The first prosecution of Internet porn in India is pending... The controversial Children's Online Privacy Protection Act has resulted in the blocking of e-mail to kids from one hugely popular website ¾a website for children... And the FBI has fixed a software glitch which blocked legitimate gun sales for two days... The Web Roundup always spots a battle or two...
NEW DELHI - It's called the first case of its type for India, but India Times faces prosecution for showing and circulating porn online. Authorities launched the case when discovering a category which led to a page of Indian models showing nude women in allegedly obscene positions, as well as some 65 erotic stories including nude photographs. Police told Indian media these pages and others were downloaded with the assistant police commissioner observing, after which point the obscenity case was filed.
LONDON - Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends have been wildly popular with children on the Internet as well as on television and videos, since debuting as a Shining Time Station feature narrated by former Beatle Ringo Starr. But Thomas and company are now casualties of the Child Online Privacy Protection Act - the show's regular e-mail bulletins to children have been stopped by the law. Not to mention, online matchmaker Ecrush.com dropped some two thousand under-12 subscribers, and NBCi canceled pre-teen e-mail accounts because of the law, too. You see, the law means children under 12 can't open their own e-mail or other Net accounts without Mom and Dad's permission. It was supposed to be a way of blocking spam and Net porn to the kids, but observers are saying the law's having precisely the opposite effect. And Britt Allcroft, the British company which owns and produces Thomas the Tank Engine, says they lack the manpower or finances to handle obtaining parental consent for the kids who flocked to their website. Which cuts off about 40 percent of the site's 500,000 monthly hits, since that's the percentage of hits from the U.S. alone. "Congress rushed into this without considering the impact of indulging in privacy technophobia on consumers and small businesses," says Cato Institute attorney Solveig Singleton. "This will happen more and more as the Federal Trade Commission gets on the privacy bandwagon and decides to treat legitimate businesses as stalkers."
WASHINGTON - A software glitch which blocked American gun sales for over two days has been fixed by the FBI. The sales depended on background checks with the FBI's criminal history database - but the database quit working late May 11 at the FBI's Criminal Information Center in Virginia. The Brady Law requires the background checks. And the glitch cut into Saturday sales, often recorded as the busiest for gun dealers around the country, but the shutdown forced the dealers to tell customers to wait until the system revived and checks could be completed. APBNews said that when the system works, 72 percent of gun purchases are approved within thirty seconds, with 95 percent of buyers getting the word within two hours of their purchase applications.
--- Compiled By Humphrey Pennyworth
