Balance Sheet

Jeff Taylor from the March 2006 issue

Assets

French Revolution

Members of the French National Assembly reverse the Culture Ministry's attempt to outlaw sharing music and movies online. Instead, they back a monthly royalty scheme of about $8.50 a month for file swapping.

Veteran Drinkers

State Rep. Jim Splaine (D-Portsmouth) wants to lower New Hampshire's drinking age for military personnel to 18. Splaine figures that if they can handle a weapon, they can handle a beer.

iEconomy

Mobile electronic gadgets fuel a tech boom from Korea to California to Switzerland. NAND flash-memory chips were a $10 billion market in 2005 and will hit $18 billion worldwide by 2008, the IT research firm Gartner Inc. estimates.

Speech Insurance

Officials in Polk County, Florida, eliminate a rule requiring anyone who wants to set up a display--often holiday-themed--outside county government offices to purchase a $500,000 liability insurance policy.

Download Defense

Patricia Santangelo, a single mom in Wappingers Falls, New York, refuses to fold when the recording industry charges that she is a music pirate. A federal judge notes the 43-year-old is "an Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely retrieve her e-mail."

Beating Diabetes

Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute find a genetic link between a high-fat diet and the onset of type 2 diabetes. A single gene in a key enzyme seems to disrupt insulin production, which suggests using that enzyme to develop a treatment for the disease.

Liabilities

Tech War