Category Archives: Law

ABCDownloaders: A Survey, of sorts

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A comment on my Hindi film music post from Kush Tandon earlier in the week got me thinking:

Where do you buy India/ Bollywood music in electronic from? I have browsed Rhapsody, they seem decent. I could not find much on iTunes. Is there some other place too?

Or is it all pirated and/ or through buddies?

No one responded to the comment at the time — is it because everyone is in fact downloading pirated desi music and films over the internet, and they’re not sure they should admit it?

There are a number of good explanations for why downloading is popular. First, not everyone lives near an Indo-Pak grocery/music store, and a lot of Desi stores aren’t very serious about getting current music, or a broad range of it. Second, so much of the music is kind of crappy and derivative to begin with (Hindi film producers often borrow bass-lines and samples from western or Arabic pop songs), so why worry about making sure the artist is adequately paid for his or her work?

Third, there’s never been any attempt from Indian record and film companies to crack down on downloads of their stuff in the diaspora. Grocery/music/video stores that sell pirated material are often raided, but there’s no desi equivalent of the RIAA or MPAA suing online pirates, or shutting down BitTorrent/filesharing sites. (Note: Kazaa just settled with American record companies for $100 million.)

And finally, there’s no desi equivalent of Itunes, where you can legally buy MP3 singles from CDs and be assured that your money is going to the label and the artist who made the music (any entrepeneurs out there? go for it, buddy).

What are your thoughts on piracy? Do you yourself download pirated music (note: if you normally use your real name in comments, here I would recommend an alias)? What is your “piracy to legal consumption” ratio? Would you spend $1.00 a song if a desi version of Itunes were available? Continue reading →

She’s Better Off Without Him

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Sue THIS.JPG

Kenyandesi posted this story on the News tab yesterday and then Ruchira kindly reminded me of it via email today, (Thanks, ladies!) so I thought I should probably blog about the latest bit of stupidity regarding arranged marriages:

Citing the potential bride’s protruding teeth, bad complexion and poor English, a family in Massachusetts called off an arranged marriage and filed a lawsuit for damages.
The Hindu family, residing in Belchertown, Mass., had agreed to an arrangement proposed by Hindu friends in Maryland to marry their niece, who lives in India, the Springfield Republican newspaper reported.
But the father of the groom-to-be, Vijai B. Pandey, 60, filed suit after family members saw the selected bride in New Delhi last August. The Pandeys, according to the lawsuit, were “extremely shocked to find … she was ugly … with protruded bad teeth, and couldn’t speak English to hold a conversation.” The woman’s complexion also was cited. [linkage]

Continue reading →

It’s up to you, New York New York (updated)

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There is only one thing of which I am a rabid fan and that is my home city, my ancestral homestead, New York New York. This is where my heart is (although I did leave a piece in San Francisco). It is the place that I feel safest post 9/11, safest from both terrorists and violent bigots, despite the fact that both have been active there. What can I say? It’s home.

Not only is it home, but New York is what I think of when I think of America. In a freudian slip, the other day I said “when I’m in America next” when what I meant was “when I’m in New York next,” particularly ironic since I am currently based in the midwest. And why not? New York was America’s first campital and 40% of Americans are descended from at least one person who came through Ellis Island. Growing up, if somebody told me to “Go back where I came from” I would reply “After you!” We’re all immigrants here.

This is why these two news stories from this month have been sitting in my craw, and I’ve put off posting them. In the first week of June, Assemblyman Hikind introduced legislation that he had been promising for some time, legislation that would allow:

law enforcement officials to “consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors that could be used in identifying persons who can be initially stopped, questioned, frisked and/or searched.” [Link]

Hikind is very clear about who he wants stopped — brown people:

“The individuals involved look basically like this,” Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) said … brandishing a printout of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists – all with Arabic names, most with facial hair, some wearing turbans.

“Why should a policeman have to think twice before examining people of a particular group?” Hikind asked. “They all look a certain way.” [Link]

[Hikind’s website shows no reaction to recent accusation that seven black men may have plotted to blow up the Sears Tower, nor to the fact that half the London bombers were black, nor to various reports from the US government about SouthEastAsian plots.] Continue reading →

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Hamdan, Katyal, and Swift beat Rumsfeld

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As we have blogged about several times before, The Supreme Court has been considering the case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld for most of this year. Today the court handed down a 5-3 decision (Chief Justice Roberts had to recuse himself) in favor of Hamdan. It was also a victory for his two lawyers, Indian American attorney Neal Katyal, and Cmdr. Charles Swift. It has been the most awaited decision of the year.

A great victory…at least for now

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.

In a 5-to-3 ruling, the justices also rejected an effort by Congress to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And the court found that the plaintiff in the case, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, could not be tried on the conspiracy charge lodged against him because international military law requires that prosecutions focus on specific acts, not broad conspiracy charges. [Link]

The Court split along idealogical lines and Roberts had to recuse himself because The Court had overturned his ruling on this case when he was a still a lower court judge. Thomas hasn’t been this unhappy since the Coke incident:

Justice Thomas took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench, the first time he has done so in his 15 years on the court. He said that the ruling would “sorely hamper the president’s ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy…” [Link]

Hamdan’s other attorney, a JAG officer, issued a statement after the ruling:

Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Navy lawyer assigned by the military to represent Mr. Hamdan, said at a televised news conference held outside the Supreme Court that the logical next step would be for Mr. Hamdan to be tried either by a traditional military court martial, as provided for under the Geneva Convention, or by a federal court.

He called today’s ruling “a return to our fundamental values.”

“That return marks a high-water point,” Commander Swift said. “It shows that we can’t be scared out of who [we] are, and that’s a victory, folks…” [Link]

Continue reading →

Posted in Law

The Freedom To Write

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He may be the “muslim Martin Luther” but author and activist Tariq Ramadan has been the object of controversy in the post 9-11 climate. In 2004, his visa was revoked by the department of homeland security because of the fear that he would use his

“position of prominence…to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”

Despite all the suspicion, most evidence pointed to Ramadan being a scholar, not a terrorist. Furthermore, Ramadan is a Swiss citizen, and taught all over Europe, including at Oxford, with no mishaps or accidental bombings. So why the stall on the visa? Obviously, the feds didn’t enjoy Ramadan’s vocal criticism of the war against terrorism.

Recently, however, federal Judge Paul A. Crotty ordered the government to stop stalling on Ramadan’s visa for teaching at the University of Notre Dame. I went to school with Judge Crotty’s daughter and vaguely remember hearing him speak at a conference, but my respect for him doubled with this decision, but he is clearly not immune from the dreaded Legalese Virus.

Allowing the government to wait for ‘possible future discovery of statementsÂ’ would mean that the government could delay final adjudication indefinitely, evading constitutional review by its own failure to render a decision on RamadanÂ’s application. The Court will not allow this…

crikey. basically, the decision also slaps the knuckles of the DHS for assuming that there would be no judicial review of the visa denial. translate, if you will:

While the Executive may exclude an alien for almost any reason, it cannot do so solely because the Executive disagrees with the content of the alienÂ’s speech and therefore wants to prevent the alien from sharing this speech with a willing American audience.

Take that, Patriot Act! And Professor–welcome to Indiana. Enjoy the football.

More about the decision can be read at PEN American Center, an organization which works to preserve the freedom to write and be read all over the world. For the hardy, here is Judge Crotty’s full decision in its technical, DHS-bashing splendor.

Continue reading →

Remember the Alamo!

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Alamo Rent A Car, one of the largest rental car agencies in the United States, recently got smacked down for blatant anti-Muslim discrimination [via DNSI]. In essence, Alamo tried to claim that it was OK to discriminate on the basis of religion to pander to the anti-Muslim bigotry of post 9-11 customers. This case was so clear cut an example of discrimination that the court didn’t even put the case to the jury.

Alamo meets its waterloo pandering to predjudice

Bilan Nur was hired by Alamo in 1999. With Alamo’s permission, she wore a head scarf during Ramadan of 1999 and 2000. However, after September 11th, Alamo said that wearing a scarf was against their dress code. Nur even offered to wear an Alamo scarf, but that that compromise was refused. In the end, she was fired.

According to the EEOC, here’s how the law works:

… the law allows employers to avoid accommodating [religious] requests if they can show undue hardship. And that has been defined in law to include financial considerations other than insignificant amounts. But … a company that argues it will lose customers because of its workers’ religious garb will lose in court — even if it could conceivably show some monetary harm ….the exception in the law does not apply to the discriminatory preferences of customers. [Link]

In this case:

the company’s regional manager admitted under questioning that the only hardship Alamo might suffer is the image that the firm has with customers. [Link]

And therefore,

The judge rejected a series of arguments by the company, including its contention that allowing her to wear the scarf — a clear sign of her religion in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — would cause the firm undue hardship. [Link]

What appals me about this case is that

Alamo disciplined, suspended and terminated her employment following consultation with regional level human resources officials and in-house counsel. [Link]

This was not some irrational gut decision by a low level manager acting alone. This was a corporate decision – they seem to have felt a need to pander and furthermore, they seem to have believed that the courts would back their bigotry up. I’m glad to see that they were wrong, at least on the second point.

Continue reading →

Terror in the GTA (Updated)

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I woke up on Saturday morning, rolled out of bed and made a cuppa tea. “Terror plot near Toronto”, screamed my first email of the day and I almost choked on my chai masala (thanks, Abhi!). My blood pressure grew worse as I scoured the web for more and found only speculation, fabricated tie ins with Al Qaeda and fictitious “targets”. My five simple ‘W’s remained unanswered. Three days later a story has finally emerged in bits and pieces.

A report by the Toronto Star says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service began monitoring internet sites, which the suspects allegedly used, and in 2004 brought the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in on the case to facilitate a criminal investigation. Toronto mayor David Miller was informed of the investigation this past winter due to growing concerns about the groupÂ’s activity. Upon learning of their plot to build a bomb using ammonium nitrate, investigators intercepted the delivery of three tons of fertilizer to certain group members in a massive sting operation. There have also been reports of a connection between the Toronto group and two U.S. citizens, one was indicted while the other was arrested on terror charges earlier this year.

Shortly after the operation, on Friday night, RCMP officers arrested 17 Canadian residents on terror-related charges in a raid on their homes. Many of these suspects are long-time Canadian residents, five of them are teens under 18 years of age while the oldest two in the group are 30 and 43 years of age.

Details of the suspects are being revealed slowly as trusty journos bang on doors and beat on windows to answer that one as-yet elusive ‘W’. Who? Continue reading →

A bunch of lawyers in ATL-NASABA 2006

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It is time once again for the annual North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA) conference. This year it is being held in Atlanta on the June 16th weekend. I have attended this worthwhile conference the past two years, 2004 in Los Angeles and 2005 in Washington D.C. No, I am not a lawyer just a lawyer groupie (although I pass myself off as a tort lawyer when mingling amongst their kind). In addition to getting to attend fantastic seminars, NASABA is also a great place to flirt with federal clerks as well as meet desi attorneys who will one day run for office. Just read my recap from last year. Unfortunately, despite their gracious invitation, I won’t be able to make it down to Atlanta this year, but all you lawyers (and lawyer groupies) should:

More than 400 South Asian judges, attorneys and law students will gather in Atlanta for the third annual national convention of the North American South Asian Bar Association (NASABA), June 16-18, marking a year of progress for the South Asian legal community.

Achievements in the U.S. and Canada to be acknowledged at the conference include high-profile South Asian legal appointments, diversity strides and greater representation of South Asian concerns in business, entertainment and education. Expert speakers will cover more than a dozen topics at this year’s conference, “Networking to Influence, Influencing the Network: South Asian Lawyers Changing the Flow of the Mainstream.”

Seminars, workshops and networking events will provide thought-provoking and productive sessions for attendees to review the year’s significant strides and establish new objectives. Representing more than 5,000 South Asian American attorneys, this year’s NASABA convention is expected to be larger than previous gatherings. The Convention, for one memorable weekend, will bring together attorneys from firms, large and small, from small private companies to large public companies, like CompuCredit Corporation, a convention-level sponsor, from the public and private interest sectors, from all branches of government, and from the world of academia.

The keynote this year will be given by Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal (see previous SM posts 1,2,3,4). Here is a schedule which includes a list of all the great seminar panelists they have coming out. Continue reading →

The taming of Diego Garcia

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“outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards.”- Sir Sydney Kentridge QC

A British court has just issued a decision that has significant implications for both the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia and for the U.S. military:

In a decision that could have ramifications for the huge US airbase on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, a British high court ruled earlier this month that attempts by the British government to keep the former residents of the Chagos islands from returning to the islands (which include Diego Garcia), even after they had won a court ruling in 2000 to do so, were “outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards.”

The British government expelled the Chagossians, the original inhabitants of the islands, some 40 years ago so the US could build the airbase at Diego Garcia, but a British court ruled in 2000 that the islanders had a right to return to their home. After the decision, then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the British government would not appeal the ruling.

But under pressure from the US, London changed directions in 2004, using what was called “Royal Perogative” to overrule the original decision. Government lawyers had argued that in a territory like Diego Garcia, the Queen (and her ministers) have unlimited power and can use Royal Perogative powers in these territories, despite the fact that she lost the right to use such powers in Britain in the 17th century. [Link]

NPR’s Morning Edition also featured a story about this on Tuesday morning. Roughly 2000 people were forced to leave Diego Garcia at the hands of the British in the 1960s. Domestic animals were gassed and most inhabitants were relocated to slums in the nation of Mauritius. The expulsion by the British involved a deal that would lease the island to the U.S. who needed it as a strategic base during the Cold War (good place for long-range bombers to take off from). The trade? The U.S. gave the Brits the Polaris missile system. About 2000 U.S. military personnel now live there. Ironic when you consider the number of people forced to leave was almost exactly the same. Continue reading →

They tapped my cell and the phone in the basement

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As most of you surely know, USA TODAY broke the story yesterday that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been sifting through all of our phone records in order to see if they can establish “patterns” of terrorist activity. This post serves as a follow-up to my post last December.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews…

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added. [Link]

The ACLU, which defends our civil liberties, was not happy:

“Both the attorney general and the president have lied to the American people about the scope and nature of the NSA’s program,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s clearly not focused on international calls and clearly not just focused on terrorists. . . . It’s like adding more hay on the haystack to find that one needle.” [Link]

Oh, and by the way, did you guys know:

One government lawyer who has participated in negotiations with telecommunications providers said the Bush administration has argued that a company can turn over its entire database of customer records — and even the stored content of calls and e-mails — because customers “have consented to that” when they establish accounts. The fine print of many telephone and Internet service contracts includes catchall provisions, the lawyer said, authorizing the company to disclose such records to protect public safety or national security, or in compliance with a lawful government request. [Link]

I for one defend President Bush’s data mining program wholeheartedly. A person who cares about and is entrusted to maintain the security and success of ANY institution the way George W. Bush obviously cares for the United States of America, is expected, nay…duty-bound I should say, to keep track of their “organization.” If you guys disagree with this view then you obviously don’t understand the fact that with great power comes great responsibility.

My tremendous sense of responsibility is the very reason that I have been data mining and tapping the telephone calls of my fellow-bloggers here in our North Dakota headquarters for the past two years. Let me tell you a bit of what I’ve learned from this patriotic tool. Continue reading →