Companies that offer downloadable movies and music online without licenses from the copyright holders typically wind up answering lawsuits from the Hollywood studios and the major labels. So it was odd to see a news release announcing the impending launch of Zookz, a site that offers unlimited music or movie downloads for about $10 a month (or both for $18). That's a bit like waving a red cape in front of a couple of bulls, isn't it? But Zookz believes it's in the clear, legally, thanks to the World Trade Organization. It's a far-fetched argument, but you've got to give Zookz credit for nerve.

The main differences between Zookz and most online outlets for bootlegged goods are that it's not a file-sharing network and that the content isn't free. Instead, it's just insanely cheap. The company's impossibly low prices reflect the fact that it doesn't pay for most of its inventory or share revenues with  copyright holders. All the proceeds go to Zookz, its 10-person staff in St. Johns, Antigua, and (through taxes) the Antiguan government.

How can it get away with this, you ask? I'm not sure it can, but here's its argument....

The Times endorses an unusual idea being considered today by the L.A. Unified School Board: allowing assorted groups inside and outside the district to operate 50 newly built schools over the next four years. Yes, there are pitfalls to this idea, but it's still the most intriguing experiment to reinvent local education to come along in years.

The ongoing crisis in Honduras, meanwhile, is starting to look like it won't be resolved without some "superpower pressure" from the United States, The Times opines. It's time to impose sanctions on those behind the coup that ousted the country's rightful president, Manuel Zelaya, and take other actions aimed at restoring democracy. "Failure to return to constitutional order would send a signal to the rest of Latin America that once again political problems can be solved with an old-style coup."

And we celebrate the nomination of Regina Benjamin as surgeon general. This "angel-like" figure, known for her work bringing clinics to rural areas, rebuilding health centers devastated by Hurricane Katrina and leading medical associations, "has the potential to be one of the strongest voices in public health in decades."

On the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg raises an eyebrow over a recent comment in the New York Times from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

'Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe vs. Wade] was decided,' Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, 'there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of.'

Goldberg lists other prominent abortion backers, including former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who appeared to think that abortion was necessary to cull undesirable elements -- like the poor and minorities -- from the population. He'd like to see more questioning of such attitudes in the media.

Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project says the Obama administration is breaking its promise to bring transparency to government surveillance programs. The administration is reportedly proceeding with a Bush-era plan to use the National Security Agency to screen government computer traffic on private-sector networks, a program known as Einstein 3 that has no intrinsic security value -- but will allow spooks to read e-mail communication between the government and private citizens.

And Deborah Doctor of Disability Rights California challenges Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to document all the fraud he claims to have identified in the state's In-Home Supportive Services program, a quarter of whose funds he says are wasted. The governor not only hasn't proven the accuracy of that figure, he has proposed fixes that could well cost more than they would save.

Here's a look at the blogosphere's reactions to the work of the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division this week:

The Real Clear World blog responds to Andrew Bacevich's op-ed on the White House's overlooking of strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq in favor of tactics:

Musings, a blog discussing culture, politics, and education, took offense at the Opinion L.A piece about Amnesty International's recent report that accused Israel of "wanton destruction" and Hamas of "war crimes" in the December conflict in the Gaza Strip. The writer disagreed with the post's assertion that both sides were blamed, saying that the report's full text put much more blame on Israel for the war.

The Oy Vay blog, featuring the voice of a self-proclaimed Jewish conservative on various issues, liked Patt Morrison's post on her disgust with the cash-strapped city of Los Angeles' commitment to using taxpayer money to pay for the security detail for Michael Jackson's funeral.

And the Opinion L.A. poll urging fans to boo Manny's return to Dodger Stadium on July 16 made it onto the Major League Baseball's Fanhouse blog:

Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugged blog praised John Bolton's op-ed piece that stated the only way to fix Iran is to institute regime change in the country:

The War Victims Monitor blog re-posted, sans comment, Ahmed Rashid's op-ed on Pakistan's more serious commitment to getting rid of the Taliban and its influences, and the need for strong international support to complete a successful campaign against the militants.

Ron Radosh of Pajamas Media was not a fan of the L.A. Times' coverage of I.F. Stone, both in the op-ed section and the book reviews, implying that the paper overlooked the unsavory parts of the journalist and radical's past.

The Guardian UK's Haroon Siddique included Michael Carey's op-ed on the beginning of Sarah Palin's end in a wrap-up of skeptical articles regarding the Alaska governor's motives for resigning abruptly.

Finally, a few blogs picked up on Jonah Goldberg's column about the Washington Post salon, which charged $25,000 a ticket for dinner at publisher Katharine Weymouth's home and promised networking with top Obama administration officials and the Post reporters who cover them.

The Open Secrets blog linked to Goldberg's piece in their rehashing of the Post's response that claimed they would amend any business practices that weren't clear.

And Chicago Boyz, a blog composed of many different voices, said the following about WaPo after linking to the column:

Knowing I'm a papal proclamation buff, a friend referred me to the headline of a story about Pope Benedict XVI's just-released encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" (Love in Truth).The headline read: "In Encyclical, Pope Proposes New Financial Order."

"Apparently he thinks the SEC really should regulate derivatives and he worries about mission creep over at the Fed," my friend quipped. "The pope also thinks that Sallie Mae should be regulated as a bank."

Not quite, but Benedict does argue in the encyclical, released on the even of the G-8 summit, for what conservatives will see as a form of international economic regulation, if not world government.

In typically turgid Vaticanese, the pope writes: "In our own day, the state finds itself having to address the limitations to its sovereignty imposed by the new context of international trade and finance, which is characterized by increasing mobility both of financial capital and means of production, material and immaterial. This new context has altered the political power of states." And the solution? "Once the role of public authorities has been more clearly defined, one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally . . ."

Benedict is in a long tradition of popes who offered prescriptions for enlightened economy policy. In my Catholic high school, required reading included "Rerum Novarum," the 1891 encyclical in which Pope Leo XIII offered a defense of union organizing that could have been ghostwritten  by a labor activist. Leo said that "some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen's guilds were abolished in the last century, and no other protective organization took their place. . . . "

Capitalism-friendly Catholics  have always had trouble with the Vatican’s leftish line on economics and have wrestled with the problem of how they can be loyal to the pope  and opt out of this part of the program. Their discomfort must tempt liberals in the church to hurl the conservatives' favorite gibe back at them: "cafeteria Catholics."

Photo by L'Osservatore Romano Vatican Pool via Getty Images

Today's memorial service for Michael Jackson at the privately owned Staples Center reminds The Times editorial board of a sad fact of life in Los Angeles: It's a city without a public square. Though the backers of LA Live once promised that the downtown entertainment mall would become L.A.'s version of Times Square, the fact remains that it's a private space whose owners can bar the public anytime they choose.

We also weigh in on President Obama's trip to Russia, which isn't expected to accomplish much -- but even a small thaw in relations between the two countries, and the modest improvement represented by the nuclear weapons pact concluded Monday, is better than the chilly status quo.

And we ponder the lessons to be learned from the example of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died Monday at 93. Though many see parallels between the mistakes made in Iraq and the mistakes made by McNamara in Vietnam, we think the larger lesson is that using yesterday's solutions to today's problems is often the pathway to failure.

Over on the opposite page, columnist Jonah Goldberg thinks all the sturm und drang over the canceled "salons" by the Washington Post, in which lobbyists were invited to pay heavily to attend get-togethers with the newspaper's journalists and top politicians, amounts to little more than posing. After all, many publications offer similar meet-and-greet opportunities, Goldberg says.

The hand-wringing over genetically modified foods, meanwhile, reminds author Tom Standage of another food-related hysteria from a few centuries ago -- over the potato. When the tubers were first discovered in the New World, Europeans feared they were a dangerous, unholy poison. They got over it, just as they'll probably eventually get over their irrational fears about improved crops.

And psychiatry professor Sander L. Gilman cautions against jumping to conclusions about Michael Jackson's cosmetic surgery. True, the King of Pop clearly was fond of surgical reshaping, but that doesn't necessarily indicate self-loathing.

* Illustration by Bob Daly / For the Times

The Uighurs, a minority Muslim group in China's westernmost province of Xinjiang, are embroiled in a violent protest. So far, 156 protesters on both sides have died  and more than 1,000 have been injured.

Coming on the heels of the recent Iran election protests, the events in Xinjiang draw a comparison between the two, particularly in the two groups' efforts to use media and their governments' subsequent technological crackdown.

This protest was provoked by the killing of two Uighurs by a mob of Chinese co-workers in a toy factory, fueled by rumors that the two men sexually harassed Han Chinese women. The fight occurred against a backdrop of heightened tensions, as the Uighurs have been pushed out of their province by a growing population of Han Chinese. Hans once made up only 5 percent of Xinjiang's population -- they now represent 40 percent of the region's populous.

President Obama travels to Russia today to give a speech (of course!) and meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The topics likely to be covered include the START treaty (which expires in December), human rights, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, nonproliferation, the environment and even reserve currencies.

Both administrations seem willing to negotiate. "Pressing the reset button" has been a phrase used within the Obama administration to describe how the president wants to approach U.S.-Russian relations. Medvedev said in a video blog that Russia is "ready to play our part" in strengthening the relationship:

Now is not the time to say who is suffering more and who is stronger. Now is the time to unite our efforts. We simply must improve our relations in order to put our joint efforts into resolving the numerous problems facing the world today.

Although both administrations appear eager to be more amiable than in the recent past, there are still many issues where they disagree. NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and U.S. missile defense installations there are two of the sticking points. In a press briefing, Michael McFaul, Obama's Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs, responded to these two most divisive topics in a decidely non-amiable way:

We're definitely not going to use the word "reassure" in the way that we talk about these things. We're not going to reassure or give or trade anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense.... We're going to talk about them very frankly as we did in April when we first met with President Medvedev. And then we're going to see if there are ways that we can have Russia cooperate on those things that we define as our national interests. So we don't need the Russians, we don't want to trade with them.

Newsweek's Holly Bailey said one area the U.S. does need Russia is in Iran. The Russians can aid in pressuring the Iranians to end their development of Nuclear weapons. Interestingly, the Russians were the first to recognize the controversial re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while the rest of the world eyeballed the election skeptically.

With the next two days shaping to be crucial in U.S.-Russian diplomacy, we want to know what you think of Obama's trip. Will it produce anything of substance? Do you fear Obama will concede too much? Could relations be strained further? Take our poll, leave a comment below, or do both!

Photo: Dmitry Astakhov / AFP/Getty Images

Amnesty International, a London-based human rights group, released a report today accusing Israel of "wanton destruction" and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas of "war crimes," each committed during the 22 violent days last December in the Gaza Strip.

But both Israel and Hamas deny the claims and are shouting, yet again, about why the other side didn't receive more of a rebuke for the atrocities committed.

Said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, "Things presented as facts are untrue and have no connection to reality." He was most likely referring to the high death toll the report cited and the judgment that Israel's attacks could not "be justified on grounds of military necessity."

On the other side, Hamas rejected the report because it did not chastise the Israeli military enough for the actions it committed against Palestine.

The report, as with the United Nations' inquiry that is currently gathering evidence on the conflict, sought to dispel the myths and rumors that have added to already high tensions in the region, particularly the assertion that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields (a claim the report said had no basis in fact). Instead, the report said Israeli soldiers effectively turned Palestinians into human shields by forcing them to stay in the homes that soldiers used as makeshift military bases.

As with any dispute between Palestinians and Israelis, there was no admission of shared fault, no statement that "we both committed war crimes, killed civilians and launched rockets across borders." That seems hard to contest, yet each side tried its best to do so -- as it always does. A microcosm of the larger conflict, the reactions to the report show why no progress is being made, and why this event will leave a scar on the relationship for years to come.

Photo: Palestinian children play in front of their ruined houses, hit during Israel's 22-day offensive over Gaza, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip today. Credit: Said Khatib / AFP/Getty Images

Here at the Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division, we like to check in on how our editorials and Op-Ed articles are doing -- and where they are going -- in the blogosphere. What follows is a sampling of blogs that have picked up our opinions and generated opinions of their own.

Jerry Roberts' and Phil Trounstine's Op-Ed listing six factors that are at the root of California's inability to be governed caught the attention of several blogs this week. The Housing Chronicles Blog linked to a post about its own theories on California's detrimental changes:

Bob Burnett of the Huffington Post linked to the piece in his take on California's growing troubles and who's to blame:

On FarmPolicy.com, a blog dedicated to news about the farming industry that took particular interest in the climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, linked to The Times' editorial that supported the bill. It seems the farm industry, based on the blog's long and varied list of supporters and naysayers, is quite conflicted on this issue. The Harvesting Justice blog came out slightly more strongly against the editorial's favorable position on the bill, offering this comment (which I believe is meant to be sarcastic?):

Another example of the excesses of the "greedy growers," as former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson used to say.  We poison the environment and our farmworkers and agribusiness continues to lobby for the ability to continue to do so, while getting paid subsidies not to do so.

On June 26, The Times ran an Op-Ed by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton -- a controversial figure in the world of diplomacy -- that encouraged the United States to support regime change in Iran. Not surprisingly, several bloggers had a lot to say in response. The Citizens blog said Bolton's argument is a veiled call for war:

The UN Dispatch blog offered a similar reaction, and added that the target of Bolton's attack was clearly the Obama administration, and even worse, offered no real solution to his goal. It was written for a partisan purpose and little else, the blog said.

Gregory Tejeda, a Chicago-area freelance writer and former UPI reporter, took issue with Zev Chafets' Op-Ed, in which Chafets argued that Latino baseball players are being singled out by the Hall of Fame for their use of steroids. Tejada said he knows just as many non-Latino ball players who were disgraced by their drug use:

And finally, Noel Sheppard on the NewsBusters blog was quite taken aback by Karen Bass's statement during an interview with Patt Morrison that Republican radio talk-show hosts were "terrorizing" their fellow Republicans in the California legislature.

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses a joint session of the state legislature in Sacramento on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Schwarzenegger urged state lawmakers to act quickly to close a $24 billion deficit that opened in the state budget because of the worst U.S. recession in half a century. Credit: Ken James/Bloomberg News

On the Op-Ed page today, John P. Hannah, security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney during President George W. Bush's second term, evaluates whether Iraq is ready for the looming withdrawal of U.S. troops from its cities. His conclusion is that President Obama is effectively giving up on Iraq before the job is done:

While Hannah argues that Obama's focus in the Middle East has shifted to Iran and he'd rather be done with Iraq, isn't the pulling out of troops and the handing of power to a government we helped build part of getting the job done? Even Bush was not planning on staying in Iraq forever, but that's the track we've been on since the 2003 invasion. Retreating our troops so the Iraqi police can take over the security of Iraqi cities may be the right step to the conclusion for which Hannah is calling.

Criminal Justice Professor Eric J. Williams writes to another aspect of the Bush administration's legacy: Guantanamo Bay. Williams specifically responds to the surprise expressed by many Republican politicians over a myriad of rural towns asking for the Gitmo detainees, as prisons have become an economic remedy for such towns that have lost staple industries.

The two other Op-Eds today offer more hopeful ruminations.