ChildLaw Blog

A Long Island judge has dismissed a $6 million defamation action filed by a teenager against four former classmates who set up a Facebook page on which they joked that the teen used heroin and contracted AIDS by having sex with animals in Africa.

The judge ruled that no reasonable person could believe that the allegedly defamatory statements were facts.

"A reasonable reader, given the overall context of the posts, simply would not believe that the Plaintiff contracted AIDS by having sex with a horse or a baboon or that she contracted AIDS from a male prostitute who also gave her crabs and syphilis, or that having contracted sexually transmitted diseases in such manner she morphed into the devil."

"Taken together, the statements can only be read as puerile attempts by adolescents to outdo each other."

The judge also dismissed a negligent-supervision claim against the teenagers' parents, saying that a computer does not constitute, as required by New York case law, a "dangerous instrument." "To declare a computer a dangerous instrument in the hands of teenagers in an age of ubiquitous computer ownership would create an exception that would engulf the rule against parental liability," the judge concluded.

The plaintiff in Finkel v. Dauber sought $3 million for the damage to her reputation and character and another $3 million in punitive damages.

In June 2009, a Manhattan judge granted Facebook's motion for summary judgment on the basis of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 which provides immunity to service providers for "information originating with a third-party user."

In dismissing the case, the judge found that "while the posts display an utter lack of taste and propriety, they do not constitute statements of fact. The entire context and tone of the posts constitute evidence of adolescent insecurities and indulgences, and a vulgar attempt at humor. What they do not contain are statements of fact."

This case illustrates the continuing difficulty in applying even long-established legal principles to cyberspace where hyperbole and conjecture are contagious. According to this court, the more sensational the statement, the more protection the poster will enjoy. In a world where almost anything is possible, and most of it is posted online, individuals seemingly enjoy less and less protection from even the most outrageous and sensationalistic statements.

In a recent little noticed unpublished First Circuit decision, former USSC Justice Souter held that "whatever the scope of a school’s responsibility towards its students . . . there is no apparent constitutional obligation to impose physical restraint upon teenagers not at immediate risk of harm to themselves or others."

This case was brought by mothers of teenagers who were not physically restrained by school officials from leaving their schools during instructional hours. The mothers brought action under state law as well as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and § 1988 seeking monetary and injunctive relief for violating Fourteenth Amendment due process, the mothers’ right to preserve family integrity and the children’s right to enjoy freedom from abuse and neglect.

The school system explained their policy of permissiveness by referring to a state education regulation limiting use of lawful physical restraint to instances in which children’s unfettered behavior would raise a risk of “assault or imminent, serious, physical harm” to themselves or others; absent such danger, the prevention of truancy would not be worth the burden of defending the liability claims that would doubtless eventuate.

The magistrate judge hearing the case below recognized that the schools’ refusal to confine children to school premises during school hours effectively converted the state’s compulsory attendance law into the children’s option to wander off into trouble that the parents could not effectively prevent. He suggested that the mothers consider the possibility of relief from the general regulation through Individual Educational Plans for their children as special education students.

The mothers argued that inadequate supervision in schools infringes their rights to maintain the integrity of their families under Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), cases that held it to be beyond the power of states to limit a parent’s choice to provide foreign language instruction in elementary schools or to resort to private education. The Court found, however, that these cases recognized a parent’s liberty to be free from state interference with certain education choices, not a right to require state or local government to run public schools in a way a parent might think they ought to be administered. Any actionable interference with family integrity must be “directly aimed at the parent-child relationship.” Manarite v. Springfield, 957 F.2d 953, 960 (1st Cir. 1992).

Judge Souter further found that the Supreme Court’s discussion in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189, 199-200 (1989), is on point: “[W]hen the State takes a person into its custody and holds him there against his will, the Constitution imposes upon it a corresponding duty to assume some responsibility for his safety and general well-being." According to Souter:

The situation of the children in this case is not even close to facts that would thus raise a state obligation. There is neither restraint of the child (that indeed is the very complaint), nor any practice or circumstance rendering the child unable to care for himself, nor failure to provide basic human needs of food, clothing, shelter, medical care or reasonable safety. As the Supreme Court later observed in Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 655 (1995), “we do not, of course, suggest that public schools as a general matter have such a degree of control over children as to give rise to a constitutional ‘duty to protect’” (citing DeShaney, 489 U.S. at 200).

This decision did not consider any rights parents might have under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] or other state or federal regulation. Clearly, the court might have found that a policy and practice of allowing special education students to leave with impunity might effectively deny them a free appropriate public education [FAPE]. Beyond this, however, there is no Constitutional duty for schools to keep children in the classroom, nor is there any apparent duty to insure their safety or well-being (or even notice to the parents or police) once they leave school grounds.

The case is Saez v. City of Springfield.

Almost 5 years ago, the Marsh Law Firm was instrumental in enhancing the federal civil legal rights of children who are victims of child pornography. Borrowing from intellectual property law, our firm helped draft, introduce and pass—in just seven months—a comprehensive update to a long-forgotten federal law which gives victims the right to sue anyone who produces, distributes or possess their child sex abuse images. Masha’s Law provides statutory damages of $150,000 for each violation of federal child pornography provisions and was incorporated into the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act signed by President Bush on July 27, 2006.

In 2008, Florida passed a state version of Masha's Law. Now Kansas has joined the effort by passing a state law which is modeled on the federal law we helped write.

The bill provides a recovery for actual damages of at least $150,000. In order to bring a civil action against a producer, promoter, or intentional possessor of child pornography the plaintiff must prove that while he or she was under the age of 18, he or she was the victim of an offense that resulted in a conviction, that offense was used in the production of child pornography, and the victim suffered personal or psychological injury as a result.

Civil action may be pursued through private counsel or by the Attorney General at the victim’s request. The bill also creates a three year statute of limitations.

In October 2009, the U.S. Children’s Bureau named University of Michigan Law School the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep).

The QIC-ChildRep, is a five-year, $5 million dollar project to gather, develop and communicate knowledge on child representation, promote consensus on the role of the child’s legal representative, and provide one of the first empirically-based analyses of how legal representation for the child might best be delivered.

The Center, which is run by the legendary child advocate Don Duquette, has a great website and promises to answer the following questions:

• What should be the duties and responsibilities of the child’s representative in civil child protection proceedings?
• Who should represent the child in such proceedings? A lawyer? A CASA? A social worker? A team?
• What does the child representative do that makes a difference in a child’s life?
• How can effective representation for the child be accomplished? That is, what organizational structure best delivers legal services for a child?
• By what criteria is effective child representation to be measured?
• How should the child's representative accommodate the child's wishes in setting the goals of the advocacy?

This is a serious initiative which is long overdue and which will significantly advance the representation of children in the child welfare system. I look forward to the results.

Legislators and courts have long recognized what common sense makes clear - children depicted in child abuse images[1] are harmed not only by the sexual abuse captured by the images, but also by the subsequent distribution, possession, and viewing of the images of their abuse.[2] Legislators and courts have similarly recognized the importance of awarding restitution to victims who are harmed by crime to help make them whole, and to aid in their recovery.[3] Thus, it seems a straightforward proposition that children depicted in child abuse images should be awarded restitution from their offenders, including those offenders who possess and view their abuse. In fact, this simple supposition seems to underpin the statute governing restitution in cases involving sexual exploitation.[4]

Despite the logic, justness, and legality of affording restitution to the victims in child abuse images, federal courts differ greatly in their approach to the restitution rights of these victims[5] in the context of possession cases. As discussed below, over the last year alone, courts have awarded these victims full restitution, partial restitution, di minimus restitution, or even no restitution at all. These differences in outcome can be attributed, at least in part, to varied legal interpretations of the governing restitution statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2259. This article provides a brief overview of the current state of the law, and suggests that a court-based or legislative solution is urgently needed to avoid further victimization of these victims.

According to a FOXNews.com exclusive investigation, inspired in part by this blog's April 20th post Wikipedophilia:

Wikipedia has become home base for a loose worldwide network of pedophiles who are campaigning to spin the popular online encyclopedia in their favor and are trying to lure more people into their world, an investigation by FoxNews.com confirms.

Chat room posts show a clear effort by pedophiles to use Wikipedia, which can be accessed unfiltered in public schools across the country, to further their agenda. Message board posts often include links to specific Wikipedia articles that the participants say need to be edited to "normalize" pedophile behavior in the public eye and to recruit more pedophiles into their community.

“Pedophiles have campaigned to push their point of view that 'pedophilia is OK and doesn’t hurt children' on Wikipedia,” says Xavier Von Erck, director of the online pedophile watchdog organization Perverted Justice Foundation and Wikisposure.com, its offshoot project devoted to tracking pedophiles and pedophile activism on Wikipedia. “This has been a problem since Wikipedia started.

A series of FOXNews.com exposés last month resulted in a shakeup at the top levels of Wikipedia as administrators tried to deal with the growing controversy surrounding pornographic images that appear on the online encyclopedia and its associated websites.

After much pressure from within the Wikipedia community, co-founder Jimmy Wales was forced to relinquish his top-level control over the encyclopedia's content, as well as all of its parent company's projects.

According to FOXNews.com, though he remains the chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales is no longer able to delete files, remove administrators, assign projects or edit any content. Essentially he has gone from having free reign over the content and people involved in the websites to having the same capabilities of a low-level administrator.

Insider sources and publicly available internal listserve discussions revealed that Wikimedia editors rebelled against Wales' attempts to remove pornographic images from the nonprofit's websites. Those images were the subject of heated discussion within the community since their existence was revealed by FoxNews.com on April 27.

Hundreds of listserve discussions among Wikimedia board members, administrators and editors reveal the eruption of a heated and chaotic debate over whether to delete the images, which legal analysts say may violate pornography and obscenity laws.

On May 7, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that Wales had personally deleted many of the images from Wikimedia's servers, and that he'd ordered that thousands more be purged. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages.

For more on these stories visit:

EXCLUSIVE: Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge

EXCLUSIVE: Pedophiles Find a Home on Wikipedia

ChildLaw Blog posts on Wikipedia

Almost two years after a federal lawsuit was filed to secure the civil legal justice demanded by Congress in 2006, Masha Allen's federal lawsuit was dismissed today--incredibly--for "failure to properly plead a basis for federal jurisdiction."

Despite the trenchant involvement of a reconstructed legal team consisting of much-sought after guardian ad litem Cambria County bankruptcy attorney Timothy J. Sloan (who replaced Masha's former mother Faith Allen as lead plaintiff), Georgia attorneys David S. Bills (who blogs anonymously about Masha's case at poundpuplegacy.org), William Q. Bird and Darren Summerville (who were originally hired by Faith Allen who reportedly now lives in Georgia), and Pennsylvania First Amendment attorney Thomas Vecchio (who replaced renowned Philadelphia attorney Robert N. Hunn who withdrew under protest last year), Masha "did not oppose (and consents to) dismissal [of the lawsuit] without prejudice on ground of lack of subject matter jurisdiction."

Masha, who turns 18 in August, vowed to fight on by "pursuing the claim outlined in the Amended Complaint in an alternative forum." No word yet on where her case is headed, if anywhere.

Despite the involvement of no less than 27 attorneys in the last 7 years, justice remains elusive for one of the most notorious victims of child trafficking in recent history.

Order to Show Cause
Letter Consenting to Dismissal

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit today against Pennsylvania school district for searching a student's confiscated cell phone without probable cause and punishing her for storing semi-nude pictures of herself on the device. The school subsequently turned her phone over to George Skumanick Jr., at the time the Wyoming County district attorney, who threatened to file felony child pornography charges against the girl unless she took a class on sexual violence.

The Third Circuit recently threw out the prosecutor's case.

"Students do not lose their privacy rights at the schoolhouse door," said Witold Walczak, the ACLU of Pennsylvania's Legal Director and one the student's lawyers. "School administrators have no more right to look through personal photographs stored on a student's cell phone then they have the right to rummage through her purse, read her diary and mail, or view her family photo album."

In January 2009, a teacher confiscated the cell phone of N.N., a 17-year-old senior, for using a cell phone on school grounds in violation of school policy. Later that morning, Principal Gregory Ellsworth informed N.N. that he had found "explicit" photos stored on her cell phone, which he turned over to law enforcement. He then gave her a three day out-of-school suspension, which she served. According to the student handbook, the first offense for misuse of a cell phone is a ninety-minute Saturday detention and the confiscation of the phone for the rest of the day.

The photographs, which were not visible on the screen and required multiple steps to locate, were taken on the device's built-in camera and were never circulated to other students. N.N. appeared fully covered in most of the photographs, although several showed her naked breasts and one indistinct image showed her standing upright while fully naked. The photographs were intended to be seen only by N.N.'s long-time boyfriend and herself.

"I was absolutely horrified and humiliated to learn that school officials, men in DA's office and police had seen naked pictures of me," said N.N., who graduated in 2009. "Those pictures were extremely private and not meant for anyone else's eyes. What they did is the equivalent of spying on me through my bedroom window."

A few days later, N.N. and her mother received a letter from then-District Attorney George Skumanick threatening felony child pornography charges if she did not complete a five-week re-education course on violence and victimization offered by the DA's office and the Victim's Resource Center. According to the suit, N.N. reluctantly agreed to take the course rather than face prosecution.

"Ironically N.N. was forced to take a class about victimization by the very people who were victimizing her," said Jacob C. Cohn of Cozen O'Connor, one of N.N.'s lawyers.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, charges that the search of the cell phone and the punishment for the content of the photographs violated N.N.'s rights under the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Pennsylvania constitution. It seeks to have all electronic and hard copies of the photographs destroyed.

This unusual international adoption case, which was recently decided by New York's highest court, has far-reaching implications for current and future best-practices as well as important policy implications. In L.M.B. v. E.R.J., 2010 NY Slip Op 1345; 14 N.Y.3d 100 (February 16, 2010), the New York Court of Appeals was called upon to untangle a New York adoption by ERJ (mother) and a Cambodian adoption by LMB (father). Each adoptive parent, who were never married to one another, claimed to be the child's only legal parent.

The child, Doe, was found abandoned in Cambodia and brought to New York by ERJ for medical treatment. Subsequently ERJ and her boyfriend, LMB, decided that they would both adopt Doe. Both ERJ and LMB erroneously believed that Cambodian children could not be adopted in the United States. It was decided that LMB (who because he had been born in Trinidad and could reclaim Trinidadian citizenship) would adopt Doe in Trinidad and Tobago. Once that adoption was finalized, ERJ would adopt Doe in New York.

As part of this plan, Cambodia issued a “document” to LMB in June 2004 which, according to the translation submitted by LMB, was entitled “ADOPTION CERTIFICATE” and stated that LMB “is allowed to adopt” Doe. The Trinidadian adoption plan never materialized. ERJ then decided she could adopt Doe in New York. LMB asked Cambodia to “relinquish” the permission he was given to adopt Doe and ERJ obtained a “certificate” like the one which was originally given to LMB.

In January 2006, ERJ filed a petition to adopt Doe in New York but did not give LMB notice of the adoption.This adoption was granted in June 2006. In August 2006, LMB discovered this adoption and moved to vacate. In the meantime the Cambodian government issued documents affirming ERJ's right to adopt and nullifying LMB's.

The lower court declared the New York adoption invalid because the 2004 Cambodian action was actually an adoption of Doe by LMB, not just permission to adopt. Based on the facts and expert testimony, the court agreed with LMB that he was Doe's father and that his parental rights had never been relinquished or extinguished. Therefore, ERJ could not adopt Doe in New York without notice to and consent from LMB.

On appeal, ERJ argued that New York should not give comity to the Cambodian adoption and claimed that LMB was not Doe's father under New York law. The Court of Appeals explained that foreign adoptions are generally recognized unless there are truly compelling reasons not to, like cases in which “enforcement . . . is shocking to the prevailing moral sense.” Because there were no compelling reasons not to recognize his Cambodian adoption of Doe, LMB's adoption would be recognized by New York.

Interestingly, the Court of Appeals raised an argument ERJ failed to make. In 2004, Doe and LMB were living in New York, not Cambodia, and Doe had very little, if any, prospect of ever returning to Cambodia. Thus, in 2004 New York had as much legal interest in who should adopt Doe as Cambodia. ERJ's fatal error was ignoring the premise that Cambodia's position on the status of it own citizen was at least entitled to some recognition in New York.

Once the Cambodian adoption was given effect however, LMB's subsequent surrender of his parental rights was governed by New York, not Cambodian law. Since LBM's surrender of his parental rights was improper under New York law, it was declared void. The Court held that “when New York parents have acquired, by virtue of a foreign country adoption, parental rights that are recognized in New York, those rights can no longer depend on the vagaries of a foreign country's law”.

[The court gave no weight to ERJ's “act of state” argument and rejected her “best interest of the child” argument by pointing out that the child's best interest do not “automatically” validate an “otherwise illegal adoption” and the father's rights cannot be ignored because a court thinks the child should be adopted by someone else.]

This opinion bears close reading reading because the issues are sure to appear again in different factual and legal situations. The most important principle to remember is that once a foreign adoption is finalized, the law of the state where the child resides controls all future legal decision-making about that child. Adoptive parents will not be allowed to return to the country where the adoption was originally finalized to make any changes concerning the child's custody, guardianship or legal parents. What the Court did not decide is what would happen if the original foreign decree was illegal, invalid or procured by fraud or corruption. That issue will have to wait for another day which will surely come soon.

Guest analysis by Harvey Schweitzer, Esq.

Mr. Schweitzer is a lawyer whose practice in Washington D.C. and Maryland focuses on legal matters pertaining to children and the provision of services to children including foster care, child abuse and neglect, adoption,custody and mandatory reporting. He is the co-author of Foster Care Law: A Primer. Contact him at harvey@schweitzerlaw.net or go to www.schweitzerlaw.net

Sometimes one thing leads to another and then another and then ultimately purgatory. That's exactly where Wikipedia is finding itself after a tip on ChildLaw blog led to this FoxNews.com story which led to action by Congress and now this. According to FoxNews.com:

The parent company of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is rapidly purging thousands of explicit pornographic images from its websites as it prepares to announce a new policy regarding sexually explicit content in response to reporting by FoxNews.com.

The move came as FoxNews.com was in the process of asking dozens of companies that have donated to Wikimedia Foundation -- the umbrella group behind Wikimedia Commons and its Wiki projects, including Wikipedia -- if they were aware of the extent of graphic and sexually explicit content on the sites.

Among the donors to Wikimedia Commons who were contacted by FoxNews.com were Google, Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo!, Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation, Best Buy, USA Networks and Craigslist Foundation.

These images were and in some cases still are easily accessible to anyone, including school children, many of whom receive unfiltered access to Wiki projects in schools across the country. A child doing homework research on the educational website could easily stumble upon pornographic photos — including close-ups of genitalia and people having sex and masturbating. There's even a “nude children” category.

Check out the entire late breaking story here at FoxNews.com!

A report issued yesterday by attorneys hired by the Lower Merion School District found that the collection of images stemmed not from an effort to spy on students but from "the district's failure to implement policies, procedures and recordkeeping requirements and the overzealous and questionable use of technology by IS personnel without any apparent regard for privacy considerations or sufficient consultation with administrators."

The report also criticized leaders and several members of the IS department as "not forthcoming with the Board, administrators and students about what TheftTrack could do and how they used it," citing incidents demonstrating "an unwillingness ... to let anyone outside of the IS Department know about TheftTrack's capabilities."

The report said the tracking system was intended to help recover stolen computers and the district used it successfully for that purpose. But it said the district also used the system for missing computers and for unknown purposes and left it activated for long periods in cases "in which there was no longer any possible legitimate reason" for capturing images.

The report faults administrators who had information about the program with not having appreciated the privacy concerns raised.

The most interesting part of the report confirms the allegation by student Blake Robbins and his family about alleged privacy violations over webcam images taken at home without their knowledge.

The report says Robbins turned in his laptop with a broken screen and was issued a loaner on Oct. 20, but school officials quickly moved to retrieve it due to outstanding insurance fees. So the tracking program was activated from Oct. 20 to Nov. 4 and captured 210 webcam photographs and 218 screen shots, the report said.

Although a technician confirmed on the first day of tracking that the laptop was "now currently online at home," another official in the same department instructed him to keep the tracking on and later told investigators he thought he needed authorization to terminate it, the report said.

On Oct. 30, the report said, a technician saw a computer screen shot that "included an online chat that concerned him." After consulting with a superior, he allowed school officials to look at the images.

Although the school principal said none of the images should be discussed with Robbins or his parents because they involved off-campus activities, Vice Principal Lindy Matsko decided about a week later it was "appropriate to discuss certain seemingly troubling images" with them, the report said.

In the civil lawsuit, Robbins said Matsko approached him and warned that school officials, based on webcam photos, suspected him of selling drugs. Robbins, 15, denies the drug allegation and said Matsko mistook Mike & Ike candies for illicit pills.

Robbins family attorney Mark Haltzman told reporters at the meeting that he and his clients were "thankful that we've been vindicated ... about all the misuse going on," but he added he was concerned that the full story had not yet been revealed.

The report notes Robbins "was not disciplined as a result of any images captured from his laptop."

FoxNews.com was recently informed that the day after the Wikipedophilia post appeared on this blog, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, sent a copy of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger's letter to the FBI. Rep. Steve Austria, R-Ohio, sent a copy of the same letter to the FBI on April 27. Perhaps this is the kind of bi-partisanship we've all been waiting for. Stay tuned for updates which are posted here on FoxNews.com.

An interesting side note: Wikipedia apparently got its start in the world of online pornography. According to an article on Wikipedia:

Bomis (pronounced /ˈbɒmɨs/ to rhyme with "promise") is a dot-com company founded in 1996. Its primary business is the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal. It was founded by [the current head of Wikipedia] Jimmy Wales and Tim Shell, and provided support for the free encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia.

On the Bomis.com site, Bomis creates and hosts web rings around search terms popular among male users. The rings are currently categorized broadly as "Babe", "Entertainment", "Sports", "Adult", "Science fiction", and "Other". The "Adult", "Babe", and "Entertainment" categories are the most frequently updated and the most popular. Revenue from search-related pages is generated from advertising and affiliate marketing.

Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005, offering customers access to premium, X-rated pornographic content.

Until mid-2005, Bomis also featured the Bomis Babe Report, a free blog, publishing news and reviews about celebrities, models, and the adult entertainment industry. The Babe Report prominently linked to Bomis Premium and frequently posted updates about new models joining Bomis. Bomis has also operated nekkid.info, a free repository of selected erotic photographs, and continues to host The Babe Engine, "a precision babe search engine", which indexes photos ranging from glamour photography to pornography.

Bomis is best known for having supported the creation of the free-content online encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. Bomis hosted Nupedia in 2000, and Larry Sanger was hired to manage and edit that project.

For a while, Bomis provided web servers and bandwidth for these projects, paid Sanger in his role as project editor-in-chief (until he left the projects in 2002), and owned key items such as the associated domain names. However, as the costs of Wikipedia rose with its popularity, Bomis' revenues declined as result of the dot-com-crash, a general reluctance to display advertising on the site—together with a desire from the Wikipedia community to reflect the spirit of openness and neutrality central to Wikipedia—suggested an alternative ownership model.

The Wikimedia Foundation was formally announced on June 20, 2003. All intellectual property and domain name assets were transferred or donated over to the foundation because it was registered as a non-profit organization, but the server hardware was not transferred. Bomis CEO Tim Shell became the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees. Larry Sanger had left the project by this time, but Jimmy Wales retains a role on the board of the Foundation, along with users elected from the Wikimedia community. In December 2006 Tim Shell was replaced by Jan-Bart de Vreede. The Foundation now funds the operation of Wikipedia (and its sister projects) primarily through donations from readers.

Read the full post about Bomis on Wikipedia here (as long as it lasts).