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Citizen Media Law Project

Legal training and resources to protect free online speech. Advocacy for citizen participation in online media.
By Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Center for Citizen Media

Post Frequency: 3.9/day

Last Entry: July 20, 2010 at 10:11:43

Ninth Circuit Weighs In On Internet Anonymity, Consumer Griping At Risk

Posted on July 20, 2010
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision last Monday in Inre: Anonymous Online Speakers, No. 09-71265 (9th Cir. July 12, 2010), a case that could be influential for future courts deciding whether to order the identification of anonymous or pseudonymous Internet speakers...

Toxic Lunch: Digesting the Latest ACTA Leak

Posted on July 19, 2010
The latest leak of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) came out a few days ago. Before we delve into the more troublesome elements of the agreement, let?s take a few moments to ponder how sad it is that our government continues to craft this agreement in secret...

Appeals Court to Filmmaker: Turn Over Your Footage to Chevron

Posted on July 16, 2010
A federal appellate court has issued a swift ruling, in a high profile reporter's privilege case, that requires a filmmaker to surrender some of his unpublished footage to a powerful oil company. Last week I wrote about a brewing court battle between filmmaker Joe Berlinger and the oil company Chevron over 600 hours of outtakes from his documentary, ?Crude: The Real Price of Oil? (?Crude?)...

Won't Someone Think of the Children! Massachusetts' Unconstitutional Attempt to Break the Internet

Posted on July 15, 2010
It is a good thing to want to protect children from the vulgarity of the world. Accordingly, states have adopted prohibitions on exhibiting or selling harmful material to minors. These laws make sense, in that we usually don?t want sex shops selling pornography to kids...

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7th Circuit Holds Blogger Can Be Prosecuted For Threatening Juror

Posted on July 12, 2010
An alleged white supremacist can be prosecuted under a federal solicitation statute for posting on his blog the name, address and photograph of a juror who helped convict the "leader of a white supremacist organization" of soliciting the murder of a federal district court judge and obstruction of justice, the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in a ruling in late June...

N.C. Judge Unmasks Pseudonymous Blog Commenters

Posted on July 09, 2010
A North Carolina trial court recently ordered the editor of the local community blog Home in Henderson to turn over the names and addresses of six pseudonymous commenters who allegedly defamed former Vance County commissioner Thomas S. Hester, Jr...

Court Battle for Filmmaker's Footage Spurs National Debate on Reporter's Privilege

Posted on July 07, 2010
A filmmaker's fight against an oil company seeking his raw documentary footage has spurred a national debate on the reporter's privilege, pitting media organizations and filmmakers against powerful corporations and criminal defense attorneys.� At stake is the breadth of the protection given to unpublished newsgathering materials and, ultimately, the basic trust between journalists and their sources...

Public Engines to World: Look, But Don't Touch the Crime Data

Posted on July 07, 2010
Earlier this spring,�Public Engines, Inc. sued ReportSee, Inc.�in federal district court in Utah. Both companies maintain websites that publish local crime statistics and information gathered from law enforcement agencies. Public Engines gathers crime data by contracting with law enforcement agencies across the country to provide software and data management services...

An Ounce of Prevention: Protecting yourself against online retaliation

Posted on July 06, 2010
Last week I discussed recent news stories highlighting the dangers of online retaliation. At worst, this form of retaliation chills speech and threatens critical reporting. But short of that, it can harm journalists in a number of ways, including third-party harassment (in the case that your personal information is published) and reputational damage (through fraudulent profiles, posts, defamatory comments, etc...

We Love a Happy Ending...

Posted on July 02, 2010
Earlier this week, we received the good news�that�travel blogger extraordinaire Christopher Elliott sucessfully resolved the defamation lawsuit brought against him by Palm Coast Travel. Chris found a top-notch lawyer to help with his case through our�Online Media Legal Network (OMLN)��(thanks for the�shout out to the network, Chris!)...

No Safe Harbor Offline

Posted on July 01, 2010
Last week YouTube won a landmark victory against Viacom in NY federal court. YouTube successfully argued that it was protected from Viacom's copyright infringement claims by the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...

Free Speech Savior or Shield for Scoundrels? An Empirical Study of Intermediary Immunity Under Section 230

Posted on June 30, 2010
As many of you who read this blog know, we spend a lot of time thinking about -- and sometimes debating --�section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. �We've often lamented, however, that there isn't a good compilation of all of the 230 cases (Eric Goldman, the dean of the 230 bar, has covered most, if not all, of the cases, but you have to sift through his�excellent blog�to find them)...

Logging In and Lashing Out: 'Crowdsourced retaliation' presents new challenges to journalists

Posted on June 23, 2010
Critics have always run the risk of retaliation. They have not, however, always run the risk of having their personal phone number micro-blogged to over 115,000 people in a split second. For a long time, retaliating against a journalist meant grumbling to your friends or writing a phone number on a bathroom wall...

Citizen Media Law Project, EFF, and Public Citizen Advocate First Amendment Scrutiny in Hot News Cases

Posted on June 22, 2010
The Citizen Media Law Project, EFF, and Public Citizen have jointly submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the court to apply First Amendment scrutiny to the ?hot news misappropriation? doctrine in Barclays Capital, Inc...

Eric Robinson and Reporter Ron Sylvester Discuss Social Media in the Courtroom on Lawyer2Laywer

Posted on June 17, 2010
CMLP contributor Eric P. Robinson and Wichita (Kansas) Eagle Staff Writer for Interactive News Ron Sylvester discuss Tweeting, blogging and use of other social media to report on courtroom proceedings in the latest Lawyer2Lawyer podcast.� Eric has written numerous posts on this issue for this blog, including here, here, here, here, here, here,here, and here...

FTC's Provocative Discussion Paper on Saving Print Media

Posted on June 14, 2010
The Federal Trade Commission?which last year created guidelines to impose ethical standards on bloggers?is now taking on the ambitious task of saving the print media in the Internet era.In preparation for the final in a series of hearings on the future of the news media, the Commission has released a staff report that makes some pretty bold proposals, including legal changes and even government subsidies for traditional media...

Is the New York Times Really Claiming That All Paid RSS Readers Infringe its Copyright?

Posted on June 09, 2010
The Interwebs are up in arms, again. This time, the kerfuffle is over a DMCA notice, submitted by The New York Times Co., that caused the removal of the Pulse RSS reader from the Apple Apps Store. The timing almost seemed designed to bring out the pitchfork-wielding hordes:� Mere hours after the Pulse iPad application was highlighted by Steve Jobs during his keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the app was pulled from the App Store in response to a DMCA claim submitted by The New York Times Co...

Who Took Your E-book?

Posted on June 08, 2010
E-readers are spreading both in the U.S. and abroad. Last week the New York Times reported that the Kindle, previously available only on Amazon.com, will be sold in brick-and-mortar stores by Target. College students could grab one when they pick up their school supplies...

T&J Towing v. Kurtz: We've Got The Court Documents

Posted on June 07, 2010
Last Monday, the New York Times ran an article about T&J Towing's lawsuit against a college student, Justin Kurtz, over a Facebook group page he started called ?Kalamazoo Residents against T&J Towing.? Several other news outlets and blogs have picked up the story, in no small part due to its David-and-Goliath appeal...

Illinois Court Requires Newspaper Website To Identify Pseudonymous Commenter

Posted on June 03, 2010
A mid-level appellate court in Illinois ruled on Tuesday that the publisher of a local newspaper must reveal the identity of a pseudonymous Internet commenter.� In Maxon v. Ottawa Publishing Co., 3-08-0805 (Ill. App. Ct. June 1, 2010), the court reversed a trial court order granting Ottawa Publishing's motion to dismiss a pre-litigation petition for discovery seeking the identity of a commenter to its mywebtimes...

Seventh Circuit Vacates Contempt for E-Mail Barrage

Posted on May 21, 2010
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the summary contempt citation and sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman after his court e-mail account was inundated with messages after infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau urged his supporters to e-mail the judge...

Summertime, and the Living's Easy...

Posted on May 14, 2010
It's that time of year.� The students are finishing up classes and the Berkman Center is catching its collective breath before the summer interns descend in June.� As we eagerly await the nice weather, we're going to be changing things up a bit here at CMLP headquarters...

New Legal Guide Section on Foreign Risks

Posted on May 10, 2010
It's pretty obvious that material placed on the "word wide web" is, indeed, available around the world -- at least most of it. While the ability to make content available worldwide is a great virtue of the Internet, it has the potential to create a legal minefield for citizen journalists, who could face a civil or criminal legal action over online content in any country where the content is available...

Out of the Lab and Into the Fray, Scientists and Science Writers Talk About the New Media Environment

Posted on May 07, 2010
Last Friday, the Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Science, Technology & Society hosted a conference to discuss science journalism online. Alongside scientists and science journalists, Sam Bayard and Kimberley Isbell from the Citizen Media Law Project discussed the roles and responsibilities of science journalists and scientists who write online...

Google/Youtube v Greg Sandoval

Posted on May 07, 2010

Sam Bayard and Eric Goldman Discuss Gizmodo iPhone Flap on Lawyer2Lawyer

Posted on May 06, 2010
Title:�� The Mystery of the Missing iPhone Description:�� The technology and legal world was abuzz over an incident involving a prototype of the iPhone 4G. An Apple engineer allegedly left behind the iPhone, which eventually ended up in the hands of Gizmodo...

New Hampshire Supreme Court Upholds Free Speech Rights for Online News Sites

Posted on May 06, 2010
The New Hampshire Supreme Court today issued an important decision upholding the First Amendment rights of online publishers. Harvard Law School?s Cyberlaw Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief last June on behalf of the Citizen Media Law Project and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in the case, The Mortgage Specialists, Inc...

New Hampshire Supreme Court Rules Website Covered By State Reporter's Privilege

Posted on May 06, 2010
This morning, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire handed down an important decision holding that a mortgage industry website, The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, is entitled to protection under the state's reporter's privilege. The case is Mortgage Specialists, Inc...

FTC Endorsement Rules Get Their First Workout

Posted on April 30, 2010
The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it has completed its first investigation under the "blog-ola" rules it adopted last year, which require bloggers and other social media posters who receive a free or discounted product or service to disclose the freebie in their reviews or commentary about the product or service,�or face the possibility of an FTC enforcement action...

Government Data: This Data Was Made for You and Me?

Posted on April 28, 2010
In March, Google launched its Public Data Explorer, expanding upon its public data search feature that's been around since last spring. Earlier this month, Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism announced a joint degree program to train tech-savvy journalists...

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