VSDA late last week continued its battle against a Wash. State videogame law that would prevent stores from renting or selling titles that depicted violence toward law enforcement officers. In oral arguments presented to U.S. Dist. Court Seattle, Judge Robert Lasnik, VSDA attorneys again claimed that the law violated the First Amendment. “Violent speech has been given full protection of the Constitution, whether it is in a videogame or on a TV show,” argued attorney Paul Smith. The VSDA and other critics of the Video Game Violence Law, as well as the law’s supporters, asked Lasnik to grant summary judgment in the case. The judge asked the law’s proponents why only violent videogames were to be regulated -- as opposed to movies and other forms of entertainment -- and was told that because games were interactive they were more harmful to young people. Lasnik declined to rule from the bench, saying he needed time to evaluate a complex area of the law in a case that might break new ground, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. Retailers that violate the law are subject to fines as high as $500. Wash. Gov. Gary Locke (D) signed the legislation last year, but the VSDA, Entertainment Software Assn. (then called the Interactive Digital Software Assn.) and other groups quickly and successfully fought for a preliminary injunction against enforcement until the court ruled on its constitutionality (CED May 22/03 p3).

A group of Ill. CLECs asked the Ill. Commerce Commission (ICC) to allow them to participate in the ICC staff’s review of SBC tariffs to implement a roughly 15% increase in unbundled network element (UNE) rates. The CLECs in their joint petition said they wanted to review all of SBC’s cost support material to ensure SBC correctly applies the various cost elements prescribed in the ICC order. The CLECs said their preliminary review of the compliance tariffs SBC filed June 18 raised questions about whether SBC was correctly calculating costs. The ICC didn’t specify the new UNE rates, but ordered changes to UNE cost calculations that would produce an increase of roughly $3.75 monthly per line.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) frequently issues notices on antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders which Broker Power considers to be "minor" in importance as they concern actions that occur after an order is issued and neither announce nor cause any changes to an order's duty rates, scope, affected firms, or effective period.

The ITA states that the China-wide rates applies to all entries of subject merchandise except for entries from Since Hardware, Yongjian, Forever Holdings, Harvest, and Lihe.

In its first full week available, Columbia TriStar’s 50 First Dates was the #1-rented DVD in the U.S., Rentrak’s preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ended June 20 showed. Rentrak said the title earned $8.14 million on DVD in the week, for $8.3 million to date. Last week’s #1 DVD -- Warner’s Mystic River -- slipped to #2, earning an additional $6.89 million on DVD, for $14.24 million to date. The only other new DVD release in the top 10 was Warner’s Spartan at #8 ($1.63 million in the week, $1.67 million to date).

Take-Two Interactive’s Red Dead Revolver for PS2 was again the #1-rented videogame in the U.S., according to Rentrak’s preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ended June 20. Rentrak said the title earned an additional $295,899 in its 7th week, for $1.86 million to date. The Xbox version of the game dropped one notch to #6 ($161,516 in the week, $1.09 million to date). But Electronic Arts had the most games in the top 10, with 3, all for PS2: Need for Speed Underground at #4 (up 2 in its 31st week, $190,418 in the week, $8.69 million to date), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at #8 (up 12 in its 3rd week, $138,602, $286,948) and James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing at #10 again in its 18th week ($121,431, $3.5 million). The only other titles in the top 10 not for PS2 were for Xbox: Vivendi Universal Games’s The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay at #3 (up one in its 3rd week, $200,754, $490,724) and Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow at #7 (up 10 in its 13th week, $141,520, $2.25 million). Rounding out the top 10 were Midway’s NBA Ballers at #2 again in its 11th week ($211,657, $2.63 million), Eidos’s Hitman: Contracts at #5 (down 2 in its 9th week, $169,433, $2.17 million) and Sony Computer Entertainment’s Syphon Filter: Omega Strain at #9 (down 2 in its 7th week, $125,783, $3.50 million).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has made preliminary affirmative antidumping (AD) duty determinations that carbazole violet pigment 23 (CVP-23) from China and India is being, or is likely to be, sold in the U.S. at less than fair value.

The ITA states that these companies are not based in a non-market economy.

The Departmental Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (COAC) held a quarterly meeting on June 18, 2004 in Washington, DC to discuss and receive updates from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials on various trade and customs issues.

* For China, the ITA has previously stated that these rates apply only when the individually named companies are both the exporter and producer (exporter/producer) of subject merchandise.