Kentucky

Last week, Republican Tim Couch of Kentucky introduced a bill in the state legislature that would impose criminal fines on Kentucky-based website operators who fail to collect "a legal name, address, and electronic mail address" before allowing a user to post a comment. The proposed law would also require website operators to "establish reasonable procedures to enable any person to request and obtain disclosure of the legal name, address, and valid electronic email address of [a user] who posts false or defamatory information about the person."

Hmm . . . This looks like a transparent attempt to get around the First Amendment protection for anonymous online speech recognized in a slew of recent and not-so-recent cases, including Doe v. Cahill, Mobilisa v. Doe, Krinsky v. Doe 6, Essent v. Doe, and Greenbaum v. Google. Entirely appropriately, Marc Randazza takes Couch out to the woodshed for failing to appreciate not only the state of the law but also the importance of anonymous speech to our nation's history.

Putting aside the First Amendment issue, Couch's bill suffers from a host of practical difficulties. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica, also fired up by the stupidity of the proposal, writes:   read more »

A (Louisville) Courier-Journal reporter was stripped of his press credential at an NCAA Super Regional baseball game yesterday and asked to leave the stadium for live-blogging the game. Contrary to the views of some commentators (including, apparently, the newspaper's own lawyer in a prior story), this is not a copyright issue, as the NCAA does not appear to be claiming that the live-blogging infringed or otherwise violated its copyright in the game. (In probably the most widely quoted opinion addressing the issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the NBA v. Motorola case stated that sporting events are not original works of authorship subject to copyright protection.) Rather, the NCAA is claiming that as a condition of access to the press box or for receiving a press credential, a journalist must refrain from live-blogging or filing reports for publication during a game. While it is debatable whether a live blog is an adequate substitute for a television or radio broadcast, the NCAA is clearly trying to protect the value of the broadcast rights it licenses for TV, radio and other live media.   read more »