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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

Journalism Graduates: It's Time to Reinvent Journalism

Posted on June 02, 2009
Spring is upon us and with it comes commencement season at universities across the country (Harvard's 358th commencement is this Thursday, FYI). This is a tough time for graduates in almost every discipline, but especially so for journalism grads. At least that is the conventional wisdom...

Scientology Suffers Another Setback -- This Time in Wiki Court

Posted on June 01, 2009
The Blogosphere and the MSM have been abuzz recently with news of a decision handed down last week by Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. Already the subject of law review articles and deep thoughts by Berkmanite Jonathan Zittrain, Wikipedia finds itself again in the spotlight for a decision that, on the surface, seems contrary to the Wikipedian ethos: Wikipedia, the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," has declared edits by the Church of Scientology to be unwelcome, permanently blocking contributions originating from IP addresses owned or operated by the Church or its associates...

A View of Judge Sonia Sotomayor From Cyberspace

Posted on May 29, 2009
With Obama's pick of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, the press has been snuffling through her record to find out where she stands on all sorts of hot-button topics. Little has been written in the popular press about what she might mean for areas of interest to our readers, such as copyright and online speech (the RCFP just put out a great report summarizing her First Amendment and freedom of information opinions)...

Inventor of Vibrating Toilet Seat Sues Google Over Allegedly Defamatory Search Results

Posted on May 28, 2009
From the we-aren't-making-this-up-department: Johnny I. Henry, an inventor of the vibrating toilet seat, filed a lawsuit last week against Google, Inc. and AOL, claiming that search results delivered by Google and hosted by AOL are defamatory. In his pro se complaint, Henry, who is African-American, asserts that Google's search results include links to, and snippets of text from, sites that contain pictures of him with captions containing a racial epithet...

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It's Time to Update the Lanham Act for the 21st Century

Posted on May 27, 2009
So this comment to my latest blog post got me thinking. Congress has (admirably) made an effort to clarify the legal liability faced by Internet service providers for content posted by users in some areas (see, e.g., Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act)...

NY Legislature Proactively Considering Whether Shield Law Applies to Bloggers? How Novel!

Posted on May 26, 2009
As anyone who's been faithfully reading the CMLP blog knows, the law hasn't been particularly good at dealing with the intersection of media shield laws and bloggers. Although there seems to be a modest trend towards application of shield laws to anonymous commenters on news stories, the judiciary's application of shield laws to bloggers specifically has been pretty hit and miss (and sometimes avoided all together)...

Web of Justice?: Jurors' Use of Social Media

Posted on May 22, 2009
At the start of a trial, the judge usually reads to jurors general instructions about how the trial will proceed. The instructions also tell jurors how they should behave during the trial, including the admonition that they should not discuss the case with others, including both trial participants and outsiders...

South Carolina Attorney General Agrees to Temporary Restraining Order in Craigslist Suit

Posted on May 22, 2009
Today, a federal district court in South Carolina issued a consent order temporarily restraining South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster from "initiating or pursuing any prosecution against craigslist or its officers and employees in relation to content posted by third parties on craigslist's website...

Yahoo! Petitions for Rehearing in Barnes v. Yahoo!, CMLP Joins Amicus Coalition in Support

Posted on May 22, 2009
Yesterday, Yahoo! filed a petition for rehearing in Barnes v. Yahoo!, a case in which the Ninth Circuit recently held that Cecilia Barnes could pursue a promissory estoppel claim against Yahoo! based on an employee's promise to take down a false profile, notwithstanding the immunity for interactive computer services in section 230 of the Communications Decency Act...

Top Conservative on Twitter Takes Critic to Court

Posted on May 21, 2009
Shortly after the election last November, a call went out within the conservative blogosphere to use Twitter to organize conservatives online. Not long thereafter, Michael Patrick Leahy and Rob Neppell started the website Top Conservatives on Twitter and pushed like-minded conservatives to use the Twitter hashtag #TCOT (the # allows twitterers to tag their tweets so others can easily search for the term on Twitter), which quickly caught on with the Tax Day Tea Party crowd...

Craigslist Sues South Carolina AG Over Threats of Criminal Prosecution

Posted on May 20, 2009
Tired of being bullied by South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, craigslist is going on the offensive. CEO Jim Buckmaster announced on the craigslist blog today that that craigslist is suing McMaster in South Carolina federal court, seeking "declaratory relief and a restraining order with respect to criminal charges he has repeatedly threatened against craigslist and its executives...

How to Make Your Client Look Bad, in Three Easy Steps

Posted on May 19, 2009
Courtesy of counsel for Newt Gingrich and Saul Anuzis. 1. Demonstrate a complete failure to understand how the relevant technology works. The whole dustup started when a Twitter user going by the handle EFCANOW tweeted the following tweet: "Join @newtgingrich @sanuzis in signing the EFCA Freedom Not Fear petition at http://action...

Employee Surveillance: How Big Brother Could Be Your Boss

Posted on May 18, 2009
When it comes to employee surveillance, will your electronic communications be spared from your employer's watchful eye? The United States District Court for the District of New Jersey will soon consider this question in the context of social networks...

IOC: All Your Blog Are Belong to Us

Posted on May 15, 2009
The Sports Journalists' Association is reporting that the International Olympic Committee has issued guidelines for athlete bloggers at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. For those of you that have been following this space, many of the restrictions on athletes' speech will seem familiar from the IOC's previous guidelines, issued during the 2008 Games in Beijing...

Merrill Lynch to Financial Blogger: Don't Quote Our Bearish Reports

Posted on May 14, 2009
Felix Salmon of Reuters reports that the pseudonymous lead blogger behind the financial blog Zero Hedge received DMCA takedown notices for six posts that cited or excerpted from Merrill Lynch reports authored by Merrill's former chief economist, David Rosenberg...

Craigslist Dropping 'Erotic Services' Section, No Word On Whether State AGs Will Drop Their Bullhorns

Posted on May 13, 2009
The Associated Press is reporting that Craigslist has decided to replace the "erotic services" section of its site with a new adult category that will be reviewed by Craigslist staff (Craigslist just issued a statement confirming the change)...

White House Drops License Restrictions on Photos, Flickr Stream Now in Public Domain

Posted on May 12, 2009
Wired/Epicenter reported yesterday that popular photo-sharing site Flickr, in collaboration with the Obama administration, has changed the licensing designation on photos in the Official White House Photostream to reflect that, as U.S. government works, they are in the public domain...

News Links

Posted on May 11, 2009
I sent this list out to the CMLP's team of intrepid bloggers to pique their interest, but with things being a bit slow around the office today, I figured I'd avoid the middleman. Things that caught my eye this past week: Who owns the facts? The AP and the "hot news" controversy - We aren't likely to see this issue go away any time soon...

The Future of Journalism and How to Start It

Posted on May 08, 2009
"Where do we go from here?" In the wake of the demise of local papers like the Rocky Mountain News and the well-publicized battle between the New York Times Co. and the Boston Globe's unions, this question has increasingly been on the lips of media professionals and those interested in the future of journalism in the Internet age...

Barnes v. Yahoo: Section 230 Does Not Insulate Online Service Provider From Contractual Liability

Posted on May 07, 2009
This is an interesting Section 230 decision from the Ninth Circuit that shows where the line is between Section 230 immunity and Section 230 liability. It should also serve as a cautionary tale for online service providers including bloggers who allow comments...

Introducing Kim Isbell, CMLP's New Staff Attorney

Posted on May 07, 2009
I'm excited to welcome Kimberley Isbell, the Citizen Media Law Project's new staff attorney. Kimberley is a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (where the CMLP is based). She received her J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 2000, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Law Record and President of the HLS Civil Liberties Union...

YouTube Restores National Organization for Marriage Video Outside DMCA Parameters, Cites Fair Use

Posted on May 07, 2009
Ben Sheffner reports that YouTube has restored the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM")'s "No Offense" video without waiting for the expiration of the DMCA's 10-14 business day counter-notification window: In what I believe is an unprecedented development, YouTube has conducted its own legal analysis of a National Organization for Marriage video that was subject to a DMCA takedown notice, and has re-posted the video prior to the expiration of the 10-14 business day counternotice window after determining that the inclusion of a 3-second clip of Perez Hilton calling Miss California USA Carrie Prejean a "dumb [beep]" was a non-infringing fair use...

Lesson of "Communist" Libel Cases in Vietnamese Community: Know Your Audience

Posted on May 06, 2009
In the United States after the Cold War, saying that someone is a Communist may not have the same sting that it did during the the decades of tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. But within the past three years, courts in California, Minnesota and Washington have held that calling someone a Communist can be the basis of a valid libel claim when the audience is the Vietnamese-American community, which consists mostly of refugees who fled the Communist regime in their native land after the Vietnam War...

South Carolina Attorney General Threatens Craigslist With Criminal Prosecution Over User Content

Posted on May 05, 2009
A new sortie in the battle over craigslist's "erotic services" section came today when South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster sent a letter to craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster threatening company management with "criminal investigation and prosecution" over the website's alleged facilitation of prostitution and -- more unexpectedly -- its hosting of "graphic pornographic pictures" posted by craigslist users...

Perez Hilton Sends DMCA Takedown Over Anti-Gay-Marriage Ad

Posted on May 04, 2009
The blogosphere is buzzing about Perez Hilton's recent foray into copyright bullying. Last week, the celebrity blogger, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, claiming that a new advocacy ad from the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") which was posted on the video-sharing site violated his copyright...

FCC v. Fox: Rethinking the Regulation of Indecent Speech in a Time of Pervasive Media

Posted on May 01, 2009
Earlier this week the Supreme Court handed down its eagerly awaited decision in FCC v. Fox. In a 5-4 vote, the Court rejected Fox's argument that the Federal Communication Commission had violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to give sufficient justification for its new policy banning "fleeting expletives" on broadcast radio and television...

CMLP Launches New Page Devoted to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

Posted on April 30, 2009
The Citizen Media Law Project today launched a cool new page that aggregates everything on our site relating to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("Section 230"), the important federal statute that protects operators of websites and other interactive computer services from liability for publishing the statements of third-parties...

Blogger Wins $225,000 Settlement Over Public Records Delay

Posted on April 29, 2009
In a nice cautionary tale for government agents who refuse to take public records requests seriously, Washington state political blogger Stefan Sharkansky won a $225,000 settlement last week from a county government that took two years to comply with his request for information...

Blogger Threatened Over Ballot Photo As 19th Century Laws Meet 21st Century Technology, Sensibility

Posted on April 28, 2009
As noted in the Documenting Your Vote section of CMLP's Legal Guide, several states have laws prohibiting voters from displaying their ballots to someone else. In Missouri, an anonymous blogger who sponsored a fake campaign for St. Louis Blues hockey player T...

Orlando Police Chief v. The First Amendment

Posted on April 28, 2009
There aren't too many elected officials in Flori-duh that I respect. Orlando Police Chief Val Demings, used to be one of the select few. She hasn't done a perfect job, and had a particularly embarrassing incident in which her gun was stolen. Nevertheless, my general impression of her has been that she is competent and ethical...

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