Postage

post card usa .24
post card overseas .75
letter usa .39
letter overseas .84

Paris beach ban rules thongs to be beyond the pale

If there are any young lovelies out there who would like to sunbathe, this blogger will happily cover the 38 euro fine!

link

By Colin Randall in Paris

(Filed: 31/07/2006)

A threat to impose spot fines on women who sunbathe topless or in thongs on Paris Plage, a summer beach on the banks of the Seine, has left the city's mayor struggling to maintain his carefully nurtured image as a modern civic chief.

The penalty for going nude, topless or in a thong is 38 euros (£26). No fines have yet been imposed

In a country where going topless on real beaches is almost de rigueur, incredulity has greeted news that city hall officials and police have been moving among sunbathers, warning them of the ban on "indecent" dress.

What is especially embarrassing for Bertrand Delanoë, Paris's openly homosexual mayor, is that Paris Plage, now in its fifth year, is intended to reproduce the ambience of a Mediterranean beach.

"Sand, sunbeds, parasols," sighed the tabloid daily Le Parisien. "On the beach along the Seine, Bertrand Delanoë has deployed the full panoply of the perfect seaside postcard.

"But beware, it is a beach only in name and those who want sun-bronzed bottoms are unwelcome."

The major proudly describes Paris Plage as an attraction not only for tourists but for Parisians too poor to join the summer exodus to the coast.

The riverside highway is closed to traffic and covered by 2,000 tons of fine sand. The beach stretches for more than two miles and is dotted with palm trees and cafes.

But the order forbidding the exposure of flesh declares: "Behaviour must conform to good morals, tranquillity, safety and public order."

The penalty for going nude, topless or in a thong is 38 euros (£26). No fines have yet been imposed but the beach does not close until Aug 20.

City officials insist that the rule dates from Paris Plage's origins in 2002.

But one assistant mayor, Pascal Cherki, was ridiculed by Le Parisien for suggesting that inappropriate clothing worn so close to a river "could provoke dangerous temptations and behaviour".

Mr Delanoë was already under fire for launching an operation to remove tramps' tents, ostensibly for health reasons but widely seen as an attempt to sweep away signs of poverty and squalor from the chic riverside.

The Mouths of Babes

link

Mother dearest

We've all had moments of mortification caused by our mothers. But what if your mother is one of the most famous women in the world - with a tendency to cavort naked with a riding crop?

It's no surprise to hear that Madonna's nine-year-old daughter, Lourdes, was recently appalled by her mother's day job. "After seeing my video, Hung Up, she remarked: 'Yuk, that's disgusting. Why are you behaving like that?' " says the Queen Mummy of Pop. "She's even asked me if I am gay. She'd seen me kiss Britney Spears [at the MTV awards] and I tried to explain, saying: 'No darling, I kissed her to give her my energy'."

But Lourdes's perceptive reaction showed a maturity beyond her years: "Don't make me laugh," she scoffed.

Five Feet Under

Now you can't cuddle a conger

By Richard Alleyne

(Filed: 29/07/2006)

A charity game in which people try to knock each other over with a 5ft conger eel has been banned after animal rights activists complained that it was "disrespectful" to the dead fish.

Conger cuddling has been staged annually for more than 30 years at the harbour in Lyme Regis, Dorset, as a fund-raising event for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Teams stand on 6in high wooden blocks and others take it in turns to swing a 25lb eel at them. The team with the most people left standing at the end wins.

However, animal activists threatened to film the event and use the footage to start a national campaign against it.

Rob Michael, the chairman of the Lyme Lifeboat Guild, said: "We have been advised by the RNLI headquarters at Poole to abandon the conger cuddling event following a local complaint from animal rights activists.

"The RNLI is not prepared to be involved in an event that may be seen by some to be a barbaric throwback due to its use of a dead animal."

A rubber buoy may be now used instead of an eel.

Ken Whetlor, the mayor of Lyme Regis, said: "The writer of that letter is a gutless troublemaker with nothing better to do than stop people enjoying an innocent event that helps to raise money to save lives. I cannot see how using a dead conger eel landed by a local fisherman is unethical."

Foreign Exchange

You know, as ANTONIS A. DEMOS and CHARLES A. E. GOODHART always like to say:

There is an empirical relationship between volatility, average spread, and number of quotations in the foreign exchange spot market. The estimation procedure involves two steps. In the Þrst one the optimal functional form between these variables is determined through a maximization procedure of the unrestricted VAR, involving the BoxÐCox transformation. The second step uses the two-stage least squares method to estimate the transformed variables in a simultaneous equation system framework. The results indicate that the number of quotations successfully approximates activity in the spot market. Furthermore, the number of quotations and temporal dummies reduce signiÞcantly the conditional heteroskedasticity e¤ect. We also discuss information aspects of the model as well as its implications for Þnancial informational theories. Inter- and intra-day patterns of the three variables are also revealed.

It's true. Who knew?

Selling Keywords for Ads an Infringement

link to the opinion
Oh boy! This has got to be trouble!

Volume 72 Number 1779
Friday, July 28, 2006 Page 348
ISSN 1522-4325
News

Trademarks/Infringement
Search Engine's Sale of Trademark Terms
As Keywords Ruled Commercial Use of Mark


Selling paid-search listings triggered to appear whenever a user queries the plaintiff's trademark is a "use in commerce" of the mark that may be infringing, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled July 17 (800-JR Cigar Inc. v. GoTo.com Inc., D.N.J., No. 00-3179, 7/17/06).
The court adopted the reasoning of Government Employees Insurance Co. v. Google Inc., 330 F. Supp. 2d 700, 73 USPQ2d 1212 (E.D. Va. 2004) (69 PTCJ 186, 12/24/04 ), for the proposition that keyword-based advertising amounts to a use in commerce of a trademark where the mark serves as an invisible trigger to display a competitor's ad. . . .

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Technical Tools School

link

A STOCK MARKET CRASH IN 2006?

Four Investment Safe Havens for the Ailing Market
by Dr. Mark Skousen
Chairman, Investment U
June 15, 2006
Originally published June 7, 2006
link

Watch out below! We could well be headed for a Ben Bernanke crash...

This coming crash could hit all sorts of financial assets - stocks, gold, commodities and real estate. In fact, it's already happening... And my recommendation last month to move to "cash" (earning 5%) and prime rate funds (8%) has proven good advice.

The summer of 2006 is eerily similar to 1987, Alan Greenspan's first year as Fed chairman. What happened in October 1987? The stock market fell 23% in a single day. I remember it well, October 19, 1987, my 40th birthday. Fortunately, I warned investors six weeks before to "sell everything," but few followed my advice.

The stock market collapsed in 1987 because the new chairman talked tough about inflation and raised interest rates. The Treasury secretary also said he supported a weaker dollar. It was not what the markets wanted to hear.

Once again, a new chairman has taken over, and on Monday, he gave a speech warning that his new Fed policy-makers would not tolerate current inflationary pressures. "We will be vigilant," he said. . . .

Subject: RESULTS - Newspaper advertisements?

Some recommended sources are:
NewsStand (very cool, and quite affordable)
https://www.newsstand.com/

Library PressDisplay (NewspaperDirect) via ProQuest


Google Image Search
(example result)

I was able to find the Friday-Sunday issues of 2005 of one newspaper I'm looking for in NewsStand, which is sure better than nothing. And $2.75 is a small price to save my eyes from the microfilm reader!

Thanks again to everyone who responded!
Emily
Emily G. Cunningham
Research Specialist

The Option Strategist Weekly Updater

July 14, 2006

To receive the complete commentary plus reccomendations visit here:
http://www.optionstrategist.com/offers/strategist.htm

Stock Market
The bulls had every opportunity to move the market higher over the past couple of weeks, but they were unable to do so. Even before today's global problems surfaced, the bulls were woefully lacking in ability to counteract the bearish trends. As a result, $SPX slipped back below support (1255) and NASDAQ made new lows. It now appears that the bears are in charge again, and it would take a whole new setup of buy signals to generate another rally. Perhaps $SPX will find support near 1240 again, as it did in the second half of June, but it's more likely that it will try to retest the June lows near 1220. We had expected such a retest to take place, although we thought it might be later this year. When a retest takes place, we look for divergences: are the technical indicators in better or worse shape than the first time the averages visited this level? That will be important, and it's something that we'll definitely be keeping an eye on. For example, from Figures 2 & 3, we can see where the put-call ratios were when $SPX bottomed out in June. Will they be higher if $SPX trades down there again? If they are, that's bearish, but if they're lower, that would be a bullish divergence.

Speaking of the equity-only put-call ratios, they have been on buy signals for 2-3 weeks, but they were mostly alone in that stance and hence nothing much ever got going on the upside. They may roll over and start moving higher again. If that happens, they would revert to sell signals. It's possible.

Market breadth has been poor all along, and nothing has occurred to change that. Breadth indicators are bearish at the current time.

Finally, the volatility indices ($VIX and $VXO) had been taking a rather benign view of this decline when it first started about a week ago. However, they are now moving sharply higher, which is bearish while it's ongoing. Eventually another spike peak in $VIX would be bullish, but it's too early to call for that yet.

In summary, $SPX is going to try to find support at 1240 and then 1220. If both give way, this could get very nasty. In the meantime, we will take a somewhat bearish outlook unless new buy signals set up something that doesn't necessarily happen overnight.

.

The Option Strategist Weekly Updater

June 30, 2006

To receive the complete commentary plus reccomendations visit here:

Note: Use the following link to view this week's charts:

We have been waiting for the market to break out over resistance -- to show that price action could be as bullish as some of the technical indicators were becoming. That has now occurred, in the wake of the Fed's announcement. I'm not completely in agreement with the super- bullish interpretation of the Fed statement (and I think some of the buying was due to end-of-quarter window dressing), but the reasons don't really matter. An upside breakout has occurred and thus we expect the major indices to trade higher at least for the short term.

$SPX had struggled with the 1260 area. Two rallies were turned back there, and the 200-day moving average (one which is often followed by institutional traders) had been holding back progress as well. In addition, the declining 20-day moving average was overhanging the averages as well. Today's rally blew through all of those, turning the technical picture bullish -- at least as long as it doesn't slip back below 1255, say.

The equity-only put-call ratios had already turned bullish (Figures 2 and 3) and were just waiting for confirmation from price action and the other technical indicators -- confirmation which is now verified.

Market breadth has been poor all year, and it was deeply oversold for most of the past month. With today's action, both breadth oscillators have given buy signals. A truly long-lasting rally would be led by
extremely oversold breadth readings in the coming days and weeks. Failure to achieve that may give us some indication of just how strong and long-lasting this rally can be.

Volatility indices ($VIX and $VXO) plunged today. That is a bit strange, because a new era of higher volatility has almost certainly been issued in. Even if the Fed has temporarily stopped raising rates, the market is going to live in fear that they might start again. That, coupled with the aftermath of a very nasty decline in April and May is certainly going to keep volatility high, in our opinion. Yes, we understand that $VIX dropped because put sellers were hammering $SPX and $OEX puts with abandon today, but that doesn't necessarily mean the market won't be volatile.

This short-term breakout should carry the averages up to at least the early June highs -- about 1290 on $SPX. The jury is still out on what happens after that. It is possible that an intermediate-term rally will take place, but we are not jumping on that bandwagon yet. The June lows are eventually going to be retested, we're sure, even if it takes several months to do so. This could develop into the kind of bottom we saw in August-October 1998 or July-October 2002. But, for now, enjoy the rally while it lasts.


To receive the complete commentary plus reccomendations visit here:

Forex references

post 6/30/2006 7:37:07 PM

Here are some resources on FOREX for those who might be interested. The download links are located at the bottom.
_______________________
1/ Introduction to Forex

1st Forex Trading Academy - Introduction to Forex
Forex - Online Manual for Successful Trading
Forex - Time Zone Chart
Introduction to Forex Trading with TradeStation
Mark McRae - Introduction to Forex
Realtime Forex Online Tutorial
Study Book for Successful Foreign Exchange Dealing
The Forex Market Phenomena
Trading for a Living in the Forex Market

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#1 Forex Trading Course
10 Rules - How to Make More Money in Forex Trading
Avoiding Mistakes in Forex trading
Forex - Market Quotations, Spread & Volatility
Forex - Study Book for Successful Forex Dealing
Forex Manual - 10 keys to successful trading
Forex Trading - Avoiding Mistakes
FX Power Trading Course
Sure-Fire Forex Trading

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3/ Forex Trading System

80 Trading Strategies for Forex
Amazing Forex System
Bortucene & Macy - The Day Trade Forex System
Currency Strategy - A Practitioner's Guide To Currency Investing, Hedging & Forecasting
Day Trade Forex System - The ULTIMATE Step-By-Step Guide to Online Currency Trading
Day Trading the Forex Market
Forex - Trade Book
Forex 1-2-3 Method
Forex Report - Predicting Price Action
Forex Sailing
Forex Scalping
Forex Surfing
Forex Systems Research - Practical Fibonacci Methods For Forex Trading 2005
Forex Trading - Power Trading Course (2003)
Forex Trading Strategy
Make the Trend Your Friend in Forex
One More Zero - How to Trade the Forex like a Pro in One Hour

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Download Links:

Introduction to Forex

Forex Trading Course

Forex Trading System

OneOption Blog

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Kylie Minogue: No looking back

Hamilton Spectator
Kylie Minogue says she lives in the moment and revels in spontaneity.

The tiny, perfect pop princess is back at work after cancer, but sees no 'miracle cures'
By Liz Hoggard
The Independent(Jun 24, 2006)

When Kylie Minogue sent thanks to an awards ceremony a couple of weeks ago after being voted woman of the year by Glamour magazine, she noted wryly the "last year has been my least public."

But arguably it's been the most important year of her life. Diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2005, the 38-year-old singer immediately issued a statement and cancelled her Showgirl tour. (She has since announced she's resuming it in November).

We've had dance Kylie, electro-clash Kylie, retro Kylie, but the way she's handled her illness and treatment has been her most remarkable incarnation yet. Not only has she showed real dignity, she has refused to be turned into a triumph-over-tragedy story.

After a partial mastectomy, chemo-therapy and radiotherapy, the prognosis looks good. She is recording a new album and is tipped to headline next year's Glastonbury Festival, but there is no talk of miracle cures; rather she insists she is taking "baby steps."

Nor is she about to rush up the aisle with her boyfriend of four years, film star Oliver Martinez. "I don't have that sense of urgency," she told an Australian newspaper in her first interview since her illness. As for the gruesome fascination with her fertility, she says, "Yes, I feel broody -- it's only natural. If and when it happens, then great."

As a pop star, Minogue's media exposure was strictly controlled. Glamorous photos were churned out, but she rarely spoke to the press. Half- woman, half-cartoon, she was never a spokesperson for a cause.

All the more commendable then, that faced with a brush with mortality, she has handled it so brilliantly. Few stars go public about cancer -- especially one whose sexuality is so key to her image -- but from the moment she was diagnosed, Minogue has been totally open.

Throughout her treatment and mindful of her influence on other women, she has refused to endorse quack cures. Minogue has insisted that medical science should be at the heart, not just of her own treatment, but of that of any cancer sufferers who look to her as a role model.

In the past Minogue's freakishly perfect body has been used as a stick to beat normal women. But now for the first time, she's made herself part of the female constituency.

"I think of all of my past images," she said last week, "and none of them are like me. I'm just like any girl and I have the same anxieties and issues."

Although Kylie has always embraced the market ("I think to a degree it's fair to say that you're a manufactured product"), her capacity for reinvention is staggering. There have been many cutting-edge collaborators, including photographers Stephane Sedanoui, Wolfgang Tillmans and Pierre and Gilles, and the designer John Galliano, who described her as a "blend of Lolita and Barbarella."

Kylie Ann Minogue was born in Melbourne in 1968 to an Australian father and Welsh mother. Her younger sister, Dannii, is also a pop singer, her brother, Brendan, a news cameraman.

The Minogue sisters began their careers as children on Australian TV. At first Kylie was overshadowed by Dannii, but all that changed when she landed her role in the soap opera Neighbours in 1986 (she played Charlene opposite her then boyfriend Jason Donovan).

The singing career happened by accident. During a charity event with the cast, Minogue performed the Loco-Motion, which was later released and became a No. 1 single in Australia. After its success, the Svengali-like Stock, Aitken and Waterman invited Minogue to London to work with them.

Her album, Kylie, sold seven million copies. At the age of 21, a romance with INX bad boy Michael Hutchence led her to take control of her image for the first time. In her 1990 video Better the Devil You Know, she cavorts with a posse of black dancers, presenting a more sexually aware image.

Feeling stifled by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Kylie broke away and signed for indie label DeConstruction, where she collaborated with the Manic Street Preachers. In 1995 she recorded the ballad, Where the Wild Roses Grow with Nick Cave, and recited her hit I Should Be So Lucky as part of Poetry Jam at London's Royal Albert Hall.

The critics loved it, but the fans did not warm to Indie Kylie. It wasn't until her comeback album with Parlophone in 2000, the Euro pop-inspired Fever, that she became cool again.

Spinning Around was her first British No. 1 in 10 years, and the video, with Minogue in gold hotpants, became a phenomenon. In 2000, Minogue sang at the Sydney Olympics, and Baz Luhrmann cast her as Absinthe, the Green Fairy, in Moulin Rouge! Can't Get You Out of My Head was Europe's top-selling single of 2001.

Hardened critics melted. Paul Morley analysed her ability to be at once superstar, businesswoman, seductress and blank canvas, while Julie Burchill celebrated her mix of glitter and working-class blue-collar stock. Reading their articles now, they display a childlike belief that nothing bad could ever happen to Kylie.

The pop princess released one more album of new material, Body Language, followed by a greatest hits album. Last May, everything stopped.

Pictured last week sporting a pixie crop, Kylie looks amazing. It will be fascinating to see how she styles herself for the new album, post-chemo.

And will the tabloids feel able to objectify that perfect body again? For 20 years, Kylie has had every day of her life mapped out. Now friends say she is enjoying a new spontaneity. She went partying in New York with Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters and ended up nipping into a studio to record a song.

When she split up with model James Gooding, he described her as a "self-obsessed, virtually friendless control freak."

These may be the words of a love rat, but even Kylie admitted, on radio, that her schedule had led to her suffering a "small nervous breakdown."

During her treatment she surrounded herself with a loyal team. Her parents are involved in her career; her father is her financial adviser, her mother has joined her on each of her tours. And then there is Martinez.

But anyone desperate for a fairytale ending where Kylie resumes her peacock feathers and no one will mention cancer or pain again, will have to wait. Her illness, she says, has "been a long, hard road up to now."

It would be impertinent to suggest it has politicized her, but she intends to protest against the building of a nuclear power plant on a small island near Melbourne where she lived for part of last year.

The pop princess is growing up: more woman now than girl. "I'm not a great believer in looking back. I've always lived in the moment because I know more than most how things can suddenly drop from the sky and shake everything up."



Legal Notice: Contents copyright 1991-2005, The Hamilton Spectator. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thespec.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of The Hamilton Spectator. For directions on material reuse, website comments, questions or information send email to helliott@thespec.com.

FEDERAL LEGISLATIVE HISTORY RESEARCH:

A Practitioner's Guide to Compiling the Documents and Sifting for Legislative Intent
LLSDC

DETAILED OUTLINE with links to WRITTEN NARRATIVE
A. Introduction: What Federal Legislative Histories Are and How They Are Used
1. Compilation of related legislative docs that precede the enactment of a U.S. public law
2. Used by federal agencies, attorneys and courts to interpret a law
a. At the least tells you general purpose of a law or particular title in a law
b. Usually harder to decipher legislative intent in smaller provisions in a law
3. Controversy about relying on documents that are not enactments
a. Many law journal articles written debating the merits of leg. histories
b. Recent critics, textualists like Justice Scalia, have dampened use in courts
c. See bibliography of selected law journal articles

Legislative history P.L. 107-204 - Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

Senate Cmte. on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs has compiled a
history, which they've issued as 4 volumes of hearings, which you can
find on GPO Access.

Here are some URLs to pdf versions:

http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS35014

http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS35017

http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS35021

http://purl.access.gpo.gov/GPO/LPS35023


John D. Moore
Assistant Librarian for Public Services
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
202-312-XXXX
Moore, John D. [Moorej@XXXX.GOV]

Sandbox

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Taxonomy

Historical hourly - intraday quotes

HQuote Pro downloads historical stocks quotes, futures, market indices, mutual funds quotes from Quote.com and Yahoo data servers. End-of-day, weekly, monthly and intraday quotes supported.

Fitch stocklist@fitchgroup.com 212-619-3800 or 800-332-1237 and
fitch ratings

DataBull

Briter Systems maintains a complete historical collection of the data we capture.
Every quote includes: name, symbol, date/time, current price, change value, change percent, previous close, open, volume, day min price, day max price, price to earnings, market cap, average volume, year min price, year max price, dividend value, earnings per share, dividend yield

Bi-Hourly Data: is collected every 30 minutes on roughly the 3000 largest companies which are traded on the US markets. Stocks are constantly added to the list and some companies are bought or delisted, so the list is ever changing. The list would correlate well to the Russell 3000.

End of Day Data: for All Listed Equities on NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ provides over 7,500+ equities


http://www.tickdata.com/ provider of valueadded historical intraday financial data, and Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) have unveiled ready-to-use trade and quote data for equities traded on TSX. This offering, the result of an agreement between Nexa and TSX Datalinx, the market data operation of TSX Group, is the newest addition to Tick Data's Tick Equity Database, a research-quality historical intraday equity database launched in April, 2004. The TSX product includes cleaned and filtered trade and quote data as of January 1, 2001, and was developed for quantitative investment professionals who require research-ready historical equity data to design, test, and validate trading strategies and order execution systems.

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eSignal Forums

Free feeds from LexisNexis

Mealey's Health care news headlines

General news

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Public Corruption

New FBI website

Public corruption is one of the FBI’s top investigative priorities—behind only terrorism, espionage, and cyber crimes. Why? Because our democracy and national security depend on a healthy, efficient, and ethical government. Public corruption can impact everything from how well our borders are secured and our neighborhoods protected…to verdicts handed down in courts of law…to the quality of our roads and schools. Here you can find more information on how we investigate cases of corruption across all levels of government and details on our strong national program to address these crimes.

For Michelle

Find a New Job: Resume: Write Accomplishments!

Internet Prospector
INTERNATIONAL REFERENCE

here

The surge in the global economy in recent years suggests a potential similar spike in the demand for international prospect research. Watch these pages as the Prospector explores foreign shores for the latest in international research sources.

DIG IT!
Locating Incorporation (and other) Records in Canada:
Stake your claim up north with the Prospector's exclusive guide.

Tax Assessor Database

here

Contributions to this project are strongly encouraged. Please feel free to email the following information whenever you call a tax assessor's office:


The name of the county, city or township office
The number by which you must multiply the assessed value to come up with the market value
Phone number of the office
Tax assessor's web address
You may also wish to access the Geographic Name Server at http://www.mit.edu:8001/geo to determine what county a particular city is in. The name server provides other information about cities as well. You can get there via telnet or through a www gateway. Updates to: c-pulawski@comcast.net

Blog Law Squishy

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
ISSN 1535-1610
News

Copyrights
Blog Law Squishy,
But Copyright Law Clear, Panelists Say

SAN FRANCISCO--The worlds of blogging, journalism, and the law are colliding online and in the courts, with media and business advocates clearly disagreeing on free speech and trade secret theft.

The California Court of Appeals heard oral arguments April 20 on whether a trial court can order bloggers to reveal who leaked information to them about upcoming Apple Computer Inc. products. O'Grady v. Superior Court , Cal. Ct. App., No. H028579, oral arguments 4/20/06).

Kurt Opsahl, an attorney with the online civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation who argued on behalf of the individuals Apple sued last year, said bloggers enjoy the same First Amendment protections as journalists regardless of the medium or audience size.

"The size of the community has never been a basis for limiting the First Amendment rights, or the specialized nature of that community has been a basis for limiting those rights," Opsahl said. Consumers seek information vital for making choices, he said April 21 in a panel discussion at the Law Seminars International blog law conference.

Journalists all the time ask people for information that is unknown to the general public, said Terry Gross, an attorney with Gross & Belsky in San Francisco representing ThinkSecret.org which Apple sued for posting allegedly leaked information.

"The key really is, does the journalist do anything wrong in obtaining the information?" Gross said.

In another EFF case, the same California Court of Appeal that is hearing the Apple case held that the defendant, who posted DVD descrambling code on his Web site, was protected by the First Amendment. DVD Copy Control Association Inc. v. Bunner, Cal. Ct. App., No. H021153, 2/27/04. The court said that by the time the defendant posted the code, it was no longer a secret.

Marc Martin of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham, Washington, D.C., said the issue is whether information in the Apple case was rightfully obtained and whether the information is privileged.

While Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants broad immunity for service providers from liability for defamatory information, ISPs are not protected from intellectual property claims, according to Martin. Martin represents Apple in some issues but not in the case in the California appeals court.

At technology companies in general, Martin told BNA, all employees sign nondisclosure agreements, the firms operate secure facilities, have trade secret policies, and computers are behind firewalls, Martin said.

"If you're taking information that's proprietary from a company and one of your employees takes that treasured secret, walks out the door tucked in their sock, and runs over to the competitor, took it out of their sock, and gave it to them, that would be obvious. No one would contest that," Martin said.

"So what's the difference of that person instead of putting it in his sock and walking to the competitor, he instead went home, fires on line, and posted the content, and then all of a sudden it's available?" Martin said.

A California Superior Court, Santa Clara County, judge ruled in March 2005 that neither the First Amendment nor California's shield law for journalists bars discovery of the identities of persons who allegedly leaked Apple trade secrets to Apple-oriented bloggers. Apple Computer Inc. v. Doe, Cal. Super. Ct., No. 1-04-CV-032178, 3/11/05.

Blogger Protections

The California appeals court's decision is due within 90 days of oral argument. While not a federal case, the decision will be persuasive on judges in other states, Opsahl said.

"So long as the number of blog cases you can count on the fingers of two hands, I think this will be very important," said Bruce E.H. Johnson with Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle.

The difference between a blogger and a journalist, said Johnson, is "a journalist has an editor."

Ensuring bloggers are included in state shield laws can be a fight, said Johnson. A failed Washington state shield law bill this past session was intended to be media neutral did not cover bloggers. "It's hard to create a privilege that applies to 13.4 million people," Johnson said.

The bill died in part because of opposition by business lobbyists and from the Society of Professional Journalists which wanted more extensive protection, Johnson said.

Copyrights and Blogging

A much clearer issue is who owns the copyright of material posted on a blog, said Raymond Nimmer, director of the Intellectual Property and Information Law Institute at the University of Houston Law Center.

"Copyright's automatic. Everything you're going to be dealing with, both stuff you write and gets written on your site and linked to, everything's copyrighted," Nimmer said at a session April 20. "Posting online is not waiver of copyright."

The professor gave the example of placing a book on the table and letting others look at it. "That doesn't give anybody the right to copy it. The simple fact of posting online isn't a waiver of copyright," Nimmer said.

Among the perils of employee blogging is ownership. When someone in-house is blogging, such as a law partner, Nimmer said an express contract is essential. "You really only get in trouble if you don't have a written contract," he said.

Putting aside the employment and work-for-hire issue, "if I write an entry on your site, either a comment or guest entry, I own the copyright to that unless I transfer. What you get is an implied license," Nimmer said.

By Joyce E. Cutler

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There's much more shock and ore in the pipeline

Telegraph

By Tom Stevenson (Filed: 18/04/2006)

You may not realise it, but you are almost certainly taking a punt on one of the key investment questions of 2006: is the explosion in commodity prices the start of a sustainable super-cycle or a bubble waiting to burst?

Even if you have not joined the rush to ride the oil, gold and base metals bandwagon, your pension fund most likely has. Unprecedented amounts of retirement savings are flowing into the sector as money managers seek better returns and a diversification away from equities.

The Sainsbury's pension fund has bet 5pc of its £3.2bn fund on a continuing rise in prices. Hermes, manager of the UK's largest pension, recently launched a commodities fund into which it has invested £1bn of the £34bn it manages.

It is easy to see why investors should be attracted to the sector. Gold has broken through $600 an ounce for the first time since 1980, more than twice its level five years ago. The oil price has risen six-fold since 1999. Copper has tripled in six years while the prices of other base metals like nickel and zinc continue to hit new records.

With movements like these, it is no surprise that speculative investors have spotted an opportunity. Investment bank Macquarie estimates that $80bn was invested in commodity index funds in 2005, up from $55bn in 2004 and less than $30bn in 2003. Forecasts point to an inflow of up to $150bn a year by the end of 2007.

But this is about much more than mere speculation. All investment booms require a plausible story and with commodities it is an unusual combination of rising demand and constrained supply. The "super-cyclists" believe this will underpin a multi-year upswing.

Others caution that things are never "different this time". They argue that rising interest rates around the world, a slowdown in US consumption and growth in production will soon prick the bubble.

First, the bull case, most of which can be summarised by one word - China. The Asian dynamo's remarkable expansion in recent years means it dominates the growth in global demand for raw materials.

China makes 90pc of the world's toys, 50pc of its cameras and 70pc of photocopiers. It is estimated that 80pc of Wal-Mart's 6,000 suppliers are in China. The country has 130 cities with a population of more than 1m. Around 300m Chinese will move into new houses by 2020, all of which will require new plumbing, electricity and appliances. The mind-boggling statistics go on and on.

China is at a resource-intensive stage of its economic development. Post-industrial countries like those in Europe and North America use less base metal and one day China and India will too. But that day is a long way off.

The second part of the bull case is the supply side of the equation. In the past, commodity prices have followed a well-worn trajectory. As economic growth boosts demand, metal prices rise and producers respond by investing in new supply. Thanks to long lead times, this usually comes on stream just as interest rates rise to choke off inflation. Subdued demand and over-supply combine to slash prices.

This time really does look different in some key respects. Over the past couple of years producers have shied away from new developments, despite the surge in demand. Mining companies are more focused on returns than they were and they have seen share buybacks and acquisitions as lower risk ways of cashing in on rising prices.

After years of under-investment there is now a serious shortage of qualified workers and equipment, with Caterpillar, for example, warning that mining kit is sold out through 2007. Such is the shortage of big tyres, that machinery is routinely sold without them. There has also been a massive fall in metal discoveries over the past 25 years and, while there has been an uptick in exploration recently, it looks too little too late.

One last reason for thinking that commodity prices have further to go is the fact that in inflation-adjusted terms, they are not expensive. According to UBS, despite doubling in two years, base metal prices have only just broken through a 30-year down trend. On average they are less than half their real price in 1974. This is where veterans of the dotcom bubble get nervous. When investors start to talk of new paradigms and things being "different this time", it is usually the time to be most cautious.

Capital Economics argues that there has been a good reason for the real price declines over the past 50 years. Despite global consumption of steel and copper, for example, rising seven-fold over the period and aluminium nearly 30-fold, producers have always satisfied massively greater demand. There's plenty of ore in the ground.

It also believes that a shift in China away from investment towards consumption of goods and services will make its economy less commodity-intensive. This will compound an expected slow-down in the US economy and lower global growth next year, all of which should reduce the upward pressure on prices.

Finally, it says speculative demand, which has fuelled much of the recent boom could easily swing into reverse if prices start to fall.

In the short-run, prices do look frothy. But however plausible the bearish argument, the force is with commodities. Market trends continue long after prices have left fair value behind. So, super-cycle or bubble, don't count on this boom ending soon.

tom.stevenson@telegraph.co.uk


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What women want

Read all about it.

Open & Shut

From The News Media & The Law
A recent collection of funny, fascinating, nonsensical or just notable newsworthy quotations


"Thank God we have a press that at least tells us what the heck you guys are doing because you're obviously not telling us."

— Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a Feb. 6 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the National Security Agency's surveillance authority.



"The First Amendment provides a guaranteed protection of free speech, but the press has an equally important responsibility to be accurate and deliberative, something that becomes increasingly challenged with the proliferation of information available in this new multi-media era."

— Paul J. Pronovost, editor of the Cape Cod Times, in a Jan. 29 column on a decision not to publish a story about or sell photos of an alleged illegitimate child of a prominent politician.



"You people ought to get a life. I mean, goodness, gracious, the questions you ask."

— Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a Jan. 12 press briefing in response to a question about whether he had read Ambassador Paul Bremer's "My Year in Iraq."



"If you are not as open as you can be it's going to look like you're trying to hide things."

— Army Maj. Jeff Weir, deputy public affairs officer for Joint Task Force Guantanamo, in a Jan. 9 article from the Armed Forces Information Service.



"Illegal spying and torture need to be investigated, not whistle blowers and newspapers."

— Jan. 4 New York Times editorial.



"In this case — I've been a reporter for about 25 years — this was the purest case of whistle blowers coming forward, people who truly believed there was something wrong going on in the government and they were motivated, I believe, by the purest reasons."

— New York Times reporter James Risen, who along with Eric Lichtblau, broke the story on Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, on NBC's "Today Show" Jan. 3.



"You just don't testify. It's a matter of civil disobedience."

— Scott Armstrong, a National Security Archive founder, at a Dec. 9 program observing the 20th anniversary of the archive.



"Even an imperfect journalist deserves protection of [the] First Amendment."

— Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) in a Nov. 16 article in The Hill.



"I think freedom of expression is the safeguard of all other freedoms. I consider freedom of expression the most important freedom of all."

— Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in a Feb. 10 Washington Post article about a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.



"I was not looking for a First Amendment showdown."

— Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an Oct. 28 press conference after announcing the perjury indictment of White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.



Definitions:

telephone (n.) 1. An instrument in which sound is converted into electrical impulses for transmission by wire. 2. A "fairly well known device ... . By depressing numbered buttons on this device in the appropriate order, the user may speak with a person at a distant location." See U.S. v. Kaufman 2005 WL 2465804 (Kan. 2005). Usage, in addition to 2, above: "For reasons which are unexplained, Channel 12 and its lawyers chose not to utilize this device [Footnote 1] or otherwise attempt to communicate directly with the court." In the footnote, the court noted that "Channel 12 is represented by lawyers from two — count 'em two — large law firms, one in Kansas City and the other in Florida. For future reference, there are many fine lawyers and law firms in Wichita which are acquainted with the use of a telephone."

The Club in teh News

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY – INTELLIGENCE
March 3, 2006 – 8:44 p.m.
Negroponte Makes the Most of His Post as Minister Without Portfolio
By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff

On many a workday lunchtime, the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library.

“He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Others say they’ve seen the Director of National Intelligence at the University Club, a 100-year-old mansion-like redoubt of dark oak panels and high ceilings a few blocks from the White House, only “several” times a week.

Surely Negroponte needs a comfort zone, forced as he is to spends hours in the witness chair in front of congressional committees, fielding hot potatoes on subjects over which he has no control — the NSA’s warrantless surveillance, domestic spying by secret military intelligence units, paying newspapers in Iraq to run pro-U.S. stories.

Lacking control must be a new experience for Negroponte. In the 1980s he was ambassador to Honduras, base camp for U.S.-backed attacks on left-wing Nicaragua. More recently, he was the U.S. proconsul in Baghdad. Negroponte’s reputation as a very demanding boss, in fact, preceded him to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where aides fretted at the prospect of 15-hour days and memos thrown back in their faces by this disciple of Henry A. Kissinger.

But there seems to be a new, relaxed John Negroponte. And some close observers think they know why.

He’s figured out the job. Which is to say, he really doesn’t have much control over the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So why not hang at the University Club?

Negroponte spokesman Carl Kroft takes serious issue with that portrayal.

“He’s the hardest working person in U.S. intelligence,” Kroft said. “He’s hard at work from the early hours of the morning to late every night. The job never ends.”

On the Hot Seat
“We appointed you to be the person to (run) all intelligence,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., lectured Negroponte at a Feb. 28 hearing of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. (CQ Transcripts: Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing, Feb. 28, 2006)

Feinstein asked Negroponte about “recent media reports [that] have spotlighted a number of activities that appear to be related to intelligence collection or covert action, but that well may be outside of the official intelligence community’s channels.

“For example,” Feinstein continued, “military databases of suspicious activity reports . . . by the (domestic military) counterintelligence field activity, or CIFA; and, secondly, a Pentagon program to secretly pay Iraqi newspapers to run pro-American articles.

“Were these activities subject to your approval and oversight?”

Negroponte’s answer was short-circuited by an unidentified voice, according to the CQ transcript, quite possibly his deputy, former Air Force general and NSA chief Michael Hayden.

“Ma’am, I don’t believe that either of those activities would fall into Mr. Negroponte’s area. They are Department of Defense programs, I believe.”

“Now, let me raise this problem then,” Feinstein continued.

“Now, I know how tough it is. But if you didn’t know and you didn’t give a go-ahead [to domestic military spying], it indicates to me that, for 85 percent of the budget, which is defense-related, that you’re not going to have the controls that you should have,” Feinstein said.

“You want to comment?”

Negroponte, who not long ago in Baghdad was dismissing senior military officers with the wave of his hand, had to be feeling an acute wave of heartburn.

The Director of National Intelligence was forced to concede that the U.S. intelligence activities Feinstein was asking him about had “not risen to the level of my office.” In any event, they came “under the direction of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence” — a pipsqueak, relatively speaking.

Negroponte said he “understood” that the Pentagon was doing an internal review of spying programs because of a congressional uproar.

“But will you get the results of that review?” Feinstein asked.

“Yes,” promised Negroponte, dismissed like a schoolboy, “I will get those results.”

How Many Divisions?
Washington’s conventional wisdom these days is that ODNI is a joke.

The main reason is that Negroponte’s group has little power over the Pentagon’s covert actions.

It’s not his fault. Congress set it up that way after Rumsfeld and company worked the rooms of the House and Senate office buildings.

The noted intelligence historian Lock K. Johnson worries that Negroponte could end up like the National Drug Czar, “with no real power” over U.S. spy agencies.

Or the Pope, whose political powers Josef Stalin dismissed with a laugh to worried aides: “The Pope? How many divisions has he got?”

Kroft, Negroponte’s spokesman, said in an e-mailed response to a question that his boss “determines and presents to the President the full U.S. National Intelligence Program budget.”

As for Negroponte’s lunches at the University Club, he responded, “As a matter of policy we do not discuss the Director of National Intelligence’s schedule.”

Backchannel Chatter
Fire when ready: Clark Kent Ervin, the former DHS Inspector General, is not going to make many friends — or maybe he will — with sentences like these from his forthcoming book, Open Target, an advance copy of which just arrived on SpyTalk’s desk: “From the very beginning, the Information Analysis (IA) unit of the Department of Homeland Security proved to be a bad, bad joke.” Ervin describes both understaffing and empty desks at DHS’s intelligence wing. Eventually, “word got around the tight-knit and hyper-status-conscious intelligence community that taking a job (there) was not” — his emphasis — “a career-enhancing move,” writes Ervin, a Texas protege of the Bush family. Wonder what President Bush thinks of that (our emphasis).

Landing more gently on the SpyTalk bookshelf recently: Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study, an inside look at the people who connect the dots, by anthropologist Dr. Rob Johnson. This is of more than passing interest because it is published by the CIA’s own Center for the Study of Intelligence.

Political Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Peter Lang Books), by the Canadian intelligence expert Jeffrey Ian Ross, ruminates on the the origins of terrorism or, put more simply, he asks: What does Osama bin Laden want?

Source: CQ Homeland Security
© 2006 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reser

The Perfect Search

Google-style search is all right for some, but greater accuracy in the enterprise demands a mix of techniques including content tagging and taxonomy development and technologies such as entity, concept and sentiment extraction tools.
By Penny Crosman


If you want to find out what Brad and Angelina are up to, Google is a great search tool. Type in the celebrity names and poof, you get a list of the latest stories about the Brangelina baby-to-be. But if you need a technical or business-oriented search, Internet-style search technology doesn't cut it. Accurate enterprise search depends on intelligent use of state-of-the-art taxonomies, metatags, semantics, clustering and analytics that find concepts and meaning in your data and documents. . . .

Publisher

From Blogger to Published Author, for $30 and Up
By SEAN CAPTAIN
BookSmart software from Blurb downloads and reformats the contents of a Web log into a book.

blurb.com

The Google Opportunity

By James B. Stewart
February 7, 2006
GOOGLE SHARES FELL to earth last week, singed by earnings that fell short of wildly optimistic expectations and higher-than-expected tax rates.

You knew this day was coming, didn't you? No party goes on forever.

The plunge was swift. Google (GOOG1) shares were trading at $475 just a few weeks ago. After the earnings were announced last week, they dropped in after-hours trading to $379. This week, they dropped below $370. The thundering sound of fast money running for the exits was deafening.

My reaction: Good riddance. The higher Google shares climbed before some kind of correction, the harder they were going to fall. It's a relief to have this out of the way. And here's the silver lining: If Google is the company I think it is, this is almost certainly a buying opportunity for long-term investors.

Let's look briefly at the earnings that caused the havoc. Earnings were $372 million, up 83% from a year ago; revenue was $1.92 billion, up 86%. Margins, already above 60%, improved slightly. In other words, stellar results. "We actually think we had a strong quarter," said Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, seeming somewhat befuddled by the stock collapse.

All companies should have such problems. But good as they were, these results fell slightly short of Wall Street estimates, because analysts were using the wrong tax rate in their earnings models. The higher tax rate reported by Google accounted for all the shortfall and then some. Lost in the rush to sell was the fact that operating results were actually better than the consensus forecast.

Even so, the case for Google shouldn't be based on one quarter's results. Obviously the broad shift to Internet advertising is continuing to propel Google's earnings and revenues, and the margins suggest Google retains considerable pricing power. But Google isn't going to continue reporting 80-plus annual percentage gains indefinitely. No company does. But some companies have nonetheless done amazingly well over the years, turning their long-term investors who bought a hundred shares in the initial public offering into millionaires in the span of a decade. This is the kind of company I believe Google can be: an Intel (INTC2), Cisco Systems (CSCO3) or Microsoft (MSFT4) for this decade.

Take a look at the early trading patterns of Cisco and Microsoft after their IPOs (Intel's happened too long ago for the data to be available). Both are strikingly similar to Google's. Microsoft went public in March 1986. A year later, it had more than tripled. A year and a half later, it was up 450%. Then in 1987, it plunged along with the rest of the market on Oct. 19, losing more than half its value, a worse correction than Google has experienced thus far. Cisco went public in February 1990. A year later, it was up more than 150%. But then it lost more than a third of its value. Four months later it was up 250%. By comparison, Google was up 250% a year after its IPO, and 450% at its peak a few weeks ago.

These early corrections in Microsoft and Cisco were significant buying opportunities. At today's prices, Microsoft has risen 335 times, and Cisco is up nearly 300 times, from their initial offering prices. Of course there were no doubt companies with similar trading trajectories that ended up going nowhere. But it's only been a year and a half since Google went public. If Google does turn out to be another Cisco, it's still in its infancy, with plenty of gains ahead of it.

I still own my Google shares, and may well add to them. I've vowed to be the kind of investor Google's founders said they wanted at the time of the IPO: patient, supportive of management, not obsessed with quarterly earnings results, and not trading frantically in and out of the stock. In return, my hope is that Google turns into one those few companies that both transforms society and makes its investors wealthy. Opportunities like these don't happen very often.

Links in this article:
1http://www.smartmoney.com/cfscripts/Director.cfm?searchString=GOOG
2http://www.smartmoney.com/cfscripts/Director.cfm?searchString=INTC
3http://www.smartmoney.com/cfscripts/Director.cfm?searchString=CSCO
4http://www.smartmoney.com/cfscripts/Director.cfm?searchString=MSFT

URL for this article:
http://www.smartmoney.com/commonsense/index.cfm?story=20060207

Google Book Search: The Argument

Lessig

So there’s a corrected version of the Google Book Search video here on youTube. Very cool video sharing service, just ripe for CC licenses.

The essence of the argument here builds upon the “market failure” justification for fair use: We recognize fair use where there’s a prominent market failure. Here, the market failure is caused by the insanely inefficient property system copyright law is. Given that, the use Google makes is plainly “fair use.”

Update: This is an updated version that substitutes a photograph. I stupidly used a photo without checking the license. The substituted photo is a beautiful image by fuzzbabble on Flickr. My apologies to the very talented Andrea K. Gingerich.

posted by [ Lessig ] on [ Jan 14 06 at 8:07 PM ] to [ good law ] [ post diffusion: 1 trackback + technorati ]

The Option Strategist Weekly Updater

February 10, 2006

To receive the complete commentary plus reccomendations visit here:

Note: Use the following link to view this week's charts:


The market actually made its high for this year just a few days into the year. If you weren't looking at a chart, you might not believe that, for the bullish media and brokerage barrage has been heavy. But, with this week's $SPX close below 1260, that put the final cap on a series of negative technical developments, and we are therefore officially bearish now.

When $SPX closed below 1260, that made a lower low to go along with a lower high -- establishing a negative, down-trending channel (see Figure 1). While the market did bounce right back after that, the bounce is still within the confines of that down-trending channel. In other works, with the market being more volatile recently, it is possible that we will see these bullish bounces off of support (1260, 1245-1250) and off of the bottom of the channel. However, as long as the channel remains intact, the trend is down.

The equity-only put-call ratios rolled over to well-defined sell signals this week. This is a big part of our strong bearish opinion. While they had toyed with sell signals recently, they did not confirm them. However, this time they have. As you can see from the charts in Figures 2 and 3, there is no doubt that they have turned higher. A rising equity- only put-call ratio is negative for the broad market. Also note that the NYSE/NASD chart has both ratios presently on sell signals as well.

Market breadth has not been great for a couple of months, and the last two weeks fit right into that bearish pattern.

Finally, volatility indices ($VIX and $VXO) are in uptrends that began back in December. Despite some gyrating (the spike peak and subsequent drop in January), the uptrend ploddingly persists (see Figure 4). A rising $VIX is bearish -- at least in this environment -- and so this completes a full complement of negative technical indicators.

Could we be wrong? Of course, but when all the indicators are in agreement like this, we feel comfortable taking a stance (a bearish one, in this case). As we wrote in The Daily Strategist yesterday, if you can't agree with your own indicators, then what good are you/they? Obviously, if these trends -- downward in $SPX and upward in $VIX are violated, that would be our 'stop out' point.

Human head found in woman's luggage

here

Human head found in woman's luggage
A woman faces charges after a US baggage search found a human skull with teeth, hair and skin in her luggage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Florida officials have said.

Haitian Myrlene Severe, 30, a permanent US resident, arrived on Thursday afternoon from Cap Haitien, Haiti, aboard a Lynx International Airlines Flight, said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami.


Customs and Border Protection officials "found a human head with organic matter inside of her checked baggage", ICE Special Agent Erick Hernandez wrote in an affidavit.

Severe told officers "she had obtained the package, which contained the human head, from a male in Haiti for ... use as a part of her Voodoo beliefs. Severe also stated that the purpose of the package was to ward off evil spirits," Hernandez wrote.

"It still had teeth, hair and bits of skin and lots of dirt," Gonzalez said.

The charges filed include that Severe smuggled a human head into the US without proper documentation, as well as failure to declare the head and transporting hazardous material in air commerce.

She faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

Severe remains in custody.

© Copyright Press Association Ltd 2006, All Rights Reserved.


This article: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=214792006

Last updated: 10-Feb-06 20:34 GMT

Deja voodoo all over again...

Don't Copy This Headline!

BNA

Friday, February 10, 2006
ISSN 1535-1610
News

Anaylsis & Perspective
Don't Copy This Headline!


The authors discuss the potential impact of a pending copyright infringement case that challenges Google's use of newspaper headlines to link to news stories.
Judge Gladys Kessler is poised to make summary judgment rulings in a case that has fleshed out yet another novel copyright issue wrought by the Internet. That case, Agence France-Presse v. Google Inc., D.D.C., No. 05-00546, pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, presents the question of whether newspaper-article headlines are copyrightable. The court's decision on this issue of first impression could have far-reaching effects both for news-aggregators like Google and for your average blogger alike.

In this article, we outline the issues and arguments raised by the parties, and consider some possible outcomes. Following Judge Kessler's ruling on the summary judgment motion, we will analyze the possible consequences of the court's decision.


Background

The case arises in the context of Google's news service, Google News, which is described in papers filed by Google as a tool that helps users "identify and locate Web pages containing news stories and images on a given subject." Google News displays headlines to identify available news stories on a range of topics. To read a particular story, a user clicks on a headline, which whisks the user away from Google's Web site to the Web site where that particular story has been published. The Google News site that displays these headline-links is generated using Google's proprietary "Web crawlers" that search and organize information on the Internet.
Plaintiff Agence France-Presse is a wire service that, according to its court papers, supplies news stories, headlines, photographs, and graphics to, among others, newspapers, Web sites, and news aggregators. The gravamen of AFP's complaint (as it relates specifically to headlines) is that when Google News copies and displays headlines generated and supplied to news outlets by AFP, it is infringing on AFP's copyrights in those headlines.

The copyrightability of those headlines came to a head when Google filed its motion for partial summary judgment, arguing that AFP's headlines are not copyrightable as a matter of law.


Google: Headlines Are Short, Ordinary Titles
That Are Not Entitled to Copyright Protection


Google presses three arguments in support of its assertion that AFP's headlines are not copyrightable. First, Google argues that AFP's headlines are fact-based and too ordinary to merit protection. Second, Google argues that the AFP headlines are too short to merit protection, even if they are witty. Finally, Google argues that the headlines are equivalent to titles of works, which Copyright Office regulations and courts declare uncopyrightable.
Google contextualizes its first argument--that headlines are fact-based and ordinary--by citing to admissions by AFP that its headlines are typically factual, simple, and contain only one idea. AFP also admitted that headlines of AFP articles are typically not "hardened" or "jazzed up." From these admissions, Google argues that headlines of such a nature cannot be copyrighted because copyright law does not protect ordinary factual statements about news or ideas since they lack the requisite creativity to merit protection.

Citing Feist Publications Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, 18 USPQ2d 1275 (1991), Google first notes that news of the day is typically not copyrightable and is in the public domain. Google then marshals case law holding that ordinary phrases are not entitled to copyright protection. Cast in light of these principles, Google argues, AFP's headlines cannot be copyrightable because they are admittedly nothing more than simple, factual statements about news that is in the public domain.

In pressing its argument that AFP's headlines are too short to merit protection, Google cites to AFP's admission that its headlines are typically short--fewer than ten words. Highlighting the reciprocal relationship between length and the required degree of creativity for copyright protection, Google argues that even if the headlines were not fact-based and ordinary, they would not be copyrightable because they are too short.

Google directs the court's attention to case law in which such phrases as Pepsi's "You Got The Right One, Uh-Huh" and a guidebook entitled "Eat Your Art Out, Chicago" were found to be unprotectable despite their non-factual nature. Measured against this case law, according to Google, even if AFP's headlines were considered highly creative, rather than fact-based at ten words or less, they would be too short to merit copyright protection. Thus, under the circumstances of a case where the headlines are both short and fact-based, they are even less deserving of protection.

Last, Google argues that AFP's news headlines are equivalent to titles, which have no protection under copyright law. Regulations from the Copyright Office and case law are in accord in holding that titles to works are categorically unworthy of copyright protection. Google argues that AFP's headlines are simply titles to its news stories and, therefore, fall within this categorical exclusion. In support of its argument, Google cites several dictionaries that define a headline as the title or caption of a news article.


AFP: Headlines Are the Heart of the News Story, And Must Be Afforded Copyright Protection

AFP meets Google's arguments with four central contentions. AFP first argues that its news headlines are protected as fact-based compilations. Second, AFP counters that headlines are not titles subject to categorical exclusion. Third, AFP argues that when Google copies its headlines, it is copying the most important part of its news stories, which as a whole certainly qualify for copyright protection. Last, AFP appears to appeal to the equities of the case by arguing that Google is copying for free the very material that AFP licenses for a fee to its subscribers.
In arguing that its headlines are protected as fact-based compilations, AFP notes that creating a news-headline is no simple, unskilled task. AFP states that the author must take account of a multitude of facts, distill and interpret them, and determine which facts to emphasize so as to capture the essence of the story in the headline while also enticing a reader to read the full article.

AFP argues that such a process is not a mechanical process but rather one that requires a great deal of creativity, producing a result that is worthy of copyright protection. Moreover, AFP asserts, its headlines often express wit and humor.

By way of example, AFP cites to such headlines as "Robot dog keeps over-eaters on tight leash" and "Poor-fitting bras leave Australian women feeling like boobs" and "Pop goes soda in U.S. schools in victory for health campaign."

AFP also takes issue with Google's characterization of news headlines as titles. First, AFP notes that its search of numerous dictionaries' definitions of title turned up none that included headlines in its definition of title.

AFP further argues that headlines are integral parts of news stories, not titles of them. Expounding on this point, AFP analogizes a headline to the overture of an opera, as opposed to the opera's title. Even though the opera's title may not warrant protection, its overture almost certainly would; so too, then, should the headline of a news story, an overture's analogical equivalent.

Related to this argument is AFP's third point, in which AFP argues that its headlines are imbedded within and an integral part of the news story itself, which as a whole merits copyright protection. Under this characterization, AFP claims that by copying the imbedded headline, Google takes the most important part of the copyrighted news article. Citing Harper & Row Publishers Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539, 225 USPQ 1073 (1985), AFP argues that such copying by Google is not de minimis and is sufficient to be infringing.

Finally, AFP notes that it licenses to its subscribers for a fee the same stand-alone headlines that Google News copies. That copying, AFP argues, threatens the financial incentive for wire services such as AFP to provide such a service. AFP asks rhetorically why any wire service would go to the expense of creating headlines and a network for their distribution if the wire service knows that its headlines are not protected and may be duplicated and used in a similar fashion by any competitor.


A Decision With Consequence

Judge Kessler heard oral arguments from the parties on Jan. 11, and the court anticipates ruling on Google's motion prior to the next status conference in the case set for March 21. The stark alternatives facing the court--either headlines are copyrightable or they are not--come with practical implications. A holding that news headlines are capable of exhibiting the creativity and originality necessary to merit copyright protection comes with both positives and negatives. Similarly, a categorical exclusion of news headlines from copyright protection would come with its own set of benefits and burdens.
Should the court conclude that headlines exhibiting the requisite amount of creativity and originality are copyrightable, one can imagine certain benefits that would flow from such a decision. First, such a result would likely foster the production of witty, entertaining, or otherwise interesting and engaging headlines in newspapers and other periodicals. Such a result also seems to appeal to an ordinary sense of fairness and to the equities of the case. Why, after all, should Google News be able to unabashedly copy AFP's headlines, which undeniably took time and effort to craft, and profit from doing it? Something does seem unfair about that.

On the other hand, such a ruling from the court could spread considerable concern throughout the so-called blogosphere that has arisen in recent years. Many bloggers routinely use headlines to link to news articles.

One could imagine that the threat of infringement litigation for such linkage would substantially chill that activity or at least lead to the inconvenience of having to independently compose a description of the article being linked to. As stated by Howard J. Bashman, author of the Web log How Appealing: "It is more difficult and time-consuming to have to describe articles rather than providing a headline with a link, so it is also likely that if headline linking becomes impractical, the end result at my Web log would be that fewer articles would be mentioned."

Finally, such a ruling would prevent services like Google News from automatically linking to news stories through what is an easy and efficient manner. If such news aggregators still chose to link via headlines, they would be forced to make a headline-by-headline call on the headline's copyrightability and risk litigation on any close call and damages if they were wrong.

Under such a scenario, none but the most dry and boring headlines would likely find their way onto Google News or similar services. Those services could probably strike a licensing deal with the authors of the headlines, but given the large number of news outlets searched and linked to, such an effort would likely be costly and time-consuming.

A decision from the court that news headlines are categorically uncopyrightable would of course be a bright-line rule that would eliminate these concerns. Such a rule, however, would not be without its costs. As noted above, it could disincentivize creativity and originality in crafting headlines. It would also be subject to the same criticism as the categorical rule against copyright protection for titles--overbreadth. Precluding copyright protection for all headlines might very well deprive creative and original expression of protection simply because of its location at the top of a news article.

Should the court settle on a rule denying copyright protection to headlines, one would expect such a ruling to be expressly limited to the factual, news-story context, leaving for another day the question of whether fictional headlines that poke fun and parody (such as those found in the popular newspaper spoof, The Onion, which currently displays headlines like "Black Box Records Last 90 Minutes of Hot-Air Balloon Crash" and "President Creates Cabinet-Level Position to Coordinate Scandals") merit at least the possibility of protection. Undoubtedly, however the court rules, its decision will receive due scrutiny as the first to decide an interesting and important copyright question with possibly far-reaching consequences. The decision will be of interest to both scholars and practitioners alike, with commentary, analysis, and debate likely to ensue.

Stay tuned.

Martin J. Bishop and Thomas K. Anderson are attorneys with Foley & Lardner, Chicago.


By Martin J. Bishop and Thomas K. Anderson


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Gunning For Google

Forbes

On My Mind
Gunning For Google
Dennis Kneale, 02.03.06, 11:00 AM ET


LONDON - The Google guys must be wondering what the hell hit them. For a year or two now, Sergey Brin and Larry Page have been hailed by Wall Street and the press, adored by fiendishly avid users and devoted investors, and all but worshipped by Silicon Valley colleagues and advertisers.

Now comes the backlash: Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) as spineless hypocrite willing to sell out a billion users yearning to breathe free behind the Great Firewall of China; Google as violator of copyrights, reviled by book publishers and newspapers that accuse it of pirating their precious prose; Google as flawed financial manipulator, unable to manage its tax rates to avoid a mild earnings disappointment and a jarring market reaction.

Newsflash: Google is on the side of right in most of this Sturm und Drang. This onslaught isn’t really about the issues at hand. It is driven by fear, envy and greed, and it is an inevitable part of the life cycle in Silicon Valley. Upstarts climb up from nothing to the applause of all, and then--just when you start believing your own planted PR--the best ones must be taken down. Admiration turns into wariness and jealousy, and what first struck everyone as perky and plucky now seems potent and threatening. High-tech heroes, once renowned for their boldness, suddenly are resented as arrogant and imperious (by perception or reality; in the Valley they are one and same).

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) endured this in the late 1990s. Tom Siebel and Siebel Systems went through it in the aftermath of the tech crash of 2000; so did Larry Ellison of Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ). See also Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ).

And now it is Google’s turn.

The gloating is palpable, some of it from people who had celebrated Google’s startling rise. When the China flap broke last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland--the company will follow Chinese law and restrict search phrases that could yield entries on dissent and suppression--it got more play than the news that the Palestinians had elected Hamas militants intent on destroying Israel (business trumps geopolitics, even at WEF). Bill Gates was ready for comment, reportedly teasing Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt about the company motto (“Don’t be evil”) and later holding forth sagely on the matter.

Now the bloggers are on the company’s case. “I wonder if they’ve banned ‘spineless,’ hypocritical’ and ‘cowards,’ ” said one wag quoted in the Financial Times. Another diatribe, posted on the blogspot.com site that Google itself owns, lamented “that giant sucking sound” of “Google’s soul getting sucked out to make room for cash.”

Please stop the madness. Users will find a way dodge the search restrictions. No company is above the laws of the country where it wants to compete, and shareholders will fare better by having Google stay in the booming market and wait for it to loosen up. Eventually China will.

The World Association of Newspapers, meanwhile, accuses the Google guys of building their business “on the back of kleptomania,” demanding recompense. (Even though many publications throw up their content online free of charge anyway.) Book publishers have questioned Google’s plan to put online 15 million titles in ten years, including the entire contents of the libraries at Stanford University and the University of Michigan.

And the stock market went haywire when Google’s per-share net came in 22 cents below the $1.76 that analysts had expected. For want of two dimes, each share lost up to $56 in trading that day. Never mind that sales rose 86% and earnings, even better, doubled. On Thursday, The Independent in London had Google’s one-day loss in market value on page one in a headline six inches high: $13,000,000,000, puckishly putting the digits in blue, red, yellow, then green to mock the Google logo.

Google was headed for a fall, if only because, damn it, we’re all so jealous. It went public at $85 in August 2004. At over $400 lately, it has created four billionaires, and according to the company, one in five of its employees are now multimillionaires. (The investor relations chief, who has got to be younger than I am, is said to have recently retired.) Sergey Brin and Larry Page, each now barely into their 30s, founded Google in 1999 after landing a $100,000 check at lunch from Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) co-founder Andrew Bechtolsheim. Now Brin and Page are worth $16 billion apiece. Isn’t that reason enough to hate them?

Worse: In sharp contrast to the storied nerdiness of Bill Gates 20 years ago, these guys are close to cool. They wear black, travel in attractive company and work the room. They were on prominent display at myriad Davos parties. “Ooh, he just took off his sweater!” an admiring young woman at the Forbes party said when Sergey shucked his jumper to reveal sculpted biceps framed by a tight, black T-shirt. (Sorry, Sergey; too rich a moment to go unmentioned.)

But Google aggravates the matter with its own pretensions. It wraps itself in the pious pursuit of truth and access and free-flowing information. It applies a famously difficult intelligence test that requires recruits to know arcane things they will never use on the job. At the Google party in Davos, the flow of expensive vintage wines stopped at 11:15 P.M. so a few hundred people could sit in a sweltering museum room to hear Brin and a venture capitalist do an onstage interview with Shimon Peres, the former Israeli prime minister--all of it off the record, of course. As they chatted, an Israeli cartoonist in a corduroy suit entertained the audience by using squeaky, fat felt-tip markers to draw cruel caricatures of the men onstage. Even a couple of Googlers cringed.

A bigger driver of this backlash, though, may be fear. Google now poses a direct threat to Microsoft--and to Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ), and eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), and cable channels and broadcast networks, and radio, and telecom carriers and still more. “Each company is focused solely on Google as the main threat, but Google has to fight off all of them at once. How are they supposed to do that?” asks Richard Stromback, chief of nanotech shop Ecology Coatings in Akron, Ohio, who watched the Google drama play out in Davos.

Google execs, sharpie sandbaggers that they are, insist the search engine threatens few of these outlets. Yet the company imperils Microsoft because, while the latter sells software, Google essentially gives it away free to get you to look at ads on its site, notes John Sviokla, vice chairman at consulting firm DiamondCluster International (nasdaq: DTPI - news - people ). Google threatens travel sites, too: Some 30% of the private-jet bookings at easyJet last summer came not through Travelocity and other sites but through Google.

Ever insatiable, Google now offers satellite-mapping and news searches and price-discount shopping and local pizza referrals and Internet phone service; it just bought a radio ad delivery firm and touts plans to distribute TV shows and movies over the Internet. Yet at bottom, Google really is little more than an advertising medium, albeit one of the most powerful ad machines ever invented. Sviokla says more than a trillion dollars, 10% of U.S. gross domestic product, is spent on advertising and marketing, and most of this is utterly inefficient, pitching the wrong product to people who aren’t even shopping--they are planted on the sofa at home.

What was it the old retailer John Wanamaker said? He knew that half of his ad budget was wasted; he just didn’t know which half. At long last, Google offers a way to pitch just the right product to a consumer who is shopping for it at just that moment and can buy it on the spot. Google doesn’t have to save the world or free China or stamp out evil, its own earnest inclinations aside. It just has to provide a venue for ads that truly work, and huge riches will follow.

GREAT LITERARY TAUNTS

Dear Book Club Members. To all of us, who are Great Readers and so
understanding of human nature and do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings,
outright. Thought you would enjoy the following taunts.


"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." --
Stephen Bishop

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about." -- Winston Churchill
(about Clement Atlee)

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." --
Irvin S. Cobb

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure." -- Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary." -- William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." --
Samuel Johnson

"He had delusions of adequacy." -- Walter Kerr

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -- Groucho
Marx

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human
knowledge." -- Thomas Brackett Reed

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." -- Forrest Tucker

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of
it." -- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." -- Oscar
Wilde

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." Oscar Wilde

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." -- Billy Wilder

Starting out

By Widget Finn (Filed: 28/01/2006)


Writing on the wall for unwanted tattoos

When businessman Richard Simpson-Birks attended an annual tattoo convention in Derby dressed in T-shirt and jeans he says "I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the only person without any tattoos."

He was there to do some market research after his wife Barbara, a beauty therapist, had received emails from a German tattooist offering a franchise to use his patented chemical method of removing tattoos.


Mr Simpson-Birks says: "One in eight people in the UK have tattoos and the number is increasing rapidly.

"Like all fashions it's bound to wane, and I saw tattoo removal as an interesting business opportunity."

The German tattooist spent 20 years developing his method that, unlike the conventional approach, didn't involve lasers - and he wanted €1.3m for the UK master franchise. "I went to see the procedure in Switzerland and persuaded him that his price was nonsense because of the amount and investment required to get it off the ground. Eventually we agreed a very small selling price plus a profit share on the basis that he had no involvement with the commercial side."

Mr Simpson-Birks discovered that the whole area of tattoo removal is currently unregulated, though the EU is planning to move in. "I decided that it was an opportunity to redesign the tattoo industry. Any legislation would affect me so if I could influence it this would benefit my business. I got on to a consultancy which advises the government in this area."

A key step was to establish through the environmental health department that tattooing and its removal is a cosmetic rather than a medical procedure, so that it can be carried out by qualified beauty therapists and medical clinics. Mr Simpson-Birk says: "I also had to redesign the tattoo gun, since hygiene would be a major issue.

"A Swiss company developed the single-use gun for me while a UK electronics company produced a recordable controller to stop unauthorised people from carrying out the procedure. I invented my own standards which would influence others in the industry."

The Simpson-Birks started using the procedure in Barbara's Derby beauty salon to test the market. After an article in the local paper asking for volunteers to have their tattoos removed the switchboard was jammed.

But Mr Simpson-Birks knew that franchising was the way forward. He says: "I contacted the British Franchise Organisation for advice then we engaged a franchise lawyer to ensure that we offered a watertight agreement."

Coverage in the beauty press brought in more inquiries. "Initially I thought I could sell franchises to anyone, then I realised that the image must be clinical and that we should target established salons and clinics."

They were about to sell the first franchises when the Simpson-Birks were invited to appear on the BBC programme Dragons' Den. "It was the most stressful situation I've experienced. I had a full business plan, forecasts and cash flows, but these were ignored and we were grilled for over two hours without any paperwork. We'd asked for £250,000 and one 'Dragon' offered half, but I didn't take it because I couldn't work with someone looking over my shoulder." The first three five-year franchises were sold for £15,000 each, "a giveaway, for it's the royalty on each removal session which brings in the turnover".

Mr Simpson-Birks is currently negotiating franchises in three branches of Selfridges - with a tattoo company. "I said that I wouldn't sell the process to the opposition but these people share the same standards, and the chance to get into Selfridges is irresistible."

The cost of removing a small tattoo starts at £500, and with all those fashion victims who change their mind, that's an awful lot of royalties for Tattoo Erase.


© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006