(CNN) --Boy band singer Lance Bass says he has been medically cleared for space travel.
"I'm pretty confident we will be able to pull this off. I know physically I can do this," Bass told a packed news conference in a luxury hotel in Moscow, according to Reuters.
Bass, a member of the band 'N Sync, hopes to become the next tourist to hitch a ride on a manned Russian rocket to the international space station. He has been undergoing tests at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems to evaluate his fitness for the journey.
The pop star still has to get permission from the Russian Aerospace Agency to make the trip, scheduled to launch in October.
A spokesman for the agency told CNN Friday there had been no discussions with Bass about a possible space flight, and said no decision had been made about the next space tourist.
But David Kreiff of Destiny Productions, a Los Angeles television production company that has committed to helping fund Bass' trip, said the spokesman was misinformed.
"Things are progressing on a very high level," Krieff said.
He said paperwork had been sent to the Russian space agency and money had been put in escrow to fund the venture.
"We're looking at upwards of $14 (million) to $20 million," Krieff said of the cost of the trip. That's in line with what the two previous space tourists, American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth, paid for the privilege.
Nokia 9290 Communicator Full Specifications Applications Digital cellular phone (handsfree, handset and headset use) Fax, Short Messages, E-mail 1 Wireless imaging, digital camera connectivity Smart Messaging Support 1 WWW, WAP 1 Contacts Notes Calendar with multiple views and attachments Calculator, World time clock with alarms Size Dimensions: 6.22" Long x 1.06" Deep x 2.20" Wide Weight: 8.6 oz Technical Data 32-bit ARM9 RISC CPU Symbian operating system - Personal Java, C++ support Data speed up to 14,400 bps ready 1 Screen resolution: 640 pixels wide x 200 pixels high Multimedia card slot. 16 MB memory included. Network: GSM 1900 Connectivity: IrDA, Ir-TranP, RS-232 System Specific Features GSM phase 2 signaling 3V SIM Application Toolkit support Enhanced full rate (EFR) speech codec Full rate speech codec Encryption algorithms: none, A5.1, A5.2 E-mail Protocols POP3 or IMAP4 SMTP Mime 1 >
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Okla. legislature passes bill authorizing chemical castration of some sex offenders Sat May 25, 6:47 AM ET
OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma legislature has approved legislation that authorizes the chemical castration of serious sex offenders.
The measure, which passed the House on Thursday and had already passed the Senate, permits judges to order chemical castration for people convicted of first- or second-degree rape or forcible sodomy. Repeat offenders could be subject to surgical castration under the bill.
The measure now goes to Gov. Frank Keating for final approval.
In the chemical castration process, drugs are used to reduce the amount of the male hormone testosterone the body produces.
The sponsor, Sen. Frank Shurden, has been trying to get a castration law on the books since the early 1970s. He has said castration has been effective in Europe in reducing recidivism by sex offenders.
I hope their robots work better than their web site.
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As far as we know, the idea of copyright and the royalty-fees in connection to it, did not originate in the minds of composers nor creators at all! Protection of copyright entered our law-systems only under pressure of publishers and replaced their former privileges to print and to sell books. Therefore the idea of copyright cannot be traced back any further than up to the moment of the invention of the printing press with Gutenberg. Even if the idea of individual authorship and moral rights with regard to intellectual property goes back on the french revolution, it should be said, as to musical composition, that all copyright regulations date back only from the second half of the nineteenth century. The time when our music culture took a turn towards historicism.
Concert life at that time just achieved independence from contemporary music production and concentrated merely on reproduction of so called classic music from the past. Only commercial, i.e. mass-consumption oriented new music (Strauss-walzes, the real origin of pop-music) was really in demand. The majority of academically schooled composers became sort of superfluous and thus felt a lot of social frustration. Nobody was in need of their music and thus, economically speaking, their music was (and still is) absolutely worthless, since out of demand. Organisations such as Sabam here in Belgium, were not founded to help out poor composers, but only to secure them a place in a capitalist economical system: to give them some psychological feel of being valuable. It is thus very well explainable why those organisations where founded by probably the worst of those days composers, and... why still today they are led by the worst and most academic amongst them. But, what they have done in fact, was nothing else than copying the idea of copyright protection from the publishers, but without understanding the very basis of the system. Publishers in fact used and needed copyright protection in order to protect their investment. Composers at the other hand do not usually invest anything but cheap ink and musicpaper.
However, I am not going to annoy you all with historical facts and details, but the only reason why I am raising these few points is to show that the underlying motivation to the legislation of such a thing as copyright was nothing else than the protection against competition of the publishers material production. The publisher, before printing, had to do a for that time rather substantial investment, and he did'nt like the risk of someone else producing the same book - cheaper - in fear of major financial losses. He didn't protect the contents of the book, but merely used the criterium of the contents as a way of protecting his material production and financial investment. One can consider such an attitude to be clearly in contradiction with liberal economic theory. Information in the second half of the nineteenth century still was quite strongly bound to its medium, to its material carrier. As a parenthesis, allow me to remark that the first books printed in large numbers were actually bibles, wherefore nobody could really claim any form of copyright anyway! One thought of it being quite evident, the Holy Word going round. And, as a second remark, of course also before printing the practice of copying was widely in use, and nobody ever made a problem with regard to the "property of the contents" . Every copy - a manuscript in itself - was a new commissioned product and that product was owned by the one who payed for it. In every case, the notion of content was entirely unrelated to the economical value of the manuscript. The labour of copying - by hand - was what was payed for. Furthermore, in the case of "original" work, the new work was either a commission in some way (of a publisher, a monastery, a government, an art collector, an institution...) or a normal result of a given job situation (as in the case of professional researchers in service of an institution, university, conservatory etc...), or else, it could also be a new work under the personal initiative of the writer. In the first case the work was of course payed for by the commisioner or the employer, whereas in the second case, no claims for remuneration could of course be made.
Up to the beginning of the 19th century, this procedure sounded - and so it still sounds to me - quite fair. Things have changed from the second half of that century on, where the first associations of authors and inventors were founded in an attempt to protect the economy against its own and most beautiful and democratising consequences: technology. And here we enter the level of the philosophical debate of the matter, since this paradox can only be solved by careful analysis of the different concepts used. So, let's first have a brief look at the notion of 'information', and let's define information broadly as a set of perceivable forms of matter or energy (form in space or form in time, as in the case of music). As such any form is transferable to any material or energetic substrate or carrier. This is a logical consequence of the defined notion of information itself. It seems extremely evident when we apply it to such things as knowledge: it simply means that I can tell you something I know, that I can also write it down, record it on a cassette or store it as a sequence of bytes in a computer. The basic property of information seems to be that its transfer and multiplication is possible without taking away anything from the source. When I tell you something, I don't lose anything from what I'm telling you. I just lose some salliva, some energy etc...
This entails that information cannot be owned for very intrinsic reasons. Property after all, is something you can lose. If you can't lose something you can't consider it to be your property neither. Thus the whole notion of intellectual property, property of ideas, appears to be nonsensical, and , not for ideological reasons but logically so. Its merely a bad metaphor. Secondly, as information is not a product and an object of possession itself, it cannot be considered to have been produced neither. The notion of production can be sensefully applied only to the substrates and the labour put into shaping them. This means clearly that thinking is not producing. An idea is not a product. A score is, speach is, just as making (and I mean, playing) music is the result of a real production. Now of course, it may be true that it is quite impossible to communicate ideas, or information in general, without producing shaped substrates, but still the distinction remains fully correct.
Knowledge is not a product nor is it produced. Knowledge and memory are simply properties of collective systems necessary for their survival in an steadily changing environment. I say clearly collective for transferability characterises information and for the fact that this implies a social context. Knowledge and information in the broadest sense therefore is a capacity of a system and its transferability is even a criterium for its being knowledge! If society takes care of its members' knowledge, by organising schools and such more..., it does so because only doing so it has a chance to increase its survival and developmental chances as a society. The members do not own this knowledge, but they share it, change it, contribute to it, examine it, recombine it, transform it and... can only give it back (i.e. let it know) to society. Nobody doubts this reasoning as long as we apply it for instance to the discovery of physical laws. Who would say that Einstein owned the general relativity theory? Or stronger, who would find it logical to pay a fee to Einstein (or his heritagers) everytime "his" knowledge would be used for something? Where, but more important, why do our institutions draw a line of calling something property or not? There is absolutely no intrinsic difference as to the nature of information in the case of a physical law, a technical idea to solve a problem, an argument, or an expressive piece of music! Therefore, any legal limitation on the reproducibility of information is an infringe on the proper character of information. It is an epistemological lie! Moreover, it is purely immoral towards society. So far it should be clear that I support the idea that an effort - labour - should be payed for only once. More so, if an effort is done without anyone asking for it, it should be clear that that effort should not necessarily lead to a remuneration whatsever: it becomes a leisure activity. As to music, we can distinguish both cases very clearly: (i) Either a composer gets a commision for a piece, in which case he also gets a remuneration for the writing. There is no problem, the author is simply a "professional". His labour is payed for. No further royalties should be payed to him, regardless the number of performances the piece eventually gets. (ii) Or else, the author takes the initiative to the creation of a work. In this case he becomes an "amateur" - and I do not have any negative associations with this term whatsever -, just as those who are helping in the Red Cross, collecting stamps, playing chess, or perform any kind of hobby. It seems logical that he does not get payed automatically, since his effort was not requested at all.
Consequently, to me the idea of a composer, author... as a 'free' profession is pure madness. In the margins of this all, I could of course also remark, closer to the everyday practice amongst the vast majority of new music composers, that they generally compose within the time they are already payed for by our social institutions: radio-stations, music schools, universities etc..., or else they are on welfare, social security or such more. If these composers claim and get copyright royalties I would not even hesitate a moment accusing them of theft.
Yet another, more practical question one could ask with regard to the corruption of the royalty system, is related to the object of protection itself: the information and the properties characterising it one would consider protectable. Speaking of music for instance, traditionally melodies were considered to be the criterium for deciding whether one piece of music was different than another. Since almost a full century now, virtually all possible melodies have been written and one could question whether melody is even a criterium. Are two pieces of music on the same order of notes different? Why not protect instrumentation for instance, or, as would be most appropriate for most rock music, the 'sound' as such. A full analysis along these lines must lead to the unavoidable conclusion that those aspects of music that are probably the most 'original' and typical are not quantifiable, and thus cannot lead to any kind of formal and non-arbitrary legal protection.
Within the last decennia, the whole paradoxical issue of copyright became really something enjoyably problematic. I think that it will become even more problematic up to the moment that it will collapse. Since the idea of copyright is based on the false assumption that information is a product, it will reveal to be auto-destructive. Moreso, it will destruct itself relatively fast: recently our technology made reproduction not only possible, but also accessible to almost everybody at little effort, and the prices of copying (in any medium...) sink everyday. This is a natural consequence of the transferability of information and technological progress. A single CD-rom disk can nowadays contain many whole books for only a fraction of the price, and contrary to the photocopy-procedure, which is still quite time-consuming, here dubbing takes only a fraction of a minute, and this medium has the great advantage of ease of transfer everywhere in the world: only use a modem or better, a fast broadband internet connection! All this beautiful technology made the "music publishers" - the social group that originated the copyright idea - completely anachronistic. Publishing in the traditional way is nowadays only done in two cases: 1. When the published product, by mass production, can be brought on the market at a lower or equal price than the price of a 'pirate' copy. This is the case of our newspapers, many paperbacks and such more...; 2. When it may serve the purpose of a anachronistic honoration of an author (generally, the publisher only starts working, when can he be certain to get some subsidy in some form: guaranteed clients, such as libraries, universities,orchestras). In most of these last cases, the reason for the publishing is not so much related to the contents of the work, but rather to the 'product' character of the publication itself: it becomes a bibliophile-edition. This of course, is material production, and copies here do indeed lack the prestigiuous values associated with the owning of these publications.
Applied to the realms of new music, we will see the publishing companies disappear entirely within the next generation. Already now it is true that photocopies of scores are always cheaper then the originals, and consequently, most new music is played from copies... As to music in its quot;realized form", we see very similar things happening: so called "pirates" appear everywere, and I find it awfully hard to call them pirates, since dubbing here is just an act of normal common sense and economical behaviour. If publishers want to change this situation, they can only do it sensefully, by lowering the prices of the originals below those of the copy, which is, in the case of records for instance quite possible. The only other alternative they would have, and some actually take this consequence, is to market a product with a high product value (e.g. expensive and complicated covers), but this reflects a change from publishing to producing. For video, of course, the same phenomena are true, and in the last decennium of the 20th century we saw it already happening for digital audio: for instance the recordable CD's as well as the DAT recorders, MD disks, MP3 formats and players. The 'royalty maffia' will of course try to fight this, but they will always be late, since whenever they've succeeded in forcing laws, technology will come up with another not yet covered technique of reproduction and distribution. Consequently I do not only see copyright disappear from our socio-economic system, since its paradoxical position will reveal itself as entirely untenable, but also do I think this to be a very favourable thing for our music culture and for culture in general.
At a very first sight it may appear sort of strange for a music maker as I am to defend a thesis against his own (financial) interests. But, defending the case of copyright on such low and muddy grounds would be purely childish since the long-term advantages, particularly for "serious new music" are huge. Therefore, let's look for a moment to what would happen to the commercial music industry if royalties on copyright grounds would cease to exist: very probably the whole industry would collapse pretty fast and would become, in order to maintain some market position, even more boring than ever... going into real massive mass production. Small scale music production everywhere would flourish and only as long as the participants are interested ("no labour, no money" principle!), so many more musicians would get chances to play more musics. Nobody would make music only for the royalties anymore - no more top hits - since that ridiculous hope would have no more grounds. Reproduction of music would no longer be in the financial interest of the record producer, so he would to a much lesser extend put media under pressure to program it. Also, radio and T.V. would become substantially cheaper, what would render regional TV and radio a lot more possible and interesting. Also, in the realm of technology, inventions would improve a lot faster than now and show economically an ever steeper price evolution. Inventors and factories could no longer sit on their patents and by doing so, slowing down the otherwise very natural process of improvement and further development. Computer software would be free or else, customer-specific. The nature and the possibility of the secret of course remains, although such could only be for a limited period of time, since all codes are in principle breakable...
But, what interest or motivation would the author or inventor have in such a royalty-less society? First of all it should be noted that his value as an author remains as before: his value would still be higher, the more of his ideas get accepted and applied or performed in a society. Such would of course increase his social status, for, the refusal of royalties and of the economical consequences of copyrights does not lead to a denial of authorship. The author, or the collective of authors in some cases, will still be the origin, source and cause of new information, and should be given credit. He does not become anonymous, since for control and improvement reasons it is always better to have the possibility to trace back the origin of information. Copyright would end up being nothing more than a matter of honour and prestige deserved by the author. Breaking these minimal copyright rules in this respect, would be nothing different then lying!
Now most law systems speak in terms of "the necessary protection of the author", but... who is attacking him ? If I choose to play someone's piece of music, then first of all I should know it (for instance by having a score). This means that the piece cannot be a secret. If it is not a secret, it must have been the author's wish to have it known to others. If I choose to let it know to more, what the hell could I be attacking the author??? Furthermore, this raises the question of control. Since at the end we would have no other alternatives than either some kind of 'Big Brother' watching you or no controls on information use whatsever. Who would suggest hiding spies in my bathroom to make sure I'm not whistling "The bridge over the river Kwai" with my window opened to my neighbour???
Look at the price of Microsoft's XBox and you'll probably chant the magical phrase: "give away the razors and sell the hell out of blades!" We all want to believe that the Microsoft XBox, Sony Playstation 2, and Nintendo GameCube are $1,000 machines practically given away for $199. We are told that the hardware companies lose money on the hardware sales and make up the difference in software sales. In reality, Microsoft is the only one that has bought in to this "lose money on the hardware" idea.
The XBox hardware has been estimated to cost Microsoft $320 to $400 to build in 2001. They have been selling the box for $299, and this month they have dropped the price to $199 to keep up with Nintendo and Sony. Even after six months of cost reduction, they may still be losing $100 on each XBox sale. Nobody knows how much Microsoft is really losing, but they have confirmed that they are selling the hardware at a loss. Will they really be able to make up all of these losses with software sales?
What Was Supposed To Happen
"Microsoft is the only one that has bought in to this 'lose money on the hardware' idea."
Microsoft's plan was supposed to work something like this. On Day 1, they sell the XBox for $389 or so to those one million "early adopters" that would frankly pay anything to get their hands on a new game console. They can only realistically manufacture 500,000 to 1,000,000 units for that first holiday shopping season anyway. Note that this $389 price would have allowed Microsoft to break even on those first million units of hardware, so this part of the plan looks great on paper.
After the early adopters are tapped out, the Console Hardware Playbook calls for a price drop to something that sounds more affordable, like $299. At this point, sales are supposed to really start to pick up steam, packing on another 10 to 20 million units. A gradual price war is expected throughout the years of the XBox life span. Everybody's game consoles then slowly drop to $249, then $199, then $149, and finally $99. Microsoft would hope that Sony and Nintendo hold out until year 6 or 7 before dropping to the $99 mark.
While the retail price of the XBox is dropping regularly over the years due to market forces, Microsoft has that old friend Moore's Law in their back pocket. Remember, that's the law that states that computer hardware will cost half as much and run twice as fast every time you click your heels. So by the end of 6 years, if everything is planned correctly, Microsoft will be shipping the same hardware for 1/8th the cost of the original units, after only dropping the price by a factor of 3. Now, they're making money on the razors!!!
What's Really Happening
"Microsoft would hope that Sony and Nintendo hold out until year 6 or 7 before dropping to the $99 mark."
So rewind to day 1. Unfortunately, Microsoft had to launch the XBox at $299 to compete with the Playstation 2, so they missed out on the early-adopter tax and started losing money right away. Because of this price pressure from the start, they also missed their chance to drop the price after the holidays to jumpstart that critical second wave of sales. Now, they are being forced to match the Playstation 2 and Gamecube with a mid-year price cut to $199, but not enough time has elapsed for Moore's Law to lower the cost of the XBox very much.
Microsoft makes $5 to $10 on each XBox software title sold, no matter who publishes it (the major publishers probably negotiate this down to $5, and for low-cost titles, the kickback could be lower). They are counting on this money from software sales to subsidize all of their extra costs. Microsoft really bought in to the idea that they can lose a lot of money up front and make up for it later with this software kickback.
For Microsoft's sake, let's debunk that mythical "sell the hell out of blades" (translated: "make up for extraordinary hardware and marketing costs with software sales") part of the equation. If, on average, every XBox owner buys 7 software titles over the life of the console (a reasonable estimate), that's $35 per console sold that the first party gets without investing a penny more in development, manufacturing, or marketing. That's nice to have, but in light of all of the costs involved, it's not going to pay for extra hardware expense and still turn a profit. That little $35 figure kind of blows a hole in the whole razors and blades thing, doesn't it? Even if Microsoft's kickback is closer to $10, Sony and Nintendo can bring that down by starting a software price war. Sony and Nintendo are perfectly happy to let you believe that they are selling their hardware at a big loss. They are even happier to let Microsoft believe that. Sony and Nintendo both know that software sales are for profits, not for hardware subsidies.
Nightmare Scenario
"Sony and Nintendo both know that software sales are for profits, not for hardware subsidies."
It appears that Microsoft is in a dangerous price war that it is losing. But what would happen if one of their competitors suddenly combined two of its major computer chips in to one chip, tripling the output of their manufacturing plant? That competitor's costs would fall dramatically, and they could drop the price of their console much faster and much lower than Microsoft could.
Sony has done exactly this with the Playstation 2. Two of their largest chips will now fit on to one chip. Sony invested $1 billion in their own chip fabrication facility. Now you know why. Microsoft, on the other hand, grabbed a bunch of off-the-shelf chips from a variety of vendors and shoved them together in an absolutely huge, expensive, heavy box that looks a lot like a PC and would probably maim a small child if it fell off the top of a TV. Even if Microsoft could combine the nVidia graphics chip with the Intel CPU, do you think nVidia and Intel would go for this? These chips are owned by different (competing) companies, and the chips are manufactured in different places. If this combination were even physically possible, it would never happen for obvious competitive business reasons that are completely out of Microsoft's hands. Microsoft's box is, and will continue to be, expensive to make, because they don't control the silicon. They will not catch up to Sony or Nintendo on manufacturing costs.
It seems that, while Microsoft was salivating over Moore's Law, Sony has been cheating and using "Moore's Law Plus". Nintendo is also clearly cheating with some enhanced Moore's Law variant in their calculations; if you've ever picked up a feather-light GameCube, you might wonder if there are any electronics inside the thing at all. The result is a price war between Nintendo and Sony that is just starting to get good. This month (May 2002), the Sony Playstation dropped to $199 and the Nintendo GameCube dropped to $149. The XBox dropped to $199 to stay competitive, but boy does it hurt to see that. The XBox has been out less than a year, while Sony has had 3 years to bring its hardware costs down (Playstation 2 launched in Japan in 1999). Nintendo and Sony are cutting each other's throats on retail price (as planned), and still making money on the hardware. Microsoft has to follow suit with the price cuts, causing them to lose even more money on relatively new hardware that is still expensive to build. Don't worry, Microsoft will make it up in software sales, if every customer buys 20 or 30 games.
YOYODLR (You Own Your Own Damn Living Room)
"Don't worry, Microsoft will make it up in software sales, if every customer buys 20 or 30 games."
Game consoles historically do one of two things. They live long, healthy lives with software support for many years (the original Playstation still does brisk business today, and just dropped to $49), or they die horrible, horrible deaths when the console sales stagnate and software publishers run screaming (Sega Dreamcast). If sales stagnate, a console will die.
Some seem to think that it doesn't matter if Microsoft loses millions or billions on the XBox, because they will just release the XBox 2, and everybody will buy that, according to some larger Microsoft "strategy" to "own the living room". Game consoles don't work that way, for some reason. If the XBox goes the way of the Dreamcast, nobody... NOBODY is going to be clamoring for the XBox 2 (how many millions of people are eagerly awaiting Dreamcast 2? That's right, zero million.)
The economics of the XBox don't add up now, and they get worse with time. Sony and Nintendo can kill the XBox on cost alone. The "software subsidies" that Microsoft expected are a myth. Game console prices will continue to drop, from $199 to $149, then on down to $99. Will Microsoft ever make it to the $99 level of this game? We'll see. According to XBox economics, it all depends on how much money they are willing to lose.
The Force is with George Lucas again as the fifth installment of the Star Wars saga, 'Attack of the Clones,' took in $116.3 million in its first four days and to become the second-fastest film behind only "Spider-Man" ($286.5 million in three weeks) to top $100 million. According to studio estimates issued today, the Richard Gere-Diane Lane adultery thriller "Unfaithful," ($10.3 million) remained strong behind the blockbusters at no. 3 ahead of the Hugh Grant film "About a Boy," ($8.4 million). April's top film "The Scorpion King" ($2.7 million) placed seventh this week.
Jennifer Lopez's "Enough," "Insomnia," and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" open nationwide in theatres on May 24.
May 17, 2002 Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill By ADAM CLYMER
WASHINGTON, May 16 -- Senator Trent Lott, the minority leader, forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill.
The measure would require Internet service providers, online service providers and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation.
Mr. Lott, a Mississippi Republican, had been on the losing side of a series of votes on amendments. The most important would have deleted the bill's provisions allowing individuals to sue over disclosure of their personal information, and another would have imposed the same secrecy protections on businesses that collect their information without using the Internet.
The bill does direct the Federal Trade Commission to enact rules imposing "similar" requirements on online and off-line data collection. But that did not satisfy most committee Republicans.
Just before the committee was to vote to send the bill to the Senate floor, Mr. Lott invoked a Senate rule barring committees from meeting for more than two hours after the Senate convenes and votes. That halted action on the bill and on several other measures, including a nomination by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Since all 12 committee Democrats -- and 2 Republicans, Senators Conrad Burns of Montana and Ted Stevens of Alaska -- support the bill, it is likely to be voted out at the committee's next meeting, which may happen on Friday. But Mr. Lott's intense opposition indicates that it may be difficult for the bill even to be debated on the Senate floor.
The committee's senior Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, had warned the committee that unless the off-line-online data issue was addressed satisfactorily and the private suits were eliminated, the bill "will have great difficulty in receiving consideration on the floor of the Senate."
The Senate Democratic leaders have been reluctant to tie the Senate up for weeks with any but the most essential bills. But they might force this bill to the floor because there would be a political risk to Republicans in voting to maintain a filibuster against it.
Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, explained the politics of the measure.
"I think this subject of privacy is a ticking time bomb, and we better pay attention to it, because people do not want their personally identifiable medical and financial information spread all over every place," Mr. Nelson said. "A doctor needs to know what ails you. But those ailments, your mortgage banker doesn't need to know that."
Senator Ernest F. Hollings, the South Carolina Democrat who is chairman of the committee and sponsor of the bill, complained that "other than the progressive-minded companies, Hewlett-Packard and others, still a good segment of the industry opposes this bill."
Mr. Hollings said he found this strange because 180 American companies had agreed to similar rules to do business in the European Union.
May 12, 2002 Global Village Idiocy By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- During a dinner with Indonesian journalists in Jakarta, I was taken aback when Dini Djalal, a reporter for The Far Eastern Economic Review, suddenly launched into a blistering criticism of the Fox News Channel and Bill O'Reilly. "They say [on Fox], `We report, you decide,' but it's biased -- they decide before us," she said. "They say there is no spin, but I get dizzy looking at it. I also get upset when they invite on Muslims and just insult them."
Why didn't she just not watch Fox when she came to America, I wondered? No, no, no, explained Ms. Djalal: The Fox Channel is now part of her Jakarta cable package. The conservative Bill O'Reilly is in her face every night.
On my way to Jakarta I stopped in Dubai, where I watched the Arab News Network at 2 a.m. ANN broadcasts from Europe, outside the control of any Arab government, but is seen all over the Middle East. It was running what I'd call the "greatest hits" from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: nonstop film of Israelis hitting, beating, dragging, clubbing and shooting Palestinians. I would like to say the footage was out of context, but there was no context. There were no words. It was just pictures and martial music designed to inflame passions.
An Indonesian working for the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, who had just visited the Islamic fundamentalist stronghold of Jogjakarta, told me this story: "For the first time I saw signs on the streets there saying things like, `The only solution to the Arab-Israel conflict is jihad -- if you are true Muslim, register yourself to be a volunteer.' I heard people saying, `We have to do something, otherwise the Christians or Jewish will kill us.' When we talked to people to find out where [they got these ideas], they said from the Internet. They took for granted that anything they learned from the Internet is true. They believed in a Jewish conspiracy and that 4,000 Jews were warned not to come to work at the World Trade Center [on Sept. 11]. It was on the Internet."
What's frightening him, he added, is that there is an insidious digital divide in Jogjakarta: "Internet users are only 5 percent of the population -- but these 5 percent spread rumors to everyone else. They say, `He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible."
If there's one thing I learned from this trip to Israel, Jordan, Dubai and Indonesia, it's this: thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically or culturally. We are now seeing and hearing one another faster and better, but with no corresponding improvement in our ability to learn from, or understand, one another. So integration, at this stage, is producing more anger than anything else. As the writer George Packer recently noted in The Times Magazine, "In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place."
At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information.
Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes.
A couple of years ago, two Filipino college graduates spread the "I Love You" virus over the Internet, causing billion of dollars in damage to computers and software. But at least that virus was curable with the right software. There is another virus going around today, though, that's much more serious. I call it the "I Hate You" virus. It's spread on the Internet and by satellite TV. It infects people's minds with the most vile ideas, and it can't be combated by just downloading a software program. It can be reversed only with education, exchanges, diplomacy and human interaction -- stuff you have to upload the old-fashioned way, one on one. Let's hope it's not too late.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
Computer Probe Is Widening By DAN MORAIN and NANCY VOGEL Times Staff Writers
May 3 2002
SACRAMENTO -- California Highway Patrol officers moved in Thursday to halt shredding at the state's information technology department, and Gov. Gray Davis suspended the agency's chief amid a widening investigation of the state's multimillion-dollar computer contract with Oracle Corp.
As those developments were unfolding in the Capitol, Davis' director of e-government, Arun Baheti, quit.
His resignation came one day after he acknowledged to Davis aides that he had personally accepted a $25,000 Oracle check for the governor's reelection committee, which reported receiving the money two weeks after the state signed the $95-million computer software deal.
Late Thursday, Davis issued a statement saying that he would give "immediate and careful attention" to an offer Oracle has said it made in the past to rescind the entire deal. Oracle said earlier in the day that its offer to undo the contract still stood.
That contract has become the object of scrutiny and criticism. A state audit concluded that the deal, designed to save money, could cost the government $41 million more than if there had been no agreement.
Baheti was the second department head in a week to lose his job as a result of the controversy, and a third, Information Technology Director Elias Cortez, was suspended by Davis on Thursday pending the outcome of the state investigation.
In addition, the Oracle deal has become a political issue for the governor, who is seeking reelection. Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon Jr. suggested that Davis aides engaged in a cover-up, and other Republican leaders called on federal authorities to become involved in the probe.
Davis offered no comment on either Baheti's resignation or his suspension of Cortez, who will continue to receive his $123,255 annual salary during his indefinite leave.
"There was shredding, but we have no idea what it was," Davis Press Secretary Steven Maviglio said, adding that Cortez was not in the building Wednesday when the shredding occurred. "Was there shredding related to the Oracle contract? We have no idea. That's what we want to find out."
While department officials said any shredding was routine, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said in a statement: "Any destruction of documents, e-mail and other materials that may be associated with the Oracle contract could pose the potential for obstruction of justice."
Davis' legal advisor, Barry Goode, said his office received an unsubstantiated report of document shredding at the Department of Information Technology.After calling the department to check on the report, he said, he informed Lockyer's office. Highway Patrol officers were then dispatched to the department headquarters.
Simon issued a statement suggesting that Davis or his staff shared responsibility for the shredding. "I'm deeply disturbed that it appears the governor's legal affairs advisor called the Department of Information Technology while documents were being shredded and let DOIT officials know that the attorney general's office was en route. If this is true, it's essentially letting them know they have an hour to shred."
Republican Assembly Leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks called on the U.S. attorney in Sacramento to enter the investigation, alleging that the Davis administration has tried to derail the Legislature's probe.
"The terms of the Oracle contract and any attempts on behalf [of] the Davis administration to silence state-level inquiries into this matter are most troubling," Cox said in a letter to acting U.S. Atty. John K. Vincent.
Cortez had a lead role in pushing for the deal in which Oracle proposed to license software for as many as 277,000 state employees and contended that it would save the state as much as $111 million, according to the state audit.
The audit said officials improperly relied on claims by Oracle and its partner in the venture, Logicon, that their software would save the state money. Further, the audit said, the state evidently was unaware Logicon stood to make more than $28 million on the deal.
A department spokesman said accusations of improper shredding were untrue and unfair to an agency that already has been demoralized by "negative" news reports of its role in the Oracle debacle. "I have been aware of no illicit shredding of any kind," said Communications Director Kevin Terpstra. "In terms of shredding contracts or official records, I do not believe that has occurred and I have no knowledge of that occurring."
The document shredding occurred as Department of Information Technology officials were preparing to testify before a legislative oversight committee Monday. Terpstra said department employees were preparing documents for the committee and "making sure everything was correct."
Terpstra said the department owns 24 shredders that are used to destroy "nonessential" confidential documents it gets from other state agencies that are embarking on computer technology contracts. He said the department has an understanding with those agencies that after reviewing confidential drafts and reports it will shred them.
A department worker, speaking on the condition that she not be identified, said about 10 plainclothes officers with the Justice Department filed into the office on the 21st floor of the downtown high-rise at about noon. Others, including two Sacramento Police Department officers and two state police officers, arrived shortly thereafter. About 1 p.m., the worker said, bosses sent an e-mail telling employees to shut down their computer systems.
She said the contracts office had been working to prepare documents requested by the governor's office and legislative committees. The contracts office was locked at 5 p.m. Wednesday, as it normally is, and the large shredder that sits in the hallway outside the contracts office was not used at all Thursday, she said.
Justice Department investigators took away some documents, she said, but even if anything was shredded Wednesday night, nothing would be lost because the contracts at the Information Technology office are all copies and the originals are kept at the Department of General Services.
"I'm a bureaucrat by profession," said the Information Technology worker. "I understand policy. But this was totally unfounded."
The Davis campaign committee reported receiving the Oracle check in June, two weeks after Oracle won the lucrative state software contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding. A source close to Davis' campaign committee said the check was dated in March, but could not explain why it was received in June.
In his resignation letter to Davis, Baheti made no mention of the campaign donation. Rather, he said, "It is apparent in retrospect that I should have more vociferously raised questions about the details" of the deal with Oracle and Logicon, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.
"Today," the letter continued, "there are people who would use me as a tool to attack you and the important work of the administration. I refuse to allow my service to you to become a distraction from the real work of government or to detract from your accomplishments. I cannot stay if my effectiveness for you has been compromised; the faith you placed in me deserves nothing less."
Baheti, a lawyer, had been state director of e-government since September 2000.
He also had worked for Davis when the governor was lieutenant governor, and worked on Davis' 1998 election campaign.
Baheti has told aides to Davis that when he took the check, he was not on government property, but was having dinner with a friend who is a lobbyist.
It is illegal to conduct such campaign activity in the Capitol.
Aides to Davis informed Lockyer about the transaction. Lockyer's office is investigating circumstances involving the state contract with Oracle.
"The governor has had a policy of not allowing his state employees to be involved in our fund-raising in any way," said Davis campaign strategist Garry South.
"It is not illegal for them to do, but it is his preference that they not do so," South said.
South said that although the governor's political aides were aware in June that Baheti had violated Davis' policy by taking the check, the campaign decided against returning it.
"I have no way of knowing what Oracle's motivation was," South said of the timing. "The check came from a well-known California company and it didn't violate any law."
Oracle spokesman Jim Finn said he did not know why the check was dated in March. He said the person who gave the $25,000 check to Baheti was Ravi Mehta, a lobbyist hired by Oracle and also a former chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission.
"Political contributions are entirely separate from any sale activities and always have been," Finn said. "California is our home state and we have more than 10,000 employees in the state, so it is natural that we would want to contribute to the governor."
Baheti is the second official to resign as a result of the Oracle deal. On Friday, Barry Keene quit as director of the state Department of General Services.
Having Liposuction? Give the Fat to Scientists Wed May 1, 6:10 PM ET
By Kathleen Doheny
LAS VEGAS (Reuters Health) - If you're undergoing liposuction, you're no doubt happy to kiss that unsightly fat goodbye. But you might not want to throw it away.
The excess fat that looks so bad on your tummy, backside or thighs, it turns out, is a mother lode of stem cells, and some cosmetic surgeons now suggest you might want to bank that fat. Later, they hope to draw on those banked stem cells--unspecialized cells that can be transformed into many different types of specialized cells--for use in additional cosmetic procedures or other types of operations or treatments, if necessary.
"Fat happens to be rich in stem cells," said Dr. Peter Fodor, a plastic surgeon at Century City Hospital near Los Angeles and a UCLA clinical associate professor of plastic surgery, who will present his latest research Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Las Vegas. Every 100 cubic centimeters of bone marrow yields up to 10,000 stem cells, Fodor told Reuters Health. But the same amount of fat contains a million stem cells.
In their research, Fodor and his colleagues isolated stem cells from liposuction specimens of 10 patients and grew them into more fat cells as well as into bone, cartilage, skeletal muscle and nerve cells.
"The possibilities are endless," Fodor said. Suppose a patient is involved in a motor vehicle accident and bone is needed for repair. "You could take their stored stem cells, make bone, put it back in (their body) to heal up the fracture," Fodor said. Or, a woman may have fat removed from her thighs, bank it, and then, later have it injected into her hands to give them a more youthful look.
Besides finding a rich source of stem cells in the discarded fat, Fodor and his team found the fat to be a source of collagen, the fibrous part of bone, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissue. Fodor and his colleagues harvested the collagen from the liposuction specimens of 10 patients and then successfully reinjected it into soft tissues. For example, this reinjected collagen might plump up a face that has begun to look emaciated with age.
As for stem cells, using those collected from a patient's body eliminates the risk of rejection when later reintroduced. It also avoids the ethical issues involved in using stem cells derived from embryos. Stem cells are already being looked at by researchers to treat a variety of diseases and conditions, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites), stroke, burns, heart disease and diabetes.
One of Fodor's co-presenters, Dr. Marc Hedrick, is the CEO of StemSource in Thousand Oaks, California, which banks stem cells from liposuction patients.
Fees for StemSource banking are not yet set, said Dr. John K. Fraser, StemSource's chief scientific officer and a veteran stem cell researcher. But he expects the initial collection and processing cost, which will be charged by participating doctors, to be about $1500 to $2000, including 5 years of storage. After the initial 5 years, the storage fee is expected to be about $100 per year. Those who donate up to 10% of their cells for research will receive an additional 5 years free storage, Fraser said.
The average surgeon's fee for liposuction is $2,049, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
The concept of using banked stem cells from liposuctioned fat for future procedures "sounds feasible," said Dr. Farshid Guilak, director of orthopedic research at Duke University Medical Center and a stem cell and arthritis researcher. His lab and at least one other have also grown stem cells from fat into the more specialized cells, he said.
However, he cautioned that a number of studies will be required to prove that using stem cells from liposuctioned fat for cosmetic or reconstructive procedures works well. "We need to prove that transformation of cells from one type to another is irreversible," Guilak said. The safety of the procedures must also be proven.
Microsoft witness stumbles MIT professor fumbles answers as states attorney grills him on proposed settlement. May 2, 2002: 7:59 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (CNN/Money) - A technical expert testifying on behalf of Microsoft Corp. in the ongoing antitrust action stumbled several times while on the stand.
"I'm not trying to be evasive," Stuart E. Madnick, a computer science professor at MIT, said at one point. "I'm just trying to be precise."
Madnick was sometimes anything but precise, however. When government attorney Kevin Hodges asked him to name an operating system besides those made by Microsoft in which the Web browsing software could not be removed. Madnick immediately offered up KDE as an example. But KDE is a computer program designed to run on top of the Linux operating system, as Hodges pointed out. Madnick conceded that was true, and instead suggested GNOME as an example.
But GNOME performs the same function as KDE on a computer equipped with the Linux operating system. Hodges was never able to get an answer to his question.
One of the key issues in the antitrust case revolves around Microsoft's incorporation of the Internet Explorer Web browsing software into its Windows operating system in such a way that IE can't be removed without damaging Windows. The courts found that Microsoft has monopoly power in the market for desktop computer operating systems, and violated antitrust law to protect that power.
The U.S. Department of Justice and half the states involved in the original antitrust action are ready to settle with Microsoft, but the rest of the states involved in the original case say the proposed settlement doesn't go far enough. The current hearings, before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, are intended to decide what should be done.
Hodges and Madnick sparred over a number of issues, including the concept of interoperability. Critics, including the dissenting states, have argued that Microsoft deliberately designs its products to interfere with technology made by other companies, forcing people to use Microsoft products. The dissenting states are pressing for complete interoperability. But Madnick argued that being able to exchange and use data on any level -- even if the process is clumsy -- is enough to claim interoperability.
Madnick argued that perfect interoperability, which would allow products to be substituted for each other with no performance degradation, was a theoretical impossibility. "It would be surprising if two different products behaved exactly alike," he told the court Wednesday.
Madnick testified that Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates) probably would not be able to develop and market a workable version of Windows under the terms proposed by the dissenting states. He believes the requirements -- such as building Windows in such a way that computer manufacturers could alter it -- are not technically feasible.
Hodges hammered away at Madnick throughout the day, leaving the weary academic floundering at times.
Asked to evaluate language in the proposed settlements, Madnick studied the documents, then shook his head and said, "I somehow think there's something I'm missing, but I can't spot it at the moment."
Madnick will return to the stand Thursday. Microsoft executive Will Poole should take the stand as soon as Madnick completes his appearance.
Wednesday morning, Kollar-Kotelly returned to the issue of whether to allow the states to introduce additional evidence into the case. She held open the possibility that the documents could be introduced during the rebuttal phase of the trial, after each side has made their case. But she was clear that it wouldn't happen while Microsoft was presenting its witnesses. "You can't get these in during their case," she told Howard Gutman, an attorney for the states. Kollar-Kotelly may rule on the issue Thursday.
The issue arose Tuesday after Microsoft withdrew several witnesses Monday night, one of whom, Richard Fade, is senior vice president of the OEM division, which works with computer manufacturers. But the government lawyers were counting on his testimony to introduce documents as evidence that Microsoft has continued to use its monopoly power to squeeze computer manufacturers.
The government team apparently had every intention of introducing the documents as part of its own case -- as the courtroom rules require -- but botched that attempt several weeks ago by apparently misunderstanding the court's rules on the introduction of witnesses. The states tried to introduce deposition testimony from over a dozen witnesses near the end of their case, but Kollar-Kotelly, in response to an objection by Microsoft, ruled that those individuals should have been on the original witness list and denied the states an opportunity to bring whatever facts those witnesses might have offered into the trial.
Wednesday, Gutman brought the number of documents he'd like to see admitted down to 7, and Kollar-Kotelly said she'd take the request under advisement, though she seemed unenthusiastic. Top of page
-- from CNNfn producer Dave Wilson
here's the text
on
Paintable LCDs
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
LCD paint licked Walls and curtains could sport liquid-crystal digital displays. 2 May 2002
Homes of the future could change their wallpaper from cream to cornflower blue at the touch of a button, says Dirk Broer. His team has developed paint-on liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that offer the technology.
Liquid crystals are peculiar liquids: their molecules spontaneously line up, rather than being randomly orientated as in a normal liquid. Passing a voltage across the molecules switches their alignment, blocking the transmission of light so a display changes from light to dark.
Current LCDs on digital watches, mobile phones and laptops sandwich the crystal between heavy glass plates. The complicated production process is time-consuming, expensive and restricts the size of screens to just 1 metre square.
Broer and his colleagues have devised a new open-sandwich technique that instead deposits a layer of liquid crystal onto a single underlying sheet. Working at Eindhoven University of Technology and Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, Broer's team has already produced prototypes on glass and plastic; fabric could be next.
The technique could create giant TV screens, digital billboards and walls that change colour. Slim, plastic LCDs sewn into fabric could display e-mail or text messages on your sleeve. "It depends what future societies want," says Broer.
The technique should feed people's thirst for smaller, cheaper gadgets. Conventional glass LCDs now make up an increasing part of a laptop's weight - plastic versions could change that, says Peter Raynes, who studies LCD technology at the University of Oxford, UK.
Crystal glazing
Broer's team made the LCD paint by mixing liquid crystal with molecules that link together into a rigid polymer when exposed to ultraviolet. In a two-stage process they effectively build tiny boxes holding the liquid1.
Don't expect to buy a watch featuring one of the new displays in the next six months Peter Raynes, University of Oxford, UK
They coat a glass or plastic base with a thin layer of the LCD paint and mask out squares so that a blast of ultraviolet forms a grid of walls. When they remove the mask, a second exposure - at a wavelength that does not penetrate the whole liquid layer - seals over the boxes with a lid.
Standard LCDs, which are divided up into pixels, turn dark when a voltage crosses between electrodes on the two glass plates. The new displays instead pass voltage between two points on the same plate. Colour LCDs fit each pixel with red, green and blue colour filters.
"Don't expect to buy a watch featuring one of the new displays in the next six months," warns Raynes, however. He cautions that the technique needs work: compared with glass, the thin outer layer may be more easily penetrated by oxygen or water that degrade the crystal.
References
# Penterman, R. et al. Single-substrate liquid-crystal displays by photo-enforced stratification. Nature, 417, 55 - 58, (2002).
Interview with a congressman--part one (continued) B: Well, the Sony vs. Betamax decision is a very valuable decision. It was rendered 20 years ago. To a large extent it was reversed by the DMCA. What the Sony vs. Betamax decision held is that any time technology can be used for two purposes--a minimum of two, but two anyway, one of which is infringing, and another I have very serious problems with punishing the technology. And that is precisely what the DMCA seeks to do. of which is noninfringing, that the technology is lawful technology as long as it has a substantial noninfringing use. And the court analyzed the Betamax and found that because it allowed time-shifting, it had a substantial noninfringing use (time-shifting is fair use), and therefore Betamax was found to be lawful technology. That's a very valuable legal principle: The presence of a substantial noninfringing use renders the technology to be lawful. Now unfortunately, the DMCA essentially reversed that, because it says that if the technology, even though it has substantial noninfringing uses, was primarily intended by the manufacturer to be used for an infringing purpose, then the technology is unlawful. Now the problem is, nobody's going to know at the outset what a court is going to rule about the intent of the manufacturer. How do you determine that extent? How does a court subsequently determine what was in the manufacturer's mind at the time that he produced technology that could be used both for infringement and also had noninfringing purposes? And so the Sony vs. Betamax principle was severely weakened by that provision of the DMCA. And then, of course, anybody who traffics in a device which is declared to be an infringing technology--such as Mr. Sklyarov from Russia--can be arrested for criminal conduct.
M: Right.
B: And I have very serious problems with punishing the technology. And that is precisely what the DMCA seeks to do. We should punish people who engage in acts of piracy. We should not punish the technology which can be used for infringing purposes but also for substantial noninfringing purposes.
M: So along those lines, I just came across a very interesting quote from John Ippolito of the Guggenheim, and he's talking about Senator "Fritz" Hollings's bill, the CBDTPA, and Ippolito says about that bill, "To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure the livelihood of monastic scribes."
B: (laughs) Well, it's artful...(laughs) Well, without being quite that eloquent, let me endorse the general idea that he expresses. I think that Senator Hollings's bill is wrongheaded. It is inappropriate for the government to establish technical standards to be applied to digital media. The government is not a very good standards-developing body.
M: Mmm-hmm.
B: I do agree that we need to take some steps to assure that material which is, for example, broadcast across digital-television equipment should be protected in such a way as to disallow unauthorized copying and disallow uploading to the Internet. I actually endorse the idea of doing that. But I think that should be done in a collaborative process that involves the manufacturers of equipment and also involves the motion- It is inappropriate for the government to establish technical standards to be applied to digital media. The government is not a very good standards-developing body. picture studios. And that very process is underway. That group has already achieved an agreement that will protect television content--broadcast and digital format--and received in the home by either cable television or by satellite. What they have not achieved is an agreement in regard to material that is broadcast over the air for receipt by an antenna or by "rabbit ears." But they're working to do that, and we expect that within another six weeks there will be a private-sector agreement that produces a standard for protecting that content as well. Now, at the end of that process, after the equipment manufacturers are satisfied that the standard is workable, after the motion-picture studios are satisfied that it offers sufficient protection, after the various consumer groups that are also working in this process are content that the employment of that standard will enable people to continue to exercise their fair-use rights for appropriate home recording of the material--after all of those tests are met, there may be a role for Congress to require that equipment respond to that particular standard, and all of the external stakeholders will have endorsed the standard and say that this technology works, and that consumer rights are protected. Now, at that point, I would be willing to entertain a proposal that Congress act and require that equipment respond. The Senator Hollings's bill is way ahead of all of that. Senator Hollings's bill would require that all digital media immediately respond to a standard that the government would wind up setting. There would be no assurance that consumer rights would be protected. There would be no assurance that the fair-use right to home recording of digital content would be preserved. There would be no assurance that the technology as applied to consumer-electronics products and information-technology products would allow those products to function effectively. And I'm convinced that if his bill becomes law, which I don't think it will, but if it were to become law, I think it would probably inhibit the introduction of a lot of useful new technology.
M: Exactly. I mean it seems to me that in fact it would incent people to buy used computer equipment from before the legislation were enacted...
B: Absolutely.
M:...which is ironic because it's called the promotion of broadband and digital television, promotion of sales [Editor's note: The law is actually called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act], it seems to me that the exact opposite is true.
B: I think that's right.
M: Right. OK, so since the Internet is international, then there's the aspect of will the DMCA become the basis for worldwide copyright law, and do you think that's realistic?
B: Well, that's a big problem. You put your finger on a major concern there.
Note: Check back in two weeks for the second half of the MP3 Insider's interview with Rep. Boucher.
Slashdot Mirror
'N Sync singer fit to be 'N Space
(CNN) --Boy band singer Lance Bass says he has been medically cleared for space travel.
"I'm pretty confident we will be able to pull this off. I know physically I can do this," Bass told a packed news conference in a luxury hotel in Moscow, according to Reuters.
Bass, a member of the band 'N Sync, hopes to become the next tourist to hitch a ride on a manned Russian rocket to the international space station. He has been undergoing tests at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems to evaluate his fitness for the journey.
The pop star still has to get permission from the Russian Aerospace Agency to make the trip, scheduled to launch in October.
A spokesman for the agency told CNN Friday there had been no discussions with Bass about a possible space flight, and said no decision had been made about the next space tourist.
But David Kreiff of Destiny Productions, a Los Angeles television production company that has committed to helping fund Bass' trip, said the spokesman was misinformed.
"Things are progressing on a very high level," Krieff said.
He said paperwork had been sent to the Russian space agency and money had been put in escrow to fund the venture.
"We're looking at upwards of $14 (million) to $20 million," Krieff said of the cost of the trip. That's in line with what the two previous space tourists, American Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth, paid for the privilege.
Nokia 9290 Communicator
Full Specifications
Applications
Digital cellular phone (handsfree, handset and headset use)
Fax, Short Messages, E-mail 1
Wireless imaging, digital camera connectivity
Smart Messaging Support 1
WWW, WAP 1
Contacts
Notes
Calendar with multiple views and attachments
Calculator, World time clock with alarms
Size
Dimensions: 6.22" Long x 1.06" Deep x 2.20" Wide
Weight: 8.6 oz
Technical Data
32-bit ARM9 RISC CPU
Symbian operating system
- Personal Java, C++ support
Data speed up to 14,400 bps ready 1
Screen resolution: 640 pixels wide x 200 pixels high
Multimedia card slot. 16 MB memory included.
Network: GSM 1900
Connectivity: IrDA, Ir-TranP, RS-232
System Specific Features
GSM phase 2 signaling
3V SIM Application Toolkit support
Enhanced full rate (EFR) speech codec
Full rate speech codec
Encryption algorithms: none, A5.1, A5.2
E-mail Protocols
POP3 or IMAP4
SMTP
Mime 1 >
Personalize Your Nokia
9290 Communicator
Choose accessories and software that fit your needs.
Accessories >>
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Travel
(1) Check with service provider for availability and description of features. Some features are network dependent.
(2) Some of the WAP services have been pre-configured by the network service provider.
(4) PC Suite requires IR-capable computer or data cable, which must be purchased separately.
(10) Limited warranty timeframes for Nokia accessories: 1 year for batteries, covers and loopsets; 3 years for car kits and headsets; duration of ownership for all other accessories.
Nokia, Nokia Connecting People, the Model 9290, Bounce, Snake Ex, Triple Pop and the Original Accessories logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nokia Corporation.
Trademarks of companies mentioned herein appear for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective companies. All other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
I live to give. Thank you for your kind words.
biotches
Could you translate "badonkadonk butt" for me please?
You're gonna need it.
Could someone let me know when 4.2.2 comes out? Thnx.
What's the difference between acne and a priest? Acne waits until you're 12 before coming on your face.
Okla. legislature passes bill authorizing chemical castration of some sex offenders
Sat May 25, 6:47 AM ET
OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma legislature has approved legislation that authorizes the chemical castration of serious sex offenders.
The measure, which passed the House on Thursday and had already passed the Senate, permits judges to order chemical castration for people convicted of first- or second-degree rape or forcible sodomy. Repeat offenders could be subject to surgical castration under the bill.
The measure now goes to Gov. Frank Keating for final approval.
In the chemical castration process, drugs are used to reduce the amount of the male hormone testosterone the body produces.
The sponsor, Sen. Frank Shurden, has been trying to get a castration law on the books since the early 1970s. He has said castration has been effective in Europe in reducing recidivism by sex offenders.
THE ABSURDITY OF COPYRIGHT
,orchestras). In most of these last cases, the reason for the publishing is not so much related to the contents of the work, but rather to the 'product' character of the publication itself: it becomes a bibliophile-edition. This of course, is material production, and copies here do indeed lack the prestigiuous values associated with the owning of these publications.
As far as we know, the idea of copyright and the royalty-fees in connection to it, did not originate in the minds of composers nor creators at all! Protection of copyright entered our law-systems only under pressure of publishers and replaced their former privileges to print and to sell books. Therefore the idea of copyright cannot be traced back any further than up to the moment of the invention of the printing press with Gutenberg. Even if the idea of individual authorship and moral rights with regard to intellectual property goes back on the french revolution, it should be said, as to musical composition, that all copyright regulations date back only from the second half of the nineteenth century. The time when our music culture took a turn towards historicism.
Concert life at that time just achieved independence from contemporary music production and concentrated merely on reproduction of so called classic music from the past. Only commercial, i.e. mass-consumption oriented new music (Strauss-walzes, the real origin of pop-music) was really in demand. The majority of academically schooled composers became sort of superfluous and thus felt a lot of social frustration. Nobody was in need of their music and thus, economically speaking, their music was (and still is) absolutely worthless, since out of demand. Organisations such as Sabam here in Belgium, were not founded to help out poor composers, but only to secure them a place in a capitalist economical system: to give them some psychological feel of being valuable. It is thus very well explainable why those organisations where founded by probably the worst of those days composers, and... why still today they are led by the worst and most academic amongst them. But, what they have done in fact, was nothing else than copying the idea of copyright protection from the publishers, but without understanding the very basis of the system. Publishers in fact used and needed copyright protection in order to protect their investment. Composers at the other hand do not usually invest anything but cheap ink and musicpaper.
However, I am not going to annoy you all with historical facts and details, but the only reason why I am raising these few points is to show that the underlying motivation to the legislation of such a thing as copyright was nothing else than the protection against competition of the publishers material production. The publisher, before printing, had to do a for that time rather substantial investment, and he did'nt like the risk of someone else producing the same book - cheaper - in fear of major financial losses. He didn't protect the contents of the book, but merely used the criterium of the contents as a way of protecting his material production and financial investment. One can consider such an attitude to be clearly in contradiction with liberal economic theory. Information in the second half of the nineteenth century still was quite strongly bound to its medium, to its material carrier. As a parenthesis, allow me to remark that the first books printed in large numbers were actually bibles, wherefore nobody could really claim any form of copyright anyway! One thought of it being quite evident, the Holy Word going round. And, as a second remark, of course also before printing the practice of copying was widely in use, and nobody ever made a problem with regard to the "property of the contents" . Every copy - a manuscript in itself - was a new commissioned product and that product was owned by the one who payed for it. In every case, the notion of content was entirely unrelated to the economical value of the manuscript. The labour of copying - by hand - was what was payed for. Furthermore, in the case of "original" work, the new work was either a commission in some way (of a publisher, a monastery, a government, an art collector, an institution...) or a normal result of a given job situation (as in the case of professional researchers in service of an institution, university, conservatory etc...), or else, it could also be a new work under the personal initiative of the writer. In the first case the work was of course payed for by the commisioner or the employer, whereas in the second case, no claims for remuneration could of course be made.
Up to the beginning of the 19th century, this procedure sounded - and so it still sounds to me - quite fair. Things have changed from the second half of that century on, where the first associations of authors and inventors were founded in an attempt to protect the economy against its own and most beautiful and democratising consequences: technology. And here we enter the level of the philosophical debate of the matter, since this paradox can only be solved by careful analysis of the different concepts used. So, let's first have a brief look at the notion of 'information', and let's define information broadly as a set of perceivable forms of matter or energy (form in space or form in time, as in the case of music). As such any form is transferable to any material or energetic substrate or carrier. This is a logical consequence of the defined notion of information itself. It seems extremely evident when we apply it to such things as knowledge: it simply means that I can tell you something I know, that I can also write it down, record it on a cassette or store it as a sequence of bytes in a computer. The basic property of information seems to be that its transfer and multiplication is possible without taking away anything from the source. When I tell you something, I don't lose anything from what I'm telling you. I just lose some salliva, some energy etc...
This entails that information cannot be owned for very intrinsic reasons. Property after all, is something you can lose. If you can't lose something you can't consider it to be your property neither. Thus the whole notion of intellectual property, property of ideas, appears to be nonsensical, and , not for ideological reasons but logically so. Its merely a bad metaphor. Secondly, as information is not a product and an object of possession itself, it cannot be considered to have been produced neither. The notion of production can be sensefully applied only to the substrates and the labour put into shaping them. This means clearly that thinking is not producing. An idea is not a product. A score is, speach is, just as making (and I mean, playing) music is the result of a real production. Now of course, it may be true that it is quite impossible to communicate ideas, or information in general, without producing shaped substrates, but still the distinction remains fully correct.
Knowledge is not a product nor is it produced. Knowledge and memory are simply properties of collective systems necessary for their survival in an steadily changing environment. I say clearly collective for transferability characterises information and for the fact that this implies a social context. Knowledge and information in the broadest sense therefore is a capacity of a system and its transferability is even a criterium for its being knowledge! If society takes care of its members' knowledge, by organising schools and such more..., it does so because only doing so it has a chance to increase its survival and developmental chances as a society. The members do not own this knowledge, but they share it, change it, contribute to it, examine it, recombine it, transform it and... can only give it back (i.e. let it know) to society. Nobody doubts this reasoning as long as we apply it for instance to the discovery of physical laws. Who would say that Einstein owned the general relativity theory? Or stronger, who would find it logical to pay a fee to Einstein (or his heritagers) everytime "his" knowledge would be used for something? Where, but more important, why do our institutions draw a line of calling something property or not? There is absolutely no intrinsic difference as to the nature of information in the case of a physical law, a technical idea to solve a problem, an argument, or an expressive piece of music! Therefore, any legal limitation on the reproducibility of information is an infringe on the proper character of information. It is an epistemological lie! Moreover, it is purely immoral towards society. So far it should be clear that I support the idea that an effort - labour - should be payed for only once. More so, if an effort is done without anyone asking for it, it should be clear that that effort should not necessarily lead to a remuneration whatsever: it becomes a leisure activity. As to music, we can distinguish both cases very clearly:
(i) Either a composer gets a commision for a piece, in which case he also gets a remuneration for the writing. There is no problem, the author is simply a "professional". His labour is payed for. No further royalties should be payed to him, regardless the number of performances the piece eventually gets.
(ii) Or else, the author takes the initiative to the creation of a work. In this case he becomes an "amateur" - and I do not have any negative associations with this term whatsever -, just as those who are helping in the Red Cross, collecting stamps, playing chess, or perform any kind of hobby. It seems logical that he does not get payed automatically, since his effort was not requested at all.
Consequently, to me the idea of a composer, author... as a 'free' profession is pure madness. In the margins of this all, I could of course also remark, closer to the everyday practice amongst the vast majority of new music composers, that they generally compose within the time they are already payed for by our social institutions: radio-stations, music schools, universities etc..., or else they are on welfare, social security or such more. If these composers claim and get copyright royalties I would not even hesitate a moment accusing them of theft.
Yet another, more practical question one could ask with regard to the corruption of the royalty system, is related to the object of protection itself: the information and the properties characterising it one would consider protectable. Speaking of music for instance, traditionally melodies were considered to be the criterium for deciding whether one piece of music was different than another. Since almost a full century now, virtually all possible melodies have been written and one could question whether melody is even a criterium. Are two pieces of music on the same order of notes different? Why not protect instrumentation for instance, or, as would be most appropriate for most rock music, the 'sound' as such. A full analysis along these lines must lead to the unavoidable conclusion that those aspects of music that are probably the most 'original' and typical are not quantifiable, and thus cannot lead to any kind of formal and non-arbitrary legal protection.
Within the last decennia, the whole paradoxical issue of copyright became really something enjoyably problematic. I think that it will become even more problematic up to the moment that it will collapse. Since the idea of copyright is based on the false assumption that information is a product, it will reveal to be auto-destructive. Moreso, it will destruct itself relatively fast: recently our technology made reproduction not only possible, but also accessible to almost everybody at little effort, and the prices of copying (in any medium...) sink everyday. This is a natural consequence of the transferability of information and technological progress. A single CD-rom disk can nowadays contain many whole books for only a fraction of the price, and contrary to the photocopy-procedure, which is still quite time-consuming, here dubbing takes only a fraction of a minute, and this medium has the great advantage of ease of transfer everywhere in the world: only use a modem or better, a fast broadband internet connection! All this beautiful technology made the "music publishers" - the social group that originated the copyright idea - completely anachronistic. Publishing in the traditional way is nowadays only done in two cases:
1. When the published product, by mass production, can be brought on the market at a lower or equal price than the price of a 'pirate' copy. This is the case of our newspapers, many paperbacks and such more...;
2. When it may serve the purpose of a anachronistic honoration of an author (generally, the publisher only starts working, when can he be certain to get some subsidy in some form: guaranteed clients, such as libraries, universities
Applied to the realms of new music, we will see the publishing companies disappear entirely within the next generation. Already now it is true that photocopies of scores are always cheaper then the originals, and consequently, most new music is played from copies... As to music in its quot;realized form", we see very similar things happening: so called "pirates" appear everywere, and I find it awfully hard to call them pirates, since dubbing here is just an act of normal common sense and economical behaviour. If publishers want to change this situation, they can only do it sensefully, by lowering the prices of the originals below those of the copy, which is, in the case of records for instance quite possible. The only other alternative they would have, and some actually take this consequence, is to market a product with a high product value (e.g. expensive and complicated covers), but this reflects a change from publishing to producing. For video, of course, the same phenomena are true, and in the last decennium of the 20th century we saw it already happening for digital audio: for instance the recordable CD's as well as the DAT recorders, MD disks, MP3 formats and players. The 'royalty maffia' will of course try to fight this, but they will always be late, since whenever they've succeeded in forcing laws, technology will come up with another not yet covered technique of reproduction and distribution. Consequently I do not only see copyright disappear from our socio-economic system, since its paradoxical position will reveal itself as entirely untenable, but also do I think this to be a very favourable thing for our music culture and for culture in general.
At a very first sight it may appear sort of strange for a music maker as I am to defend a thesis against his own (financial) interests. But, defending the case of copyright on such low and muddy grounds would be purely childish since the long-term advantages, particularly for "serious new music" are huge. Therefore, let's look for a moment to what would happen to the commercial music industry if royalties on copyright grounds would cease to exist: very probably the whole industry would collapse pretty fast and would become, in order to maintain some market position, even more boring than ever... going into real massive mass production. Small scale music production everywhere would flourish and only as long as the participants are interested ("no labour, no money" principle!), so many more musicians would get chances to play more musics. Nobody would make music only for the royalties anymore - no more top hits - since that ridiculous hope would have no more grounds. Reproduction of music would no longer be in the financial interest of the record producer, so he would to a much lesser extend put media under pressure to program it. Also, radio and T.V. would become substantially cheaper, what would render regional TV and radio a lot more possible and interesting. Also, in the realm of technology, inventions would improve a lot faster than now and show economically an ever steeper price evolution. Inventors and factories could no longer sit on their patents and by doing so, slowing down the otherwise very natural process of improvement and further development. Computer software would be free or else, customer-specific. The nature and the possibility of the secret of course remains, although such could only be for a limited period of time, since all codes are in principle breakable...
But, what interest or motivation would the author or inventor have in such a royalty-less society? First of all it should be noted that his value as an author remains as before: his value would still be higher, the more of his ideas get accepted and applied or performed in a society. Such would of course increase his social status, for, the refusal of royalties and of the economical consequences of copyrights does not lead to a denial of authorship. The author, or the collective of authors in some cases, will still be the origin, source and cause of new information, and should be given credit. He does not become anonymous, since for control and improvement reasons it is always better to have the possibility to trace back the origin of information. Copyright would end up being nothing more than a matter of honour and prestige deserved by the author. Breaking these minimal copyright rules in this respect, would be nothing different then lying!
Now most law systems speak in terms of "the necessary protection of the author", but... who is attacking him ? If I choose to play someone's piece of music, then first of all I should know it (for instance by having a score). This means that the piece cannot be a secret. If it is not a secret, it must have been the author's wish to have it known to others. If I choose to let it know to more, what the hell could I be attacking the author??? Furthermore, this raises the question of control. Since at the end we would have no other alternatives than either some kind of 'Big Brother' watching you or no controls on information use whatsever. Who would suggest hiding spies in my bathroom to make sure I'm not whistling "The bridge over the river Kwai" with my window opened to my neighbour???
Dr.Godfried-Willem RAES
p/a Logos-Foundation
Kongostraat 35
B-9000 G E N T
B E L G I U M
wow, that sounds great. I'm going to try that tonight. thanks, RT.
XBox Economics
Look at the price of Microsoft's XBox and you'll probably chant the magical phrase: "give away the razors and sell the hell out of blades!" We all want to believe that the Microsoft XBox, Sony Playstation 2, and Nintendo GameCube are $1,000 machines practically given away for $199. We are told that the hardware companies lose money on the hardware sales and make up the difference in software sales. In reality, Microsoft is the only one that has bought in to this "lose money on the hardware" idea.
The XBox hardware has been estimated to cost Microsoft $320 to $400 to build in 2001. They have been selling the box for $299, and this month they have dropped the price to $199 to keep up with Nintendo and Sony. Even after six months of cost reduction, they may still be losing $100 on each XBox sale. Nobody knows how much Microsoft is really losing, but they have confirmed that they are selling the hardware at a loss. Will they really be able to make up all of these losses with software sales?
What Was Supposed To Happen
"Microsoft is the only one that has bought in to this 'lose money on the hardware' idea."
Microsoft's plan was supposed to work something like this. On Day 1, they sell the XBox for $389 or so to those one million "early adopters" that would frankly pay anything to get their hands on a new game console. They can only realistically manufacture 500,000 to 1,000,000 units for that first holiday shopping season anyway. Note that this $389 price would have allowed Microsoft to break even on those first million units of hardware, so this part of the plan looks great on paper.
After the early adopters are tapped out, the Console Hardware Playbook calls for a price drop to something that sounds more affordable, like $299. At this point, sales are supposed to really start to pick up steam, packing on another 10 to 20 million units. A gradual price war is expected throughout the years of the XBox life span. Everybody's game consoles then slowly drop to $249, then $199, then $149, and finally $99. Microsoft would hope that Sony and Nintendo hold out until year 6 or 7 before dropping to the $99 mark.
While the retail price of the XBox is dropping regularly over the years due to market forces, Microsoft has that old friend Moore's Law in their back pocket. Remember, that's the law that states that computer hardware will cost half as much and run twice as fast every time you click your heels. So by the end of 6 years, if everything is planned correctly, Microsoft will be shipping the same hardware for 1/8th the cost of the original units, after only dropping the price by a factor of 3. Now, they're making money on the razors!!!
What's Really Happening
"Microsoft would hope that Sony and Nintendo hold out until year 6 or 7 before dropping to the $99 mark."
So rewind to day 1. Unfortunately, Microsoft had to launch the XBox at $299 to compete with the Playstation 2, so they missed out on the early-adopter tax and started losing money right away. Because of this price pressure from the start, they also missed their chance to drop the price after the holidays to jumpstart that critical second wave of sales. Now, they are being forced to match the Playstation 2 and Gamecube with a mid-year price cut to $199, but not enough time has elapsed for Moore's Law to lower the cost of the XBox very much.
Microsoft makes $5 to $10 on each XBox software title sold, no matter who publishes it (the major publishers probably negotiate this down to $5, and for low-cost titles, the kickback could be lower). They are counting on this money from software sales to subsidize all of their extra costs. Microsoft really bought in to the idea that they can lose a lot of money up front and make up for it later with this software kickback.
For Microsoft's sake, let's debunk that mythical "sell the hell out of blades" (translated: "make up for extraordinary hardware and marketing costs with software sales") part of the equation. If, on average, every XBox owner buys 7 software titles over the life of the console (a reasonable estimate), that's $35 per console sold that the first party gets without investing a penny more in development, manufacturing, or marketing. That's nice to have, but in light of all of the costs involved, it's not going to pay for extra hardware expense and still turn a profit. That little $35 figure kind of blows a hole in the whole razors and blades thing, doesn't it? Even if Microsoft's kickback is closer to $10, Sony and Nintendo can bring that down by starting a software price war. Sony and Nintendo are perfectly happy to let you believe that they are selling their hardware at a big loss. They are even happier to let Microsoft believe that. Sony and Nintendo both know that software sales are for profits, not for hardware subsidies.
Nightmare Scenario
"Sony and Nintendo both know that software sales are for profits, not for hardware subsidies."
It appears that Microsoft is in a dangerous price war that it is losing. But what would happen if one of their competitors suddenly combined two of its major computer chips in to one chip, tripling the output of their manufacturing plant? That competitor's costs would fall dramatically, and they could drop the price of their console much faster and much lower than Microsoft could.
Sony has done exactly this with the Playstation 2. Two of their largest chips will now fit on to one chip. Sony invested $1 billion in their own chip fabrication facility. Now you know why. Microsoft, on the other hand, grabbed a bunch of off-the-shelf chips from a variety of vendors and shoved them together in an absolutely huge, expensive, heavy box that looks a lot like a PC and would probably maim a small child if it fell off the top of a TV. Even if Microsoft could combine the nVidia graphics chip with the Intel CPU, do you think nVidia and Intel would go for this? These chips are owned by different (competing) companies, and the chips are manufactured in different places. If this combination were even physically possible, it would never happen for obvious competitive business reasons that are completely out of Microsoft's hands. Microsoft's box is, and will continue to be, expensive to make, because they don't control the silicon. They will not catch up to Sony or Nintendo on manufacturing costs.
It seems that, while Microsoft was salivating over Moore's Law, Sony has been cheating and using "Moore's Law Plus". Nintendo is also clearly cheating with some enhanced Moore's Law variant in their calculations; if you've ever picked up a feather-light GameCube, you might wonder if there are any electronics inside the thing at all. The result is a price war between Nintendo and Sony that is just starting to get good. This month (May 2002), the Sony Playstation dropped to $199 and the Nintendo GameCube dropped to $149. The XBox dropped to $199 to stay competitive, but boy does it hurt to see that. The XBox has been out less than a year, while Sony has had 3 years to bring its hardware costs down (Playstation 2 launched in Japan in 1999). Nintendo and Sony are cutting each other's throats on retail price (as planned), and still making money on the hardware. Microsoft has to follow suit with the price cuts, causing them to lose even more money on relatively new hardware that is still expensive to build. Don't worry, Microsoft will make it up in software sales, if every customer buys 20 or 30 games.
YOYODLR
(You Own Your Own Damn Living Room)
"Don't worry, Microsoft will make it up in software sales, if every customer buys 20 or 30 games."
Game consoles historically do one of two things. They live long, healthy lives with software support for many years (the original Playstation still does brisk business today, and just dropped to $49), or they die horrible, horrible deaths when the console sales stagnate and software publishers run screaming (Sega Dreamcast). If sales stagnate, a console will die.
Some seem to think that it doesn't matter if Microsoft loses millions or billions on the XBox, because they will just release the XBox 2, and everybody will buy that, according to some larger Microsoft "strategy" to "own the living room". Game consoles don't work that way, for some reason. If the XBox goes the way of the Dreamcast, nobody... NOBODY is going to be clamoring for the XBox 2 (how many millions of people are eagerly awaiting Dreamcast 2? That's right, zero million.)
The economics of the XBox don't add up now, and they get worse with time. Sony and Nintendo can kill the XBox on cost alone. The "software subsidies" that Microsoft expected are a myth. Game console prices will continue to drop, from $199 to $149, then on down to $99. Will Microsoft ever make it to the $99 level of this game? We'll see. According to XBox economics, it all depends on how much money they are willing to lose.
Entire contents Copyright © 2002 by Red Mercury, LLC. All rights reserved.
'Clones' Surpasses $116 Million at Box Office
," and "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron" open nationwide in theatres on May 24.
The Force is with George Lucas again as the fifth installment of the Star Wars saga, 'Attack of the Clones,' took in $116.3 million in its first four days and to become the second-fastest film behind only "Spider-Man" ($286.5 million in three weeks) to top $100 million. According to studio estimates issued today, the Richard Gere-Diane Lane adultery thriller "Unfaithful," ($10.3 million) remained strong behind the blockbusters at no. 3 ahead of the Hugh Grant film "About a Boy," ($8.4 million). April's top film "The Scorpion King" ($2.7 million) placed seventh this week.
Jennifer Lopez's "Enough," "Insomnia
May 17, 2002
Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill
By ADAM CLYMER
WASHINGTON, May 16 -- Senator Trent Lott, the minority leader, forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill.
The measure would require Internet service providers, online service providers and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation.
Mr. Lott, a Mississippi Republican, had been on the losing side of a series of votes on amendments. The most important would have deleted the bill's provisions allowing individuals to sue over disclosure of their personal information, and another would have imposed the same secrecy protections on businesses that collect their information without using the Internet.
The bill does direct the Federal Trade Commission to enact rules imposing "similar" requirements on online and off-line data collection. But that did not satisfy most committee Republicans.
Just before the committee was to vote to send the bill to the Senate floor, Mr. Lott invoked a Senate rule barring committees from meeting for more than two hours after the Senate convenes and votes. That halted action on the bill and on several other measures, including a nomination by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Since all 12 committee Democrats -- and 2 Republicans, Senators Conrad Burns of Montana and Ted Stevens of Alaska -- support the bill, it is likely to be voted out at the committee's next meeting, which may happen on Friday. But Mr. Lott's intense opposition indicates that it may be difficult for the bill even to be debated on the Senate floor.
The committee's senior Republican, Senator John McCain of Arizona, had warned the committee that unless the off-line-online data issue was addressed satisfactorily and the private suits were eliminated, the bill "will have great difficulty in receiving consideration on the floor of the Senate."
The Senate Democratic leaders have been reluctant to tie the Senate up for weeks with any but the most essential bills. But they might force this bill to the floor because there would be a political risk to Republicans in voting to maintain a filibuster against it.
Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, explained the politics of the measure.
"I think this subject of privacy is a ticking time bomb, and we better pay attention to it, because people do not want their personally identifiable medical and financial information spread all over every place," Mr. Nelson said. "A doctor needs to know what ails you. But those ailments, your mortgage banker doesn't need to know that."
Senator Ernest F. Hollings, the South Carolina Democrat who is chairman of the committee and sponsor of the bill, complained that "other than the progressive-minded companies, Hewlett-Packard and others, still a good segment of the industry opposes this bill."
Mr. Hollings said he found this strange because 180 American companies had agreed to similar rules to do business in the European Union.
Use Linux!
Apple has it's new rack mounted servers out.
May 12, 2002
Global Village Idiocy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- During a dinner with Indonesian journalists in Jakarta, I was taken aback when Dini Djalal, a reporter for The Far Eastern Economic Review, suddenly launched into a blistering criticism of the Fox News Channel and Bill O'Reilly. "They say [on Fox], `We report, you decide,' but it's biased -- they decide before us," she said. "They say there is no spin, but I get dizzy looking at it. I also get upset when they invite on Muslims and just insult them."
Why didn't she just not watch Fox when she came to America, I wondered? No, no, no, explained Ms. Djalal: The Fox Channel is now part of her Jakarta cable package. The conservative Bill O'Reilly is in her face every night.
On my way to Jakarta I stopped in Dubai, where I watched the Arab News Network at 2 a.m. ANN broadcasts from Europe, outside the control of any Arab government, but is seen all over the Middle East. It was running what I'd call the "greatest hits" from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: nonstop film of Israelis hitting, beating, dragging, clubbing and shooting Palestinians. I would like to say the footage was out of context, but there was no context. There were no words. It was just pictures and martial music designed to inflame passions.
An Indonesian working for the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, who had just visited the Islamic fundamentalist stronghold of Jogjakarta, told me this story: "For the first time I saw signs on the streets there saying things like, `The only solution to the Arab-Israel conflict is jihad -- if you are true Muslim, register yourself to be a volunteer.' I heard people saying, `We have to do something, otherwise the Christians or Jewish will kill us.' When we talked to people to find out where [they got these ideas], they said from the Internet. They took for granted that anything they learned from the Internet is true. They believed in a Jewish conspiracy and that 4,000 Jews were warned not to come to work at the World Trade Center [on Sept. 11]. It was on the Internet."
What's frightening him, he added, is that there is an insidious digital divide in Jogjakarta: "Internet users are only 5 percent of the population -- but these 5 percent spread rumors to everyone else. They say, `He got it from the Internet.' They think it's the Bible."
If there's one thing I learned from this trip to Israel, Jordan, Dubai and Indonesia, it's this: thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically or culturally. We are now seeing and hearing one another faster and better, but with no corresponding improvement in our ability to learn from, or understand, one another. So integration, at this stage, is producing more anger than anything else. As the writer George Packer recently noted in The Times Magazine, "In some ways, global satellite TV and Internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, less tolerant place."
At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. Because the Internet has an aura of "technology" surrounding it, the uneducated believe information from it even more. They don't realize that the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information.
Worse, just when you might have thought you were all alone with your extreme views, the Internet puts you together with a community of people from around the world who hate all the things and people you do. And you can scrap the BBC and just get your news from those Web sites that reinforce your own stereotypes.
A couple of years ago, two Filipino college graduates spread the "I Love You" virus over the Internet, causing billion of dollars in damage to computers and software. But at least that virus was curable with the right software. There is another virus going around today, though, that's much more serious. I call it the "I Hate You" virus. It's spread on the Internet and by satellite TV. It infects people's minds with the most vile ideas, and it can't be combated by just downloading a software program. It can be reversed only with education, exchanges, diplomacy and human interaction -- stuff you have to upload the old-fashioned way, one on one. Let's hope it's not too late.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy
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Computer Probe Is Widening
By DAN MORAIN and NANCY VOGEL
Times Staff Writers
May 3 2002
SACRAMENTO -- California Highway Patrol officers moved in Thursday to halt shredding at the state's information technology department, and Gov. Gray Davis suspended the agency's chief amid a widening investigation of the state's multimillion-dollar computer contract with Oracle Corp.
As those developments were unfolding in the Capitol, Davis' director of e-government, Arun Baheti, quit.
His resignation came one day after he acknowledged to Davis aides that he had personally accepted a $25,000 Oracle check for the governor's reelection committee, which reported receiving the money two weeks after the state signed the $95-million computer software deal.
Late Thursday, Davis issued a statement saying that he would give "immediate and careful attention" to an offer Oracle has said it made in the past to rescind the entire deal. Oracle said earlier in the day that its offer to undo the contract still stood.
That contract has become the object of scrutiny and criticism. A state audit concluded that the deal, designed to save money, could cost the government $41 million more than if there had been no agreement.
Baheti was the second department head in a week to lose his job as a result of the controversy, and a third, Information Technology Director Elias Cortez, was suspended by Davis on Thursday pending the outcome of the state investigation.
In addition, the Oracle deal has become a political issue for the governor, who is seeking reelection. Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon Jr. suggested that Davis aides engaged in a cover-up, and other Republican leaders called on federal authorities to become involved in the probe.
Davis offered no comment on either Baheti's resignation or his suspension of Cortez, who will continue to receive his $123,255 annual salary during his indefinite leave.
"There was shredding, but we have no idea what it was," Davis Press Secretary Steven Maviglio said, adding that Cortez was not in the building Wednesday when the shredding occurred. "Was there shredding related to the Oracle contract? We have no idea. That's what we want to find out."
While department officials said any shredding was routine, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said in a statement: "Any destruction of documents, e-mail and other materials that may be associated with the Oracle contract could pose the potential for obstruction of justice."
Davis' legal advisor, Barry Goode, said his office received an unsubstantiated report of document shredding at the Department of Information Technology.After calling the department to check on the report, he said, he informed Lockyer's office. Highway Patrol officers were then dispatched to the department headquarters.
Simon issued a statement suggesting that Davis or his staff shared responsibility for the shredding. "I'm deeply disturbed that it appears the governor's legal affairs advisor called the Department of Information Technology while documents were being shredded and let DOIT officials know that the attorney general's office was en route. If this is true, it's essentially letting them know they have an hour to shred."
Republican Assembly Leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks called on the U.S. attorney in Sacramento to enter the investigation, alleging that the Davis administration has tried to derail the Legislature's probe.
"The terms of the Oracle contract and any attempts on behalf [of] the Davis administration to silence state-level inquiries into this matter are most troubling," Cox said in a letter to acting U.S. Atty. John K. Vincent.
Cortez had a lead role in pushing for the deal in which Oracle proposed to license software for as many as 277,000 state employees and contended that it would save the state as much as $111 million, according to the state audit.
The audit said officials improperly relied on claims by Oracle and its partner in the venture, Logicon, that their software would save the state money. Further, the audit said, the state evidently was unaware Logicon stood to make more than $28 million on the deal.
A department spokesman said accusations of improper shredding were untrue and unfair to an agency that already has been demoralized by "negative" news reports of its role in the Oracle debacle. "I have been aware of no illicit shredding of any kind," said Communications Director Kevin Terpstra. "In terms of shredding contracts or official records, I do not believe that has occurred and I have no knowledge of that occurring."
The document shredding occurred as Department of Information Technology officials were preparing to testify before a legislative oversight committee Monday. Terpstra said department employees were preparing documents for the committee and "making sure everything was correct."
Terpstra said the department owns 24 shredders that are used to destroy "nonessential" confidential documents it gets from other state agencies that are embarking on computer technology contracts. He said the department has an understanding with those agencies that after reviewing confidential drafts and reports it will shred them.
A department worker, speaking on the condition that she not be identified, said about 10 plainclothes officers with the Justice Department filed into the office on the 21st floor of the downtown high-rise at about noon. Others, including two Sacramento Police Department officers and two state police officers, arrived shortly thereafter. About 1 p.m., the worker said, bosses sent an e-mail telling employees to shut down their computer systems.
She said the contracts office had been working to prepare documents requested by the governor's office and legislative committees. The contracts office was locked at 5 p.m. Wednesday, as it normally is, and the large shredder that sits in the hallway outside the contracts office was not used at all Thursday, she said.
Justice Department investigators took away some documents, she said, but even if anything was shredded Wednesday night, nothing would be lost because the contracts at the Information Technology office are all copies and the originals are kept at the Department of General Services.
"I'm a bureaucrat by profession," said the Information Technology worker. "I understand policy. But this was totally unfounded."
The Davis campaign committee reported receiving the Oracle check in June, two weeks after Oracle won the lucrative state software contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding. A source close to Davis' campaign committee said the check was dated in March, but could not explain why it was received in June.
In his resignation letter to Davis, Baheti made no mention of the campaign donation. Rather, he said, "It is apparent in retrospect that I should have more vociferously raised questions about the details" of the deal with Oracle and Logicon, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.
"Today," the letter continued, "there are people who would use me as a tool to attack you and the important work of the administration. I refuse to allow my service to you to become a distraction from the real work of government or to detract from your accomplishments. I cannot stay if my effectiveness for you has been compromised; the faith you placed in me deserves nothing less."
Baheti, a lawyer, had been state director of e-government since September 2000.
He also had worked for Davis when the governor was lieutenant governor, and worked on Davis' 1998 election campaign.
Baheti has told aides to Davis that when he took the check, he was not on government property, but was having dinner with a friend who is a lobbyist.
It is illegal to conduct such campaign activity in the Capitol.
Aides to Davis informed Lockyer about the transaction. Lockyer's office is investigating circumstances involving the state contract with Oracle.
"The governor has had a policy of not allowing his state employees to be involved in our fund-raising in any way," said Davis campaign strategist Garry South.
"It is not illegal for them to do, but it is his preference that they not do so," South said.
South said that although the governor's political aides were aware in June that Baheti had violated Davis' policy by taking the check, the campaign decided against returning it.
"I have no way of knowing what Oracle's motivation was," South said of the timing. "The check came from a well-known California company and it didn't violate any law."
Oracle spokesman Jim Finn said he did not know why the check was dated in March. He said the person who gave the $25,000 check to Baheti was Ravi Mehta, a lobbyist hired by Oracle and also a former chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission.
"Political contributions are entirely separate from any sale activities and always have been," Finn said. "California is our home state and we have more than 10,000 employees in the state, so it is natural that we would want to contribute to the governor."
Baheti is the second official to resign as a result of the Oracle deal. On Friday, Barry Keene quit as director of the state Department of General Services.
Having Liposuction? Give the Fat to Scientists
Wed May 1, 6:10 PM ET
By Kathleen Doheny
LAS VEGAS (Reuters Health) - If you're undergoing liposuction, you're no doubt happy to kiss that unsightly fat goodbye. But you might not want to throw it away.
The excess fat that looks so bad on your tummy, backside or thighs, it turns out, is a mother lode of stem cells, and some cosmetic surgeons now suggest you might want to bank that fat. Later, they hope to draw on those banked stem cells--unspecialized cells that can be transformed into many different types of specialized cells--for use in additional cosmetic procedures or other types of operations or treatments, if necessary.
"Fat happens to be rich in stem cells," said Dr. Peter Fodor, a plastic surgeon at Century City Hospital near Los Angeles and a UCLA clinical associate professor of plastic surgery, who will present his latest research Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Las Vegas. Every 100 cubic centimeters of bone marrow yields up to 10,000 stem cells, Fodor told Reuters Health. But the same amount of fat contains a million stem cells.
In their research, Fodor and his colleagues isolated stem cells from liposuction specimens of 10 patients and grew them into more fat cells as well as into bone, cartilage, skeletal muscle and nerve cells.
"The possibilities are endless," Fodor said. Suppose a patient is involved in a motor vehicle accident and bone is needed for repair. "You could take their stored stem cells, make bone, put it back in (their body) to heal up the fracture," Fodor said. Or, a woman may have fat removed from her thighs, bank it, and then, later have it injected into her hands to give them a more youthful look.
Besides finding a rich source of stem cells in the discarded fat, Fodor and his team found the fat to be a source of collagen, the fibrous part of bone, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissue. Fodor and his colleagues harvested the collagen from the liposuction specimens of 10 patients and then successfully reinjected it into soft tissues. For example, this reinjected collagen might plump up a face that has begun to look emaciated with age.
As for stem cells, using those collected from a patient's body eliminates the risk of rejection when later reintroduced. It also avoids the ethical issues involved in using stem cells derived from embryos. Stem cells are already being looked at by researchers to treat a variety of diseases and conditions, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites), stroke, burns, heart disease and diabetes.
One of Fodor's co-presenters, Dr. Marc Hedrick, is the CEO of StemSource in Thousand Oaks, California, which banks stem cells from liposuction patients.
Fees for StemSource banking are not yet set, said Dr. John K. Fraser, StemSource's chief scientific officer and a veteran stem cell researcher. But he expects the initial collection and processing cost, which will be charged by participating doctors, to be about $1500 to $2000, including 5 years of storage. After the initial 5 years, the storage fee is expected to be about $100 per year. Those who donate up to 10% of their cells for research will receive an additional 5 years free storage, Fraser said.
The average surgeon's fee for liposuction is $2,049, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
The concept of using banked stem cells from liposuctioned fat for future procedures "sounds feasible," said Dr. Farshid Guilak, director of orthopedic research at Duke University Medical Center and a stem cell and arthritis researcher. His lab and at least one other have also grown stem cells from fat into the more specialized cells, he said.
However, he cautioned that a number of studies will be required to prove that using stem cells from liposuctioned fat for cosmetic or reconstructive procedures works well. "We need to prove that transformation of cells from one type to another is irreversible," Guilak said. The safety of the procedures must also be proven.
Microsoft witness stumbles MIT professor fumbles answers as states attorney grills him on proposed settlement.
May 2, 2002: 7:59 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (CNN/Money) - A technical expert testifying on behalf of Microsoft Corp. in the ongoing antitrust action stumbled several times while on the stand.
"I'm not trying to be evasive," Stuart E. Madnick, a computer science professor at MIT, said at one point. "I'm just trying to be precise."
Madnick was sometimes anything but precise, however. When government attorney Kevin Hodges asked him to name an operating system besides those made by Microsoft in which the Web browsing software could not be removed. Madnick immediately offered up KDE as an example. But KDE is a computer program designed to run on top of the Linux operating system, as Hodges pointed out. Madnick conceded that was true, and instead suggested GNOME as an example.
But GNOME performs the same function as KDE on a computer equipped with the Linux operating system. Hodges was never able to get an answer to his question.
One of the key issues in the antitrust case revolves around Microsoft's incorporation of the Internet Explorer Web browsing software into its Windows operating system in such a way that IE can't be removed without damaging Windows. The courts found that Microsoft has monopoly power in the market for desktop computer operating systems, and violated antitrust law to protect that power.
The U.S. Department of Justice and half the states involved in the original antitrust action are ready to settle with Microsoft, but the rest of the states involved in the original case say the proposed settlement doesn't go far enough. The current hearings, before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, are intended to decide what should be done.
Hodges and Madnick sparred over a number of issues, including the concept of interoperability. Critics, including the dissenting states, have argued that Microsoft deliberately designs its products to interfere with technology made by other companies, forcing people to use Microsoft products. The dissenting states are pressing for complete interoperability. But Madnick argued that being able to exchange and use data on any level -- even if the process is clumsy -- is enough to claim interoperability.
Madnick argued that perfect interoperability, which would allow products to be substituted for each other with no performance degradation, was a theoretical impossibility. "It would be surprising if two different products behaved exactly alike," he told the court Wednesday.
Madnick testified that Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates) probably would not be able to develop and market a workable version of Windows under the terms proposed by the dissenting states. He believes the requirements -- such as building Windows in such a way that computer manufacturers could alter it -- are not technically feasible.
Hodges hammered away at Madnick throughout the day, leaving the weary academic floundering at times.
Asked to evaluate language in the proposed settlements, Madnick studied the documents, then shook his head and said, "I somehow think there's something I'm missing, but I can't spot it at the moment."
Madnick will return to the stand Thursday. Microsoft executive Will Poole should take the stand as soon as Madnick completes his appearance.
Wednesday morning, Kollar-Kotelly returned to the issue of whether to allow the states to introduce additional evidence into the case. She held open the possibility that the documents could be introduced during the rebuttal phase of the trial, after each side has made their case. But she was clear that it wouldn't happen while Microsoft was presenting its witnesses. "You can't get these in during their case," she told Howard Gutman, an attorney for the states. Kollar-Kotelly may rule on the issue Thursday.
The issue arose Tuesday after Microsoft withdrew several witnesses Monday night, one of whom, Richard Fade, is senior vice president of the OEM division, which works with computer manufacturers. But the government lawyers were counting on his testimony to introduce documents as evidence that Microsoft has continued to use its monopoly power to squeeze computer manufacturers.
The government team apparently had every intention of introducing the documents as part of its own case -- as the courtroom rules require -- but botched that attempt several weeks ago by apparently misunderstanding the court's rules on the introduction of witnesses. The states tried to introduce deposition testimony from over a dozen witnesses near the end of their case, but Kollar-Kotelly, in response to an objection by Microsoft, ruled that those individuals should have been on the original witness list and denied the states an opportunity to bring whatever facts those witnesses might have offered into the trial.
Wednesday, Gutman brought the number of documents he'd like to see admitted down to 7, and Kollar-Kotelly said she'd take the request under advisement, though she seemed unenthusiastic. Top of page
-- from CNNfn producer Dave Wilson
LCD paint licked
Walls and curtains could sport liquid-crystal digital displays.
2 May 2002
HELEN PEARSON
One layer LCDs could lead to smaller, cheaper, lighter gadgets.
© R. Penterman et al.
Homes of the future could change their wallpaper from cream to cornflower blue at the touch of a button, says Dirk Broer. His team has developed paint-on liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that offer the technology.
Liquid crystals are peculiar liquids: their molecules spontaneously line up, rather than being randomly orientated as in a normal liquid. Passing a voltage across the molecules switches their alignment, blocking the transmission of light so a display changes from light to dark.
Current LCDs on digital watches, mobile phones and laptops sandwich the crystal between heavy glass plates. The complicated production process is time-consuming, expensive and restricts the size of screens to just 1 metre square.
Broer and his colleagues have devised a new open-sandwich technique that instead deposits a layer of liquid crystal onto a single underlying sheet. Working at Eindhoven University of Technology and Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, Broer's team has already produced prototypes on glass and plastic; fabric could be next.
The technique could create giant TV screens, digital billboards and walls that change colour. Slim, plastic LCDs sewn into fabric could display e-mail or text messages on your sleeve. "It depends what future societies want," says Broer.
The technique should feed people's thirst for smaller, cheaper gadgets. Conventional glass LCDs now make up an increasing part of a laptop's weight - plastic versions could change that, says Peter Raynes, who studies LCD technology at the University of Oxford, UK.
Crystal glazing
Broer's team made the LCD paint by mixing liquid crystal with molecules that link together into a rigid polymer when exposed to ultraviolet. In a two-stage process they effectively build tiny boxes holding the liquid1.
Don't expect to buy a watch featuring one of the new displays in the next six months
Peter Raynes, University of Oxford, UK
They coat a glass or plastic base with a thin layer of the LCD paint and mask out squares so that a blast of ultraviolet forms a grid of walls. When they remove the mask, a second exposure - at a wavelength that does not penetrate the whole liquid layer - seals over the boxes with a lid.
Standard LCDs, which are divided up into pixels, turn dark when a voltage crosses between electrodes on the two glass plates. The new displays instead pass voltage between two points on the same plate. Colour LCDs fit each pixel with red, green and blue colour filters.
"Don't expect to buy a watch featuring one of the new displays in the next six months," warns Raynes, however. He cautions that the technique needs work: compared with glass, the thin outer layer may be more easily penetrated by oxygen or water that degrade the crystal.
References
# Penterman, R. et al. Single-substrate liquid-crystal displays by photo-enforced stratification. Nature, 417, 55 - 58, (2002).
Interview with a congressman--part one (continued)
...which is ironic because it's called the promotion of broadband and digital television, promotion of sales [Editor's note: The law is actually called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act], it seems to me that the exact opposite is true.
B: Well, the Sony vs. Betamax decision is a very valuable decision. It was rendered 20 years ago. To a large extent it was reversed by the DMCA. What the Sony vs. Betamax decision held is that any time technology can be used for two purposes--a minimum of two, but two anyway, one of which is infringing, and another
I have very serious problems with punishing the technology. And that is precisely what the DMCA seeks to do.
of which is noninfringing, that the technology is lawful technology as long as it has a substantial noninfringing use. And the court analyzed the Betamax and found that because it allowed time-shifting, it had a substantial noninfringing use (time-shifting is fair use), and therefore Betamax was found to be lawful technology. That's a very valuable legal principle: The presence of a substantial noninfringing use renders the technology to be lawful. Now unfortunately, the DMCA essentially reversed that, because it says that if the technology, even though it has substantial noninfringing uses, was primarily intended by the manufacturer to be used for an infringing purpose, then the technology is unlawful. Now the problem is, nobody's going to know at the outset what a court is going to rule about the intent of the manufacturer. How do you determine that extent? How does a court subsequently determine what was in the manufacturer's mind at the time that he produced technology that could be used both for infringement and also had noninfringing purposes? And so the Sony vs. Betamax principle was severely weakened by that provision of the DMCA. And then, of course, anybody who traffics in a device which is declared to be an infringing technology--such as Mr. Sklyarov from Russia--can be arrested for criminal conduct.
M: Right.
B: And I have very serious problems with punishing the technology. And that is precisely what the DMCA seeks to do. We should punish people who engage in acts of piracy. We should not punish the technology which can be used for infringing purposes but also for substantial noninfringing purposes.
M: So along those lines, I just came across a very interesting quote from John Ippolito of the Guggenheim, and he's talking about Senator "Fritz" Hollings's bill, the CBDTPA, and Ippolito says about that bill, "To disable the Internet to save EMI and Disney is the moral equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to ensure the livelihood of monastic scribes."
B: (laughs) Well, it's artful...(laughs) Well, without being quite that eloquent, let me endorse the general idea that he expresses. I think that Senator Hollings's bill is wrongheaded. It is inappropriate for the government to establish technical standards to be applied to digital media. The government is not a very good standards-developing body.
M: Mmm-hmm.
B: I do agree that we need to take some steps to assure that material which is, for example, broadcast across digital-television equipment should be protected in such a way as to disallow unauthorized copying and disallow uploading to the Internet. I actually endorse the idea of doing that. But I think that should be done in a collaborative process that involves the manufacturers of equipment and also involves the motion-
It is inappropriate for the government to establish technical standards to be applied to digital media. The government is not a very good standards-developing body.
picture studios. And that very process is underway. That group has already achieved an agreement that will protect television content--broadcast and digital format--and received in the home by either cable television or by satellite. What they have not achieved is an agreement in regard to material that is broadcast over the air for receipt by an antenna or by "rabbit ears." But they're working to do that, and we expect that within another six weeks there will be a private-sector agreement that produces a standard for protecting that content as well. Now, at the end of that process, after the equipment manufacturers are satisfied that the standard is workable, after the motion-picture studios are satisfied that it offers sufficient protection, after the various consumer groups that are also working in this process are content that the employment of that standard will enable people to continue to exercise their fair-use rights for appropriate home recording of the material--after all of those tests are met, there may be a role for Congress to require that equipment respond to that particular standard, and all of the external stakeholders will have endorsed the standard and say that this technology works, and that consumer rights are protected. Now, at that point, I would be willing to entertain a proposal that Congress act and require that equipment respond. The Senator Hollings's bill is way ahead of all of that. Senator Hollings's bill would require that all digital media immediately respond to a standard that the government would wind up setting. There would be no assurance that consumer rights would be protected. There would be no assurance that the fair-use right to home recording of digital content would be preserved. There would be no assurance that the technology as applied to consumer-electronics products and information-technology products would allow those products to function effectively. And I'm convinced that if his bill becomes law, which I don't think it will, but if it were to become law, I think it would probably inhibit the introduction of a lot of useful new technology.
M: Exactly. I mean it seems to me that in fact it would incent people to buy used computer equipment from before the legislation were enacted...
B: Absolutely.
M:
B: I think that's right.
M: Right. OK, so since the Internet is international, then there's the aspect of will the DMCA become the basis for worldwide copyright law, and do you think that's realistic?
B: Well, that's a big problem. You put your finger on a major concern there.
Note: Check back in two weeks for the second half of the MP3 Insider's interview with Rep. Boucher.
You bunch of pinkos.