Daily News Briefs: April  10, 2000
Date: Monday, 10 Apr 2000 13:58:23 -0700

Table of Contents

Subject: NEWS
Date: Monday, 10 Apr 2000 13:58:23 -0700
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 13:58:23 -0700

Top News
Florida Jury Awards $12.7 Million to 3 Sick Smokers
NY City Hall Protest Ban KO'd
A Kinder Immigration Policy
Judge dismisses lawsuit against entertainment companies

Cyberlaw News - Download This!
Historians Take a Longer View of Net Battles
Latest Internet freeware creates pirating bonanza

Criminal Law
Study Finds Wide Disparities In Customs' Intrusive Searches
Too Many Cops on the Information Superhighway?

Unusual  Legal News
Jury Seated in Obscene-Video Trial

Top News

Florida Jury Awards $12.7 Million to 3 Sick Smokers
FindLaw News

In a verdict setting the stage for a potentially massive punitive
damages award, a Florida jury ruled on Friday that America's cigarette
makers injured three sick smokers and awarded them a total of $12.7
million in compensatory damages. The compensatory, or personal-injury,
awards were the highest yet in a U.S. sick-smokers case and pave the way
for the same six jurors to weigh within weeks punitive damages for
hundreds of thousands of other ailing smokers in Florida.

http://news.findlaw.com/News/s/20000407/tobaccoengle.html

NY City Hall Protest Ban KO'd
FindLaw News

A law that drastically limited the size of protests and other gatherings
in front of City Hall was struck down Thursday by a federal judge who
called the steps and plaza of the building ``quintessential public
forums.'' Judge Harold Baer Jr. concluded the law violated the First
Amendment because it set two standards governing the right to assemble,
one for demonstrators and another for city-sponsored speech.

http://news.findlaw.com/news/s/20000407/nycityhall.html

A Kinder Immigration Policy
Wired News

The booming economy in the United States is prompting a kinder, gentler
approach to immigration policy. A recent bill introduced in the House of
Representatives takes a bold step towards changing immigration policy to
ease the severe backlog in processing green card applications. The
Helping to Improve Technology and Education bill has mostly received
attention for temporarily increasing the annual number of available H-1B
visas. But other sections of the bill may have a more permanent impact
on the immigration process. The most important change is the move toward
dismantling the hallowed per-country system that has guided immigration
policy since 1965.

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35134,00.html

Judge dismisses lawsuit against entertainment companies
FindLaw News

A federal judge has dismissed a $33 million lawsuit filed against a
group of entertainment companies by the families of three victims in the
Heath High School shootings. The lawsuit alleged that teen-age gunman
Michael Carneal was imitating violence he witnessed in video games,
movies and Internet sites when he fired shots into a student prayer
group on Dec. 1, 1997.

http://news.findlaw.com/news/s/20000407/entertainmentsuit.html

Cyberlaw News

Tech-Deals - Internet Contracts - The Details
http://techdeals.findlaw.com
Meg Whitman & eBay, Dr. Koop's deal with drkoop.com & more
Amazon, AOL, eBay, Excite, iVillage, Netscape, TheStreet.com, Yahoo!
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history . . .
Historians Take a Longer View of Net Battles
New York Times

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been enmeshed in controversy of
late, with critics charging that it is awarding too many patents that
cover too much ground and questioning whether its staff truly
understands the technology it is evaluating. And yet, much of the
current controversy about patents, according to historians of technology
and communications, lacks a sense of historical context. They say the
patent battles looming on the Internet horizon have historical precedent
in those that arose with other innovations in communication, including
the telegraph, telephone, radio and television.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/04/biztech/articles/10pate.html

Copy right over the Internet
Latest Internet freeware creates pirating bonanza
San Jose Mercury News

To makers of music, movies and software, it's like a cancer
metastasizing out of control across the Web, an infectious method of
thwarting copyright law and undermining big business. But to users and
proponents, a subversive little program called Gnutella and its many
freeware imitations have changed the Internet into what purists say it
was designed to be all along: an easy-to-use and open environment to
share information.

http://www.mercurycenter.com/breaking/docs/061470.htm

Criminal Law

Racial Profiling Practices at U.S. Customs Slammed
Study Finds Wide Disparities In Customs' Intrusive Searches
Washington Post

African American women returning from abroad were disproportionately
singled out for strip-searches by U.S. Customs Service inspectors at
airports, according to a congressional report scheduled for release
today. Black women were nearly twice as likely to be strip-searched on
suspicion of smuggling drugs as white men and women, the report by the
congressional General Accounting Office said. Moreover, black women were
three times as likely as African American men to be strip-searched.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/A44564-2000Apr9.html

Too Many Cops on the Information Superhighway?
FindLaw News

Privacy rights advocates and legal experts Thursday told members of a
congressional committee that the ever-widening scope of criminal
investigations into computer crimes is jeopardizing the privacy rights
of innocent people. Addressing members of a House judiciary
subcommittee, the panelists warned that as law enforcement expands its
efforts to capture computer hackers and others committing Internet
crimes, untold amounts of data are being swept up in so-called
cyber-raids.

http://news.findlaw.com/crime/s/20000407/copsinternet.html

Unusual  Legal News

Jury Seated in Obscene-Video Trial
Omaha World-Herald

Ever watch an adult video? Shop in an adult video store? Visit a Council
Bluffs sex novelty shop? Those were the questions asked of 23 potential
jurors during jury selection Tuesday in the criminal case involving the
owner of Dr. John's, an Omaha adult video and novelty store. "If we get
a juror on there that is predisposed (against the videos) . . . if we
can't identify those people and get them off the jury, we don't have a
chance to begin with," said attorney Tom Petersen, who represents
Haltom. As Petersen put it, jurors will have to view "three-and-a-half
hours of nonstop video action."

http://www.omaha.com/Omaha/OWH/StoryViewer/1,3153,326060,00.html

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