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Free Speech X-Press
Delivering Weekly Censorship Updates to the Adult Industry

FSC WEBSITE HAS A NEW LOOK!
It took longer that we expected and is still under construction, but our new FSC website is UP! Thanks so much to board member Sid Grief of AAANews.com, former board member Greg Dumas and the folks at AVN Online for the important part each played in updating our site.
Check it out at http://www.freespeechcoalition.com. We think you’ll like what you see!
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ACACIA LOSES A ROUND IN COURT
SANTA ANA, CA – A federal court here has issued a ruling clarifying the scope of two patents in the Acacia Research patent infringement lawsuit against more than a dozen adult Internet companies. The judge sided with the adult companies, citing “indefiniteness” in the patents, and invited the companies to file for summary judgment to invalidate Acacia’s claims on those patents.
        Acacia is putting the best spin they can on the ruling.               
         “While two independent claims are under a cloud of uncertainty, even if we happen to lose those two claims, we believe we have at least six other claims that will demonstrate infringement,” said Paul Ryan, Acacia’s chief executive.
        However, after the decision was announced, shares in the Newport Beach company plunged 37 percent.
From the Orange County Register, 7/14/04
http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/07/14/sections/business/oc_region/
article_166563.php
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BROADCAST DELAY SYSTEMS SELLING BRISKLY
AIRWAVES, USA – In the wake of the passage of draconian penalties for broadcast indecency, high-tech digital-delay systems are in hot demand. At least two radio-technology companies are raking in money as radio stations flood them with orders. Even music stations which often rely on pre-taped content are using digital delay systems. The systems are very sophisticated. For example, a station with a 7-second delay that “dumps” seven seconds of “indecent” material would suddenly find itself live. But the system would quickly resurrect the delay by using an algorithm that chops the tiny bits of silence between words. Delay systems can cost as much as $3,300, an amount which could be a serious burden for small stations trying to serve the public interest. The FCC is unlikely to accept a “we’re too poor to have a delay system” excuse.
From Randy Dotinga, Wired.com, 7/9/04 
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,64127,00.html
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NEW TECHNOLOGY MAKES WEB LESS WORLDWIDE
CYBERSPACE  -- Rapidly improving so-called “geolocation” technology is increasingly able to carve the Web into small chunks. In recent months, RealNetworks began offering soccer games and movies restricted to specific countries. Art.com has coded its website so Americans automatically see prices in dollars while Germans see them in euros.  Google, which already had used the technology to redirect foreign visitors to country-specific home pages, has now expanded geolocation to let merchants target ads by city or distance from a given address. So, for example, type “dentist” into Google from your computer in New York, and you’ll get ads for dentists in the city.
        Alan Davidson, associate director for the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology, worries that governments will try to employ the technology to enforce their laws within artificial borders they erect. Such concerns, not entirely new, have grown with the technology’s reliability, he said.
From Wired.com, 7/12/04 http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/
0,1377,64178,00.html
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MEN FIRED FOR E-MAILS CAN GO BACK TO WORK
TORONTO, ONT --Ontario’s grievance-settlement board has reinstated six employees of the Ministry of Natural Resources who were fired three years ago for exchanging sexually explicit e-mails at work. Don Eady, attorney for the six said he had argued that “some form of discipline was appropriate, but not dismissal.” The material ranged from dirty jokes to fairly graphic e-mails, Eady said, but none of it was deemed illegal, nor was child pornography involved. Eady surmised the board had found “dismissal was simply too harsh” for the six ­ one of whom, for example, was six months away from retirement after 25 years of service with an unblemished record. The men had been deemed the worst offenders of a group of 90 employees at the Ministry. 66 other employees were disciplined, with penalties ranging from letters of reprimand to suspensions of as much as 20 days without pay.
        Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay said he wasn’t happy about the decision.
From CBC/Radio Canada, 7/12/04
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/07/12/canada/ontarioporn040712
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PARIS HILTON PRIVACY LAWSUIT DISMISSED
LOS ANGELES, CA – The $30 million dollar invasion of privacy lawsuit brought by Paris Hilton against Internet company Kahatani Ltd has been dismissed for reasons not made public in court documents. Hilton claimed in the lawsuit that the now famous video of her having sex with a former boyfriend, Rich Salomon, had been “intended only for personal use.” Red Light District Video has since bought distribution rights for the video from Salomon and had planned to release the night vision video under the title “One Night In Paris.”
From Reuters, 7/12/04
http://www.boston.com/ae/celebrity/articles/2004/07/13/
paris_hilton_privacy_lawsuit_dismissed_in_la/
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MORE ON HOW THE PATRIOT ACT IS BEING USED
WASHINGTON, DC – In a report to Congress that seems to be part of an effort by the Bush administration to bolster support for the Patriot Act, Attorney General John Ashcroft has unveiled extensive new details of how the act has been used. Included in the report are prosecutions the DOJ characterizes as related to terrorism. However, also included are non-terrorism cases in which the Patriot Act played a central role, including investigations of a couple who allegedly defrauded widows and orphans, and an Indiana man accused of filming the sexual abuse of his 13-year-old daughter. University of Wisconsin student Rajib Mitra was sentenced to 8 years in prison for using a computer to jam the Madison Police Department’s radio system 22 times in 2003. The Justice Department notes that the Patriot Act made it a crime to create such public safety system problems, even if there was no monetary damage.
        Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the examples indicate that “the Patriot Act went too far too fast, and gave law-enforcement officials too much power that had nothing to do with terrorism.”
From Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, 7/14/04
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0407140330jul14,1,6049960.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
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STUDY CRITICIZES MOVIE RATING SYSTEM
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The Harvard School of Public Health has published a study critical of the movie ratings system run by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The study charges that a decade of “ratings creep” has allowed more violent and sexually explicit content into films, suggesting that movie raters have grown more lenient in their standards.
        “The MPAA appears to tolerate increasingly more extreme content in any given age-based rating category over time,” the study said. For example, Disney’s 1994 movie “The Santa Clause” was rated PG, while the 2002 sequel, “The Santa Clause 2,” which had comparable content, was rated G.
        Additionally, the study noted that the association’s ratings were often confusing, using different terms from movie to movie that made it hard to judge a film’s content.
         “When the rating says ‘action violence,’ is that less intense than just ‘violence?”’ asks Kimberly Thompson, associate professor of risk analysis and decision science at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “What’s the difference between sensuality and sexuality? They’re in the ratings, but they don’t have clear criteria for it.”
        Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the MMPA, said he had not had a chance to examine the study. But he and others pointed out that the standards for judging acceptable depictions of sex and violence in American society were constantly changing, and that it would not be surprising if that changed for movie ratings as well.
From Sharon Waxman, The New York Times, 7/13/04
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2270356,00.html#top
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EVERY TRICK IN THE BOOK IN USENET CASE
BUCKS COUNTY, PA – Prosecutors here have convened a grand jury to investigate whether Voicenet Communications distributed child pornography. Then they asked U.S. District Judge Mary McLaughlin to freeze a free speech lawsuit brought against the state and two county district attorneys by the same suburban Philadelphia Internet firm.
        The formation of the grand jury came just in time to forestall a key decision Judge McLaughlin had planned to issue in the civil lawsuit; a lawsuit that was initiated last year after investigators seized Voicenet computer servers that subscribers had been using to browse pictures posted on Usenet, a global network of electronic bulletin boards. The Internet firm said it had no control over Usenet content and little way of knowing whether customers were using its “QuikVue” search tool to find child porn. The suit said the state acted unconstitutionally in seizing the equipment and demanded its return.
        Voicenet attorneys said in a court filing that the grand jury was “a charade, done for improper and vindictive purposes,” and suggested it was convened for the sole purpose of derailing the civil case. Judge McLaughlin has scheduled a hearing on the matter.
From David B. Caruso, Associated Press, 7/11/04
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/
ats-ap_technology10jul11,1,3902588.story?coll=sns-technology-headlines
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