Video Recordings

A sex video made by actor Colin Farrell and a Playboy Playmate surfaced Tuesday on the Internet despite a court injunction blocking its release. Word about a website carrying the video featuring Farrell and his then-girlfriend, Nicole Narain, Playboy magazine's Miss January 2002, rapidly spread on the Internet through other websites, including IDontLikeYouIn ThatWay.com, which also posted what it said were video stills of the Irish actor and Narain engaged in sex acts.

Kobe Bryant wasn't at Staples Center for obvious reasons Sunday. But his prerecorded message to teammates hung in the air of the Lakers' locker room after their 91-86 victory over the San Antonio Spurs. It can't be printed here, the curse words definitely of the stronger variety, but Bryant's appeal was delivered Saturday by a 30-second video recorded on General Manager Mitch Kupchak's cellphone. Kupchak visited him earlier that day before Bryant underwent surgery for a torn left Achilles' tendon.

The University of Minnesota women's gymnastics coach was fired Tuesday after she accidentally gave members of her team a videotape that included sex scenes involving her and her husband, an assistant coach, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Katalin Deli was fired by Chris Voelz, women's athletic director, who said Deli's contract will end effective June 30. Gabor Deli resigned, effective June 15.

Facebook has released an update for its iPhone and iPad app that, among other features, lets users send each other recorded voice messages. To access the feature, select name, tap the "+" sign and select the mic icon. Hold down the red record button that appears and begin speaking. When done, simply let go of the button and the message is sent. To cancel the message, slide the finger away from the record icon. The voice message feature was introduced earlier this month in an update to the Facebook Messenger app, which is dedicated solely to the message component of the social network.

A videotape played Monday in a Los Angeles courtroom showed that Latasha Harlins had turned away from a scuffle with a Korean grocer when the black teen-ager was shot in the back of the head. "This is not television. This is not the movies. This is real life," Deputy District Attorney Roxane Carvajal had warned the jury. "You will see Latasha being killed. She will die in front of your eyes."

Playing private detective for a day, state Sen. Tom Hayden's staff captured Gov. Pete Wilson's director of fish and game and one of his top deputies on videotape as they fished during business hours last week with a lawyer who is trying to loosen the state's endangered species protection laws.

In Russia's latest scandal, a brief video apparently showing the prosecutor general having sex with two prostitutes aired on state television Thursday after President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered lawmakers to fire the man and they refused. The broadcast presumably aimed to force the prosecutor to bend to the Russian leader's order and leave office. But support for the embattled prosecutor, Yuri I. Skuratov, only seems to be growing, pushing Yeltsin into yet another confrontation with parliament.

Federal court records have been unsealed in a case one attorney dubbed "Water Closet Gate" involving secret videotaping inside a police station men's room. The documents released on Friday show that Concord Police Chief George Straka was on vacation in the summer of 1986 when Capt. Bob Evans ordered the camera to be hidden in the ceiling above a urinal. Evans hoped to catch officers suspected of clogging the urinal with paper towels, resulting in the flooding of the chief's adjacent office.

I remember the show ran on Monday nights and I remember my father loved it. He was the family's biggest fan of "Dragnet." My mother refused to watch, probably on religious grounds, but the rest of us did, every week. "Dragnet" was part of our routine. That took place in Memphis, Tenn., 1953 or '54. We had one of the first TV sets on the block and "Dragnet" was our introduction to California. We saw palm trees growing out of the sidewalks and crooks wearing Hawaiian shirts.

One of the most tragic and disturbing moments of American history can soon be yours to watch and review in your own home. Next week, the public will be able to purchase for the first time on video an authorized, newly restored copy of one of this century's most infamous film sequences, the home movie footage of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. "Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film," which will retail for $19.

One of the most popular new shows of the fall television season is NBC's "Revolution," a drama about post-apocalyptic America. But the real revolution is how people are watching it. About 9.2 million viewers tuned in to a recent episode, a so-so performance. But that number jumped by nearly 5 million when the Nielsen ratings service added in the people who recorded the show and watched it later or saw it through video on demand or online. Full coverage: Television reviews "Revolution" isn't the only show whose popularity can no longer be measured solely by traditional TV ratings.

"What transpires in the court room is public property. " Writing those words in 1947, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a principle so intrinsic to our national character that it predates the Declaration of Independence. America's founders believed that justice was facilitated by openness. In 1774, the first Continental Congress specifically stated that trials should occur "in open court, before as many of the people as choose to attend. " Their reasoning was that public openness would ensure the honesty of judges, witnesses and jurors, who could not "injure [the defendant]

For some outdoor enthusiasts, the age-old question, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" has been replaced by "Did we actually have any fun on our rockin' mountain biking/kayaking/rock climbing adventure if we didn't get it on video?" Simple and rugged, wearable cameras have been proliferating on the market, recording video from a perch on one's helmet, chest or handlebars. Watching and editing is simple; just plug the units' USB cords into a computer to turn your high-adrenaline pursuits into home movies.

Dish Network Corp. and its former EchoStar division agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle a long-running patent dispute involving digital video recorder technology. Under terms of the settlement, Dish Network and EchoStar Corp. will make an initial payment of $300 million, and then make six equal payments of $33 million through 2017. The companies agreed to dismiss any litigation connected with the matter. "There have been all kinds of questions and uncertainty as to whether our intellectual property had any real value," said TiVo Chief Executive Tom Rogers.

I recorded my son's birth with a Kodak. No, not in 1997 or 1957. Just last week. It's even in high definition (but not 3-D, perhaps thankfully). I figured a new camera/video recorder would be just the thing for capturing those newborn moments, and I wanted to know if Kodak's new PlayTouch had enough "added value" to make it a useful substitute for, say, Apple's recently released iPod Touch, which has HD video capability. The PlayTouch also piqued our interest because Kodak and other camera makers have been losing ground to smart phones that are increasingly multifunctional and can take pictures as well as shoot videos.

TiVo Inc. has struck a deal with Cox Communications to integrate the cable company's video-on-demand service into TiVo's digital video recorders. For consumers, the deal lets viewers take advantage of both TiVo and Cox on-demand services without having to juggle two devices. Before this deal, most consumers needed a cable set-top box to get on-demand programs and a TiVo for any number of Internet services such as streaming movies from Netflix Inc., Rhapsody Inc.'s music streaming and Amazon.

The U.S. government was ordered Tuesday to pay the heirs of amateur filmmaker Abraham Zapruder $16 million for seizing one of the nation's most macabre artifacts--the 26-second film capturing President John F. Kennedy's final moments. An arbitration panel charged with determining the value of the film said that the figure might be on the low side.

Joe Francis, the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He's pushing himself against me, shouting: "This is what they did to me in Panama City!" It's after 3 a.m. and we're in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Tuesday took a swipe at the website that released secret military video of a 2007 helicopter gunship incident in Iraq in which civilians, including two news agency employees, were killed. Gates said the videos released by the group WikiLeaks were out of context and provided an incomplete picture of the battlefield, comparing it to war as seen "through a soda straw." "These people can put out whatever they want and are never held accountable for it," said Gates, speaking to reporters aboard his plane en route to Lima, Peru, for a defense ministers conference this week.

It was meant to be a smoking gun: A grainy security video that proved police corruption. Officers said they had stopped Rafat Abdallah because his white Mercedes was missing a license plate. During a search of the car, they discovered a loaded handgun -- a serious crime for a convicted felon like Abdallah. But the footage, taken from a surveillance camera, clearly showed a license plate on Rafat Abdallah's white Mercedes as he left his business just moments before officers pulled him over.