In a ruling released Thursday, the court embraced the Protect America Act of 2007, which required telecommunications providers to assist the government for national security purposes in intercepting international phone calls and e-mails to and from points overseas.

The decision, which involves the gathering of foreign intelligence, was made last August but only released Thursday after it had been edited to omit classified information.

An unidentified telecommunications company had challenged the law.

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review said the time needed to get a court warrant would hinder the government's ability to collect time-sensitive information, impeding vital national security interests.

The challenge to the law has presented no evidence of any actual harm or any broad potential for abuse, the court's three judges concluded.

U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner restricted the live streaming to a Jan. 22 hearing, saying she will decide later whether to make other proceedings in the case, set for March 30 trial, available online.

The lawsuit is one of a series filed by the Recording Industry Association of America since 2003 against about 35,000 people who allegedly swapped songs online. Most of those sued are college students, and many have defaulted or settled for amounts between $3,000 and $10,000, often without legal counsel.

Charles Nesson, a Harvard University professor representing BU student Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., is challenging the constitutionality of the lawsuits, which, based on the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999, can impose damages of $150,000 per willful act of infringement.

Nesson had asked Gertner to authorize video cameras already installed in courtrooms to be used to capture the proceedings and transmit the material to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet, which will then stream it on its Web site for free. Gertner approved the request and authorized New York-based Courtroom View Network, which has webcast state court trials, to "narrowcast" proceedings to the Berkman Center.

Gertner said local district judges have the discretion under the guidelines of the policy-setting federal Judicial Conference to allow recording and broadcast when it serves the public interest, particularly of legal arguments without the presence of witnesses and jurors in a case.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday upheld a lower court ruling that said the federal government could not collect royalties from eight deepwater leases held by Anadarko in the Gulf of Mexico. The leases were obtained between 1996 and 2000 by Kerr-McGee Corp., which Anadarko later acquired.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. says the lawsuit involves more than $150 million in royalties sought by the U.S. Interior Department, which leases offshore tracts to oil and gas producers and, as owner, stands to collect a percentage of revenue. But the ruling could affect other leases and prohibit the government from collecting royalties from other producers.

The Interior Department said it may work with Congress to resolve the issue or appeal the case again.

At issue is interpretation of a 1995 law designed to provide a break from royalties at a time when oil and natural gas prices were extremely low. The law waived all royalty payments until a specific amount of oil and gas was produced.

"If the court's interpretation of Congress' action in 1995 is correct, certain leaseholders will be allowed to produce massive amounts of oil and gas without paying royalties to the United States without regard to the price of oil and gas — perhaps amounting to one of the biggest giveaways of federal resources by Congress in modern history," Interior spokesman Shane Wolfe said.

A unanimous court on Tuesday threw out a mandatory 15-year prison term given to Deondery Chambers, who pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a gun. Chambers had three prior convictions, which prosecutors argued and lower courts agreed brought him under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act.

But one of Chambers' convictions was for his "failure to report" for weekend jail stays. The government contended that not showing up for the weekend confinement was akin to an escape and should be treated as a violent crime.

Justice Stephen Breyer rejected that argument in his opinion for the court. Breyer said a report that examined failures to report to prison found no evidence that defendants were more likely to resist arrest and potentially injure law enforcement officers or others.

In a separate opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said the court is called on too often to interpret the career criminal law and suggested that Congress come up with a list of specific crimes that should trigger application of the law.

In a second criminal case, the court unanimously ruled for a Texas prison inmate seeking federal review of his 43-year prison term. The federal appeals court in New Orleans was wrong to find that Carlos Jiminez had missed a deadline for filing his paperwork in federal court, Justice Clarence Thomas said for the court.

The cases are Chambers v. U.S., 06-11206, and Jiminez v. Quarterman, 07-6984.

The delays paid off — for Brillon: A Vermont court threw out his conviction and freed him from prison last spring, saying his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial had been violated.

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up the case this week, trying to decide if delays caused by public defenders can deprive a criminal defendant of that right. In particular: Whether governments can be blamed for such delays since they're the ones who assign and pay the lawyers for indigent defendants.

Forty states and 15 organizations — state governments, county governments, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a victim's rights' group — are backing the Vermont prosecutor's appeal of the ruling, worried that if it stands criminal suspects will try to game the system and get the result Brillon did.

"You're greasing that slippery slope," said David Parkhurst, an attorney with the National Governors Association, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the prosecutor's appeal. "That's the big concern here."

Brillon, a 46-year-old construction worker whose criminal past includes convictions for sexual assault on a minor, felony obstruction of justice and cocaine possession, was charged with aggravated domestic assault over the 2001 incident with his girlfriend, who was the mother of his child.

The law allowing civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" federal inmates intrudes on police powers that the Constitution reserves for states, many of which have their own similar statutes, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Civil commitment power "is among the most severe wielded by any government," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote. "The Framers, distrustful of such authority, reposed such broad powers in the states, limiting the national government to specific and enumerated powers."

In upholding a decision by U.S. District Judge W. Earl Britt of Raleigh, N.C., the 4th Circuit became the first federal appeals court to rule on an issue that has divided courts nationwide. A judge in Minnesota reached the same conclusion as Britt, while courts in Hawaii, Oklahoma and Massachusetts upheld the measure.

Thursday's ruling is binding only in the states included in the 4th Circuit: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland.

U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Charles Miller said it was too early to comment on what steps the government might take next. The department could appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court or seek a rehearing before the full federal appeals court.