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Editorials
Wednesday, February 14, 2001Military training
must continue
despite deathsThe issue: Hawaii has been shaken by two fatal military accidents in four days.
ANOTHER military accident in Hawaii -- the second in four days -- has left six soldiers dead and four injured in the crashes of two Army Blackhawk helicopters on the North Shore of Oahu Monday night. In the previous incident Friday, the nuclear submarine Greeneville sank a Japanese fishing/training vessel while surfacing nine miles off Diamond Head. Nine persons on the fishing craft are missing and presumed dead.
These disasters are wrenching reminders that military preparedness comes at a price -- not only in dollars but also in lives.
There is a compelling need to determine the causes of these accidents so that measures can be taken to prevent their recurrence. But it is important to place the incidents in context.
In both cases, the accidents occurred during training exercises. To some, this may seem a pointless waste. But this view stems from a failure to appreciate the importance of training.
The only way the armed forces can prepare to fight is to train. That is what the military does when it is not actually fighting a war -- training for war.
In order to be valuable, training must be as realistic as possible. Despite the disasters that have stunned Hawaii, submariners must continue to practice bringing their craft to the surface under simulated emergency conditions. Soldiers must continue to use helicopters in maneuvers.
Safety is a prime consideration but some degree of danger is a fact of military life, even in peacetime. As long as there is a need for armed forces to defend the nation, there will be a need for training, sometimes under hazardous conditions.
The need for realistic training lies at the heart of the controversy over the Army's use of the Makua Valley firing range. This is the only place on Oahu where the Army can conduct large-scale live-fire exercises.
Training has been suspended while an environmental study was conducted, but opponents are demanding a more thorough environmental impact statement, which would prevent the Army from resuming training soon.
Hawaii's Senator Inouye has warned that the 25th Infantry Division might be moved out of Hawaii if it were denied the use of Makua Valley. It is not a warning that should be taken lightly.
Use of the valley since World War II has resulted in damage to the environment, but the Army has instituted measures to avoid or reduce further damage.
If there was no need to defend the country, there would be no need for armed forces and no need for training.
Sometimes training exercises result in accidents, including fatal ones, and sometimes they damage the environment. But there is an important purpose that opponents tend to overlook in their criticism of the effects of military use -- national defense.
If the military was not well-trained, it would not be prepared to fight if war came. That would be a far greater disaster than the recent accidents here or the damage to Makua Valley.
Napster court loss
PIRACY on the Internet was dealt a severe blow with a federal appeals court's affirmation of a judge's ruling that Napster, which allows people to copy music free, enables wholesale infringement of copyrights. The ruling is a major victory for the record industry and for all others who honor intellectual property rights.
Started two years ago by an 18-year-old college dropout, Napster has served as a clearinghouse in allowing people to share music stored on its Web site. It claims 58 million registered users. Napster says that 40,000 artists permit the exchange of "hundreds of thousands" of songs, but works of popular musicians can be downloaded without permission.
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ordered Napster in July to halt users from exchanging copyrighted music, but her injunction was lifted by a panel of appellate court judges two days later.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has essentially restored Patel's order and will force Napster to either change its business practices or close shop.
"It's time for Napster to stand down and build their business the old-fashioned way -- they must get permission first," said Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Association of America, a trade group that was the plaintiff in the suit against Napster on behalf of five major record labels.
The appeals court allowed Napster to be used for "commercially significant noninfringing uses." Napster has signed an agreement with Bertelsmann, the parent of BMG records, one of the five major record labels, allowing it to continue as a for-pay service. It also is proposing a system that would charge users a fee, probably monthly, partly to compensate record labels and other copyright holders.
Napster would be wise to model its structure along the lines of MP3.com, an online music company. To settle legal challenges, MP3.com reached an agreement to pay royalties to copyright holders for each time a song was stored and heard on its My.MP3.com service. Listeners must prove they already own the same music but find it easier to hear it from the Web site than to store it on their own computers.
MP3.com's arrangement and the 9th Circuit ruling in the Napster case set an encouraging pattern for protecting intellectual property rights in the new technology. The recording industry's success enforcing copyrights in court should be a clear warning to would-be pirates.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
Frank Bridgewater, Acting Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
