David OBrien's blog

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 »

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 »

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 »

Last week, celebrity, model, socialite, and actress Kim Kardashian found herself in diet hell.  Dr. Sanford Siegal, creator of the "Cookie Diet," and his Company, Dr. Siegal's Direct Nutritionals, LLC, filed a lawsuit against Kardashian in the 11th Judicial Circuit Court in Miami, Florida, for allegedly publishing false and defamatory statements to her immensely popular twitter account.

According to the complaint, Dr. Siegal's company sent diet samples to Kardashian's publicist last Spring after the company's CEO read an article claiming Kardashian, and other celebrities, had lost weight using the cookie diet.  The complaint states that neither Kardashian nor her publicist confirmed or denied the accuracy of the article, but acknowledged they received the samples.  Subsequently, the company posted a hyperlink on its website, alongside other news articles written about the diet, to a subsequent article that again stated that Kardashian and other celebrities had lost weight using the cookie diet.

On October 29, 2009, two tweets posted to Kardashian's Twitter account:

14(a). Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet is falsely promoting that I'm on this diet. NOT TRUE! I would never do this unhealthy diet! I do QuickTrim!

14(b). If this Dr. Siegal is lying about me being on this diet, what else are they lying about? Not cool!   read more »