Month: August 2001

It’s Official — Danny Almonte Is 14

The New York Times reports that the Dominican Republic has confirmed suspicions that pitcher Danny Almonte was 14 — not 12 — when he pitched in the Little League World Series. It also turns out that Almonte is in the country illegally, since his visa expired six months ago (on that count, though, I’ll side with great pitching over the INS any day of the week).

Almonte also apparently had plenty of time to practice. Although his biography claimed he was enrolled in a South Bronx school, the school in question has no record of him ever enrolling there.

SHAC Gets Bitten by the DMCA Bug

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty‘s web site was taken off of Envirolink this week after Huntingdon Life Sciences sent a letter to Envirolink accusing the SHAC web site of being in violation of provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The DMCA is a controversial revision of copyright law designed to deal with the unique situations created by electronic media. Unfortunately, the DMCA was written largely to benefit large media corporations and is front loaded with a number of questionable requirements.

In the case of a web site such as SHAC’s, for example, as soon as Envirolink received a letter from HLS accusing the site of a copyright violation, it was legally obligated to take down the site for a minimum of 10 days, regardless of whether or not Envirolink thought HLS had a legitimate complaint. SHAC can have its site restored only after it sends a certified letter saying it is in compliance with copyright laws, but the site can’t be reinstated until at least 10 working days have passed. If Envirolink keeps the site up, it could potentially end up bearing some of the liability for any copyright infringements.

As much as I dislike SHAC, this essentially gives a broad power of prior restraint for just about anyone to take down sites with which they disagree.

For example, a few months ago I wrote about a staged picture from the VegSource.Com web site and included a copy of the picture and an extreme close-up showing it had been altered. Such use is clearly covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws.

But if VegSource wanted to they could send a letter to my Internet host alleging a copyright violation, and unless my host wants to be sued itself, it would have to take down that portion of the site for at least 10 working days.

As Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School told Salon, “It’s a ridiculous balancing act. It’s clearly Congress trying to strike a compromise: Once the cat is out of the bag on the Internet, it’s all over, on the other hand, this idea that prior restraint of speech [is OK] because someone sent a letter sounds pretty bad.”

Not that it’s easy to get too worked up about SHAC’s predicament given its propensity for advocating and using violence to achieve its means. SHAC’s minimalist web page notes that the lawsuits and other actions by HLS, Stephens, and others are having an effect on the group:

SHAC USA is in desperate need of funds to keep us operational. We are currently fighting an upwards of nine lawsuits and we can’t do it without your support. Please help us in anyway that you can!

Source:


No free speech for animal rights Web sites. Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.Com, August 31, 2001.

Animal Rights Activists Claims Parole Conditions Are Unconstitutional

Megan Lewis, one of the founders of the Texas Establishment for Animal Rights, is trying to have one of her parole conditions thrown out on the grounds that it unconstitutionally inhibits her right to free speech.

Lewis was arrested on November 27, 1998 and charged with a misdemeanor for blocking a passageway while taking part in a protest at a Nieman Marcus store. Lewis was convicted and sentenced to serve 10 days in jail and a 24-month probation.

As part of the conditions of her probation, Judge Ralph Taite ordered that Lewis may not participate in any animal rights protest for the duration of her probationary period. Lewis had been sentenced the year before to 1 day in jail after another arrest at an animal rights protest.

Lewis appealed her conviction to the 5th District Court of Appeals which upheld the judge-imposed restriction on her protesting activities, ruling that judges have wide discretion to impose reasonable rules to protect a community and attempt to rehabilitate an offender.

Sources:

Gag order. Mark Hughes, The Dallas Observer Online, August 23, 2001.

Rally will be held today for anti-fur activist who will be jailed. Rick Lannoye, Dallas Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Press Release, August 9, 2001.

You Can’t Say That on Television

There were a couple of threads at Plastic yesterday about pushing the boundaries of acceptable content on network television. This anecdote isn’t about network television, but about commercial cable channels, but it shocked me nonetheless at the time.

I was watching Gene Wilder’s movie, “Silver Streak,” on one of those cable movie channels that features commercials — I’m pretty sure it was A&E. Anyway, someone had gone through and edited out all the f- words, which didn’t surprise me because that’s pretty common. But then near the end of the movie they did not edit out Patrick McGoohan calling Richard Pryor’s character the n- word.

That really floored me.

Seriously Ill for Medical Research Announces Its Mad Animal Rights Awards Winners

The Great Britain-based Seriously Ill for Medical Research recently released a list of winners of its Mad Animal Rights Awards highlighting “some of the lunatic excesses of the animal rights and antivivisection movement.” Even if they restricted themselves to the previous year, they must have had an overwhelming number of lunatic moments to cull down to just 13 awards.

Some of the highlights included the award for the Best Conspiracy Theory which went to the British Anti Vivisection Association for its claim that it possesses information that could “save the lives of countless human victims of today’s vivisection-based medicine and research; information which is unfavourable to the multi-billion pound/dollar pharmaceutical/ vivisection industry, and which we believe is, for whatever reason, being deliberately withheld by the BBC.”

Read the full list at http://www.simr.org.uk/pages/news/08-2001/index.html

Source:

Mad Animal Rights Awards highlight loony antics. Seriously Ill for Medical Research, Press Release, August 29, 2001.

It Was Only A Matter of Time — PETA's Latest Billboard Exploiting Shark Tragedy

Back in July, I noted that it was odd that animal rights activists had not come out to defend the shark who attacked and almost killed Jessie Arbogast. Apparently People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was just temporarily distracted, because this month they unveiled a new billboard wit the tagline, “Would you give your right arm to know why sharks attack? Could it be revenge?”

On its web site, PETA likens the pain and suffering endured by Arbogast after the attack to what sharks experience when fishers catch them. According to PETA,

The recent injuries suffered by shark attack victims offer us a glimpse into the terrifying experience these fish endure when they are hauled out of their environment only to be pitch-forked back into the water after their fins have been sliced off. While their fins are made into “delicacies” such as shark-fin soup, the sharks either suffocate or slowly bleed to death.

PETA says that readers can help sharks avoid this fate by going vegetarian, but conveniently forgets to mention that shark finning is already effectively illegal in the territorial waters of the United States thanks to a law signed by Bill Clinton in December 2000. Australia also banned shark finning last year.

Dan Shannon, the coordinator of PETA’s anti-fishing campaign, told The Sun Herald that the animal rights group intends to “capitalizes on a news story, which is current right now, and that is Jessie Arbogast.”

Ironically Shannon added that “obviously our prayers are with him [Arbogast],” but if PETA had its way many of the cutting edge techniques used to keep Arbogast alive and treat his injuries would have been impossible since they were pioneered with animal research.

The microsurgery techniques used to try to reattach Arbogast’s right arm, for example, would have been all but impossible to develop without extensive development and testing with animals — exactly the sort of research that PETA regularly criticizes the medical research community for conducting.

Sources:

Shark Finning Banned in U.S. Waters. Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service, December 27, 2000.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back into the Water. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, web page.

PETA capitalizing on Jessie’s attack. Reni Winter, The Sun Herald, August 30, 2001.