New life in the Net

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Feb 20, 2001

But the more popular American understanding, he added, is that copyright exists for a more pragmatic reason: so that creators can be paid.

It's all timing?

NEW YORK (NYT) -- For an entrepreneur, timing is everything. Unfortunately, Lawrence Kessler's timing was not ideal.

On Jan. 31, Kessler's year-old company, E.G. En Guard Cellular, based in Montreal, announced the results of a survey that indicated 41 percent of Americans were concerned about potential health risks from cell phone radiation. The same day, En Guard announced a new product: the $19.95 Deflectowave shield. It is a small metal flange the can be clipped on a cell phone's antenna "to deflect an average of 60 percent of radiation away from the cell phone during use," En Guard said.

But a week later, The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a study involving 420,000 Danish cell-phone users. It found no increase in the risk of the ailments that worry cell-phone critics: brain and nervous system cancers, leukemia or salivary gland tumors.

Although one of the study's authors acknowledged that the findings did not absolutely rule out radiation hazards from cell phones, he said that the results, taken with two recent studies in the United States, should "minimize the concern and fears that the public has with regard to the use of these phones," The Associated Press reported. Hardly the news that En Guard's Kessler wanted to hear so close to the rollout of Deflectowave.

But Kessler, in an interview, dismissed the Danish study as too "short term"; it tracked cell-phone users for three years. He also said the power levels of cell phones had increased since the study. "When we took a close look at the criteria, we couldn't draw any conclusion," said Kessler, who also runs Kaytronics, a concern that sells other companies' technical products.

The survey announced by En Guard was by International Communications Research. It was based on conversations with 1,000 adults in the United States and was commissioned by Ogilvy Public Relations, En Guard's public relations firm. Kessler has no dispute with this study. "The survey confirmed what we already knew," he said.

Tennessee reaches out

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Graceland. The Grand Ole Opry. Rock City. These bedrocks of Tennessee tourism attract millions to the state annually, but they don't always appeal to black vacationers looking for sites and sounds reflecting their own culture. The state Department of Tourism wanted to tap that niche market, so it developed an African-American Guide to Cultural and Historic Sites and a soundtrack, Tennessee Sounds Good to Me, featuring six black artists who are from or once recorded in Tennessee. Between songs by such artists as Isaac Hayes, Aretha Franklin and Albert King, popular radio personalities from Tennessee's three grand regions describe black attractions and events in their areas.

"It's the first time I've heard of something like this being done," said Chattanooga disc jockey Erick Foster, who tells listeners about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Bessie Smith Strut, an annual romp through the downtown streets of Chattanooga that honors the homegrown jazz singer and kicks off the city's Riverbend music festival. The jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues music compliments trips to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis; the Henning home of Alex Haley, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Roots; and Fisk University, one of the South's oldest black colleges and home of the famed Jubilee Singers.