World News

As a person living in a child free home I strongly object to life being made even more hasslesome than it already is. I hope the ITC don't consider this a good idea otherwise it will mess up timer set recordings. Not to mention the stupidity of having a widely punished PIN. I was wondering if this is an early April Fools joke.

From The Sat-Zone

A new ruling by the French regulatory body, the CSA, has requested that all adult channels within France alter their viewing cards so that their services can only be viewed upon insertion of a parental lock key-code. XXL, the French hardcore porn channel broadcasting as part of the ABSat package, has informed us that it will implement the CSA's request shortly. Upon implementation ABSat subscribers will need to enter the code 8080 in order to view the XXL blue movie channel. According to our sources, the French-based porn channel, Ultra Blue, has also announced its intention to implement the new ruling.

Surely those kids that watch less than an hour of TV are part of a group selected by far more influential reasons than TV. I think they are probably all Amish

From The Telegraph

Teenagers who watch more than an hour of television each day are more likely to become violent adults, a US study has found. Adolescents, particularly boys, are more likely to turn to violence in their early twenties if they watch more than an hour of television a day.

The survey, the first into the long-term effects of television on violence, is published today in the journal Science by Prof Jeffrey Johnson, of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and co-authors.

The team tracked more than 700 children and took into account the "chicken and egg" question: Does watching television cause aggression or do people prone to aggression watch more television? Prof Johnson concludes that, during early adolescence, responsible parents should not let their children watch more than one hour of television a day.

The link between watching television and behaving violently remained intact after the researchers had accounted for other factors, such as childhood neglect, low family income or a psychiatric disorder during adolescence.

The youths in the study and their mothers were interviewed four times over the course of 18 years and assigned to three categories: those who watched less than one hour of television per day, between one and three hours per day, and more than three hours per day.

Information on aggressive acts committed by the study subjects came from interviews, as well as state and federal records of arrests and charges for adult criminal behaviour. The researchers grouped the violent acts according to whether they occurred around age 16, age 22 or age 30.

Once other factors were accounted for, 5.7 per cent of the adolescents who watched less than one hour then committed aggressive acts against other people in later years. In contrast, 22.5 per cent of the adolescents who watched between one and three hours a day committed aggressive acts later, as did 28.8 per cent of the adolescents who watched more than three hours a day.

From The Guardian

An Islamic appeal court in Nigeria freed a 35-year-old mother due to be stoned to death yesterday, as it emerged that a second woman convicted of adultery had been given the same sentence. In the latest case Amina Lawal Kurami, a divorced woman from Katsina state, was sentenced on Friday after giving birth outside marriage. Analysts said Ms Kurami's case was unlikely to go that far, because the governor of Katsina state, a government loyalist, would probably quash the sentence. As a result, the constitutional crisis is likely to remain unresolved.

The sentence was passed on the day that the federal minister of justice condemned the barbaric punishment imposed by sharia courts in the northern Muslim states as unconstitutional. We now have a critical situation, and the longer it remains unresolved the more serious it will get, Clement Nwankwo, a Nigerian human rights lawyer, said yesterday. The government has got to take the matter to the supreme court and establish whether these sharia punishments are acceptable in terms of the constitution and international human rights treaties.

The sharia court of appeal in the northern state of Sokoto overruled the death sentence for adultery imposed on Safiya Huseini, on procedural grounds. (Not because of justice or civilisation or tolerance or rejection of barbarism  though!)

In October she was condemned to be buried up to her neck and stoned to death. Denying adultery, she told the local sharia court that she had been raped by a neighbour. Yesterday a panel of Muslim clerics acquitted her on the grounds that her alleged crime would have been committed before sharia law was introduced in Sokoto early last year.

Since strict sharia penal codes were adopted in several northern Muslim states, human rights groups have documented numerous cases of flogging and mutilation by amputation. The federal government has largely ignored the controversy for fear of exacerbating the sectarian tension which claimed hundreds of lives last year. But on Thursday Godwin Agabi, the justice minister, said any court which imposes discriminatory punishment is deliberately flouting the constitution.

From Wired

The Cuban government has quietly banned the sale of computers and computer accessories to the public, except in cases where the items are "indispensable" and the purchase is authorized by the Ministry of Internal Commerce.

News of the ban was first reported by CubaNet, an anti-Castro site based in Miami. According to the organization's correspondent in Havana, the merchandise -- which had been sold freely in the capital since mid-2001-- was yanked off store shelves in January.

The computer departments of the retail stores were divided into two zones: a well-stocked area for government buyers, and a smaller area where the public could buy diskettes, CDs and other such items. A store employee told the correspondent she was forbidden from discussing the move.

According to Article 19, Chapter II, Section 3 of the ministry's Resolution No. 383/2001: The sale of computers, offset printer equipment, mimeographs, photocopiers, and any other mass printing medium, as well as their parts, pieces and accessories, is prohibited to associations, foundations, civic and nonprofit societies, and natural born citizens. In cases where the acquisition of this equipment or parts, pieces and accessories is indispensable, the authorization of the Ministry of Internal Commerce must be solicited.

The government already requires Cubans who can afford Internet accounts -- which cost $260 a month, while the average Cuban salary is $240 a year -- to register with National Center for Automated Data Exchange, For those who do manage to log on, the Internet experience is limited: The government-controlled ISPs block links to certain foreign media, anti-Castro sites and pornography.

The government (just like most governments) has also admitted to monitoring e-mail. To circumvent such spying, residents use Web-based e-mail accounts and chat services to make their communication harder to trace.

It strikes me that any organisation or religion that hankers after bollox law like blasphemy is shit scared that adherents are being fooled by the kings clothes. Any robust organisation, based up on an an aggregation of member's beliefs, resists and relishes alternative opinion with confidence (just like the Melon Farmers!)

From Wired

Wired News reported recently that the Church of Scientology has successfully used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to compel search engine provider Google to remove sites from its search engine that allegedly contain copyrighted Scientology materials. Sites including Xenu.net and Clambake.org -- which both criticize the Church -- no longer appear in Google search results. A letter sent from Google to the operator of Norway-based Xenu.net read, "Had we not removed these URLs, we would be subject to a claim for copyright infringement, regardless of its merits." The notoriously litigious Church of Scientology has defended its intellectual property many times.

And then the next day:

Search engine provider Google has restored links to some Web pages critical of the Church of Scientology, one day after removing them as a result legal threats from the Church under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Reuters reported. Other pages referred to by the Church as containing unauthorized copyrighted content, however, remain blocked from Google's search results. A posting from Politechbot.com reports that pages other than www.xenu.net -- the homepage of one of the sites targeted by the Church -- that reside on the site and were included in the Church's complaint to Google still do not come up when a user searches on Google.

The head of Greece's television regulatory agency suspended broadcasts Thursday of two popular reality television shows, including "Big Brother," for violating laws on public decency and dignity.

To become permanent, the decision would require approval by the 11-member National Council for Radio and Television when it meets on Friday. The council was to discuss the possibility of shifting the programs to post-midnight time slots. They currently air at 10 p.m. for one hour.

Broadcast by Greece's biggest private channels, Antenna and Mega, the two shows have some of the highest ratings. But in recent weeks, they have became the focus of intense public debate after showing scenes that include nudity or allusions to sex. Antenna carries Big Brother, while Mega broadcasts The Bar.

The Bar has 14 contestants living together in an Athens apartment next to a bar which they must operate for 14 weeks. Both locations are filled with cameras and microphones. Every week a contestant is voted off the show with the last one winning $133,500.

The reality shows have been criticized by politicians, academics, and religious nutters who think that they degrade contestants, provide a negative social image for young people, and erode family values.

Later from the BBC:

A move to outlaw two popular TV reality shows, including Big Brother, in Greece has been blocked.

The president of the National Council for Radio and Television, Vasillis Lambridis, pulled the shows off air claiming they overstepped the boundaries of public decency. But his decision to suspend the shows was not supported by the rest of the television watchdog, which voted 8-1 to allow them to continue broadcasting.

But as a compromise the members recommended the shows be moved from their 2200 timeslot to after midnight.

From Wired

After much talk about a draft of the bill and several Senate hearings on the issue, Senator Fritz Hollings has introduced new legislation called the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" (CBDTPA), which if enacted would ban the sale of consumer electronics devices that are not equipped with government-approved copy-protection technology.

The law would apply to PCs, televisions, personal video recorders, MP3 players and other devices through which copyrighted digital media can pass. Co-sponsoring the bill were five senators, including California's Diane Feinstein. The law would give entertainment and technology firms one year to negotiate a marketplace compromise, after which time the Federal Communications Commission would intervene and recommend its own copy-protection scheme.

The legislation was praised by both the movie and music industries and derided by Silicon Valley.

Malaysia is hardly a country that respects much in the way of liberty and freedom so the following story is hardly surprising.

The Film Censorship Act 2002, which will replace the 1952 Act, will take effect from April 1, said Deputy Home Minister, JakBoots Datuk Chor Chee Hueng.

He said the Act would provide higher fines and stiffer penalties for offences. He said for pornography for example an offender could be fined between RM10,000 and RM50,000 (5-25000 GBP) or jailed up to five years or both.

The Act also empowered enforcement officers to enter and inspect any premises, conduct search, arrest, detain, investigate and prosecute, he said. Chor said there was also a provision on presumption that enabled any irresponsible film distributors to be prosecuted in court even though their films were in premises belonging to others.

He also urged producers to review prices of video compact discs (VCDs), digital versatile discs (DVDs) and compact discs (CDs) to a reasonable level so that the public could afford to buy original copies.

From AVN

Adam Glasser recently walked out of the courtroom completely free of all obscenity charges in what has to be one of the best "plea bargains" ever reached in local obscenity jurisprudence.

It's a victory for the First Amendment, and a victory for all adults, said Roger Jon Diamond, Glasser's attorney.

The case was People of the State of California v. Adam Glasser, et al., and revolved around his 1999 release, Tampa Tushy Fest Part 1, which contained scenes of vaginal and anal fisting between popular porn performers Chloe and Alisha Klass. The trial of the case, which has been postponed several times for various reasons, was supposed to begin on March 20, but was put off indefinitely after the following plea agreement was reached:

• Glasser's company, BBE, Inc., would plead "no contest" to a charge of "creating a public nuisance" and would pay a fine of $1000 into a "victim's restitution" fund. The company would not be put on probation.
• All other charges against Adam Glasser, Lila Glasser and his companies would be dropped. Originally, each defendant had been charged with one court of trafficking in obscene materials and one of promoting the distribution of obscene materials.
• All materials, including the master tapes to Tampa Tushy Fest, that had been seized pursuant to the search warrant served on Glasser early last year would be returned to Glasser.
• Glasser agreed to make all customers of Tampa Tushy Fest aware that a "non-fisting" version of the tape exists if they wish to purchase it, or exchange a currently-owned "fisting" version for it. Otherwise, Glasser is free to sell the fisting version of Tampa Tushy Fest in California, free of any possible charge of obscenity lodged against it.

Basically, we'll do the same thing we did before," Glasser stated. We have what we call the XXXX version, which is the unedited version, and the XXX version, which is the edited version. We've been offering those versions to customers from Day 1; we will continue to offer them to customers, and for us, it's really no change at all in operating procedure. It only actually just makes me feel more comfortable about selling the movies that are unedited. I believe we now have the legal authority to sell a fisting version in California.

As to whether he now expected more companies to release tapes with fisting scenes, Glasser replied, I think that people have to be careful. This is a victory in California. This says nothing about how these depictions are going to be looked at or perceived in other states. So if there are companies out there that have the ability to offer two versions of a movie, one with fisting and one without, then possibly you will. Outside of the state of California, it's still a questionable issue, and you can't bank on the fact, nor will I bank on the fact that now this movie is going to be bought without any kind of thought or consciousness by the entire United States market. It's just not going to happen. The people in Texas, Florida, Alabama or wherever that were concerned about it then, probably still should be concerned about it now. I don't think there should be any difference from their perspectives and I'm not going to treat it any differently on the national level.

From The Register

Child-protective mania has given State of Pennsylvania a pretext to indulge in Internet censorship. The legislature has passed a law requiring ISPs to block access to kiddie porn Web sites. Under the scheme, PA residents will have to be prevented from accessing the sites, which will be identified by the state attorney general's office.

The law is backed up with penalties ranging from $5,000 for a first offense to fines of $30,000 and seven years' imprisonment for a third offense. The PA legislature doesn't offer any guidance as to how the blocking is to be accomplished.

The legislative measure was brought to our attention by Richard M. Smith of ComputerBytesMan.com. ISPs are going to have to filter by URLs. I think this is a hard technical problem. I'm not even sure what kind of software can deal with ISP traffic volumes, Add to this the fact that active KP URLs often change on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, and you see that PA is going to be issuing constantly out-of-date URL lists to ISPs throughout the nation and expecting them to dutifully filter them for its residents. So, will this reduce the amount of KP circulating on the Web? Will it protect children from exploitation by pornographers? Obviously, it will do neither. It's pure self-congratulatory legislation with no appreciation of the practicalities, and no hope of accomplishing anything worthwhile.

It will, of course, accomplish Internet censorship for PA residents, which may later be expanded once the necessary tools are in place; it will tax the resources of ISPs struggling to comply with impossible demands; and it will impress the uninformed with Pennsylvania's devotion to child protection. But it will not make the slightest dent in the trafficking of this filth.

Governor Mark Schweiker signed the bill into law last month. It takes effect in April.

(I find the concept of stoning deeply abhorrent. Surely it is the very pits of humanity that implement such law. Its not even as if it has any cultural history...it has been recently introduced).

European Union leaders recently urged Nigeria to show clemency towards a woman sentenced to death by stoning for having sex outside marriage. In a statement issued at the end of a two-day summit in Barcelona, Spain, the 15 leaders said: The European Union is deeply concerned by information received on the potential stoning of a woman in Nigeria. It urges the Nigerian authorities to fully respect human rights and human dignity with particular reference to women. The EU opposes any kind of capital punishment.

Safiya Hussaini, a divorced mother of two, was sentenced to death by stoning last year after a sharia court in the north-western Nigerian city of Sokoto found her guilty of adultery.

The decision sparked an international outcry and the woman has appealed against the verdict.  Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has hinted that the woman might win a reprieve, though his government says it cannot intervene in the legal process.

Hussaini, 35, was the first person to be sentenced to death since regional governments first introduced the strict sharia code in predominantly Muslim parts of northern Nigeria in 1999.

From AVN

The US network TV show, Nightline recently profiled the adult business concentrating on the mainstreaming of the adult business from a business standpoint.

The program opened with an interview with Metro contract performer Ron Jeremy, but focused on the industry as a business, interviewing such industry players such as Vivid President David Asher and AVN Publisher Paul Fishbein and AVN Online Editor in Chief Erik McFarland, as well as Wall Street analysts.

The connection between Internet, video, and broadcast delivery methods also dominated the program, taking particular interest in the Vivid Entertainment Group's multi-million dollar sale of the Hot Networks to Playboy. Nightline also took note of its distribution system and streams, and compared its contract performers to mainstream Hollywood.

Another focus was the inroads companies are making in providing content to other mainstream distribution streams such as cable (such as AT&T cable), satellite (such as General Motors Hughes DirecTV subsidiary) and hotel networks (such as Marriott Hotels). The program estimates that about 80% of in-room profits are generated from adult television entertainment, as well as high profits for satellite and cable providers. However, the established companies, such as GM and AT&T, do not specifically mention revenues derived from adult in the their annual reports.

Nightline also took interest in the burgeoning Internet adult market, talking to representatives from videosecrets.com and suicidegirls.com, noting that for minimal investments, the companies are continuing exceptional growth despite the failure of mainstream .com failures.

The Pulkovo Airport's customs officers confiscated two boxes with the French documentary film Assassination of Russia from Yuly Rybakov on Saturday night in St. Petersburg. Rybakov is a parliament member and one of the leaders of the Liberal Russia movement. He had just arrived from London where the film was shown last week in London. The customs officers, Rybakov said, failed to explain on what grounds they did confiscated the videotapes. They told the parliament member to sort it out with the customs administration. 

Rybakov said that Gorbenko and I entered a customs examination room with all the other passengers. I was carrying a bag and two small cardboard boxes. Each box contained 50 cassettes. We were approached by two customs officers who wanted to know what we had brought with us. I answered honestly that we had cassettes, produced my State Duma id and explained that I had personal immunity. They asked us to open the boxes. By that time we were alone in the room.

The officers were joined by two people in civilian clothes, who categorically refused to introduce themselves. Nonetheless, I had the impression that the customs officers acted according to their direction; they often hurried over to them to discussed things. They took my passport away and began drawing up a statement in which they wrote that the boxes were taken away to be deposited. I protested and wrote in their statement that I considered the detention of my possessions illegal.  I asked when I could have the boxes back and one of customs officers replied, We have administration, so sort it out with them.' I was given a receipt. Articles detained for political reasons will not be returned' was written on the reverse side.

Rybakov said that a full Russian-language version of the film Assassination of Russia was recorded on the cassettes (an abridged version of the film was shown in London) and the viewing rights had only been bought by the Grani.ru Internet site and had been handed over to Liberal Russia for free use. Yuly Rybakov said he was going to give out the cassettes in Parliament. Instead, he would have to tell the colleagues in the State Duma about this incident.

Besides, Rybakov is going to appeal on Monday to Andrei Ozoling, chief of the Pulkovo customs house, and Ivan Sydoruk, the public prosecutor of St. Petersburg. According to Rybakov, the action in Pulkovo made no sense right from the start a few cassettes remained in his bag and his colleague Sergei Yushenkov brought about 900 cassettes at the same time into Moscow, causing no objections on the part of customs officers there. Yushenkov handed out some of the cassettes to a few journalists who had come to meet him at the Sheremetyevo-2 Airport. Liberal Russia, Rybakov said, was going to show Berezovsky's film in movie theaters and also arrange for it to be broadcast on TV. The action is to begin in Ryazan because a considerable part of the film is about events in that city, he said.

From Reuters

A U.S. House panel voted Tuesday to update a 40-year-old law banning interstate betting so that it would apply to fast-growing Internet gambling sites as well.

The House Judiciary subcommittee on crime voted unanimously to approve a measure that would update the Wire Act of 1961, which bans interstate wagers, so it would clearly apply to the Internet and other modern communications, as well as telephone lines. The bill would allow law enforcement agents to take down sites found in violation, or stop credit card payments to sites operating outside of the country.

This legislation is badly needed because there are a great many offshore sites that are sucking billions of dollars from American households, said Rep. Bob Goodlatte who sponsored the bill.

The proposed legislation targets the estimated 1,400 online casinos that have sprung up over the last several years and operate outside the reach of local and state regulators. Goodlatte's bill would allow agents to obtain a court order requiring credit card companies and other payment services to cut off transactions with the sites if they could not be shut down directly. Law enforcement agents could also direct U.S.-based Internet providers to take down links to gambling sites and tell online advertising companies such as DoubleClick to stop distributing ads for illegal online casinos.

The bill does not affect the ability of states and Native American tribes to regulate online gambling within their borders as long as they bar minors and out-of-state users.

Fantasy-sports leagues, state lotteries and off-track betting on horse or dog racing would not be affected by the bill, which now moves to the full Judiciary Committee for consideration.

The distributor of the controversial French film Fat Girl is challenging the constitutionality of the Ontario Film Review Board over its decision to ban the movie about the sexual awakening of two teenaged sisters.

Cowboy Pictures, the New York-based distributor of the film, launched a civil action in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice this week that challenges the film board's decision on technical and constitutional grounds and suggests the board does not have the authority to halt the distribution of movies in the province.

The Ontario Film Review Board rejected the film for distribution last fall under the provincial Theatres Act that prohibits the depiction of sex-related nudity involving someone who is underaged or appears to be underaged.

Fat Girl, by French director Catherine Breilliat, tells the story of two girls, pudgy Anais and beautiful Elena, who are depicted as 13 and 15, exploring their sexuality.

It was screened at last year's Toronto International Film Festival and has been released throughout the United States and in several Canadian provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec.

Craig Martin, the Toronto-based lawyer for Cowboy Pictures, said the company argues the board simply misapplied the guidelines in deciding to ban this particular film. It will also argue that the legislation that gives the Ontario Film Review Board the power to ban movies is an unjustifiable infringement of the fundamental right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

From AVN

Private North America has announced current DVD titles in March and future DVD releases will feature reversible covers with hardcore and softcore photos.

Mara Epstein, executive account manager for Private, told AVN.com the covers will allow placement of the company's DVDs in mainstream retail outlets, such as Tower Records, Virgin Megastores and the Movie Gallery, that had not carried them because of concerns over content displayed on covers.

Epstein says the covers are being printed solely for the American market, and she adds, This is just the beginning of ways in which we'll be accommodating the U.S. market.

Reversible covers are also to be found on Private films in the UK

From The Guardian

The Turkish ministry of culture has banned a film it partly funded, and which had been Turkey's hope to pick up an Oscar for best foreign film. Buyuk Adam, Kucuk Ask (Big Man, Small Love) has won a number of awards. But it has now been banned on the grounds that it highlights Kurdish nationalism and portrays the Turkish police in a poor light.

At the film's heart is the relationship between a nationalist, authoritarian judge and a five-year-old Kurdish orphan. The judge, who is the girl's neighbour, takes her in following a botched raid on her home by police who kill her guardian while looking for two Kurdish rebels hiding in the house. Through their relationship the film explores the difficulties Turkey has living with its Kurdish minority of 12 million.

For 15 years in the 1980s and 1990s Turkey fought a bloody civil war in the south-east of the country with the Kurds. A ceasefire is in operation, but the Turkish state refuses to allow Kurds to broadcast in their own language or to educate their children in Kurdish.

The Turkish culture ministry partly funded the film with a grant of £20,000, and Turkey had put it forward as its candidate for the best foreign film in the Academy awards - although it was not selected. The ministry said police had asked for the revocation of the film's licence because the film promoted a "chauvinistic" approach towards Kurdish identity and created the impression that police carried out extra-judicial killings.

A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday that claimed several video game and movie makers shared blame for the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. The lawsuit was filed by the family of slain teacher Dave Sanders and on behalf of other Columbine victims. It alleged student gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had been influenced by violent video games and movies.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock granted motions to dismiss filed by Time Warner Inc. and Palm Pictures, as well as 11 video game makers, including Sony Computer Entertainment America, Activision and Id Software, the maker of "Doom." In his ruling, Babcock said there was no way the makers of violent games and movies could have reasonably foreseen that their products would cause the Columbine shooting or any other violent acts. Setting aside any personal distaste, as I must, it is manifest that there is social utility in expressive and imaginative forms of entertainment, even if they contain violence, Babcock wrote.

During the investigation into the April 20, 1999, shootings, police found a videotape that shows one of the killers with a sawed-off shotgun he called "Arlene" after a character in the video game "Doom." The plaintiffs also said Harris and Klebold had watched the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Basketball Diaries, in which a student kills his classmates.

To think Turkey want to join the EU and sign up to the Eurpoean Covention of Human Rights!

From The Telegraph

Turkey has revoked a controversial law authorising schools to conduct virginity tests on high school girls suspected of having premarital sex. Virginity is highly valued in mainly Muslim Turkey.

Forced gynaecological examinations in schools were common until 1999, when five girls attempted suicide by taking rat poison rather than submit to the tests. The practice drew harsh criticism from human rights and women's groups.

The revised law went into effect yesterday after publication in Turkey's Official Gazette. The new law removes ambiguous wording that allowed school administrators to "determine" if girls were virgins or not. The change eliminates reference to girls' chastity but makes a broader reference to the expulsion of students not behaving properly in school.

Last year, Health Minister Osman Durmus, a member of the far-right Nationalist Action Party, caused an uproar after he called for girls who were not virgins to be expelled from government-run nursing high schools and not to be allowed to enrol in any government institutions.

From Wired

A member of the DrinkorDie group, which traded versions of movies, software, games and music on the Internet from which
copyright protection had been removed, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The DrinkorDie group, which reportedly included executives at software firms and university network administrators, was raided during December 2001 by the U.S. Customs Service and similar agencies in Australia, England, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, which seized computers and questioned suspected members. The DrinkorDie member who pleaded guilty could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine when sentenced on May 17. Prosecutors told Reuters that additional cases will likely be brought against other members of the group.

Every time big business have designed a download facility they have made it expensive with ludicrously temporary rights. It is about time that our Governments stepped in to side with the people not those on a high of money lust.

From Wired

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday that will discuss Sen. Ernest Hollings' proposal to mandate copyright controls be placed in most PCs, televisions, DVD players, MP3 players and other consumer electronics devices. Witnesses including Walt Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, News Corp. president Peter Chernin and Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti, who support Hollings' proposal, will argue that such controls are necessary in order to protect their movies and other content from piracy, and will spur the rollout of broadband and digital television once in place.

Many technology firms oppose government intervention into the design of consumer electronics. We don't think government-mandated technology solutions are in the best interests of consumers or anyone else, Intel spokeswoman Sue Richard told Wired News. Intel executive vice president Leslie Vadasz will also testify at Thursday's hearing.

Sounds an excellent Melon Farming service

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group, and a number of law school legal clinics have launched ChillingEffects, a site that aims to help recipients of "cease-and-desist" letters from corporations understand their rights andobligations.

Such letters are usually sent when a company believes someone is violating its trademarks or copyrights with something they have posted to a website or downloaded off of the Internet. People get these letters and wonder, 'Does this mean I have to take everything down and go home?' Wendy Seltzer, a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, told The New York Times. What we try to do with this site is to clarify what it is they have to worry about and what's more likely to just be someone blowing hot air.

Entertainment Network Inc. (ENI), a provider of Web hosting services and operator of adult websites including VoyeurDorm.com, announced on Monday that the Supreme Court has refused the City of Tampa's appeal to have VoyeurDorm.com shut down. The City of Tampa argued that the website -- which webcasts video 24 hours a day of college-aged women living in a Tampa house -- should be shut down because of city zoning violations, claiming the house where the women reside is an adult business in a residential area. A lower court ruling stated that the business operated essentially in "cyberspace," and the house itself did not meet Tampa's definition of an adult business. "his is a victory for anyone operating a legitimate Internet site, whether or not it has adult content, said ENI CEO David Marshlack. It is obvious that the Internet should not be regulated under zoning laws written long before the Web was even dreamed of.

There were 646 Guys...It brought tears to her eyes (Gangbang by Alex Harvey)

From World Sex News

On Sunday Feb. 10th, 2002 the new world sexual record - the world's biggest gangbang were set. Polish porn star Klaudia Figura had sex with 646 men during one day session.

The broken record belonged to American pornstar Houston, who had sex with 620 men during a one day session in 1999. The new record was broken during the First Annual World Gangbang Championship, part III International Adult Only Festival and Fair EROTICON 2002 in Warsaw, Poland.

Three competitors tried to brake the record - Claire Brown from the United Kingdom, Mayara from Brazil and Klaudia Figura from Poland.

The Championship started at 10am. According to regulations each sexual contact has to take between 30 and 60 seconds. For the first hour, Claire Brown was the leader and set the pace. Unfortunately she was not able to keep the pace long enough to win. Claire retired a few minutes before 2 PM with score 466.

After Claire's retirement, Klaudia Figura became the leader and was leading till the end of competition. The Houston's record was broken at 5:06pm, when the jury recognized the 621st man, who had sex with Klaudia. But that was not the end of competition.

The First Annual World Gangbang Championship finished at 5:58pm. The final score was 646 for the winner Klaudia Figura, the new World Sex Champagnes and record holder. Mayara, the runner-up, had sex with 633 partners.

The event was transmitted on big video screen in main hall of EROTICON 2002 Festival and watched by about 2000 people in the audience.

Jim Malibu, the co-producer of the event, who in 1998 was the producer of the Houston record, said during a press conference after, that organizing the record in Poland was much easier then in USA. The event was covered by Marc Medoff, American photographer and reporter, working for numbers of magazines all around the world. "It is amazing. Each sex contact was carefully watched rated and counted by judge!".

All event was filmed by 6 cams. The movie will be available in the and of February.

After having established the record, the porn community then went onto debate whether this was in fact an orgy as opposed to a gangbang. The fact that there were 3 girls competing seems to downgrade the achievement

From The Guardian

Hollywood have enlisted the help of the FBI and the US secret service to bring in the heavy legal guns to sink what they see as a new form of piracy that they claim is changing the face of the movie industry.

The film and television business is gearing up for battle in the same way that the music industry closed ranks against Napster, the site which allowed users to swap music online and in doing so, according to the music business, affected the market so drastically that last year the sales of CDs dropped for the first time in a decade. Napster lost its court fight with the music establishment last year; now the industry is seeking to blow some other upstarts out of the water.

Around 11m Americans are now swapping television programmes and films online and are downloading an estimated 350,000 movies from the internet every day. In response to a potential loss of billions of dollars, the industry is seeking to use the law to close the programmes down.

On March 5, in Los Angeles federal district court, the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents all the main studios, launches the first in a series of actions. The MPAA suit launched against MusicCity and others for copyright infringement, describes the services offered as a "21st century piratical bazaar where the unlawful exchange of protected materials takes place across the vast expanses of the internet".

Those named in the action are MusicCity.com, MusicCity Networks, which runs on the market-leading Morpheus file-sharing software, Grokster, LTD, and Consumer Empowerment BV, also known as FastTrack, which operates the KaZaA service. Yesterday a spokeswoman for the MPAA confirmed that all their legal actions were going ahead.

MusicCity is alleged to have operated a Napster-like service providing users with movies, television programmes and music, offering such recent films as Legally Blonde, Planet of the Apes and The Princess Diaries. The entire catalogue of hit TV shows such as Sex and the City and the Sopranos, which viewers would be able to see only after paying a monthly subscription to cable channel, HBO, are available online for free. Launched 10 months ago after the demise of Napster, MusicCity's Morpheus software has become the most popular download on the internet, averaging more than 1m new downloads a week.

The huge explosion in pirate download services is a major embarrassment to the entertainment industry, which has ploughed more than $4bn in a desperate attempt to outflank the pirates by building the infrastructure to offer consumers legitimate digital content online. But these efforts have proved expensive flops, failing to tempt consumers away from free pirate services.

An independent report for the industry this month revealed the extent to which pirated films are swirling about cyberspace. Over a five-day period on the KaZaA network, for example, researchers for OC&C Strategy Consultants found 7,500 copies of The Fast and the Furious, 3,600 copies of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and 3,100 copies of Fight Club all available for free download.

To add to the industry's woes, a controversial new device called ReplayTV 4000 allows users to record their favourite shows in digital format directly from their televisions. These files can then be sent over the net to other Replay owners, while some users transferred them onto their PCs and made them available through the pirate services. The makers of Replay are now in the MPAA's legal firing line.

From the Boston Globe

In a ruling hailed as historic by gay rights advocates, the state's highest court yesterday gutted longstanding sodomy laws, ruling that people who engage in sodomy in semipublic places such as parking lots, wooded areas, and public beaches cannot be prosecuted as long as they make sure they cannot be seen by others.

The ruling was sought by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders in order to end what it considers discriminatory treatment by law enforcement toward gays and to extend the same rights of privacy and freedom enjoyed by heterosexuals to gay men and lesbians, said Jennifer L. Levi, the GLAD lawyer who argued the case before the Supreme Judicial Court.

For the first time, the court has said that neither of the state sodomy laws apply to private consensual conduct, Levi said. What this means is that antique laws cannot be used to intrude on people's right to engage in acts of intimacy when they are in private.

Levi said she expects the ruling to curtail, if not eliminate, law enforcement sweeps on so-called gay cruising areas such as highway rest stops. She said police have used the antisodomy laws to target gays for criminal prosecution while not applying the same standard to heterosexuals engaged in the same acts in lover's lanes. By limiting the scope of these laws, we take away some of the police's ability to target gay people in a discriminatory way, Levi said.

But CJ Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts said the ruling could lead to more sexual activity in public and deter some families from using public places. Doyle also said he wasn't surprised by the SJC decision. It doesn't contain a single justice who supports traditional morality.

Massachusetts has two antisodomy statutes, one prohibiting "the abominable and detestable crime against nature," which case law has defined as anal sex, and one prohibiting "unnatural acts," which various court rulings have applied to both oral and anal sex.

Zoran Corporation of California, a developer of compression technology used in consumer electronics devices, said on Wednesday that it has partnered with Principal Solutions to make TV Guardian a feature on Sanyo's new line of DVD players. TV Guardian allows parents to select preprogrammed alternative language choices on DVDs to replace "adult language" with wording more appropriate for children. The technology monitors the closed-captioning on DVDs and mutes the audio when swear words appear, adding a different phrase that appears on-screen as a caption.

MP3.com, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal that distributes music on the Internet, is taking steps to separate sexually graphic and pornographic audio recordings available on its site from its normal music fare, according to an email sent to MP3.com station operators last week. As of Feb. 22, stations in the "sexuality warning" genre will be removed from all station charts, artist page links and will no longer come up on the site's search engine. Effectively, stations that feature sexually explicit content will only be available if a user types that station's URL directly into their browser's address bar. San Diego-based MP3.com did not provide reasoning for the change, but advised its members with stations featuring both sexually explicit and non-sexually explicit content to create a new station for the sexually explicit content to avoid the new
filtering.

An agency of the Australian government has opposed Sony Australia in a court case that could have ramifications on DVD and video game regional coding implemented by those industries, Newsbytes reported. Regional coding is generally used so that studios and developers can release their DVDs and video games to different areas of the world at staggered intervals and for different prices -- to increase profits. The chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), a government agency representing the interests of Australian consumers, has filed a "friend of the court" brief supporting a company that makes chips which modify Sony's PlayStation 2 video game console so that regional codes embedded on games are ignored. The ACCC believes that regional coding is unfair to Australian consumers, who often pay higher prices for games and movies and have access to a smaller library of titles than is available in the U.S.

TV networks, film studios and consumer electronics companies are researching a technology they hope will keep consumers from swapping digital TV shows and movies  in Napster-like fashion online.

The new drive, under the auspices of the longstanding cross-industry Copy Protection Working Group, is just one part of a an effort to limit digital piracy wars. As US broadcast TV turns digital this year, studios are looking for ways to control  how shows are recorded and traded, and they are proposing technologies that  could ultimately bar consumers from freely recording TV programs from the airwaves.

The latest effort, a plan to insert digital tags into broadcast TV shows that would prevent them from being put online, is just part of that broader aim. But as more TV content shows up at digital swap meets, copyright owners see  it as an increasingly urgent issue. They say they'll have a standard ready by the end of the first quarter of the year.

That's a tight timetable for an issue that has caused considerable tension between Hollywood and electronics companies--and even between studios  themselves--over the last year. But with a federal deadline bearing down in early May that could require most stations to begin broadcasting digital signals, the anti-piracy group has little time to settle technology disputes.
Scott Dinsdale, the MPAAs executive vice president for digital strategy said There needs to be a standard way of doing
this.

Copyright owners say they are loath to release their best movies or TV shows into the digital TV world, knowing they can be almost instantly copied and traded online. Consumer groups and consumer electronics makers have fought to defend rights to record shows for personal use. Already video files are becoming common inside post-Napster networks such as Morpheus, Kazaa and Gnutella, as growing numbers of broadband connections and improving video compression files make it feasible for people to swap movies, music videos or TV shows in much the same way they trade MP3 songs.

Studios have been debating the level of protection needed, and consumer electronics companies have balked at adding  expensive new technologies into their devices. The newest plan, which has not been streamlined into actual selection of  technology, revolves around inserting an invisible, inaudible "flag" into a digital broadcast. Information contained inside this marker would indicate whether the broadcast could be copied, stored or shared. For this to work, the watermark would have to be read by devices receiving a TV signal, which could range from TV sets to DVD players, TiVo-style digital video recorders, or even PC cards that let shows be recorded onto a hard  drive.

While the current proposal is limited, watermarking technology ultimately could wind up barring consumers from copying their favorite shows or movies off the air. Proponents of the plan note that the technology wouldn't necessarily bar copying but would allow content owners such as studios to create new business models such as charging for the right to copy or share with friends. This could be controversial, and some consumer groups have objected, pointing to the 1980s Supreme Court decision that originally gave the green light to VCRs, saying that people could legally tape TV shows.

Analysts say consumers are likely to accept the new copy restrictions as just one more   element of a new generation of technology that provides features well beyond what they've been used to with analogue TV. But a standard that comes together so quickly is unlikely to be a final product, they add. This will be cracked, and it will be modified, and it will be cracked again, said P.J. McNealy, research director with GartnerG2, a division of the Gartner research firm. That's the reality of this business.

From The Sun

Olympics ban skate 'porn'

Ice skaters have been told to clean up their acts after complaints that the sport is becoming obscene. Revealing routines, such as women being held upside down with their legs  akimbo, have been banned ahead of next month's Winter Olympics.

Judges will now deduct points for dirty dancing as bosses fear the family-friendly sport is in danger of attracting the wrong kind of spectator. Nick Russell, director of the National Ice Skating Association, said: As couples try to be more entertaining, they produce moves that are gynaecological, which is about as politely as it can be put.

Nancy Meiss, a US judge, said: If I want a young man waving his partner's assets in my face, I can rent a porn movie. (I bet you can't in Salt Lake City!)

2600 Magazine, a publication that covers the international hacker community, has asked the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to reverse its ruling that said the magazine could not post the source code or provide links to download DeCSS, a software code that can crack the security on DVD discs. By permitting publication of code in an online magazine, the Second Circuit would recognize that Internet speech is fully protected by the First Amendment as established by the U.S. Supreme Court in ACLU v. Reno, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is handling 2600's defense. "The most egregious part of the previous decision prevented even linking, the lifeblood of the Internet." A three-judge panel from the 2nd Circuit Court previously ruled against 2600; the appeal is for an "en banc" hearing featuring all of the judges from the 2nd Circuit. A decision on whether or not an en banc hearing will be held is not expected until the spring.

Tighter control on who sees what in the island's cinemas was discussed when the House Interior committee met yesterday to discuss amendments to the cinema film classification law and ways of implementing them.

Representatives from the Attorney General's office, the Film Classification Board, the police, parents associations, the Cinema Owners Association and the Acropole Cinema club attended the meeting.

As the law stands, all films are classified under three categories; universal, children accompanied by an adult, and people over 18. Under new legislation proposed, there will be five categories; universal, 12,15, 18 and MK. The latter may include scenes containing sex or violence.

MP's were told that the main problem was forcing cinema owners to bar under age people from viewing unsuitable films. Deputy Attorney General Petros Clerides said that police were not able to control who was allowed to enter a cinema to see a particular film and who was not, while Olga Demetriades of the Classification Board said she remembered a time when police waited outside cinemas and checked the ages of children going in.

Demetriades stressed that film classification had to take account of what she called the social evils of today, drugs and sexual violence, things which did not exist in the cinema 20 year ago when the present law was enacted. She praised the Cyprus Mail newspaper for listing the classification beside film titles and suggested that other newspapers and poster adverts do the same.

Representatives from the police said some cinema owners took advantage of 'cine club' status to show films banned by the Board, citing the films Crash, shown four years ago and Romance last year.

The Consumer Electronics Association, an American  trade group of electronics manufacturers, has issued a statement endorsing a letter sent by Republican Rick Boucher (D-Va.) to the recording industry, informing them that the copy-protected CDs they are beginning to release into the market may be illegally taking away consumer rights to make copies of CDs.

Our industry applauds Congressman Boucher for drawing attention to this important issue, said CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro. We have long been concerned that some in the recording industry may be using legitimate concerns about piracy as a Trojan horse to undermine consumers' established fair use and home recording rights. Introducing CDs into the marketplace that prevent consumers from pursuing traditional fair use purposes such as space shifting and first generation digital-to-digital copying would be paramount to an attack on the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, of which the RIAA and CEA were prime advocates, and on consumer rights.

A prediction by porn director Henri Pachard found on AVN

This has been quite a year for porn. Markets have changed dramatically as viewers are "coming out of the closet" demanding more and more stuff that even today is considered perverse. There's been an increase in sexual violence, albeit among consenting adults, with slapping, punching, spitting and fisting - all without gender limits. Men are getting abused and fucked up the ass in all kinds of "specialty" tapes, along with verbal abuse, foot worship, smothering and trampling. Women  continue to be spanked until bloody and bruised, twisted and tied, stretched and strung out.

There have been some legal crackdowns over some of the product. Seymour Butts is up to his ass in problems with some fisting stuff he's produced.  Ironically, it's a scene where one of the women involved probably more than consented; she most likely demanded that she be fisted.
In fact, that's got to be some kind of silly ruling on the matter of fisting a woman. To begin with, unless she's really into it, it's just not going to happen. I don't think fisting is really planned and scheduled. I think most fisting scenes just happen because the scene just heats up to that level. So essentially, the moviemaker risks legal punishment and huge legal fees because he was willing to shoot the truth. I can recall many times, when I was not willing to take risks for either myself or my client, when I had to caution my performers while more than four fingers were working their way further into a woman's orifice- even with her own hand down there encouraging the guy to go deeper into her. It's a bummer, man.

Attorney General Ashcroft has appointed somebody to head up and investigate child porn on the Internet, and somehow this has sent a signal to some circles in the legal porn business that their own operations are in danger. And so the beat goes on.

I think there's another signal in the business that we're sensing, but don't know or want to understand it. I think the viewing public is looking for kinkier stuff that they might personally wonder about but don't personally pursue sexually. It's not about underage sex, either. I think it's more about bisexuality among males.

Most of the leaders in our industry have been around since the seventies, when porno began to erupt everywhere. What us seniors are not willing to accept is that the viewing public is entering its third generation. What's inconceivable to us is becoming very curious to many new viewers who are now in their late teens and early twenties.

For over thirty years, this industry - as we know it - has kept its product identified by measures that are tolerated by businessmen who struggle to categorize their inventories, much less understand it. I just don't think that it's likely this industry is really keeping up with the new sexual attitudes among many younger viewers.  The labels "fetish" and "specialty" have been established for those in our business who do not practice, tolerate or even understand these acts. These labels are used for selling and ordering, and not for the intended user who most likely wants to masturbate while using some of these categories.  Nevertheless, I predict that this year, we're going to see some very controversial changes among the sex video industry. We're going to hear about and see sex scenes beyond most of our marketing imaginations, and we're not going to be comfortable with it in its beginnings. We're going to be amazed at what will sell this year, and we probably won't know how to exploit or even produce it.

One thing's for sure. We won't be bored.

Happy New Year.