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A bill that bans the wearing of masks during a riot or unlawful assembly and carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence with a conviction of the offence became law today.

Bill C-309, a private member's bill introduced by Conservative MP Blake Richards in 2011, passed third reading in the Senate on May 23 and was proclaimed law during a royal assent ceremony in the Senate this afternoon.

Richards, MP for Wild Rose, Alta., said the bill is meant to give police an added tool to prevent lawful protests from becoming violent riots, and that it will help police identify people who engage in vandalism or other illegal acts. The bill is something that police, municipal authorities and businesses hit hard by riots in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and other cities in recent years, were asking for, according to Richards.

"The provisions of my bill are effective immediately, which means police officers across Canada now have access to these tools to protect the public from masked rioters," Richards said in a statement being released today.

The bill creates a new Criminal Code offence that makes it illegal to wear a mask or otherwise conceal your identity during a riot or unlawful assembly. Exceptions can be made if someone can prove they have a "lawful excuse" for covering their face such as religious or medical reasons.

The bill originally proposed a penalty of up to five years, but the House of Commons justice committee amended it and doubled the penalty to up to 10 years in prison for committing the offence.

Richards noted in his statement how rare it is for a private member's bill to become law and said that its final passage is the culmination of two years of work and a lot of consultation with police and business owners.

Bill comes into force immediately upon royal assent
"We can all rest easier tonight knowing our communities have been made safer with its passage," said Richards.

The bill didn't have unanimous support, and was opposed by some who are concerned about its effect on freedom of expression and privacy. Critics said the measures are unnecessary because the Criminal Code already includes a section about wearing disguises while committing a crime.

Civil liberties advocates argued the measures could create a chilling effect on free speech and that peaceful protesters can unintentionally find themselves involved in an unlawful assembly. They also noted that there are legitimate reasons for wearing masks at protests; some may be worried about reprisals at work, for example, if sighted at a political protest.

"Any law that infringes upon civil liberties needs to be held to a test of absolute necessity, and I don't think that test has been met in this instance," said Michael Byers, a political scientist at the University of British Columbia and a board member of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, in an interview. Byers testified at the Commons justice committee that studied the bill.

Byers said freedom of expression was not properly factored into the design of the bill and that its measures could deter acts of political expression.

Richards argues that his bill will actually help protect the legitimate right to protest because it will help prevent illegitimate protesters from infiltrating a peaceful event and causing trouble. He also said police told him the existing Criminal Code provision about disguises is more geared toward armed robbery offences and is difficult to apply in protest situations.

In a recent interview, Richards said there is a lot of misunderstanding about his bill and that there will always be people who disagree with it.

He said he is proud to have identified a problem and created a solution. The bill becomes law when it receives royal assent.

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This could be the biggest backtrack in gaming history: Microsoft will reverse course on their DRM policies for Xbox One, dropping their 24-hour Internet check-in requirement and all restrictions on used games.

Here's Microsoft:

Last week at E3, the excitement, creativity and future of our industry was on display for a global audience.

For us, the future comes in the form of Xbox One, a system designed to be the best place to play games this year and for many years to come. As is our heritage with Xbox, we designed a system that could take full advantage of advances in technology in order to deliver a breakthrough in game play and entertainment. We imagined a new set of benefits such as easier roaming, family sharing, and new ways to try and buy games. We believe in the benefits of a connected, digital future.

Since unveiling our plans for Xbox One, my team and I have heard directly from many of you, read your comments and listened to your feedback. I would like to take the opportunity today to thank you for your assistance in helping us to reshape the future of Xbox One.

You told us how much you loved the flexibility you have today with games delivered on disc. The ability to lend, share, and resell these games at your discretion is of incredible importance to you. Also important to you is the freedom to play offline, for any length of time, anywhere in the world.

So, today I am announcing the following changes to Xbox One and how you can play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360. Here is what that means:

An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.

Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today – There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.

In addition to buying a disc from a retailer, you can also download games from Xbox Live on day of release. If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline just like you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console — there will be no regional restrictions.

These changes will impact some of the scenarios we previously announced for Xbox One. The sharing of games will work as it does today, you will simply share the disc. Downloaded titles cannot be shared or resold. Also, similar to today, playing disc based games will require that the disc be in the tray.

We appreciate your passion, support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and connectivity. While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds.

Thank you again for your candid feedback. Our team remains committed to listening, taking feedback and delivering a great product for you later this year.
Original story follows:

Citing multiple sources, GiantBomb says Microsoft has decided to remove a laundry list of Xbox One restrictions that customers considered negative:

No more always online requirement
The console no longer has to check in every 24 hours
All game discs will work on Xbox One as they do on Xbox 360
Authentication is no longer necessary
An Internet connection is only required when initially setting up the console
All downloaded games will function the same when online or offline
No additional restrictions on trading games or loaning discs
Region locks have been dropped
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This comes after heavy criticism following an E3 in which Sony bragged about their own policies for the PS4, which Sony says will not restrict used games or require an Internet connection.

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Since they revealed the Xbox One in May, Microsoft has faced non-stop criticism for announced policies that could drastically change the way we play games in the future. The Xbox One, they said, would require players to connect to the Internet once every 24 hours in order to keep the box playing games. You would have to activate each game by registering it on the web before playing. The console would also restrict the way that game discs are traded, borrowed, and shared, limiting the number of people who could own and play each game, and restricting trade-ins on a publisher-by-publisher basis.

Microsoft has justified these policies by saying that these moves are consistent with a shift to digital seen on Steam, iTunes and other digital platforms.

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By reversing on those policies, Microsoft calls a lot of things into question: what will become of the Xbox One's family sharing plan? Will publishers find other ways to block used games? And what of all the rhetoric of how "the bits"—the data on each game disc, rather than the discs themselves—are the future?

We've reached out to Microsoft for comment but have not heard back yet.

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A dangerous fetish has eye experts seeing red and those who practice it seeing pink.

It is eyeball licking -- a strange erotic activity wherein participants actually put each other's tongues on each other's peepers.

Alternatively called "oculolinctus" or "worming," eyeball licking has few public advocates but they include Elektrika Energias, a 29-year-old environmental science student in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"My boyfriend started licking my eyeballs years ago and I just loved it. I'm not with him anymore, but I still like to ask guys to lick my eyeballs," she told The Huffington Post. "I just love it because it turns me on, like sucking on my toes. It makes me feel all tingly."

It's also a very intimate act, she said.

"I don't ask just anyone to do it. Guys I like a lot are more likely to not think it's so weird. I've never had anyone turn me down though," she said.

Eyeball licking has been around at least since the mid-2000s and a simple YouTube search brings up hundreds of videos from oculolinctus lovers who want to share their peeper porn with others.

However, eye experts are worried that this dangerous fad is gaining popularity with preteens, especially after news reports of elementary school students in Japan who dared to test their ocular boundaries and caused multiple cases of pinkeye, otherwise known as conjunctivitis, the Daily Caller reported.

In one classroom of 12-year-olds, one third of students confessed to "worming" or being "wormed." Officials only noticed something was up when some of the licked students showed up to school wearing eyepatches, ShanghaiList.com reported.

Currently, eyeball licking is only attempted by a small percentage of adventurers, including HuffPost Weird News journalist Andy Campbell, who said he had his own eyeball tongued to see what it's like.

"It's strange to have something touch the eye without it hurting," Campbell said. "I was a receiver, not a giver. I don't see it as a sexual thing. But you have to be comfortable with someone."

San Diego ophthalmologist Dr. David Granet are worried that the news of eyeball licking will cause it to spread.

"Nothing good can come of this," Granet warned HuffPost. "There are ridges on the tongue that can cause a corneal abrasion. And if a person hasn't washed out their mouth, they might put acid from citrus products or spices into the eye."

Dr. David Najafi, an ophthalmologist in La Mesa, Calif., said if the licker has a cold sore, it is possible to spread herpes into the eye as well.

"The cornea is very sensitive and could be scarred," he warned.

Other dangers from "oculolinctus" include conjunctivitis or "pink eye," a swelling of the thin, filmy membrane that covers the inside of the eyelids and the white part of the eye.

You might have been the old superstition that masturbation causes your vision to blur, but eyeball licking can actually cause blindness, according to Dr. Phillip Rizzuto, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

"The bacteria in the mouth is nothing like the bacteria in the eyeball, which is why we no longer recommend people lick contact lenses to moisten them," Rizzuto said.

Those serious problems may not be enough to stop eyeball licking lovers like Energias, who admits her habit did put her eyesight at risk at one point.

"I got some weird offshoot of TB in my eye once. I ended up with corneal ulcers and I spent like a month in the hospital," she said. "Nobody really knows why. Well, I got over it, and I'm fine now. That was like six years ago.

"I'm just safer now, I guess ... Live and learn. I mean they don't really make tongue rubbers, but maybe they should."

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