Hanging in the balance

Clive Stafford Smith

May 1, 2007 12:40 PM | Guardian Unlimited

Amnesty International has published its annual report on the death penalty, which makes modestly encouraging reading for those who would put an end to state-sanctioned killing.

This is not surprising: there is little chance that history, as it is ultimately written, will favourably recount stories of electrocution, hanging, gassing or lethal injection, any more than it does burning witches at the stake.

However, this is of little solace to the thousands of individuals who continue to be executed each year, each of whom has only one life to lose.

Consider China. There were 1,010 documented executions last year, but the true number was more likely to have been close to 8,000. Executions in China are shrouded in mystery, we are told, because the fact of an execution is a state secret. Why, if a government wishes to deter its citizens from crime, would the consequences of criminality be kept hidden?

China leads the premier league of executions by a long way, with well over 90% of all executions worldwide. Despite this, there are signs that China is moving towards abolition. In March 2007, a Chinese delegate told the United Nations that he thought "the application of the death penalty will be further reduced and it will finally be abolished" in his country. If the inevitability of abolition is already clear, what is the point of continuing to execute?

With the China Olympics slated for next year, criticism of the industrial scale of executions is muted. Perhaps this is inevitable since the US still comes in fifth on the annual execution table (with 53), chasing China and Pakistan on total numbers of people awaiting execution on death row.

No matter what George Bush's attitude may be, Britain cannot afford to sit silently by, if morality and British foreign policy are to intersect at all. Reprieve has learned that there were at least two British nationals among the thousands who faced execution in China in 2006, yet the British government has apparently not been able to contact the men, or influence their fate.

Presumably, China wants to earn the respect of the world in the run-up to the Olympics in Beijing. A public commitment towards abolition would be a good way to start. The fact that Australia executed nobody at the Sydney Olympics has not been touted among the reasons for the success of the 2000 Olympiad; conversely, however, executing your guests hardly enhances the goodwill of the games.

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

The erratic reporting is a problem to which gun-control advocates, law enforcement officials and others have sought to draw attention for years.

“We’ve had these wake-up calls for years, and all we ever do is push the snooze button,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The federal system, in fact, contained only about 235,000 mental health records as of January 2006, even though it is estimated that as many as 2.7 million people have been involuntarily institutionalized nationwide.

“The biggest impediment is privacy relating to mental health records,” said Joey Hixenbaugh, a unit chief in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal justice information systems division.

In 1998, Russell Weston barged into the United States Capitol and fatally shot two police officers. Mr. Weston had been involuntarily committed in Montana as a paranoid schizophrenic, but the authorities in Illinois, where he bought the gun, were unaware of that because privacy laws bar Montana from reporting those records to federal authorities.

Several years later, Peter Troy, who was twice admitted to a mental hospital, killed a priest and a parishioner at a Long Island church with a .22-caliber rifle he bought.

In the case of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, a special justice declared in late 2005 that Mr. Cho was mentally ill and a danger to himself, ordering him to outpatient treatment after two women complained that he was harassing them. The finding should have disqualified him from buying a gun under federal law, which says that any court ruling that a person is a “danger to himself or others” because of mental illness is adjudicated as a mental defective.

But because Virginia reported only involuntary commitments to mental health facilities, Mr. Cho’s information was not reported to the state police and federal authorities.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia issued an executive order this week to try to close the gap between state and federal law by requiring that commitments for outpatient treatment be reported, as well.

The bill being pushed by Representative Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Charles E. Schumer, both New York Democrats, takes a carrot-and-stick approach that offers money to states to automate records and speed their transmission to the federal database. It also withholds part of federal financing for a crime-prevention program from states that do not comply.

The measure is co-sponsored by Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is a former board member of the National Rifle Association and a longtime opponent of gun control. Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, a current member of the association board, said he supported the thrust of the bill.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the N.R.A., said it was mainly mental health groups that had stood in the way of similar legislation in the past.

“We are not an obstacle,” Mr. LaPierre said. “We’re strongly in support of putting those records in the system.”

But Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said his group was fighting the bill.

“Our biggest concern is this is being done as a denial of a civil liberty, and it’s being done without due process,” Mr. Pratt said.

Mental health advocates also opposed the measure, arguing that reporting these records to a federal database contributed to the stigmatization of mental illness.

David L. Shern, chief executive of Mental Health America, said the bill did not take into account how treatment could cure people.

“This is a classic example of a well-intentioned effort that’s going to have almost no effect and, in fact, is going to do harm,” Mr. Shern said.

The Supreme Court put up another hurdle to having states report records to federal authorities with a controversial ruling in 1997. In a lawsuit financed by the N.R.A.’s civil defense fund, the court struck down an earlier provision of the Brady bill that governs the background checks on gun purchases and ruled that state workers could not be ordered to carry out a federal regulatory program. States can be encouraged to share their information voluntarily, but in many cases they would have to amend their privacy laws to do so, an uphill battle in many states.

In North Carolina, gun-control groups tried in 2002 to require the reporting of additional mental health records but were stymied by both mental health and pro-gun groups.

Robin Peyson of the Texas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said she would oppose efforts to change privacy laws in her state.

“Its unintended consequence will be to discourage people from seeking treatment when they need it most,” Ms. Peyson said.

5 Ways to Power Up Productivity

做下小广告：下面是我写的 blog——也算是和大家share 一点 tips

A while ago, zenhabits (a productivity and lifehack blog) listed Top 5 Online Apps That Ruin Your Productivity, as follows:

1. Twitter.
   
2. IM.
   
3. Email notification.
4. Blog reader.
   
5. Social bookmarking sites like Digg.
   

One question though, what if I use ALL of them, not only on a daily basis, but on an at-least-hourly basis?

First let me start by saying I have good reasons to keep the habits:

1. Twitter. ( the most convenient way to keep track of my+my friends' life, a substitute of a condensed diary)
   
2. IM. ( it's a code of conduct nowadays to be always reachable, as important as keeping your cell phone on)
   
3. Email notification. ( same reason as above)
4. Blog reader. ( keep informed. two days without reading recent feeds makes you a stone-age man/ woman)
   
5. Social bookmarking sites like Digg. ( a little fun at side wouldn't hurt)

I use Google Reader, and subscribe to about 20 feeds from three categories: world news/opinion (up to 13 feeds), music, technology/productivity, etc. Here's how I survive:

1. Get up earlier.

No matter where you live, your internet connection is always fastest in the early morning. How early? That really depend on your environment. In my university, the internet starts to slow down at about 7:30 AM. That's why I usually get up at 6:00 AM, just enough time for me to read every feed and check out a few YouTube post.

2. Start with the fun part.

I don't care what people say about "get the important stuff done first", the thing is, if you are gonna start your day with some heavy news, it's likely you wouldn't want to continue working at all. So I start with my music feeds, chances are that there would be some free tracks available for downloading (if you subscribe to sites like Largehearted Boy or 3 hives) so that you could start the day with new music.

3. SORT your information.

I couldn't stress this strong enough. I read news from New York Times, Washington Post, BBC International and Gotham Gazzete (don't underestimate it just because of name, trust me, you couldn't know about news and public policies in NYC anywhere else. and since NYC is where most of the interesting policies start, it's the best place to learn about American policies), and commentaries / editorials from Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, The Economists, and Guardian Unlimited. [I had to do this because as a debater, I must be fully informed about (and preferably have an insight into) almost everything in the world... -_-////] The overlapping part of the information is time-consuming, so I keep news and opinions in two folders, and make the items in news folder only show headlines (for scanning) while the opinions show in full article (by then I should know what is more important/controversial).

4. Mozart, Mozart, Mozart...

I'm sure you've heard about "Mozart makes you smarter" (it's not a myth, but science-proven by the way). If you hate classical, listen to something that can get you out of the usual morning-doze. Listening to something, anything! While you are browsing the *fun* feeds, listen to a podcast; while reading news feeds (which require more concentration), using any non-vocal music.

5. Water!

Don't forget to drink a lot of water. It pumps up your body energy much better than coffee and rehydrates your body after a long period of sleep. (Oh, with a slice of lemon for better effect, if possible ;)

Virginia Ends a Loophole in Gun Laws

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia closed a loophole Monday in the state’s gun laws that allowed a mentally disturbed Virginia Tech student to buy the guns used in a shooting rampage that left 33 dead at the university on April 16.

The governor issued an executive order intended to prohibit the sale of guns to anyone found to be dangerous and forced to undergo involuntary mental health treatment. Under the order, their names would be included a database of people banned from buying guns.

In December 2005, a Virginia judge directed Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman in the massacre, to undergo outpatient treatment. But because Mr. Cho was treated as an outpatient, Virginia did not send his name to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal database. Federal gun laws depend on the states for enforcement, and the failure of Virginia to flag Mr. Cho has raised growing questions about the adequacy of background checks to scrutinize potential gun buyers.

The governor said the database “should include any determination that someone is mentally ill and so dangerous to himself or others as to warrant involuntary treatment.”

The governor also instructed the State Police to request orders for involuntary inpatient care and involuntary outpatient care from district courts and to include that information in the database.

“We realized that this is something we can fix right now and that we needn’t wait to fix it,” Mr. Kaine said in a news conference.

He added that he hoped his move would encourage other states to tighten their mental health restrictions on gun buyers.

“We were all very surprised to find that despite a federal prohibition on purchase of weapons by the mentally ill that dates back to the 1960s,” Mr. Kaine said, “the majority of states report no data on mental health adjudications in the national database.”

Even in states with these stricter mental health restrictions, gun buyers can sidestep background checks by obtaining firearms from a private seller or at a gun show from a “private” individual or “collector.”

Those purchases account for about half of the guns sold in the United States each year. Efforts by Virginia lawmakers to close this gun-show loophole have been repeatedly blocked by gun-rights advocates.

Administration Proposes Expanded Energy Drilling

The Bush administration proposed on Monday leasing out millions of acres along the coasts of Alaska and Virginia to oil and gas drillers, a move that would end a longstanding ban on drilling in those environmentally sensitive areas.
Both areas have been closed to new drilling for many years. The areas off Virginia are still covered by laws that prohibit new drilling in all areas along the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. But Congress lifted the prohibition on Bristol Bay off Alaska in 2003, and President Bush lifted an executive order in January that had blocked drilling there through 2012.
In the case of Virginia, administration officials are hoping to capitalize on interest in drilling expressed by the state legislature, which passed a bill last year asking the federal government to allow exploration for natural gas in waters 50 miles or farther from the state coastline.
Both proposals are part of a broader five-year plan to open up 48 million acres along the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. Unless Congress objects within 60 days, most of the five-year plan will go into effect, though resistance has been voiced. Starting this year, the Interior Department plans to offer leases on about 8.3 million acres in the central region of the Gulf of Mexico, which Congress specifically approved for offshore drilling late last year.
But the department hopes to open up far more than that. It would offer leases on 37 million acres off Alaska, starting as early as 2008, in vast new areas in the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea and the Cook Inlet. None of those areas have been subject to a drilling ban, but none have been tapped before.
Starting in 2011, the Interior Department would also lease out 5.6 million acres in Bristol Bay along the Alaska Peninsula, an area that Congress closed off after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. If the plan can get approval from Congress, it would offer up three million acres off the coast of Virginia, starting in 2012.
“The outer continental shelf is a vital source of domestic oil and natural gas for America, especially in light of sharply rising energy prices,” said Dirk Kempthorne, secretary of the interior.
But Democrats in Congress criticized the plans for Alaska and Virginia, and they are likely to extend the current ban on drilling off Virginia. Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, said he supported limited drilling for exploration but has refused to endorse production.
“Whatever pressing energy issue comes before the American people, the Bush administration always responds with the same oil answer: more oil,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.
The proposal includes measures to protect against damage to coastal areas from oil spills and other accidents. It would not allow drilling within 50 miles of the Virginia shore and would wall off an additional “obstruction zone” near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.
Some environmental advocates said, however, that the proposed protections would be inadequate and could jeopardize fishing areas.
“The Bush administration is zeroing in on the most environmentally sensitive areas for offshore drilling,” said Richard Charter, a lobbyist for Defenders of Wildlife and co-chairman of the National Outer Continental Shelf Coalition. “These areas that they are characterizing as buffer zones are woefully inadequate when you consider that the Exxon Valdez oil spill traveled hundreds of miles in a matter of weeks.”
It is not clear how much fuel lies in the areas that would be made available. Interior Department officials estimated that the entire plan could produce 10 billion barrels of additional oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of additional natural gas over the next 40 years. That would be equal to about 16 months of the United States’ current oil consumption and about two years of its current consumption of natural gas.
The oil industry’s two big trade associations, the American Petroleum Institute and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, both praised the administration plan and urged Congress to open even more areas to drilling.
Royal Dutch Shell has been particularly eager to explore and develop the areas in Alaska, and has hired a number of former state and federal officials to help build popular support in communities near the proposed drilling areas.
If the administration does lease out areas in Alaska, companies may be entitled to a special reprieve from paying royalties to the government. In passing the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress extended what is known as “royalty relief” for deepwater drillers to cover oil and gas produced in “frontier areas” that are far from transportation centers.
The administration plan could encounter heavy resistance. New Jersey’s two senators, Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, both Democrats, warned in a joint statement that the plan to allow drilling near Virginia was unacceptable because it “starts us down the slippery slope that could lead us to drilling off New Jersey’s coast.”
Congress has extended an annual moratorium on leasing along the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts for more than 20 years. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, has been a staunch supporter of the drilling bans and has protested Mr. Bush’s decision in January to lift the prohibition for Bristol Bay.

Why Wolfowitz Should Stay

By NUHU RIBADU

Published: May 1, 2007 New York Times

Abuja, Nigeria

FOR the past few weeks, the world has been riveted by the difficulties of Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, regarding a potential conflict of interest involving the salary of his partner, also a senior official there. With the bank’s board deliberating this week over how to handle the charges, the controversy now needlessly and regrettably threatens Mr. Wolfowitz’s presidency, which has been largely defined by his energetic support for a new Africa that is struggling to emerge.

Over the last two years, Mr. Wolfowitz has effectively directed the bank’s energies toward fighting poverty and improving human life. He is a champion of using international development institutions to deal with some of the world’s major problems. And he has been a steadfast supporter of the efforts of African organizations to rescue our people from the scourge of misrule, which leads to poverty, disease and early death.

Over the last three years, Nigeria, once the emblem of outlandish corruption, has become a leading reformer, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which I head, has been at the cutting edge of these efforts. The enormous challenges we face would have proved almost insurmountable without external help, especially from the World Bank under Mr. Wolfowitz.

When disgruntled lawmakers here tried to cut off our financing and shut down critical aspects of our operation, a World Bank grant of $5 million allowed us to bring to closure important cases of political corruption involving key members of Nigeria’s ruling elite, including members of the executive branch and Parliament.

Today our work receives accolades from all corners of the globe, and the financial and moral support of our thoughtful and courageous allies has played a crucial role in our success. In a country that never saw a single conviction for fraud or corruption before the beginning of our reform campaign, we now have 150 convictions, with 400 more cases awaiting decision in the courts. We have also recovered $5 billion in stolen property. We have brought powerful politicians and businessmen to account through the criminal justice system.

These developments are gradually improving the integrity of our national life. Two weeks ago, Nigeria had its first general election intended to pass power from one elected government to another. While the election did not meet the high standards we set for ourselves, it did reveal that for citizens, the fight against corruption was a top priority — right up there with food, health care and education. In other words, Nigerians made the same connection between runaway corruption and human suffering that Mr. Wolfowitz rightly does.

Corruption is the greatest challenge to progress across much of the developing world, and as we in Nigeria know from bitter experience, this is particularly so in Africa. As Mr. Wolfowitz remarked in a recent speech, some two million Africans die from AIDS-related illnesses each year, while nearly 3,000 African children die each day from malaria and nearly 40 million are not in school. All this, he noted, despite $300 billion in international aid to Africa over the last 20 years.

Corruption has not only produced injustice and a chronic failure to effectively manage international support, it has also led to the squandering of Africa’s considerable human and natural resources. Nigeria has made nearly half a trillion dollars from oil in less than five decades — a figure that dwarfs that of international aid to the whole of Africa. And yet, around 70 percent of Nigerians live in conditions of dispiriting poverty, on incomes of less than a dollar a day. Corruption kills far more effectively than AIDS, malaria or war.

On my recent visit to the World Bank in Washington, I was greatly impressed with the remarkable changes in policy and direction that Mr. Wolfowitz had undertaken, as well as by the diversity of talents he had convened to execute his vision of a fairer world. The bank’s secretary and two vice presidents are Africans — one was my colleague in the Nigerian cabinet. Another vice president is Salvadoran.

Mr. Wolfowitz spoke eloquently for those of us in poor countries last month when he exhorted citizens of the industrial world: “As we go back to our comfortable beds tonight, we should think about the voiceless millions who may not even have beds at all, who go to sleep hungry, sick and uncertain about their future. For many it’s literally a matter of life and death.”

And he has matched words with deeds through initiatives to promote greater international cooperation with poor countries, especially regarding the recovery of assets from pilfered resources. Effective efforts at fighting corruption cannot stop at our borders when up to 80 percent of the “grand corruption” perpetrated in Africa is dependent on international mechanisms that facilitate money laundering.

Mr. Wolfowitz has made a praiseworthy effort to halt the illicit drain of money from the coffers of poor countries. Just this simple step — denying a haven for money stolen from a poor country — addresses more than half the problem of corruption in Africa.

It would be a terrible shame to bring all these efforts to a premature halt. Mr. Wolfowitz has openly acknowledged responsibility for the mistake he made. He has apologized and expressed willingness to accept the decision of the bank’s board of directors. But the board should consider how important his error really was, especially considering that the bank’s internal documents suggest that Mr. Wolfowitz tried to follow the rules from the beginning.

The board should avoid lending credence to the widespread suspicion that Mr. Wolfowitz is really being punished for his previous role in the United States Department of Defense. And it should consider the benefit Mr. Wolfowitz has brought to countries like Nigeria.

Nuhu Ribadu is the chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

The EU must act in Darfur

April 29, 2007 11:00 AM *From Guardian Unlimited

For four years, violence and terror have ruled in Darfur. After many futile efforts, the EU must get tough with the perpetrators.

Darfur is a humanitarian catastrophe: more than 200,000 dead, thousands raped and tortured, and 2.6 million people displaced, owing to the Sudanese government's war against its own people. Originally an anti-insurgency effort, the campaign quickly mutated into a killing and expulsion operation. Sudan's government has been recruiting and paying the local "Janjaweed" militiamen, who have attacked hundreds of defenseless villages and towns, often in close co-ordination with the Sudanese air force.

The consequences are devastating. Roughly a third of Darfur's population has been forced from their homes and are now in displaced persons camps inside Sudan, where they remain subject to the Janjaweed terror, or in equally vulnerable refugee settlements in Chad. International humanitarian efforts to help those in Sudan are hampered by Sudanese government harassment and pointless bureaucratic hassles. Even if the aid arrives, the point, to quote one senior UN official, seems to be "keeping people alive with our humanitarian assistance until they are massacred".

Darfur demands consistent and firm international action. We all bear responsibility to help the displaced return to their homes. In the last three years, the United Nations Security Council has passed ten resolutions requiring the Sudanese government to change course and fulfill its obligation to protect its own people. These include a demand from the Security Council to disarm the Janjaweed. Yet the Sudanese government never follows through on its repeated promises to do so.

In November 2004, a peaceful solution was within reach, when the government and rebels signed a ceasefire and humanitarian agreement. For a short moment, there was reason to hope that peace was at hand. A Security Council resolution and international negotiation efforts had paved the way to end the 20-year war in southern Sudan - a breakthrough that in fact led to a deal signed by the government and southern rebels in January 2005. At that time, it appeared that a similar breakthrough in western Sudan would follow.

But the worst was yet to come. After an apparent lull in aerial bombardments, the planes soon returned, and the Janjaweed resumed their campaign of murder and destruction. The next round of peace negotiations, which opened in December 2004, stalled because the government launched a military offensive just as they started, in defiance of the ceasefire. This behavior is symptomatic of the lack of respect Sudan's government has shown towards its obligations.

A Security Council resolution last August mandated a 20,300-strong UN peacekeeping force to replace the small and overwhelmed African Union mission currently on the ground. Not surprisingly, the government in Khartoum rejected the idea. Subsequent negotiations led to a compromise agreement in November for a hybrid AU-UN force that would deploy in three stages. Talks continue to this day, but despite the occasional newspaper headline announcing a deal, the Sudanese government has been using every opportunity to delay or to attempt to add conditions to the force's mandate. The result is, the second phase of the deployment has still not taken place even though it was accepted by Khartoum six months ago.

The heart of the matter is this: the Sudanese government is either unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens from mass violence. In accordance with the "responsibility to protect" doctrine, adopted unanimously by heads of state and government at the UN World Summit in September 2005, if a state fails to meet this primary obligation, responsibility shifts to the international community, which may exercise various measures, including, if absolutely necessary, military force.

But military intervention in Darfur without the Sudanese government's consent is not an option today. Not only is there insufficient political will for an international force, but, more importantly, there are valid doubts about the feasibility and prospects for the success of such an operation.

Even so, the international community still has options. Although it would be best if these options were adopted by the UN Security Council, the EU itself can and must act to increase the costs to the Sudanese government of its continued obstruction of aid deliveries and its delaying tactics on deployment of international peacekeepers.

That is why it is so important that EU foreign ministers heed the European Parliament's call for serious sanctions against the Sudanese government, whose key players were clearly identified by a UN Commission of Inquiry and Panel of Experts. The EU must freeze these individuals' assets and impose an EU-wide travel ban on them.

In addition, measures should target the Sudanese government where it hurts most: revenue and foreign investment inflows into Sudan's petroleum sector, and supply of goods and services to that and associated sectors. The EU and its member states' governments must enact legislation to ban companies based in their countries from direct involvement in Sudan's petroleum sector and in industries related to it.

Moreover, an investigation into the offshore accounts of Sudanese businesses affiliated with the National Congress Party, the ruling majority party in Khartoum, should be launched, paving the way for sanctions against the regime's commercial entities, which form the main conduit for financing its Janjaweed proxies in Darfur.

Such targeted sanctions would affect the power and privileges of the key players in this crisis. By imposing them, Europe would finally take a real step towards stopping the killing in Darfur and extending meaningful help to its people.

Criminalising the consumer

IS IT legal to make a copy of that DVD you’ve just bought so the family can watch it around the home or in the car? In one of the most watched copyright cases in recent years, a judge in northern California ruled last month that copying DVDs for personal use was legal, given the terms of the industry’s licence and the way the copies were made.


The wider implication of the ruling remains clouded—not least because the DVD Copy Control Association, the loser in the case, has 60 days to appeal. But whatever the video industry may like to think, the writing is on the wall for copy protection.

Copyright is a tricky thing. It protects only the way that an author, designer, photographer, film-maker or composer has expressed himself. It does not cover the ideas or the factual information conveyed in the work.

What constitutes fair use or an infringement is trickier still. Much depends on the purpose and character of the borrowed material’s use. Limited reproduction for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research is considered fair game. But the wholesale repackaging of the content for commercial use is a flagrant infringement.

In America, the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 made it legal for people to record copyrighted radio broadcasts for personal use. But while the act said nothing about making digital recordings, ripping copyrighted music tracks off CDs and storing them on an iPod has become an everyday occurrence. Despite the number of iTunes downloaded for a fee, Apple would be in trouble if people were prevented from transferring legitimately owned CDs to their iPods. The software Apple gives away to iPod customers is designed to let them do just that.

Most people think it ludicrous that they can’t do the same with the DVDs they own. Now it seems, despite squeals from the movie industry, the law is finally moving in the video fan’s favour.

The issue in the recent case was whether Kaleidescape, a maker of digital “jukeboxes” that store a person’s video and music collections and distribute the entertainment around the home, had breached the terms of the DVD Content Control Association’s CSS (content scrambling system) licence.

A Kaleidescape server stores digital content ripped from CDs and DVDs on its hard drive. The content is then encrypted and fed to various screens and speakers around the home by a secure cable. Kaleidescape claimed that content distributed this way was even safer than it was on the original polycarbonate disks. The judge not only agreed, but couldn’t find any breach of the copy-protection licence either.

If the case ends there, to all intents and purposes the notion of fair use would appear to apply to DVDs as well as CDs. The movie industry, which nowadays depends as much on DVD sales as on box-office receipts, still seems to think that making life difficult for its customers is a recipe for success.

After likewise shooting itself in the foot for ages, the record industry is now falling over itself to abandon DRM (digital rights management) on CDs. A number of online music stores such as eMusic, Audio Lunchbox and Anthology have given up using DRM altogether. In a recent survey by Jupiter Research, two out of three music industry executives in Europe reckoned that dropping DRM would improve sales.

The latest music publisher to do so is EMI, which announced in January that it had stopped producing CDs with DRM protection. “The costs of DRM,” it declared, “do not measure up to the results.”

In an open letter entitled “Thoughts on Music”, even Steve Jobs, Apple’s charismatic boss and chief evangelist, recently called for the elimination of DRM. From this month, Apple’s iTunes will sell EMI’s highest quality recordings (those with sampling rates of 256 kilobits per second) without DRM for a small premium.

Belatedly, music executives have come to realise that DRM simply doesn’t work. It is supposed to stop unauthorised copying, but no copy-protection system has yet been devised that cannot be easily defeated. All it does is make life difficult for paying customers, while having little or no effect on clandestine copying plants that churn out pirate copies.

Now the copy protection on DVDs is proving just as easy to bypass. The biggest flop has been the CSS technology featured in the recent Kaleidescape case. It was first cracked back in 1999 by a Norwegian programmer called Jon Lech Johansen, who showed, in a few short lines of elegant code called DeCSS, just how trivial such lauded protection systems really were. Since then, even the DRM used to protect the new high-definition video disks (the Blu-ray format from the Sony camp and its HD-DVD rival from the Toshiba alliance) have been cracked wide open.

While most of today’s DRM schemes that come embedded on CDs and DVDs are likely to disappear over the next year or two, the need to protect copyrighted music and video will remain. Fortunately, there are better ways of doing this than treating customers as if they were criminals.

One of the most promising is Audible Magic’s content protection technology. Google is currently testing this to find the “fingerprints” of miscreants who have posted unauthorised television or movie clips on YouTube.

The beauty of such schemes is that they don’t actually prevent anyone from making copies of original content. Their purpose is simply to collect royalties when a breach of copyright has occurred. By being reactive rather than pre-emptive, normal law-abiding consumers are then left in peace to enjoy their music and video collections in any way they choose. Why couldn’t we have thought of that in the beginning?

Hooked On Violence

BYLINE: By BOB HERBERT

BODY:

Two days after the massacre at Virginia Tech, a mentally disturbed man with a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun opened fire in a house in Queens, killing his mother, his mother's disabled companion and the disabled man's health care aide. The gunman then killed himself.

Sixteen months ago, in the basement of a private home in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, four aspiring rappers, aged 19 to 22, were summarily executed in a barrage of semiautomatic gunfire. Two teenagers were arrested five months later, and one was charged as the gunman.

I had coffee the other day with Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund, and she mentioned that since the murders of Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, well over a million Americans have been killed by firearms in the United States. That's more than the combined U.S. combat deaths in all the wars in all of American history.

''We're losing eight children and teenagers a day to gun violence,'' she said. ''As far as young people are concerned, we lose the equivalent of the massacre at Virginia Tech about every four days.''

The first step in overcoming an addiction is to acknowledge it. Americans are addicted to violence, specifically gun violence. We profess to be appalled at every gruesome outbreak of mass murder (it's no big deal when just two, three or four people are killed at a time), but there's no evidence that we have the will to pull the guns out of circulation, or even to register the weapons and properly screen and train their owners.

On the day after Christmas in 2000, an employee of Edgewater Technology, a private company in Wakefield, Mass., showed up at work with an assault rifle and a .12-gauge shotgun. Around 11 a.m. he began methodically killing co-workers. He didn't stop until seven were dead.

An employee who had not been at work that day spoke movingly to a reporter from The Boston Globe about the men and women who lost their lives. ''They were some of the sweetest, smartest people I've ever had the chance to work with,'' he said. ''The cream of the crop.''

The continuing carnage has roused at least one group of public officials to action: mayors. ''We see the violence that is happening in America today,'' said Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston. ''Illegal guns are rampant. Go into almost any classroom in Boston -- sixth and seventh grade, eighth grade, high school -- and 50 percent of those kids know somebody who had a gun.''

The mayor noted that since the beginning of the year, more than 100 people have already been killed in Philadelphia, and nearly 80 in Baltimore. Most of the victims were shot to death.

Last year Mayor Menino and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, at a meeting they hosted at Gracie Mansion, organized a group of mayors committed to fighting against illegal firearms in the U.S. ''It is time for national leadership in the war on gun violence,'' Mr. Bloomberg said at the time. ''And if that leadership won't come from Congress or come from the White House, then it has to come from us.''

The campaign has grown. There were 15 mayors at that first gathering. Now more than 200 mayors from cities in 46 states have signed on.

When asked why Mayor Bloomberg had become so militant about the gun issue, John Feinblatt, the city's criminal justice coordinator, mentioned the ''human element.'' He said: ''I think it's because he's watched eight police officers be shot. And because, like all mayors, he's the one who gets awakened, along with the police commissioner, at 3 in the morning and 4 in the morning, and has to rush to the hospital and break the news that can break somebody's heart.''

Those who are interested in the safety and well-being of children should keep in mind that only motor vehicle accidents and cancer kill more children in the U.S. than firearms. A study released a few years ago by the Harvard School of Public Health compared firearm mortality rates among youngsters 5 to 14 years old in the five states with the highest rates of gun ownership with those in the five states with the lowest rates.

The results were chilling. Children in the states with the highest rates of gun ownership were 16 times as likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide with a gun, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm.

Only a lunatic could seriously believe that more guns in more homes is good for America's children.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: April 26, 2007

logical fallacies

1. Genetic Fallacy

instead of talking about the real argument itself, talks about the origin of the argument. <- irrelevant!

e.g. I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born. (Ronald Reagan)

2. Ad Hominem

ignores the merits of his/her opponents' arguments rather target at the persons who produce the arguments.

i. Abusive<- irrelevant!

ii. Circumstantial

point out the circumstance of the opponents themselves (they CAN have an ulterior motive and their arguments are still GOOD for OTHER people) >> only means you should be more careful, it doesn't mean the opposite is true!!!

iii. Tu Quoque

“you do it too!” <- hasn't really respond to the argument!

3. Ad Populam

the person appeals to bandwagoning, snobbery, or fear of being different than the majority in order to influence the other person

i. Bandwaggoning: “a lot of people do it!”

ii. Snobbery: “the elite do it!”

4. Appeal to Pity

emotional appeal <- irrelevant!

5. Straw Man

distort an opponent's position, directs arguments at this distorted position <- you've changed my point!

6. Appeal to force

7. Appeal to authority

EXPLAIN why he's credible/ more credible than the other authority

8. Appeal to Ignorance

lack of evidence =negation of the argument

9. slippery slope

10. false dichotomy

the arguer claims that his conclusion is one of only 2 options, when in fact there are other possibilities. he goes on to show that 1 option is outrageous therefore his preferred conclusion must be embraced.

key difference btw slippery slope & false dichotomy: SS. the disjunction maybe true (could be only 2 choices), the problem is how you get “not B”; FD. there are MORE options

11. alternate description

gives an alternate description of an object or event, and implying that under the new description the opponent's argument is flawed. [it's a fallacy if the original description is more appropriate]

e.g. take his son to a topless bar ~ “spend time with his loving father!”

12. composition [particulars -> whole]/ division

one mis-attributes properties of the whole to the part [division ]or the part to the whole [composition]

e.g. The Balboa Suspension Bridge was constructed using the strongest steel available, so the bridge must be extremely strong. >> what about the other parts of the bridge? what about a loosened nail? what about the design?

13. false cause [requires a causal chain]

mistaken a correlation for a cause

i. coincidence

ii. A causes B

iii. B causes A

iV. A and B both caused by C

14. hasty generalization [some particulars -> all particulars]

sample not typical: sample might be too small, or systematically biased

15. weak analogy

A has features WXYZ

B has features WXYZ

C has features WXYZ

D has features WXY, so it also has feature Z

16. begging the question

the arguer attempts to establish some conclusion P by appealing to some premises such that one or more of the premises illicitly assumes that P is true

17. affirming the antecedent / denying the consequent

attempting to fallaciously derive a conclusion from a conditional

e.g. if I had cake, I would be full; I'm full, so I had cake. (why? I could have had bread!)

.....; I didn't have cake, so I'm hungry. (really?)