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Things aren't looking good for the American public. While Americans generally love the idea of being tough on crime, I doubt grandmothers want to ardently police the online habits of their grandchildren. But surprise, surprise, the negotiators hammering out the details on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) have placed a three-strikes Internet ban on the agenda. This move essentially threatens users with Internet death if anyone uses their connection for ill. This is not a good sign.   read more »

Of all the crazy things I've seen on the Street View feature of Google Maps, including house fires, medieval sword fights, supposed crimes in progress, people being pulled over (including the occasional Google vehicle speeding violation), I can't say that Aaron and Christine Boring's Pennsylvanian home rates high on my list of interesting vistas.   read more »

If you're a fan of high-tech gadgets or Internet drama, you might have noticed the brouhaha brewing at Engadget this week. Long known for its comment sections ranking just above the YouTube level on the scale of man's inhumanity to man, the site prompted a new wave of bile last week with its coverage of Apple's iPad announcement. After mocking the anti-Apple commenters failed to stop them, Engadget disabled its comments Monday.

This is all well and good, of course — it's up to Engadget to decide whether and how it will offer a commenting function. Some of the coverage of Engadget's decision, however, didn't quite get this right. Wired's Epicenter blog suggested that Engadget was forced to disable commenting completely in order to avoid legal liability for what its commenters posted. “The one thing publications can't do,” he wrote, “is edit comments.” Fortunately for online publishers of all stripes, Epicenter was mistaken. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”) shields website operators who exercise normal editorial control over their users' content, and this includes editing the content of the comments themselves.   read more »

A ruling by the highest court in Massachusetts could impact the methods that activists use to advocate their causes, by setting a boundary between activism that is protected by the state's anti-SLAPP statute and factual reporting, which is not.

Earlier this week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled in Fustolo v. Hollander, SJC-10485 (Mass. Feb. 1, 2010), that the writer of newspaper articles on a local development controversy could not use the state's anti-SLAPP statute to get defamation claims by a developer dismissed, even though the writer was also involved in the story as the co-founder of a community group that opposed the development. 

The writer's involvement in the community group did not make her articles an exercise of her "right to petition" on the development issue, the high court said, because the articles were objective journalistic accounts that did not advocate a particular position or disclose the writer's involvement. 

From Participant to Observer    read more »

I'm not one for local news broadcasts. When I do watch, it's to enjoy the unintentional humor brilliantly parodied by those like the Onion News Network. But WHDH-TV's Pete Bouchard recently made me reconsider the comedic opportunities of local news, delivering an instant classic one-liner that quickly found its way onto YouTube.

During an on-air forecast last month, Bouchard said: "Picking up some snow are we? Yes we are. In Princeton we picked up 9 inches of snow and in Billerica we had 7." Then, delivered with a pause and an eyebrow raise, Bouchard boldly stated, "The biggest amount I could find—almost as big as me—about 9 inches."   read more »

I have a pet theory that perfect informational transparency would make the world a more civil place.  Sure, it might be embarrassing to reveal our personal secrets and foibles to the world, but the tradeoff would be that you'd know when someone was talking out of both sides of their mouth.  In such a world, maybe that senator wouldn't be quite so holier-than-thou when the public knows about his penchant for underage prostitutes.  Or maybe that Member of Parliament having an affair with a teenager would have been a little more tempered in her homophobia.

Of course, such a system is completely unrealistic—people value privacy too much to accept such a thing, and there are simply too many practical obstacles to the free flow of information. Still, the whistleblower site Wikileaks stands as an example of how we can break down some of the barriers to greater transparency. While not without controversy, some of it probably well deserved, the three-year-old site has made a valuable contribution to journalism and to public debate more generally, a contribution recognized on both sides of the political spectrum, from The Economist to Amnesty International.   read more »

The Citizen Media Law Project is pleased to announce that its Online Media Legal Network (OMLN) is partnering with the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) to assist with freedom of information lawsuits and to provide online journalists with FOI information and assistance.  We are honored to join forces with NFOIC, a key player in the FOI field, and we look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship.

From the press release:   read more »

No man is an island, no man stands alone
Each man's joy is joy to me
Each man's grief is my own
We need one another, so I will defend
Each man as my brother
Each man as my friend
  read more »

It’s been a long time since a printed newspaper delivered to your doorstep or purchased on your way to work was the only way to get your daily dose of news. Now you can access those news publications on a laptop, smartphone, e-book reader, or—soon—on Apple’s tablet. In addition to an ever-expanding array of formats through which to read the same content, online publishing has enabled a whole range of new journalistic ventures from hyperlocal guides of stops along a light rail route to blogs focused on local government and politics. Even The New York Times has been making use of Twitter feeds and frequently updating blog posts in its coverage of the earthquake crisis in Haiti. Journalism is no longer only about storytelling; it can include a whole host of ways to inform the public.   read more »

A group of friends gathered after work a few years ago to record what may be now the most popular performance of Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta." In a video that has since been viewed more than 2 million times on Vimeo, the 30 or so friends took turns lip-syncing, dancing and then ultimately falling to the floor as a group at the song's end.

Sean Nelson, the frontman for Harvey Danger, wrote to Vimeo's co-founder Zach Klein: "That Flagpole Sitta video made me incredibly happy, just when I thought there was NOTHING that could make me listen to that song again. A thousand thank you’s."   read more »

If you're a regular user of the Webtubes—and if you're reading this blog, you probably are—you're well aware of the kerfuffle that ensued after Google's decision to cease its search-engine operations in China.  And naturally, it's now become a political issue between the US and China.  A recap, in brief:

Google apparently discovered that Chinese hackers had broken into various Gmail accounts, including those of human rights activists.  Google, remembering that China also liked to censor the hell out of Google searches and that this didn't really jive with Google's "Don't be evil" motto, decides to publicly withdraw from the Chinese market. China gets bent out of shape by the accusations of hacking and censorship.  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighs in, drawing a comparison between Internet censorship and the Iron Curtain.  Surprisingly, China doesn't like this comparison and calls the US a pot to China's kettle.   read more »

Appeals courts in Maryland and New Jersey appear to be the first to reverse jury verdicts because of social media use by jurors during trial.

I wrote about the issue of jurors' use of social media back in May, and reported: "there do not appear to be any cases in which courts overturned a jury verdict or ordered a new trial because of use of social media by jurors during trial."

[More courts, however, are adopting rules and jury instructions to curb this growing problem.  See this blog post and associated comments for details.]

As if there hasn't been enough judicial scrutiny of live media coverage during ongoing trials recently, last week a Florida court banned a Florida Times-Union reporter from live-blogging during a high-profile murder trial in the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court of Duval County, Florida. An appeals court reversed the trial judge's ruling on Wednesday, but restrictions on the use of media in the courtroom remain in place.   read more »

Andrew Wang of Chicago Breaking News reports that an Illinois judge has dismissed Horizon Realty Group's defamation lawsuit against Amanda Bonnen. Surely you remember this gem from last summer? The landlord that sued its tenant for tweeting to all of 20 followers that her apartment was moldy; the management company that made—and then backpedalled on—one of the greatest statements (foot-in-mouth-wise) of all time: "We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization." Ah, good times indeed.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen found that Bonnen's tweet wasn't capable of supporting Horizon's claim because it was "too vague to meet the legal standards of libel." Ruling from the bench, the court also apparently indicated that the tweet could be construed innocently or as a statement of opinion, according to Wang's article.   read more »

"I'm willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job. But it's the essence of our society that the policeman's job should be hard. He's there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that's an incidental part of his job. The free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman than the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal." - Orson Welles

Orson Welles said these words in a 1955 BBC program called Sketchbook, during which he spoke of, among other things, the role of police. In light of a string of arrests made by Massachusetts police under the state's wiretapping law, his words seem especially relevant. The free citizen—in this case, the individual recording public law enforcement—is unfortunately considered a nuisance, and a law created to protect the free citizen is now being used against him.   read more »

Predictability is important when it comes to the law. Citizens should know what sort of punishment they should expect for engaging in criminal behavior. If offends our notions of justice when wildly different sentences are handed down for similar crimes.

So its more than a little disturbing that courts cannot decide whether or not an individual’s criminal acts can justify a ban from the entire Internet. While Circuit splits on the interpretation of criminal statutes are par for course (see, e.g., disagreements as to what constitutes a "violent felony" under the ACCA), the debate over Internet bans rages within one Circuit Court of Appeals. The latest ruling by the Third Circuit appears to be its third change of course in the last decade, undermining our understanding of and confidence in Internet prohibitions.

Like its sister Circuits, the Third Circuit has been struggling with the idea of banning Internet access for sex offenders.  The logic goes something like this: because convicted sex offenders might use the Internet to exploit children, sentencing courts may simply outlaw their access to the Internet. Of course, an offender might also use a car or a telephone to exploit a child, but these tools haven’t come into the crosshairs just yet.   read more »

From a functional perspective, I think that the First Amendment is the most important amendment in the bunch, because it ensures that the people can denounce any injustices the government perpetrates.  To be sure, various other amendments bar greater evils than censorship—the Thirteenth Amendment ban of slavery springs to mind as an obvious example.  But I'd argue that, without the First Amendment, banning such evils would be harder to do as a practical matter without a legally sanctioned watchdog function of constitutional proportions.

But that said, free speech without any limits imposed by government, private party, or simple civility has its drawbacks.  Such is the topic of an interesting post by Gene Policinski, the executive director and VP of the First Amendment Center.  Mr. Policinski, clearly no foe of open discourse, points out that while the Internet has brought unparalleled ability to the masses to speak their peace on every topic known to man, it also seems to have brought about an amazing level of vitriol, unfiltered by either law or simple civility, as well.

[I]n general, we’re free to say what we want, when we want, in just about any place we choose. Therein is a modern-day dilemma: Many of our fellow citizens do just that, in ways that are amplified by the Internet’s reach. As a result, nearly two decades into the World Wide Web era, speech that once would have been limited to a private snarl, sprayed onto a wall or uttered to a small group or friends or colleagues now goes global with the touch of a few keys. . . .   read more »

Last Friday, political commenter and blogger Patrick Frey of Patterico's Pontifications found a chilly email waiting in his inbox. The email purported to be a DMCA takedown notice from photographer Ted Szukalski, who complained about Frey's blog post that reproduced and commented on the photoshopped Obama/Palin image pictured at right.  The takedown notice read:   read more »

This afternoon, the Supreme Court put the final kibosh on video streaming of the Prop 8 trial to five federal courthouses around the nation.  The Court stayed U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's order permitting the broadcast.  The stay will remain in force for the foreseeable future, putting an end to the controversy for practical purposes. The Court did not address the recording and dissemination of the trial on YouTube, viewing it unnecessary because Judge Alex Kozinski, the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, had not approved Judge Walker's decision to allow Internet dissemination when the petitioners sought a stay.

The Justice split 5-4 down familiar ideological lines, with the conservative majority ruling that Judge Walker's order was invalid on procedural grounds because "the courts below did not follow the appropriate procedures set forth in federal law before changing their rules to allow such broadcasting." This despite the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council's mid-December approval of a pilot program allowing limited use of cameras in district courts within the Circuit. According to the majority, the district court did not give the public sufficient notice and opportunity to comment before revising a local rule that prohibited the broadcast at the "eleventh hour."   read more »

There are a couple of laws in California that the U.S. Supreme Court should consider before it announces tomorrow whether or not the Proposition 8 trial can be broadcast on YouTube: § 240 and § 422.  These two laws don't address same-sex marriage, discrimination, or even access to courts, as you may have expected.  Instead, these sections of the California Penal Code make it a crime to either assault or threaten to use violence against another person. 

The Justices should take comfort in these laws. They are significant because the opportunity to view what could be a watershed case for gay rights is being prevented by a concern for the safety of witnesses.  Ironically, those witnesses do not happen to be the persecuted homosexuals of bygone days, but instead those who now support a state measure to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.  The trial began yesterday in San Francisco, and U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker originally agreed to a delayed broadcast of each day's proceedings on YouTube.  But yesterday the Supreme Court issued an order (.pdf) temporarily stopping the broadcast at the request of Prop 8's supporters.   read more »