Score one for video-rental privacy.
A man who rented an Oscar-winning foreign film deemed pornographic in Oklahoma won a US$2,500 civil rights judgment Wednesday after a jury found that police violated federal law by obtaining his name from a video shop.
Also:
Melissa suspect reportedly confessed
Vodafone hunting for US partner?
MP3 gives China the willies
Mir crew prepares exit
US space plans on hold
Amazon's free singles- - - - - -
Michael Camfield, who works for the American Civil Liberties Union, filed the suit against three Oklahoma City police officers who came to his house and asked him to hand over a rented copy of the video of The Tin Drum in 1997. At the time, a state judge had ruled that the movie was pornographic, a decision later overturned in federal court. The police officers had obtained Camfield's name from a list of people who had rented the movie from a video store.
The German film, which recounts the rise and fall of the Nazis through the eyes of a child, won an Oscar for best foreign film in 1979. It contains some scenes in which the central character is sexually intimate with a young woman.
A federal jury found that the police officers violated the Federal Video Privacy Act by acquiring Camfield's name from a list of people who had rented it from local stores. But the jury rejected Camfield's claim that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures, by coming to his house and taking the tape.
- Back to topMelissa admission: The New Jersey man charged with creating the "Melissa" computer virus that snarled email systems around the country in March confessed at the time of his arrest, prosecutors said Wednesday.
"[David] Smith admitted, among other things, to writing the 'Melissa' macro virus, illegally accessing America Online for the purpose of posting the virus onto cyberspace, and destroying the personal computers he used to post Melissa," deputy attorney general Christopher Bubb, the chief prosecutor, wrote in a brief filed in state Superior Court.
Smith's defense attorney, Edward Borden Jr., was not immediately available for comment. However, in an article published in Wednesday's Asbury Park Press, Borden denied Smith made the admissions.
Smith, 31, is charged with conspiracy, theft of computer services, and interruption of public communications. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. His case is before a grand jury.
5. Back to topVodafone eyes US: Vodafone Airtouch is reportedly in talks with Bell Atlantic about creating a joint venture in the United States.
Britain's *Times* newspaper on Thursday quoted unnamed sources close to Vodafone saying the creation of a national US network was an urgent priority for Vodafone chief executive Chris Gent, and that the company viewed Bell as a suitable partner.
The paper said analysts believed the deal could involve a merger of Vodafone AirTouch's operations in the West Coast of the United States and Bell Atlantic's mobile-phone division, which covers the East Coast.
The two firms split their PrimeCo Personal Communications wireless phone joint venture earlier this month. The break came after AirTouch spurned Bell Atlantic's takeover offer and agreed to be acquired by Vodafone. The split left Vodafone without a national presence in the United States.
5\. [Back to top](#top)__Fear of MP3:__ CD counterfeiting runs rampant in China, but the music industry is talking about a new digital threat that it wants to nip in the bud.
"The old threat of piracy on the streets now rears its head on a new playing field: the Chinese Internet," said David O'Dell, who runs one of China's leading rock [Web sites](http://www.shengyin.net).
O'Dell gathered musicians, record label owners, and Internet executives in a Beijing rock club Thursday to mount an industry response to the nascent threat of piracy on the Internet through digital formats such as MP3.
China's fledgling pop-music industry has been all but crippled by counterfeiting, with more than 90 percent of CDs estimated to be counterfeit. Seminar panelist Zhang Youdai, a popular disc jockey at Beijing Music Radio, said digital piracy "does not pose a fatal threat to the Chinese recording industry yet, but based on the experience of CD piracy it will in 10 years if we don't come to grips with it."
O'Dell showed dozens of Chinese Web sites he said promoted links to pirated music, and said Internet portal services were often unaware of their role in the problem. Musicians themselves were stunned to learn how easy their works was stolen, he said.
6\. [Back to top](#top)__Ditching Mir:__ The crew on board Russia's Mir space station made last-minute preparations Thursday to end its last mission and leave the troubled craft to fly unmanned before it plunges to Earth next year.
A spokeswoman at Mission Control said the Russian-French three-man crew were readying for Saturday's departure and were making final checks of the equipment, which will keep the orbiting laboratory in space for half a year.
Many space experts mourn the end of Russia's independent space program – whose final chapter is likely in February or March 2000 when a final crew will be sent briefly to prepare to push Mir into a lower orbit and burn out in Earth's atmosphere.
Sergei Avdeyev returns to earth with the record for most time spent in space. By Saturday he will have clocked up to an overall 742 days of flight in orbit.
A space agency spokeswoman said Avdeyev and the crew has installed and tested a vital back-up navigation system designed to keep the unmanned station from crashing down to earth – a fear which troubles some astronauts familiar with the craft.
6\. [Back to top](#top)__Space station delay:__ NASA's next mission to the international space station will be delayed until next year while the space agency inspects its shuttles for faulty wiring, a NASA spokesman said Wednesday.
The space shuttle *Atlantis* had been scheduled for takeoff on 2 December on a mission to service and bring supplies to the new space outpost, a $60 billion venture by 16 nations – including the United States and Russia – that has been delayed repeatedly.
But NASA announced earlier this month that it had begun to inspect the wiring of the entire shuttle fleet after a short circuit knocked out two crucial rocket engine computers during the launch of space shuttle Columbia last month. And NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said Wednesday the inspection process was taking so long that the space agency had decided to push back Atlantis' space station trip.
The change in the Atlantis schedule is not likely to be the only one forced by the inspections. The shuttle *Endeavour*, which had been set to take off on 16 September, will be delayed until at least 10 October. But that launch date would conflict with the 13 October date on which *Discovery* was scheduled to make an emergency mission to repair the Hubble space telescope.
5\. [Back to top](#top)__Amazon's free singles:__ Warner Music is making free download tracks available on Amazon.com from artists Stereolab, The Old 97's, and The Buena Vista Social Club among others.
Warner is using the Liquid Audio format for its latest test of digital downloads. Warner, like most of the major record labels, has been slow to embrace the digital music craze as companies search for secure music formats that can minimize piracy.
Warner will release songs in September from artists that are more contemporary than much of the Net's current legal music content. Warner will also release free tracks from Kris Kristofferson, Phil Collins, Genesis, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris – current artists, but not exactly what the 15-year-olds are listening to.
*Reuters contributed to this report.*
