August 27, 2008
Journalists in Denver Face the Pokey for...What?
Two incidents this week at the Democratic National Convention make me a little worried. First, Salon's Glenn Greenwald got hassled by private security and was threatened with arrest for videoblogging outside an AT&T-sponsored party for Blue Dog Democrats, an event...
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July 25, 2008
New York's Video Game Law is Blessedly Toothless
I'm a little late on this (and so many other things) but on Tuesday New York Governor David Paterson signed into law a bill aimed at cracking down on video game violence and shielding children from exposure to violent video...
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July 23, 2008
Andrew Cuomo's Sorry Threat to Sue Comcast
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo probably thinks he'll score political points and votes with his campaign against the dissemination of child pornography on usenet groups, and he's probably right. He also likely believes that he'll look tough by threatening...
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June 12, 2008
Must-Read: Adam Liptak on U.S. Free Speech
The great New York Times writer Adam Liptak has this excellent essay, part of a new NYT series that examines unique aspects of America, that examines how the strong First Amendment right to free speech in this country sets the...
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May 16, 2008
Tragic Case Could Lead to Very Bad Legal Precedent
Hunting for some way to bring justice in a very sad case, Missouri federal prosecutors in California are seeking to set a very dangerous precedent in Internet law that could make criminals of us all. By way of background, a...
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April 29, 2008
Top Economist's View on Push for Cable A La Carte
The great media economist Bruce Owen, who is now at Stanford (and with whom I worked for many years when he was a full-time consultant) has this great piece in Cato's Regulation magazine entitled "The Temptation of Media Regulation." While...
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February 20, 2008
Two Federal Courts Undercut the First Amendment
Something is in the air these days because in two separate cases, federal court judges have issued rulings that do some damage to the First Amendment right to free speech. In the first case Judge Jeffrey S. White of the...
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January 30, 2008
Verizon Exec: We Don't Want to Police Content
(Washington, DC) Unlike its fellow giant telco AT&T, Verizon has no interest in filtering its broadband customers' data streams to identify pirated video content, Verizon's top public policy executive said today. Speaking at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the...
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January 16, 2008
Scientology & Hollywood Both Hate Pirated Videos
Scientology has long been identified with top Hollywood stars, but a kerfluffle involving a presumably purloined video of leading Scientology advocate Tom Cruise even more closely aligns the two communities. A ten-minute video of the actor and Hollywood powerbroker has...
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January 15, 2008
Gamers Form a PAC
The NYT's Seth Schiesel has this piece today about the formation of a political action committee designed to promote the interests of the gaming industry. Operated out of the Entertainment Software Association, run by former NTIA head Michael Gallagher, the...
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January 10, 2008
Does the First Amendment Protect Asinine Husbands?
A possible test case that could probe the boundaries of the First Amendment right to free speech is brewing in a Vermont family court. William Krasnansky and Maria Garrido are in the midst of a divorce and Krasnansky has put...
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January 7, 2008
Violent Films Keep Criminals Off the Streets
A recently released study suggests that contrary to some research, violent films actually reduce violent crime...because the act of attending theaters keeps criminals off the mean streets. Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, and Stefano...
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December 20, 2007
Nick Ciarelli, I Salute You For Your Guts and Stamina
Think Secret, a student-run web site that has been embroiled in litigation with Apple Inc., is shutting down as a result of that lawsuit's settlement. Although Nick Ciarelli, the Harvard student who ran the site, says that the "settlement is...
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August 24, 2007
BET Comes Under Fire for Smart Moves
Black Entertainment Television, long a backwater for gangsta rap videos, black-themed sitcom re-runs and late-night infomercials, is branching out into edgy content that embraces and satirizes African-American life in a way that has riled the irony-challenged. The latest artistic endeavor...
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August 7, 2007
Judge Terminates California Video Game Law
U.S. District Court judge Ronald Whyte is following in the footsteps of so many of his peers. Yesterday he ruled that a California law that requires labels on violent video games and bars the sale of such games to minors...
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July 25, 2007
Obese Kids or Free Speech: Food Ad Debate
(Washington, DC) There’s no question that the U.S. is facing a major health crisis when it comes to obesity, particularly the alarming rise in childhood obesity, but the issue is how to solve it. One answer put forth is to...
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June 4, 2007
Court Tells FCC to Go F*ck Itself in Indecency Ruling
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York struck a major blow for free speech today when it seriously smacked down the FCC’s policy of levying fines against broadcasters for airing “fleeting expletives.” More importantly, the...
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May 15, 2007
Pentagon to Soldiers: No More Social Networking
The news that the Pentagon is now blocking soldiers’ access to a number of popular social networking and video sites hit the wires yesterday but is front page news today. The Defense Department’s ban on access to MySpace, YouTube and...
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April 8, 2007
Blogging Guidelines Could Help Protect Free Speech
The New York Times’ Brad Stone has this thoughtful piece about the blogging guidelines that have been floated in the wake of Kathy Sierra’s widely publicized decision to back out of a speaking engagement due to threatening blog comments and...
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February 12, 2007
Presidential Candidates and The First Amendment
John Eggerton at Broadcasting and Cable has this excellent piece that prognosticates on just where the leading presidential candidates will likely stand on free speech matters, specifically as they relate to the electronic media. Expect Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and...
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February 5, 2007
No-Win Station Carriage Battle Ahead for Comcast
The Wall Street Journal today has this extensive page one piece on a major dispute between broadcast station group owner Sinclair Broadcasting and small cable company Mediacom. For those who haven’t followed this relatively arcane but high-stakes fight, here’s the...
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January 30, 2007
Apple Pays Bloggers $700K for Legal Fees
Under the American system of jurisprudence, anybody can sue anybody for anything. Unlike more enlightened justice systems, the American legal system is premised on the idea that each party to a lawsuit pays its own way, regardless of whether the...
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January 23, 2007
TV Violence Regulation Rears Its Head...Again
Like clockwork, the issue of TV violence regulation is once again rearing its head. It seems that about every ten years or so, Congress starts mau-mauing about the need to crack down on the amount and type of televised violence....
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November 21, 2006
Court: Bulletin Boards Not Liable for Others' Statements
A California Supreme Court decision regarding a blogger’s possible defamation liability has ended up serving the First Amendment very well. The court ruled that bloggers and Internet bulletin board groups cannot be sued for defamatory statements made by others due...
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Closing Arguments in COPA Case
Remember the Children’s Online Protection Act (COPA)? This is the 1998 law that would impose jail time and fines on web site owners who failed to ask for verification of the visitors’ ages if the government deemed the sites in...
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August 31, 2006
Musical "Tribute" to the FCC's Indecency Rules
An amusing and oddly catchy video devoted to the FCC’s stepped-up enforcement of indecency rules is making the rounds among DC types. (YouTube video is at the end, but for our feed readers, here’s the link.) Entitled “FCC FU,” it...
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August 30, 2006
Culver City Forces Users to Waive Free Speech Rights
Courtesy of Dave Weinberger, I came across this item from First Amendment attorney John Mitchell that seems too bad to be true, but it is. Culver City, CA is offering its citizens free Wi-Fi service, but there’s one big hitch:...
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August 26, 2006
Another Court Strikes Down Violent Video Games Ban
Proponents of local and state laws that ban the sale of “violent” video games to minors should just give up. One court after the next has overturned these laws as violations of the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech. In...
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July 28, 2006
Bill Banning Sites from Schools Passes House
The juicy, overblown press coverage of the possible predators lurking in MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites has had one clear consequence: The House of Representatives yesterday passed by a 410-15 vote a bill that is intended to restrict...
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June 25, 2006
Equalizing First Amendment Megaphones
A post by Cynthia sent me over to The Nation’s web site to check out some of the articles in the publication’s July 3 National Entertainment State issue. One of the first I saw, by filmmaker and political activist Robert...
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June 14, 2006
Jefferson's 11th Amendment & Net Neutrality
Cynthia’s intriguing posts on “Internet powered politics” and the political philosophies of those for and against net neutrality rules, got me thinking. My basic point is that old labels may no longer apply and that we may be in the...
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May 27, 2006
Online Journalists Win Big Victory
In a major victory for bloggers and online journalists, a California state appeals court handed the EFF a win yesterday in a case involving Apple’s attempt to sue writers for online publications, PowerPage and AppleInsider, who published leaked information about...
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May 11, 2006
Bill Proposes Social Networking Site Ban in Schools
CNET’s Declan McCullough has this item about proposed legislation that would in essence ban access to social networking sites in public schools. Representative Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and fellow Republicans have introduced a bill that would block access in public schools...
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April 19, 2006
Social Production and The Wealth of Networks
As Cynthia notes, Yochai Benkler’s new book, “The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedoms” is an important work. Larry Lessig is especially effusive in his praise: This is—by far—the most important and powerful book written in...
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April 14, 2006
Apple Suit Against Bloggers Heats Up Next Week
Apple Computer has set its legal sites on bloggers, charging a group of web scribblers with leaking trade secret information. The titan of Silicon Valley’s fight against a bunch of probably underpaid John Does attracted the top defenders of the...
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April 4, 2006
Federal Judge Strikes Down Michigan Game Sales Ban
If I were a state legislator, I’d give up on trying to outlaw the sale of violent video games to minors, Senator Clinton’s efforts to fund research justifying these kinds of laws notwithstanding. The latest evidence that the courts are...
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March 9, 2006
Senate Panel Approves Study on Video Games
In the hopes of producing scientific results that link violent video games with harm to minors, a group of Democractic Senators have pushed through the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions a measure that would fund a study...
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February 7, 2006
Public Knowledge Proposes Guidelines for Net Neutrality Rules
Last night, on the eve of today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearings on network neutrality, Public Knowledge, a self-described “group of lawyers, technologists, lobbyists, academics, volunteers and activists dedicated to fortifying and defending a vibrant information commons,” issued a white paper...
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January 23, 2006
Bringing Privacy Issues into the Sunshine
The Wall Street Journal’s Dionne Searcey reports that Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, “is seeking information from 20 phone, cable and Internet company executives about whether they provided information to the federal...
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December 3, 2005
Judge Strikes Down Illinois Video Game Law
A Federal judge yesterday struck down an Illinois law that bars the sale of violent video games to minors, adding to the pile of court decisions ruling these kinds of laws unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly said that...
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November 10, 2005
Judge Grants Injunction Against Michigan Video Game Law
A law passed in Michigan that would bar the sale of violent video games to minors has been preliminarily enjoined by a Michigan judge. Judge George Caram Steeh from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan granted...
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French Authorities Crack Down on Bloggers
Wired has a piece on how French authorities are shutting down blogs and arresting bloggers in the wake of the suburban riots, citing statutes that bar violent speech. Most of the arrested bloggers are minors. A prosecuting attorney from Le...
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October 15, 2005
"Freedom to Connect" As Today's "Right to Bear Arms"
At Telepocalypse, Martin Geddes makes what he calls an “outrageous suggestion” that “[t]he ability to access Internet content and services is the new Right to Bear Arms.” There’s been a lot of press in the last year or so about...
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October 6, 2005
Al Gore on Media, the Internet and Democracy
At the Media Center’s We Media conference, held Wednesday and sponsored by the AP, Al Gore gave a speech in which he argued that “American democracy is in grave danger and “that something has gone basically and badly wrong in...
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October 4, 2005
Freedom of Speech Week Announced
With a spate of developments infringing on First Amendment rights, it’s about time the right to free speech got its own week. The National Association of Broadcasters and The Media Institute announced today they are launching the first annual National...
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September 15, 2005
Video Game Group to Sue Michigan Governor
The trade association for the video game industry, the Entertainment Software Association, announced yesterday that it plans to sue Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm asking that the state’s new video game law be overturned, primarily on First Amendment grounds. The new...
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August 12, 2005
The FCC's New Indecency Advisor
Kevin Martin’s FCC is getting active on the indecency front, having named conservative Christian activist Penny Nance to the post of special advisor in the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. Her job, according to a Commission spokesperson...
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