The news: New York City Administrative Law Judge John Spooner said that a city worker should be reprimanded, not fired, for disobeying his boss's order not to use the Web. In his decision, the judge compared the Internet to newspapers and phones, something "essential to living in the technological world."

It was a pretty good ruling. But unfortunately for the headline writers, Spooner didn't rule quite what those headlines said.

In fact, the headlines were almost universally wrong. Judge Spooner found that the no-personal-surfing rule was reasonable, just not fairly applied. And whether the employee will be fired isn't up to Spooner, but New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. And the judge didn't declare any universal right to surf.

Here's what happened, according to Spooner's 13-page ruling: Toquir Choudhri, a 14-year veteran of New York's education department, was accused of excessive absence, excessive lateness, early departures, making an improper leave request and disobeying an order to cease using the Internet for personal business.

Most of the charges were thrown out -- the absences, lateness, early departures and leave request were, it turns out, all within acceptable department limits. And Choudhri was the only staffer in his office for whom the "no nonbusiness Internet use" rule was enforced, even though most other employees broke the rule, too.