Judge Blocks Law Checking Ages Of People In Sex Ads

A U.S. judge granted an injunction which stops a law that requires age verification of people in sex-related advertisements, until a lawsuit challenging the law can be heard in court.

SEATTLE -- A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Friday to block enforcement of a new Washington state law that would require classified advertising companies to verify the ages of people in sex-related advertisements.

Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the law this year to cut down on child sex trafficking. The law received unanimous approval from the Legislature and had been scheduled to take effect in June, but courts have put its implementation on hold.

The decision U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez issued Friday stops the law from taking effect until the lawsuit challenging it can be heard in court.

The website Backpage.com and a nonprofit that runs a popular archive of Internet sites asked for the preliminary injunction.

Backpage, which is owned by Village Voice Media, makes millions of dollars a year operating an online clearinghouse for escorts. The company was the main target of the new law.

The Washington law would allow for the criminal prosecution of anyone who knowingly publishes or causes the publication of sex-related ads depicting children, unless they can show they made a good-faith effort to confirm that the person advertised was not a juvenile.

Backpage and Internet Archive argue the new law violates the Communications Decency Act of 1996, as well as the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments and the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

In his ruling, Martinez found merit in some of their arguments that the state law would conflict with existing federal law. He also drew a distinction between the idea of the law and the reality of its enforcement.

"At first blush, requiring publishers to check identification before publishing an escort ad seems as commonsensical as requiring bar owners to check identification before allowing patrons to enter the door," Martinez wrote.

But he goes on to say there is a key difference between the two because one asks for identification related to conduct and the other tries to impose the rule as it relates to speech. He notes that there is no constitutional right to drink, but there is one for free speech.

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna disagreed with the ruling and promised to continue to work with lawmakers and county prosecutors on their legal options.

"Rather than fight the selling of children through responsible business practices, Backpage has chosen to fight in our courts those who battle human trafficking. While they are entitled to do that, we will do all that is within our power to see that they fail," McKenna said in a statement.

Efforts to reach Village Voice Media for comment late Friday were unsuccessful.

Democratic state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who sponsored the new law, said Martinez's ruling proves it's time for Congress to take another look at the Federal Communications Decency Act.

"I also disagree that the Constitution provides protections for speech advertising illegal activity," Kohl-Welles said in a statement. "One thing remains clear: We must continue the war against sexual exploitation of children."

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Apple Planning Huge Investment In Twitter?

Apple, which has stumbled in its efforts to get into social media, has talked with Twitter in recent months about making a strategic investment in it, according to people briefed on the matter.

While Apple has been hugely successful in selling phones and tablets, it has little traction in social networking, which has become a major engine of activity on the Web and on mobile devices. Social media are increasingly influencing how people spend their time and money -- an important consideration for Apple, which also sells applications, games, music and movies.

Read the whole story at The New York Times

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Are Apple And Twitter A Match Made In Heaven, Or A Shotgun Wedding?

Apple, Twitter may do deal where former invests in latter, according to reports.

As one of the very few big tech companies without a Twitter account, Apple may seem like an odd choice for the rumor mill to pair with Twitter.

But that's exactly what's being whispered in the tech press, and frankly, the marriage might just be fate.

Citing "people briefed on the matter" at Apple, the New York Times' Evelyn M. Rusli and Nick Bilton reported Friday that Apple is considering taking a stake in Twitter and making a strategic investment "in the hundreds of millions of dollars." The Wall Street Journal, speaking with other insiders, followed up with its own piece confirming the rumors, and adding there were talks that took place about a year ago. UPDATE: Reuters has released its own report citing its own " sources familiar with the matter" countering the reports from the Times and the Journal. Reuters' Poornima Gupta and Jonathan Weber write that Apple and Twitter are "currently not in discussions on the mobile technology giant taking a stake in the popular social networking site," adding, "It is unclear if the two companies talked about a deal in the past and at what level such discussions were held, but there are no current, formal talks between the companies on an investment or acquisition, the sources said."

So Apple and Twitter, what are we to make of your potentially pending secret engagement, if reports of a blossoming romance are accurate? Perhaps this is a match made in heaven between two like-minded partners. Or perhaps both are settling for the last firm that will have them.

First, let's try to be optimists. Perhaps Apple and Twitter are soulmates because both value sleekness and simplicity, the former with its glossy lines of iProducts and the latter with its effortless 140-character bursts of thought. They also both hold something for each other: Apple has wads of cash ($117 billion to be precise) and Twitter has social network-savvy, which Apple hasn't been able to master.

"We think of them as a company that our company looks up to," Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said of Apple in a recent interview, according to the Times. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has also been cited as a potential heir to Steve Jobs' throne. Similarly, Apple seemed more than comfortable deeply integrating Twitter into the iOS 5, an operating system of the iPhone released last year. Apple's attempts at social networking, such as Ping, a music-oriented social network Apple launched in 2010, and Find Friends, a location-based social networking service, haven't been huge hits, leaving Apple without a strong social offering.

But it could also be argued that Apple only partnered with Twitter because it couldn't come to terms on iOS 5 integration with another social network, Facebook. (Apple and Facebook kiss and made up for iOS 6, however.) And therein lies the other half of this love story: Twitter and Apple in a certain way may be the only firms left for each other to form a lasting marriage.

Consider the other big-name consumer tech brands flush with cash that Twitter could have shacked up with. Social rival Facebook is a no-go as the two have a healthy animosity for one another (shown by Twitter's latest move of killing the "Find a Friend" feature on Facebook's acquisition Instagram this week). Similarly, it butts heads with Google on its social network, Google+. And Microsoft's already wedded to a social network, have plunked down $240 million for a share in Facebook in 2007. Microsoft also purchased Skype last year, and Yammer, a social networking service for businesses, earlier this year.

And there isn't a tech company Apple hasn't made an enemy (or at least frenemy) out of. Among potential social partners, Facebook pissed off Apple for the “onerous terms" it demanded for a partnership on Ping, as AllThingsD reported Steve Jobs as saying. And Google+? Forget it. The companies compete too aggressively on smartphones and other hardware (and maybe in the future, heads-up displays and search).

But whether you believe in love at first sight or think marriages of convenience can last, Apple and Twitter together makes some degree of sense. Will they go through with investment? Only time will time.

Earlier on HuffPost:

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Microsoft's New Tablets Have Something Special

The unveiling of the Touch Cover was perhaps the most intriguing bit of the Microsoft Surface tablet event in California on Monday evening, and the single feature of the Surface that most clearly differentiates it from Apple's dominant iPad.

The Touch Cover is a QWERTY keyboard for the Surface tablet that is integrated into the back case of the tablet itself. Just three millimeters thick, you can fold the keyboard under the tablet and use it to type on your tablet; that back cover also features a "kickstand" that allows you to stand the tablet for easy use on a flat surface. The Touch Cover attaches to the tablet via a magnetic connector, which Microsoft says forms "a natural spine like you find on a book, and works as a protective cover." At the event, a Microsoft engineer said that an accelerometer is built into the keyboard that can sense when the keyboard is active and when it has been folded behind the tablet, to avoid accidental keystrokes.

The Touch Cover will come in five different colors, including hot pink, below:

The Touch Cover does not give you the click-clack of a traditional keyboard -- you have to purchase an add-on Type Cover accessory to gain that. Instead, it's pressure-sensitive, sensing when you tap on any key.

This -- a keyboard built into the back cover of the device itself -- seems to be the one feature that not only differentiates the Surface from the iPad, but from every other tablet, too. One of the main weaknesses of tablets as productivity devices is the lack of a physical keyboard; tapping away on glass is simply not as efficient nor natural. iPad users can buy Bluetooth keyboards, some of which come built into protective cases and act as stands.

With the Surface, however, you're getting a keyboard and stand built into the device itself, a much more elegant and attractive solution than what many third-party manufacturers offer for the iPad. When Microsoft pitches its new tablet to the enterprise world as a productivity device, that built-in keyboard (as well as the presence of Microsoft Office) could be a boon for the company.

You can read more about the Surface tablet -- it's not just a keyboard!

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