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Newsroom/World View

NEWSROOM for July 28, 2000

Aired July 28, 2000 - 4:30 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Seen in classrooms the world over, this is CNN NEWSROOM.

RUDI BAKHTIAR, CO-HOST: NEWSROOM surfs its way into Friday. Glad you're with us. I'm Rudi Bakhtiar.

ANDY JORDAN, CO-HOST: I'm Andy Jordan. Today, we're covering all things cyber. Here's a preview.

No, no, Napster. Will a federal court order spell the end for the music downloading service?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will keep fighting for Napster and for your right to share music over the Internet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAKHTIAR: Moving on, we download "Edit Desk" to find out who's tracking your trail online.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANN KELLAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you find that they do that? Are they trying to find out who you are?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, very much. I mean, that's sort of the trend in the industry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JORDAN: Next up, "Worldview" surfs down the Great White Way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIELLE ROMAINE, DANCER: One of these days, a director/choreographer is going to look at me and say, that's what I've been looking for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAKHTIAR: Finally, our Worldwide Web weaves its way into "Chronicle," where we learn there's a spirit of giving on the Internet.

JORDAN: Napster says it's not going down without a fight. Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the online music-swapping service shut down for copyright infringement. The judge's injunction would silence most of Napster's free music files by the weekend. Lawyers for Napster have filed an appeal asking for an emergency stay to keep Napster online pending a trial. The lawsuit against Napster was filed by the Recording Industry Association of America. Time Warner, CNN's parent company, is a member of that group.

Rick Lockridge has a closer look at the popularity of Napster.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICK LOCKRIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Even if they don't have a stick of decent furniture in the place, you can always count on college students to have a loud stereo wailing away somewhere. Well, these days, they still have the loud music, but now it's stored on their PCs in digital music files called MP3s.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This machine is playing MP3s from another machine.

LOCKRIDGE: When we last visited the guys in this apartment near the University of Georgia, they had wired five computers together and had hooked them up to the school's super-fast Internet connection. And they were positively gorging themselves on downloaded music.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Seven gigs of songs, 2400 songs.

LOCKRIDGE (on camera): And that's what Napster does for you. It makes it easy for you to get music without paying for it, and also to share your music with other people you will never meet or even talk to. The Napster software is free. After you install it, it'll ask you to promise that you won't download any copyrighted music. The number of users who actually keep this promise would all fit into Sammy Hagar's limousine.

(voice-over): Hundreds of thousands of people are tapped into Napster at any one time, but some colleges have banned the software because it's a drain on bandwidth, and maybe because the recording industry considers Napster to be the tool of choice for music thieves. But how many Napster users are actually feeling any pangs of conscience?

SCOTT ROSENBERG, MANAGING EDITOR, SALON.COM: Like, say, the 55- mile-an-hour speed limit where large numbers of people have just decided that, you know what, this law doesn't apply, or I don't care about this law, or I'm not going to worry about it, this is too much fun.

LOCKRIDGE: Rick Lockridge, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JORDAN: Well, now that the shutdown of Napster appears imminent, users have been flocking to the site to get their free music fix before the weekend. The federal judge who heard the case says Napster should have policed its site for piracy but instead chose to look the other way.

Casey Wian now on Napster's last-ditch effort to stay in business.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fans rushed to download digital music before Napster's entire service is effectively shut down.

NITSAN HARGIL, INTERNET ANALYST, KAUFFMAN BROTHERS: They are effectively shut down because they'll have very few songs to offer once they take out the copyrighted ones.

WIAN: Meanwhile, Napster attorneys appealed a stunning ruling by federal Judge Marilyn Patel.

HANK BARRY, CEO, NAPSTER: You know what the judge ruled is that one-to-one sharing among individuals, non-commercially, with no thought of any kind of return, is illegal, and we just disagree with her.

WIAN: The federal appeals court is expected to decide if it will grant a stay. That's not likely, says an attorney for artists Dr. Dre and Metallica, who are also suing Napster.

HOWARD KING, MUSICIANS' ATTORNEY: Judge Patel is a very good judge and she issued an extremely well-reasoned opinion yesterday. And she has a very good history of not being reversed on appeal. But if I were Napster, given what's at stake, I would appeal too. I think it's an important issue.

WIAN: It's also an important issue for record companies, who claim 14,000 recordings, most of them copyrighted, are downloaded using Napster's service every minute.

WALTER LEAPHART, PRES., RAPSTATION.COM: And this is, I think, more of a bigger issue of control of the avenues of distribution that the majority of the major four record companies don't control. And so what they're crying now is foul because, basically, the public was able to get hold of the technology before the record companies did, thus controlling -- sharing and leveling the playing field on the avenues of distribution for music product.

WIAN: According to the results of a new poll of home Internet users, reversing that will be difficult for record companies, which include Warner Brothers, owned by CNN parent Time Warner.

(on camera): "PC Data Online" found that only 16 percent of those it surveyed agreed with the record industry's position that services such as Napster should be shut down. Another 25 percent said they would continue to trade music online even if courts determined it's illegal piracy. Casey Wian, CNN Financial News, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BAKHTIAR: In the headlines today, new clues in the investigation of Tuesday's crash of an Air France Concorde. The supersonic jet was en route to New York from Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris when it plowed into a hotel complex just minutes into its flight. French investigators have released an initial report. They say flight recorders show that the Concorde had problems with two of its four engines.

First, the pilot reported engine No. 2 had failed. And, according to the report, the crew began experiencing problems with engine No. 1. The pilot also told the control tower he was unable to retract the landing gear. Tire parts have been found on the runway, which may suggest a blown tire contributed to the accident. Investigators say the control tower had alerted the cockpit to the flames burning in the rear of the plane during take off, but the plane was traveling too fast for the crew to abort the flight. The crash killed all 109 people on board and four others on the ground.

This is the first time a Concorde has crashed. There are now 13 Concordes left.

We saw in our top story how innovations on the Internet are prompting U.S. courts to make unprecedented decisions. The television and the VCR could be said to have caused similar ripples when they were introduced. They all signal advances that make this era what history books could refer to as a technological age.

Some other technological revolutions from the past: the printing press let information and knowledge become mass marketed. Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries went through an industrial revolution with advances in agricultural and manufacturing tools. As the printing press changed access to knowledge, the Internet is changing rules about intellectual property and privacy rights.

Ann Kellan looks at how some advertisers are keeping track of everywhere you go on the Internet and how they're using that information.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLAN (voice-over): How important is it to keep personal information and interests personal? How much of that do you give away on the Internet without knowing it? Almost every time you surf the Internet, you're being tracked. It's not illegal and worth billions to Web advertisers striving to get to know you, your likes and dislikes.

How do advertisers know? Buried in these pages are computer codes to track you: some called clear GIFs, pings, or Web bugs. They count the number of visitors to a site, letting companies know how successful a particular advertising campaign is. Web bugs can even alert the sender when you've opened an e-mail ad. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So the Web bugs are kind of right in here on the screen. You can't see them, but this is where they're at, right in here.

KELLAN (on camera): And the fact that you can highlight something means that there's something there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right, yes.

KELLAN (voice-over): Other codes tag your computer with an ID number, or cookie, that follow you within a site or from site to site if the same advertising company represents both sites. Engage is one of about a dozen Web advertising companies that represents hundreds of sites and creates a personality profile based on where you browse.

DANIEL JAYE, CHIEF TECH. OFFICER, ENGAGE: One benefit is that you're going to see ads and offers that are more relevant to you.

KELLAN: At Engage, it's a policy not to associate a name or face with a cookie or a ping. Other companies make it their business to find out precisely who you are.

RICHARD SMITH, INTERNET CONSULTANT: If you register with a number of a different ad network companies, say, for a contest -- there's a number of different contest sites -- then the ad network company can know who you are, and they're then in a position to, you know, in essence watch exactly where you go on the Web and match that up with your identity.

KELLAN: And in an industry where technology moves faster than regulations, that trend can result in an invasion of privacy.

ROBERT PITOFSKY, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION: Technology changes so rapidly that you see new opportunities for exploitation of people occurring much more rapidly than you would in the off-line marketplace.

KELLAN: Any time you give out your name or address at any Web site, you could be giving information to a Web ad company like DoubleClick. And even though some companies claim not to track you at personal finance or health sites, we did find cookies at medication sites. And there's nothing illegal about it.

At this Johnson & Johnson site for its anemia drug, not only did we find a cookie tagging and tracking visitors. There was a survey at the site asking if a person was being treated for AIDS. Procter & Gamble and DoubleClick chose not to comment on the cookies and Web bugs we found.

Johnson & Johnson issued a statement saying: "No personally identifiable information is collected without a person's knowledge or consent. Tags (cookies and Web bugs) provide account of how many times a page is opened to calculate how much is owed to advertising vendors."

You'll have to trust them on that because, according to the Federal Trade Commission, you really have no way of knowing or controlling what companies do with the information they collect.

Ann Kellan, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JORDAN: In "Worldview," we take you to meet Broadway dancers. It might seem like a career filled with glamour, but we'll take you center stage and behind the scenes to look at both the success and the setbacks. In the beginning, there's plenty of hardship and faith can be tough to sustain. Our report takes us to the United States.

BAKHTIAR: Today we head for the Great White Way. That's the nickname for New York City's theater district, famed for its dazzling electric lights and signs. We take you to Broadway, known as the world's longest street. It runs 150 miles or 241 kilometers from lower Manhattan to Albany. But Broadway is best known for its plays and musicals, its actors and dancers.

Today, we take you behind the scenes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT WISE, DANCER: My name is Scott Wise and I'm presently dancing in "Fosse."

I was in "A Chorus Line," "Cats," "Song and Dance," "Guys and Dolls," "Damn Yankees," "Victor/Victoria," and I won the Tony award for "Jerome Robbins' Broadway." It's all kind of built to me being this, I guess, this star.

SERENA SOFFER, DANCER: I'm Serena Soffer and I'm in the ensemble in "Footloose." I was 3 years old when I saw my first Broadway show, and I always wanted to be on Broadway. There's so many special dancers out there, I don't get caught up in that head trip of having to be a star dancer or anything like that.

ROMAINE: I'm Danielle Romaine (ph) and I'm 19, and I came to New York almost a year ago.

The first three months were awful. The first three months here it was just -- there was no way I was going to turn around and go back home, but I would call my parents crying and be like, oh, my gosh, it's so lonely here. One of these days a director/choreographer is going to look at me and say, that's what I've been looking for. That's the dancer I want. It hasn't happened yet, but I have faith that it will.

WISE: It was my mother's idea. Anytime we'd go to a movie theater -- that was back when they had lobbies, you know, big lobbies -- my mother would always make us do a string of back handsprings, because our living room was so small you couldn't do more than two.

SOFFER: I was 3 years old and my mom brought me to Miss Gertrude's School of Dance. And that's where it all started. My mom was an acrobat and she performed with the Circus Krona (ph) in Berlin, Germany. Her specialty was folding in half. I used to come home from my classes and she would, like, point and flex my feet, stretch my legs over my head.

ROMAINE: I started late. I started when I was about 13. That was when I had my first ballet class. I always felt inadequate. I didn't feel as skinny as the other girls. And so then you start freaking out because, oh, God, I'm 14. I'm 14 and I'm fat, you know? How am I going to make it? And so then I kind of put the pressure on myself to just start losing weight. And so since there was already nothing to lose, I did become sick.

If I wouldn't have gotten over that, that sickness, I never would have made it to New York City.

WISE: I went there with $300, to New York. What was I thinking? I had no idea. I had never seen a Broadway show. I had been in New York six months and went to "A Chorus Line," my first musical. I sat way over on the side in the, you know, the cheap seats, and I had never seen anything like that in my life.

SINGERS: One, singular sensation, every little step she takes.

WISE: The people on that stage, they were like miracles to me. I had never seen anything -- they were singing, acting, dancing, and I never, ever thought that I would ever be able to do that. Well, six months later, "All That Jazz" would come out. And if you remember, at the beginning of that there's a whole audition scene, a big cattle call. Like, hundreds of people come to these things.

Well, "A Chorus Line" was having an open call. There was 500 guys and 300 girls at this audition in Schubert Alley. We filed us out, 20 at a time, and I'm standing on the Schubert stage and, like, wow, this is kind of neat. And they just kept calling me back. Well, they hired me. And that was kind of how it started. Started? that's my whole life.

SOFFER: Everyone has their own path. I mean, I've had some pretty horrible gigs in my time. Sometimes you get a little jaded, you get miserable, but you just get through it and you laugh. And I stopped dancing for almost, you know, for two years. I'd just had enough. I just woke up one day and went, oh, my God, what am I doing with my life? And I felt like the gerbil on a wheel, running and running and running and getting nowhere.

I'd felt for so long that if I didn't dance that my mother would be disappointed in me. It turned out that I was completely wrong. She said, the minute you stop loving to dance, she's like, you shouldn't do it anymore. And that's something that I keep with me all the time.

ROMAINE: I guess, I'd say six, maybe seven hours a day, five, six days a week.

There's no way I can afford to pay for my training. And I knew that when I moved here. Well, I won scholarship at Broadway Dance Center. I work one shift a week on Sundays from 10:00 to 5:00 so that I can take class at a very discounted rate.

Hi.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.

ROMAINE: Can I help you find your seat?

I usher once a week at the Joyce Theater so that I can see as much dance as possible. And then I work for an entertainment company on the weekends. Mostly, this company does a lot of bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. It's a way to make some good money doing some form of dancing.

SOFFER: It's important at a very young age to take care of your body. But, you know, when you you're 17, 18 years old, it doesn't matter what anybody says to you.

That feels good.

I had knee surgery. I have a hairline fracture in my lower spine.

That was a good one.

I ripped my groin out once, which was pretty bad. I go to physical therapy two or three times a week. I get a massage about once a week, sometimes every two weeks. The chiropractor I try to only go to about, like, once a month. Acupuncture I try and do two or three times a month. I love acupuncture. I could do acupuncture every day.

ROMAINE: For the first six months, I didn't audition at all. And now, for the past three months, I've just started to get out and see what's out there.

We're actually going to an audition for a nightclub. It's a theater theme and it would just be kind of like a weekend gig. It's out in Coney Island, Brooklyn, so it's going to take us a little while to get there.

I try to walk into an audition, like, with confidence, even if you have to fake it, you know. And if you get caught, which most likely, especially in New York, that's going to be the outcome is that you get caught. But that's OK. It's a learning process.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And, one da, da, da, da, da, bum.

ROMAINE: Are you stepping down or just going...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no. One, two, three, three...

ROMAINE: I just -- I want to break into the professional world. I just want to get there. I just, you know, I don't want -- need to be famous or big, I just want to work.

WISE: There's a certain energy you get when you're dancing. It's like everything in the cosmos will kind of click together, like your body just moves by itself. Boy, when you get one of those nights, it's -- you'd almost pay the producer to go out there and dance. As I get older, I don't get it as often.

I'm 40 years old and I've pounded my body a lot. It becomes painful sometimes to dance, so I always am starting to have to compensate around pain or injuries. It's very sad. This show's been very emotional for me in the fact that I realize I need to move on.

You're just going to go bum, bum, bum, bum, bum bum bum, bum.

My future goals right now is I'd really like to choreograph. I've been told by other choreographers that you can get the same high from watching your work being put on stage, so I'm just looking for another high, I guess.

SOFFER: I love performing on Broadway. I love my show. The first time I walked into the theater and I got my dressing room table, oh my God, I'm really here. I'm on Broadway. This is -- this is it. My mom was just in tears crying over it. She just -- she knew how hard I worked my whole life.

My mom passed away about four weeks before opening night of acute pancreatitis. When I'm out there, I feel completely whole. It's weird. And I feel my mom with me, like that's when I feel her with me most is when I'm dancing.

WISE: I love performing. I don't want to ever stop performing on some level.

SOFFER: You get that feeling, your heart starts to beat, you feel really connected to what you're doing.

ROMAINE: When I really feel it, I get goose bumps. It's kind of like, oh, like just exhaling. When you have that moment when everything comes together, it's definitely golden, I think.

WISE: It's why I do this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, seen in schools around the world, because learning never stops and neither does the news.

BAKHTIAR: There are many ways to give back to the community: giving money to various charitable organizations, participating in fund-raisers, or simply donating old clothes and furniture to the needy. These are all forms of philanthropy. Philanthropy is the desire to help mankind, especially by giving gifts to charitable or humanitarian institutions.

Now there's a new way to give and all it involves is the click of a mouse.

Eileen O'Connor explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rehearsals at the nonprofit Wildwood Summer Theatre for 14- to 25-year-olds, whose performances on stage are increasingly funded by donations online.

ISABEL HERNANDEZ, WILDWOOD SUMMER THEATRE: The money just rolls in. I mean, every month a check.

O'CONNOR: Wildwood uses iGive.com, an on-line e-philanthropy site that, like many others, links visitors to e-commerce sites. iGive then splits a percentage of their purchases with its affiliated charities. That means Wildwood can spend more time rehearsing and less time fund raising.

HERNANDEZ: In the past, we've had to do these really time- intensive fund-raisers, but while this, really, is just zero effort and has made more money than some of our standard fund-raisers already.

LYNN RIDENOUR, GREATERGOOD.COM: We're going to select a charity to benefit from the activity we do on the site GreaterGood site.

O'CONNOR: GreaterGood.com allows customers to earmark which charity will receive a percentage of the amount they spend. GreaterGood.com also helps charities with their own Web sites and owns the hunger site where each time someone visits a cup of rice is donated by a corporate sponsor. Analysts say those sponsors benefit themselves from a so-called "halo effect" in the eyes of the consumers visiting the site.

With 3.8 million unique visitors a month, GreaterGood.com garners a coveted audience that also benefits affiliated e-commerce sites.

RIDENOUR: Up to 15 percent of every activity, whether that's shopping online, applying for a credit card, making travel arrangements, all of those things go back to benefit a charity.

O'CONNOR: But there can be a downside to online giving.

(on camera): The Better Business Bureau warns potential donors to check up on the charities to make sure they are what they say they are. At the Better Business Bureau Web site at www.bbb.com, they actually list 200 of the most asked about national charities and whether or not they meet their standards.

(voice-over): The Better Business Bureau says the majority are legit. And for those, like the Wildwood Summer Theatre, just a few clicks can go a long way.

Eileen O'Connor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JORDAN: Well, politicking in the United States is reaching a fever pitch. The Republican and Democratic Party national conventions are just around the corner. The Republican convention starts Monday, and preparations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania are in full swing. As workers position balloons and speech platforms, party leaders are fine-tuning the party platform. While they go through their motions, hundreds of students around the country are preparing for their own youth conventions.

CNN Student Bureau reporter Jason Friedman looks at what's on their minds.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Poverty, racism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How the government's using my money.

JASON FRIEDMAN, CNN STUDENT BUREAU (voice-over): Young Americans about to take part in their first presidential election are being asked to sound off on issues they consider most important.

SARAH BALDWIN, AGE 17: We have kids that are, you know, like, watching TV and looking at the commercials and wanting the next toy when there's kids out there that don't have food.

CARLOS RODRIGUEZ, AGE 23: The Social Security system is something that people our age don't really pay much attention to.

SHEIK ALIER, AGE 23: Right now, all they talk about is how they're going to serve other countries and all the other stuff. What about us?

FRIEDMAN: A national survey by Youth In Action reports that while gun control, poverty, the environment and drugs are among the biggest concerns of Americans ages 14 to 24, at the top of the list is education and its rising cost.

COURTNEY MCCRACKEN, AGE 16: There are people in our country that don't have good schools, and they deserve that.

FRIEDMAN (on camera): While the major party candidates are debating these types of issues, are young people paying attention? Since the voting age was lowered to 18 three decades ago, the number of young people who bother to vote has steadily dropped. And a recent Gallup poll found that almost half of all American teens don't identify with either political party.

ARI REISCHER, BUSH CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN: You can't blame young people. I think they turn their back on politics for very logical reasons. It's not very inspiring. The people who have been leading us have not inspired us. I think young people, if they see somebody they can get ardent behind, feel good about and believe in, you bet they're going to get involved. Young people always have.

CHRIS LENANE, GORE CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN: This is their country. The issues that are going to be decided the next four years and eight years are going to impact their lives. But it's very, very important for the candidates and the parties to inspire people to get involved with the campaign, to talk about issues that are relevant to their lives, that they understand, that they know has a meaning to them.

FRIEDMAN (voice-over): To make sure the candidates are listening to young voters, Youth In Action is organizing youth conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles on the same dates as the Republican and Democratic conventions. Hundreds of high school and college students will write a nonpartisan platform: a youth platform.

Though George W. Bush and Al Gore have yet to accept the students' invitation to join them, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader will attend the Philadelphia youth convention.

Jason Friedman, CNN Student Bureau, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JORDAN: And, of course, NEWSROOM will have all the convention coverage next week.

BAKHTIAR: That does it for us here. We'll see you back here next week.

JORDAN: Bye.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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