Lawmakers target Internet 'hunting'

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- So far, John Lockwood has had only two customers for his new Internet-based business, yet lawmakers in California, 14 other states, and Congress are moving to shut it down.

Lockwood operates a website, live-shot.com, that for a few hundred dollars lets anyone with access to a computer shoot and kill a variety of animals roaming a fenced ranch in Texas.

A rifle, video camera and computer are mounted on a stand at the ranch at a spot where deer, antelope and sheep frequently pass. From thousands of miles away, via computer, a person can control the camera and gun, firing with the click of a mouse.

Even if Lockwood doesn't have customers lining up around the block, the notion that a venue exists for remote-control killing has triggered a backlash of disgust, forging an unlikely coalition of big-game hunters and animal-rights activists.

Lockwood's venture has offended sensibilities even in Texas, where many private hunting ranches promise clients they can bag exotic trophy animals such as impala and wildebeest.

''It's not hunting," said Kirby L. Brown, executive vice president of the Texas Wildlife Association, which represents landowners, hunters, and conservationists. ''It falls off of the end of the ethical chart."

Dale Jamieson, a professor of environmental studies and philosophy at New York University, sees Lockwood's business as an understandable, if disturbing, extension of a computer society where popular video games let players pretend to kill police officers.

Jamieson says people feel threatened by Lockwood's business, much as they do violent video games, because it involves an unseemly delight in killing. Lockwood's business, he said, undermines the central argument in defense of hunting: that the joy of the sport comes in the chase and in being attuned to the natural world, not in the actual kill.

''If you look at this as being kind of a continuum or slippery slope," Jamieson said, ''you have people who enjoy the act of killing and destruction in video games, you have people who enjoy killing animals over the Internet. . . . But, of course, the next step in this is that people start killing people over the Internet. That's the worry."

In February, California state Senator Debra Bowen, a Democrat from Marina del Rey, introduced a bill to forbid Californians from using Lockwood's website or starting a similar business. The bill faces a vote in the full Senate on Thursday. Bowen said she shares the concern about where Internet hunting might lead.

''What's the line between real life and a video game?" Bowen said. ''It has all the video-game feel: It's remote, it's disconnected from the reality of it, the hunter doesn't have to deal with any blood or wounding or tracking."

In Congress on Tuesday, Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, introduced a bill to make Internet hunting punishable by up to five years in prison. Lawmakers in states from Texas to Maine also have introduced bills, some that would require hunters to be in physical control of their weapons, others that make it illegal to kill a bird or animal by remote control or via an Internet connection. Virginia has already imposed such a law.

Lockwood, 40, a body-shop estimator in San Antonio who also organizes target shooting by computer, stands alone in the face of the backlash. He has no outspoken supporter, but he is ever willing to explain himself.

''I think they have a misconception about what it is," Lockwood said. ''They think it's a slaughterhouse. They think I'm going to decimate the animal population. It's unethical because all I'm trying to do is kill things."

Lockwood said the animals on his friend's 300-acre ranch, 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, are essentially wild and easily spooked. The only difference between an Internet customer and one who visits the ranch to hunt, Lockwood said, is that the electronic customers can't walk the land and their view is limited to a narrow camera range.

Lockwood or one of his employees is always at the camera to control the rifle safety and make sure that nothing is in the way.

''Hunting is different for everybody," he said. ''And everybody has their own idea of what they think is ethical."