For Tracy Anderson, Fitness Expert, Always a New Move

Erin Baiano for The New York Times

Tracy Anderson, center, teaching a fitness class at her studio in TriBeCa. Her classes and DVDs have attracted devoted followers — and, she says, mimics.

TRACY ANDERSON, the tiny blond fitness guru perhaps best known as Gwyneth Paltrow’s trainer and business partner, is as bright and sparkly as the Swarovski crystal-encrusted iPhone case she was admiring one recent Thursday.

“I love this!” she squealed, bouncing on the sofa of the Greenwich Hotel. Then she turned the case over and spied a fighting word: Soul, short for SoulCycle, a popular chain of cycling studios in New York and Los Angeles.

She looked as if she had swallowed something sour, and nearly dropped the bejeweled case. Her girlishness disappeared, and she said flatly: “I can get you better legs than them.”

Ms. Anderson, 37, claims that SoulCycle, through a former employee of hers, uses one of her inventions: a system of resistance bands that hangs from the ceiling. (A SoulCycle spokeswoman had no comment.)

The cycling studios are just one target of the combative Ms. Anderson. At least half a dozen of her former employees have released exercise DVDs or have opened their own studios — their clients include Madonna, Anne Hathaway and Kelly Ripa — many peddling workouts she said were derived in “an opportunistic way” from the intense, heart-in-throat dance routines and minimal-weight, high-repetition “muscular structure” moves Ms. Anderson has spent 14 years perfecting.

Her influence can be found in almost any gym featuring the type of jump-heavy cardio dance classes she has popularized or a version of what Ms. Anderson calls her “weird free arms” — essentially waving the arms from every conceivable angle for minutes at a time.

“It makes me sad for humanity, actually, that people would take all my hard work and then pose like they have a method that they have tried and tested,” she said of her former employees, becoming so angry she struggled for words. “They’re not even lip-syncing what I do. They’re, like, karaokeing off my songs.”

She added: “But the nice thing about it is that as a company, Gwyneth and I have been really smart like Coca-Cola and we didn’t teach any of those trainers how or why I move the way I do.”

Ms. Anderson, who was born in Indiana, studied musical theater for two years at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. She insisted she did not owe anything to Jane Fonda, the original dance aerobics queen, because Ms. Fonda was “a motivator, but she never claimed to have a method.”

Ms. Anderson described her own philosophy as “the method,” and talked passionately about the science behind it, tossing around terms like “proprioception perception,” “strength of synapses” and “muscle confusion.”

“I move across the large muscles in a way like when you were a kid you got an Indian burn, building collective strength between muscle groups,” she explained with a smile.

Ms. Anderson has not sought certification in fields like exercise physiology or teaching, she said, because, “I am so hard on myself with not deviating the amount of time that I have for research and development of the method.”

As for coming up with moves to slim problem areas where women are predisposed to store fat (“disproportionate struggle,” in Ms. Andersonspeak), she painted a vivid picture.

“I’m completely focused on how can I get forces to travel from opposing directions and end up creating a contraction in a muscle that’s going to then pull in,” she said. “And then as we lose the fat the muscular structure will be vibrating so well that it will have the connective tissues pull the skin back to it.”

Richard Cotton, an exercise physiologist and the national director of training for the American College of Sports Medicine in Indianapolis, said there is “a ton of research that disputes the idea of spot-reduction.”

“You can’t choose where the body loses fat,” he said.

Gary Diffee, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who examined some of her claims, said, “Like many things of this type, the science seems to be a mixture of true, kind of true, true but irrelevant to the point she is trying to make, and wrong.”

“The main thing is that she is getting people to move,” Dr. Diffee said.

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Majorities support some new gun laws, not bans

Although public support for “gun control” as a general concept remains well below the levels found in the 1990s, several polls in recent days have shown Americans favor some new laws.

The polling indicates some areas where President Obama’s promised push for new measures to combat gun-related violence could prevail. At the same time, the numbers also show deeply entrenched and stark partisan divides on the issue that almost certainly will complicate efforts to gain support from Republicans for new gun measures.

Controlling the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips gets consistent majority support in surveys by the Washington Post/ABC News and YouGov  that were conducted after the Newton, Conn., massacre last week. The ability to fire large numbers of bullets without reloading has factored into several mass shootings.

A ban on bullets that can penetrate bulletproof vests also gets strong public support in recent surveys. Previous polls have shown strong support for requiring background checks of all people trying to buy guns and other steps to close loopholes in the current system.

By contrast, large majorities oppose more far-reaching steps, such as a ban on private ownership of handguns.  The public remains closely divided on the issue of banning semiautomatic guns, with poll results varying in part on the wording of the question.

The surveys suggest that the outcome of the coming debate could depend heavily on whether public attention focuses on the specific proposals or on the general issue of “gun control.”

Overall, public opinion on regulating guns has shown “only modest change” since last week’s killings, according to pollsters at the Pew Research Center based on a new survey of 1,219 Americans conducted Monday through Wednesday. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

Asked whether it is “more important to control gun ownership” or “more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns,” Americans divided closely, with 49% putting a priority on gun control and 42% on protecting gun rights. That’s a shift from a 47% to 46% division just after the shooting in Aurora, Colo., in July. Neither the Aurora shooting nor the one in Tucson, Ariz., in 2011 produced a significant increase in support for controls as a general proposition.

The difficulty of moving public opinion on the issue reflects the reality that most Americans have strongly held views on the subject. Currently, that intensity leans toward the gun-control side, but only slightly, with 42% saying they feel strongly that a priority should be put on controlling gun ownership, while 37% feel strongly on the side of protecting gun rights.

In the late 1990s, about two-thirds of Americans said that controlling gun ownership was more important than protecting gun rights, but the percentage backing gun control dropped during the George W. Bush presidency, then fell sharply again when Obama was first elected.

That historical pattern reflects the stark partisan divide on the issue. Among Democrats, 72% in the new Pew survey said they put their priority on controlling gun ownership, while only 20% sided with protecting gun rights. Among Republicans, the division was the reverse, 27% to 69%. About one-third of Americans say they have a gun at home. Among Republicans, almost half say so, while among Democrats, only one-quarter do.

That partisan divide is reinforced by strong regional and racial ones. In the Northeast, residents put the priority on gun control by more than 2 to 1. In the rest of the country, the public is equally divided between the gun control and gun rights sides. Urban residents put their priority on gun control by 56% to 35%, while among rural residents the divide is almost the opposite, 39% to 52%; suburbanites are closely split. Blacks by 68% to 24% put a priority on gun control while among whites, the divide goes the other way,  42% to 51%, with support for gun ownership particularly strong among white men.

Although Obama on Wednesday suggested that parents might back gun control measures to protect children, the Pew survey showed that support for gun control is higher among non-parents, reflecting the fact that Americans younger than 30 support gun control considerably more than those ages 30 to 65. Americans older than 65 were the group that has shown the most shift in opinion this year, moving toward greater support for gun controls.

Overall, the Pew survey shows that a plurality of Americans, 48% to 37%, say that gun ownership does more to protect people from crime than it does to put people’s safety at risk.

By contrast, when asked whether allowing citizens to own assault weapons makes the country safer or more dangerous, Americans by more than 2-to-1 said more dangerous. Even those who put a priority on protecting gun rights divided evenly on the question about assault weapons, an indicator that new restrictions on at least some of those weapons could gain majority support.

ALSO: 

House Democrats push on gun control

Sen. Feinstein will not become Judiciary Committee chair

Weapon used in Mexico gunfight linked to Operation Fast and Furious

david.lauter@latimes.com

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Let's Use Patent Fees to Stop the Trolls

As mundane as it may sound, patent fees may be the simplest way to eliminate suspect software patents and stop trolls.

The USPTO’s most recent proposal to modify patent fees, likely to take effect early next year, is the first change to the agency’s fee structure since recent patent reform granted the agency power to set its own fees. However, the new fee structure will accomplish little more than lowering costs for smaller patentees and universities at the expense of larger, more sophisticated patent owners.

I’d argue that changes to patent fees could – and should – go much further. Especially because, according to the agency’s own interpretation of the law, the PTO now has “flexibility to set individual fees in a way that furthers key policy considerations.” So what could the agency accomplish using fees?

For one, we could eliminate a large portion of suits filed by trolls – especially those asserting software patents. This approach would involve only modest changes to the number and magnitude of patent renewal or “maintenance” fees.

Here’s how.

Patent trolls and software patents, often viewed as two distinct problems with the patent system, actually cause harm due to just one fundamental flaw: Patent rights all too often persist long after the useful lifetime of the inventions they were originally intended to protect.

Neither software patents nor patent trolls are “bad” per se. Some software developments are sufficiently pioneering that they probably deserve a modicum of patent protection. Likewise, trolls can in theory play a beneficial role in the innovation economy as disseminators of unappreciated technology, or as champions of wronged inventors who lack the resources to sue on their own.

The problem with trolls and software patents isn’t that they exist, but that they exist in a patent system with a twenty-year patent term.

Software and other computing-related inventions fall out of date very quickly because computing power increases exponentially – per Moore’s Law, the density of transistors on a chip doubles roughly every two years. So it doesn’t makes sense for patents covering these inventions to remain in force more than two decades after their creation. At that point, they have little value except as tools to shakedown companies making devices thousands of times more sophisticated than those on the market when the patent was filed.

Similarly, patent trolls’ benefit to society, if any, greatly diminishes with time. Trolls litigating patents just before expiration can’t credibly claim to spread awareness about useful new technology or vindicate inventors’ rights against current competitors. Whatever socially beneficial value the software patents owned by trolls had is virtually nil when asserted two decades later.

Trolls file more than 70% of all patent suits within the final three years of the patent term.

Unfortunately, according to a recent empirical study I conducted, 17 to 20 years down the road is precisely when troll-owned software patents are most often asserted.

Trolls file more than 70% of all patent suits litigated within the final three years of the asserted patent’s term of protection. And of all companies accused of infringing a patent within three years of its expiration, trolls accuse more than 83%.

In other words: Trolls and the companies that actually produce products enforce their patents at opposite ends of the patent term. In fact, trolls have a hard time even acquiring patents until their terms are more than half over; the average troll-owned patent in my study changed hands twice over a 12-year span before it was first asserted.

Moreover, aging high-tech patents are far and away trolls’ favorite weapon. Of all infringement claims filed by trolls in the last three years of the asserted patent’s term, 88% allege infringement for patents related to computers or electronics. And almost 75% of those claims target software.

Bottom line: The final few years of the patent term overwhelmingly benefit patent trolls asserting grossly outdated patents. They do not benefit product-producing companies enforcing patents covering technology currently on the market.

So why not eliminate these last few years?

A three-year term reduction would impact over 60% of infringement claims filed by trolls, while affecting just a small fraction of product-company patent claims. A large portion of late-term patent litigation filed by product-producing companies actually looks an awful lot like traditional patent trolling: Consider the software patent suits filed by struggling or bankrupt companies like Kodak and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Trolls and the companies that produce products enforce their patents at opposite ends of the patent term.

Most other late-term product company suits are filed by biotech and pharmaceutical companies. These companies could be shielded from an across-the-board term reduction by liberally applying existing provisions in the Patent Act, which permit term extensions for patents covering products that require FDA approval.

The real impediment to shortening the patent term isn’t industry opposition or even a long legislative slog – it’s that the U.S. is bound, as a member of the World Trade Organization, by an international treaty that requires a minimum of 20 years’ protection for patents. So short of additional patent reform legislation – which might draw the ire of the rest of the industrialized world – what can we do to reduce the number of patent suits enforcing exceptionally old patents?

Increase the size and number of maintenance fees. It’s a simple but effective solution.

Under the current fee regime, patent owners must pay to renew their patent three times: 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after they issue. Roughly half of all patents expire because their owner fails to pay one of these fees. Imagine how many more middling patents might expire prematurely if the PTO simply required additional fees. And since research shows that most patents wind up in the hands of trolls 12 years after issue or later, why should U.S. patent owners’ payment obligations end so early in the term?

The PTO should adopt a new fee schedule requiring annual renewal payments in the latter half of the term – better yet, increasing those fees yearly so they become more expensive as the patent ages. Many countries, including the U.K. and Canada, already do this.

This simple change would help expire many patents that otherwise wind up in the hands of trolls. At the same time, the change would allow product-producing companies with valuable patents – and thus the revenue to pay fees – to extend their rights up to twenty years from filing.

Given the enormous influence of patents on technology and business – and the complexity of the issues involved – Wired is running a special series of expert opinions representing perspectives from academia and corporations to other organizations. To help move reform efforts forward, some of these opinions propose specific Solutions to the Software Patent Problem (presented at a conference hosted by the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University). Together, these proposals will help advocates and policy makers decide what to do about software patents.

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Taylor Swift keeps Bruno Mars out of Billboard 200 top spot

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country pop star Taylor Swift held her reign at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, keeping retro-inspired R&B singer Bruno Mars‘ new album at bay.

Swift’s latest album, “Red,” released in October, held the No. 1 slot for a fifth non-consecutive week with sales of 208,000, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Mars’ second album, “Unorthodox Jukebox,” sold 192,000 copies in its opening week to take the No. 2 slot.

The album’s lead single, “Locked Out of Heaven,” stayed at the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a second week, and is the singer’s fourth chart-topping single. It also tops the Digital Songs chart this week.

Hip hop artist The Game entered the chart at No. 6 with his fifth studio album, “Jesus Piece,” selling 86,000 copies.

Four festive albums sat in the top ten this week, with Michael Buble‘s “Christmas” at No. 3, Rod Stewart‘s “Merry Christmas Baby” at No. 5, Blake Shelton‘s “Cheers, It’s Christmas” at No. 8, and Lady Antebellum‘s “On This Winter’s Night” at No. 10.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy Editing by Jill Serjeant, Gary Hill)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Army seeks death for Sgt. Robert Bales in Afghan shooting rampage

SEATTLE -- The commanders at Joint Base Lewis-McChord have decided to refer the case against Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales for a general court-martial on charges that he murdered 16 civilians in a late-night shooting rampage outside a remote Army outpost in southern Afghanistan.

Army officials also announced they would seek the death penalty against Bales, a veteran of four combat deployments who is also charged with wounding six other civilians after a night of drinking on top of steroid use at what defense lawyers say was a dysfunctional special operations outpost.

The report from investigating officer Col. Lee Deneke was not made public, but attorneys said the commanding officer’s referral matched Deneke’s own recommendation after a weeklong preliminary hearing in November, during which a parade of witnesses testified about what happened in the early morning hours of March 11 outside Camp Belambay.

DOCUMENT: Court martial statement

Bales allegedly was seen returning to the base after the shootings with his clothing, boots and weapon covered with blood; DNA evidence provided a match between that blood and blood found at one of the shooting scenes.

Additionally, Bales’ fellow soldiers testified that the 39-year-old staff sergeant as much as admitted that he had killed people that night outside of the base, though they initially didn’t believe him.

"He said he’d just been to Al-Kozai, shot some people ... shot some military-age males. And I said, "No you didn’t,' " Sgt. Jason McLaughlin testified, adding that Bales told him he was heading to the second village where attacks occurred, Najiban, and would be back at 5 a.m.

Defense lawyers say Bales clearly wasn’t in his right mind. He had not only suffered a concussive head injury in an earlier incident, but was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from several previous emotional incidents in which he had been involved -- a colleague’s legs were blown off by a homemade bomb shortly before the shootings.

In addition, they said, Bales was called to duty at the remote special operations base and found a culture of widespread alcohol use. He had, with the encouragement of special forces troops at the base, been taking steroids, which have been linked to incidents of aggression, and was also supplied with alcohol by the special forces troops.

"I think the general's decision is understandable, but totally irresponsible. I think the Army is not taking responsibility for the soldiers in general, and ... is trying to take the focus off the considerable errors they made as far as Sgt. Bales is concerned, as far as a lot of other soldiers are concerned: It's a system failure," Bales' civilian defense lawyer, John Henry Browne, told the Los Angeles Times.

"The Army is trying to deflect criticism by not taking responsibility in my view, and it's a shame," Browne said.

Bales’ wife, Kari, said her wish from the start was for her husband to obtain a fair trial, and emphasized that he must be presumed innocent until all the evidence comes out.

“I no longer know if a fair trial for Bob is possible, but it very much is my hope, and I will have faith,” she said in a statement.

“My husband is an American soldier. He is a citizen of the USA, and he is very much loved by me and by our children,” she added. “I am so happy that my children and I can visit Bob every weekend and that for a few hours, I can see and feel the love that flows between my children and their father.”

A legal dispute has delayed an official mental health evaluation for Bales, known as a sanity board. His civilian defense team is challenging standard military legal procedures in which Army prosecutors are given access to the psychiatrists’ report, even before the defense announces any plans to assert an insanity defense.

“The military system is very unique in the way they do that. That’s not the way it’s done in the civilian world. It is extremely damaging to his due process rights, and it’s a big problem,” said Emma Scanlan, civilian co-counsel for Bales.

The defense team still has not decided whether it will attempt to have Bales found not guilty by a military jury by reason of insanity -- a verdict that is almost never returned in military cases.

Instead, they may seek to raise Bales’ mental health issues as mitigation during sentencing in order to take the death penalty off the table.

But Scanlan said it may not get that far.

“The [prosecution] team has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he acted with premeditated intent,” she said. “That’s a high burden, considering the situation here.”

Military prosecutors do not comment on ongoing cases. Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield, spokesman at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, said the next step is for Bales to be arraigned on the charges. No date has been set.

ALSO:

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Kodak Sells Digital Camera Patents to Apple, Google, Other Tech Giants

A group of tech heavyweights, including Apple, Google and Facebook, have joined forces to purchase approximately 1,100 digital imaging and processing patents from Eastman Kodak for $525 million, the company announced Wednesday. Once a thriving camera and photo company, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 in early 2012, hoping to restructure.

Intellectual property aggregators Intellectual Ventures and RPX organized a consortium of 12 tech companies — Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Fujifilm, Google, HTC, Huawei, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung and Shutterfly — to make the purchase. Each company will split the $525 million cost.

The portfolio was said to be worth around $2.5 billion, but Kodak settled for the $525 million. Partially, that’s because Kodak isn’t in the position to negotiate. But it’s also because Kodak extensively licensed these patents to other companies. “That makes the portfolio far less valuable, because there’s very little exclusivity when a patent has already been licensed to someone else,” says Harvard Business School professor and former Kodak VP Willy Shih.

According to bankruptcy court documents, Kodak has already earned $3 billion from licensing its patents. Those licensing fees made up a significant part of Kodak’s revenue in the last few years.

It’s not clear who will own the patents. The 12 companies that threw their money into the pot will not directly hold the intellectual property in all likelihood. Instead, Santa Clara University law professor Brian Love says, they probably participated to prevent RPX or Intellectual Ventures from suing them in the future. “IV and RPX will likely have the patents and license them,” he says. “Going forward, neither firms will sue the companies that bought in, like Apple and Google, but IV or NPX could go after other companies they feel are infringing on these patents.”

The deal particularly benefits the companies Kodak sued over patent infringement. Existing lawsuits between Kodak and Apple, RIM, Fujifilm, HTC, Samsung and Shutterfly, are resolved under the deal.

Kodak CEO Antonio Perez counts the sale as a win. In a statement, Perez writes, “This monetization of patents is another major milestone toward successful emergence” from bankruptcy.

Despite the company’s optimistic facade, Kodak is still the loser in this deal. The once massive photo corporation has already sold off its camera and film business, leaving only its commercial printing arm. Selling a chunk of its patent portfolio is a bad omen, says Shih. “Kodak is acting out the movie Around the World in 80 Days, where they burn the furniture just to make it to the end,” he says. “But if Kodak burns everything, which is starting to look like what’s happening, there won’t be anything left.”

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Madonna leads Billboard’s top-grossing tours

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – While this year’s pop charts have been dominated by young singers, it is veteran music stars, led by Madonna, who are commanding big money in tour ticket sales, according to a new Billboard list released on Tuesday.

Madonna, 54, topped Billboard‘s list of highest-grossing live tours, earning an estimated $ 228.4 million in ticket sales from her sold-out ninth worldwide tour in support of her 12th studio album “MDNA.” The singer will wrap her tour in South America this weekend, after performing more than 80 shows across the world starting in Israel in May.

Madonna came ahead of pop star Lady Gaga, who landed at No. 6, with ticket sales of $ 124.9 million from her worldwide “Born This Way Ball” tour. Gaga, 26, is currently midway through her tour, which kicked off in South Korea in April, and will wrap in Oklahoma in March 2013.

Music publication Billboard compiled its list through estimated gross ticket sales figures from Billboard box scores, which tracks concert tours, ticket prices and sales.

The top five highest-grossing tour acts of 2012 included Bruce Springsteen, 63, and the E Street band at No. 2 with $ 199 million from 72 shows and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, 69, at No. 3 with $ 186 million.

Cirque Du Soleil‘s homage to late singer Michael Jackson in “The Immortal World Tour” ranked No. 4 with $ 147.3 million over 183 shows, and British rock band Coldplay was fifth with $ 147.2 million over 67 shows.

The only other young stars in the list of 25 top-grossing tours was Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, 18, at No. 20 with $ 30 million from 29 shows as part of his ongoing “Believe” tour, and country-pop darling Taylor Swift, 23, who raked in $ 26 million from 21 shows from her “Speak Now World Tour.”

Last year, Swift ranked No. 5 on Billboard‘s list with an estimated $ 97 million in ticket sales from her “Speak Now World Tour,” while Bieber came in at No. 15 with $ 44 million.

Swift will embark on her third worldwide concert tour in support of her studio album “Red” in March 2013.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Walsh)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Lawyer Says Ritual Circumcision Is Protected Activity

A lawyer for Orthodox Jewish groups asked a federal judge on Tuesday to throw out a New York City regulation requiring parents to sign a consent form before their infant sons undergo a form of Jewish ritual circumcision in which the circumciser uses his mouth to remove blood from the incision.

The lawyer, Shay Dvoretzky, said the practice, which is prevalent in parts of the ultra-Orthodox community, is a constitutionally protected religious activity. He said that requiring ritual circumcisers, known collectively as mohelim, to be involved in conveying the city’s perspective on the procedure would infringe upon their rights of free speech.

“That lies at the heart of First Amendment protection,” Mr. Dvoretzky said.

But a lawyer for the city argued that the regulation was necessary and that the practice most likely caused 11 herpes infections in infants between 2004 and 2011. Two of the infected babies died; at least two others suffered brain damage.

“The health department is not looking at the religion in determining what to do about this conduct,” said Michelle L. Goldberg-Cahn, a lawyer for the city. “The city is looking at the conduct.”

The Orthodox groups, including Agudath Israel of America and the Central Rabbinical Congress, sued the city in October to block the regulation, which was approved by the New York City Board of Health in September but is suspended until a ruling is issued in this case. The groups say that the procedure is safe and that the city has not definitively linked infections to the practice.

Infectious disease experts, several of whom filed briefs in support of the regulation, widely agree that the oral contact, known in Hebrew as metzitzah b’peh, creates a risk of transmission of herpes that can be deadly to infants because of their underdeveloped immune systems.

On Tuesday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, heard oral arguments in the case, one that pits the sanctity of ancient religious rituals against the rigors of both modern medicine and secular government regulation. She said her decision would come within a few weeks.

Her sharpest inquiries were directed at Mr. Dvoretzky, the lawyer for the Orthodox groups.

She raised a hypothetical situation in which a single religious group amputates left pinkie fingers at birth, and asked Mr. Dvoretzky whether the city would have the authority to regulate the activity. He said it would depend upon whether the practice caused immediate, serious harm.

Judge Buchwald also said there was a direct comparison to consent requirements placed on physicians when they perform a circumcision.

Mr. Dvoretzky called that an “apples and oranges” comparison, because a physician would not perform a metzitzah b’peh.

“Wait a second,” Judge Buchwald interrupted. “They can’t perform any circumcision without consent. It’s a surgery.”

Mr. Dvoretzky said the city should undertake a broad education campaign, to prevent all infant herpes infections.

But Judge Buchwald said such a campaign would have little impact, because the risk of infections is medically well-known.

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F.T.C. Broadens Rules for Online Privacy of Children

In a move intended to give parents greater control over data collected about their children online, federal regulators on Wednesday broadened longstanding privacy safeguards covering children’s apps and Web sites.

Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times

Senator John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, left, and Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., at a news conference announcing rules to better protect children online.

Members of the Federal Trade Commission said they had updated the provisions to keep pace with the growing use of mobile phones and tablets among children. The regulations also reflect innovations like voice recognition technology, global positioning systems and behavior-based online advertising — that is, ads tailored to an Internet user’s habits.

Regulators had not significantly changed the original rule, based on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, since its inception. That rule required operators of Web sites directed at children to notify parents and obtain their permission before collecting or sharing personal information — like first and last names, phone numbers, home addresses or e-mail addresses — from children under 13.

Legislators who enacted that law said the intent was to give parents control over entities seeking to collect information about their children so that parents could, among other things, prevent unwanted contact by strangers.

The new rule, unveiled at a news conference in Washington, significantly expands the types of companies required to obtain parental permission before knowingly collecting personal details from children, as well as the types of information that will require parental consent to collect.

Jon D. Leibowitz, the chairman of the F.T.C., described the rule revision as a major advance for children’s privacy.

“Congress enacted Coppa in the desktop era and we live in an era of smartphones and mobile marketing,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “This is a landmark update of a seminal piece of legislation.”

In an era of widespread photo sharing, video chatting and location-based apps, the revised rule makes clear that online operators must obtain parental consent before collecting certain details that could be used to identify, contact or locate a child. These include photos, videos and audio recordings as well as the location of a child’s mobile device.

While the new rule strengthens such safeguards, it could also disrupt online advertising. Web sites and online advertising networks often use persistent identification systems — like a customer code number in a cookie in a person’s browser — to collect information about a user’s online activities and tailor ads for that person.

But the new rule expands the definition of personal information to include persistent IDs — such as a customer code number, the unique serial number on a mobile phone, or the I.P. address of a browser — if they are used to show a child behavior-based ads. It also requires third parties like ad networks and social networks that know they are operating on children’s sites or apps to notify and obtain consent from parents before collecting such personal information. And it makes children’s sites or apps responsible for notifying parents about data collection by third parties integrated into their services.

Collecting data to show children contextual ads based on the content of a site or app, however, will not require parental consent.

“The only limit we place is on behavioral advertising,” Mr. Leibowitz said. “Until and unless you get parental consent, you may not track children to create massive profiles” for behavior-based ads.

Stuart P. Ingis, a lawyer representing several marketing associations, said that reputable online marketers did not knowingly profile children to show them behavior-based ads. He added that industry guidelines prohibited the practice.

He agreed with regulators that privacy protections for children online needed to keep pace with new technologies. But he said he was concerned that the restrictions on cookie-based identifiers might cause some children’s sites to reduce their use of outside services to avoid notifying parents about data collection by those services.

“The F.T.C. is saying that it is the obligation of first parties not to allow third-party ad networks or social network plug-ins on their site,” said Mr. Ingis, who represents the Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers. “There might be overreaction that would limit just general third-party collection of data, which is very useful to businesses and consumers.”

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Boehner's 'Plan B' immediately encounters opposition

House Speaker John Boehner says he is readying a backup bill aimed at averting the "fiscal cliff."

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John A. Boehner’s "Plan B" on the budget talks, bringing to a vote his proposal to extend expiring tax breaks for all but those Americans who earn more than $1 million a year, ran almost immediately into stiff resistance Tuesday.

Conservative Republicans pushed back against it, the White House swiftly rejected the approach and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) called it "dead on arrival."

Boehner's decision, shared behind closed doors during a morning meeting of rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, was an abrupt shift after the Ohio Republican and President Obama had substantially narrowed their differences in talks that both sides described as optimistic. The proposed vote could come as soon as Thursday.

By calling up the legislation for a vote, the speaker is trying to build momentum toward a resolution as talks over a broader deficit deal continue. He wants to avoid having his party be seen as causing a tax hike on most Americans in the new year, which would happen if no agreement is reached.

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"We have to stop whatever tax-rate increases we can," the speaker told his troops, according to prepared remarks supplied by a source familiar with the talk but not authorized to disclose it. "In the absence of an alternative, as of this morning, a modified Plan B is the plan. At the same time we're moving on Plan B, we're leaving the door wide open for something better."

The speaker made it clear that he is not cutting off talks with Obama as they continue to pursue a deficit-reduction package to avert the "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts in the new year. He and the president spoke by phone late Monday after a morning meeting at the White House.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney dismissed the speaker’s Plan B in a statement, saying it "can't pass the Senate and therefore will not protect middle-class families." He added that Obama "is not willing to accept a deal that doesn't ask enough of the very wealthiest in taxes and instead shifts the burden to the middle class and seniors."

Obama campaigned on extending tax breaks for household income of less than $250,000 a year, although he has sought compromise in talks this week with Boehner, indicating a willingness to raise that threshold to $400,000.

Boehner seeks to launch a legislative ping-pong game between the House and Senate over the Plan B bill. If he is able to pass the measure in the House -- which remains uncertain -- Republicans expect that the Senate, controlled by Democrats, would likely amend it to reflect Obama’s priorities on taxes and stimulus spending on long-term unemployment insurance, and send it back to the lower chamber.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the Boehner bill could not pass either chamber.

As Boehner outlined his strategy Tuesday, conservative Republicans bristled at being asked to raise the highest tax rates, now at 35%, to 39.6% for those earning more than $1 million a year. Tax rates on capital gains and dividends would also rise on those wealthy households.

"I hate it. I hate it," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), an outspoken leader of House conservatives. But he did not say he would oppose it. "I'm trying to be reasonable. I understand no one person is going to get everything they want."

Conservatives want more federal spending cuts in exchange for any new tax revenue -- but not the massive automatic spending cuts in place for early next year. Plan B would keep those cuts in place.

Freshman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) said reaction was mixed as Boehner spoke. "There will be some of us that will say no; some of us will say yes," he said. "This is a reality check, people are trying to grapple with the situation in which we sit right now."

Democrats, though, were more certain of the outcome, especially because the Boehner proposal would reduce the cost-of-living adjustment for those who receive government benefits, likely including Social Security, which would be a major concession for the Democratic Party. Obama has offered making that cut, but only in exchange for higher tax rates on households making at least $400,000 a year.

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"I don’t know what the purpose of this Plan B is," Pelosi said as she emerged from a closed-door meeting of House Democrats. "To find out if Democrats will support that? They won't."

"Speaker Boehner seems to be walking away," added Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the House Democrats' point person for discussions of the fiscal cliff. "I know he says he wants to engage in conversation, but now he's doing this unilateral course."

Boehner faces an enormous test in trying to get his Plan B out of the House with his conservative majority. He plans to offer the rank-and-file a chance to make changes to the bill.

"He's got a difficult hand to play: On the one hand, he’s got difficult negotiations, and on the other hand, he’s got a contentious conference to deal with," said freshman Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) "He understands what reality is. He understands he’s got a difficult sell ahead of him."

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