Otherwise, schools might just as well teach that the Earth is flat and that the Moon is made out of cheese.

And finally, we all need to promote science as an attractive discipline and as a means to personal empowerment and social betterment. As science educator Nye has said to children across North America, science is cool.

And indeed it is—and more so than ever before. Today, scientists are busy discussing the possibility of infinite universes, microscopic robots that will operate in the body, cyborg and artificial citizens, plants that can clean toxic waste in the soil and a manned expedition to Mars.

While exciting, however, all these things are prone to misunderstanding and apprehension. Unless we have a populace that can fully understand and assess these and other pending issues, we risk squandering what should be wonderful opportunities for individuals and the species. We also risk creating the "two cultures" envisioned by Snow—the intellectual haves and have-nots.

The time to act is now, for those who fail to grasp the scientific issues of our time will find the future truly incomprehensible.

Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites

Song trading still popular despite suits

Sunday, February 22, 2004 · Last updated 11:09 a.m. PT

PHILADELPHIA -- Greg Kullberg first started downloading free music off the Internet as a college freshman in 1996. He stopped - mostly - after the recording industry started filing lawsuits against file-sharers last year.

"Right away when I heard about it I actually went home and uninstalled my software," the 25-year-old Boston software consultant said. But like many users, he still downloads: "I'd say one song a week instead of before, it was maybe 20 a day."

The music industry, which filed suit against another 531 Internet users last week, says its tactics are slowing the tide of free downloads, citing cases like Kullberg's.

A study released in January that surveyed 1,358 Internet users in late fall found the number of Americans downloading music dropped by half from six months earlier, with 17 million fewer people doing it nationwide.

But some experts and users say that file sharers are only being more secretive, and that file swapping is actually increasing. At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month.

The Recording Industry Association of America has sued 1,445 people since September, with the latest batch of 531 coming this month against people in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., and Trenton, N.J. Most of the earlier cases have been settled, for an average of $3,000 each.

"I think the RIAA's campaign is clearly and demonstrably having a tremendous effect, I'm just not sure to what end," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, an online media tracking firm.

Graham Mudd, a researcher at comScore Networks, said the number of consumers visiting pay music sights like Apple's iTunes and Napster pales in comparison to the file-sharing sights like Kazaa. But he says the lawsuits are decreasing free downloads.

"The faucet is still absolutely on," he said. "I just think the flow may have been slightly limited."

Mitch Bainwol, the chairman and chief executive of the RIAA, said the record 2 million songs legally sold last week, mostly on iTunes and Napster, prove the lawsuits are educating users.

"There will always be piracy - there is on the physical side, there will be on the online side - but most people won't do it when they understand the legal consequences," Bainwol said.

The January study from comScore and the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 52 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds downloaded music last spring, but only 28 percent did after the lawsuits were filed.

Like Kullberg, others say their habits have changed.

Marissa Sinclair, a 22-year-old Philadelphia school teacher, said she and a half dozen friends stopped downloading because of the lawsuits.

Jeremy Spurr, 26, a financial planner in Boston, said the suits, which were filed only against people who share music, have stopped his friends from sharing songs with each other, but not downloading it for themselves.

Kullberg and Spurr both say the suits have driven file sharers to private servers or anonymizing services that mask Internet users' identities.

"I think people realize that, hey, if we're going to do this, we have to be quiet," Kullberg said.

BigChampagne's Garland said he thinks the January study - which did not measure computer use but surveyed users only about their habits - shows the lawsuits' biggest effect was educational: People now know file sharing is illegal so they lie about doing it.

"They have effectively put music downloading in the same stigmatized category as teen smoking," Garland said. "People know when they should be shy about an issue."

Garland said that while Apple hopes to sell 100 million 99-cent songs in one 12-month period, "10 billion, or more than 100 times that, will be downloaded in MP3 form for free."

Industry numbers can be confusing. The NPD Group found the number of songs downloaded increased from September 2003 to November 2003, when it was 166 million. Nielsen/NetRatings, though, found the number of unique users on Kazaa dropped by half to 7.3 million users in December 2003 from a year earlier.

Still, many point out, that's 7.3 million users compared with 1,445 lawsuits.

"No matter what they do, it's not going to work," Spurr said. "To me the lawsuits are useless because the Internet is about sharing."

Protection From Pornography Week, 2003

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Pornography can have debilitating effects on communities, marriages, families, and children. During Protection From Pornography Week, we commit to take steps to confront the dangers of pornography.

The effects of pornography are particularly pernicious with respect to children. The recent enactment of the PROTECT Act of 2003 strengthens child pornography laws, establishes the Federal Government's role in the AMBER Alert System, increases punishment for Federal crimes against children, and authorizes judges to require extended supervision of sex offenders who are released from prison.

We have committed significant resources to the Department of Justice to intensify investigative and prosecutorial efforts to combat obscenity, child pornography, and child sexual exploi-ta-tion on the Internet. We are vigorously prosecuting and severely punishing those who would harm our children. Last July, the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Predator, an initiative to help identify child predators, rescue children depicted in child pornography, and prosecute those responsible for making and distributing child pornography.

Last year, I signed legislation creating the Dot Kids domain, a child-friendly zone on the Internet. The sites on this domain are monitored for content and safety, offering parents assurances that their children are learning in a healthy environment. Working together with law enforcement officials, parents, and other caregivers, we are making progress in protecting our children from pornography.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 26 through November 1, 2003, as Protection From Pornography Week. I call upon public officials, law enforcement officers, parents, and all the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-eighth.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Man arrested in ‘spam rage’ case

Penis enlargement ads drive man to threaten torture

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21, 2003 - Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis.

In one of the first prosecutions of its kind in the state that made “road rage” famous, Charles Booher, 44, was arrested on Thursday and released on $75,000 bond for making repeated threats to staff of an unnamed Canadian company between May and July, the U.S. Attorney’s office for Northern California said on Friday.

Booher threatened to send a “package full of Anthrax spores” to the company, to “disable” an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said. He used return e-mail addresses including Satan@hell.org.

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Booher acknowledged that he had behaved badly but said his computer had been rendered almost unusable for about two months by a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail.

Booher threatened to send a “package full of Anthrax spores” to the company, to “disable” an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.

“Here’s what happened: I go to their Web site and start complaining to them, would you please, please, please stop bothering me,” he said. “It just sort of escalated ... and I sort of lost my cool at that point.”

Booher, of Sunnyvale, California, now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for next month. He said he did not own any guns or have access to anthrax.

Booher said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer.

The object of the Californian’s anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management, which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising the “Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement.”

“This went for a long, long time. He seemed really dedicated to this,” Mackay said from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. “He seemed like a guy just crazy enough with nothing to lose that might actually do something.”

He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.

In other cases, Internet vigilantes have bombarded spammers with both unsolicited e-mail and regular mail and phone calls, launched attacks on spammers’ computers and posted spammers’ personal information on the Internet, according to reports.