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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

MySpace Sued Over Teen Suicide

Posted on February 26, 2008
No, this isn't about the Megan Meier suicide debacle. It's about another, older but equally tragic episode. The family of a fifteen-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2006 after a sexual relationship with a twenty-seven-year-old man she met on MySpace is suing the popular social networking site for negligence and violation of products liability law (i...

Highlights from the Legal Guide: Are Your Online Activities Covered by Insurance?

Posted on February 25, 2008
This is the fourth in a series of posts calling attention to some of the topics covered in the Citizen Media Legal Guide we published in January. As we roll out new sections of the guide each month, we will highlight some of the more important topics in blog posts...

Eric Menhart Rethinks Trademark Application; Internet Lawyers Still Laughing

Posted on February 22, 2008
The curtain appears to be closing on a what has been a humorous episode in the anals of "cyberlaw." Ron Coleman and Eric Goldman report that Eric Menhart has amended his application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which previously sought to trademark the term "CyberLaw" in connection with legal services...

Pennsylvania Reforms Open Records Law, Loses Distinction as Worst in the Country

Posted on February 21, 2008
Now that the Wikileaks storm has started to subside, it's time for us to catch up on some items that deserve attention (but haven't been getting it from the CMLP lately). Last week, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed a bill that significantly reforms the state's open records law, previously regarded as one of the worst in the country...

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International Olympic Committee Thinks Blogging Is Not About Journalism

Posted on February 19, 2008
Ars Technica reports that the International Olympic Committee has lifted its ban on blogging. Athletes competing in Beijing 2008 will be allowed to blog about the Olympics, so long as they follow some, well, restrictive guidelines. Most notably, athletes will not be permitted to report on the overall competition or relay information from third parties; instead, the guidelines require that they focus on their own personal experiences...

Making Sense of the Wikileaks Fiasco: Prior Restraints in the Internet Age

Posted on February 19, 2008
Yesterday, I reported that a federal judge in San Francisco had issued a stunningly broad injunction that brought down Wikileaks.org, a site that is developing what it describes as an "uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis...

Court Orders Wikileaks.org Shutdown, Then Grants Limited Reprieve

Posted on February 18, 2008
Last Friday, a federal district court judge in San Francisco issued a stunningly broad injunction that brought down Wikileaks, a site that is developing what it describes as an "uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis...

Highlights from the Legal Guide: Deciding Whether and How to be Anonymous

Posted on February 18, 2008
This is the third in a series of posts calling attention to some of the topics covered in the Citizen Media Legal Guide we published in January. As we roll out new sections of the guide each month, we will highlight some of the more important topics in blog posts...

Some Thoughts on the New Net Neutrality Bill

Posted on February 14, 2008
Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced a new net neutrality bill before the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday. Net neutrality refers to the (surprisingly) controversial idea that all Internet traffic should be treated equally...

Swartz v. Does: Tennessee Couple Sues Anonymous Author(s) of Local Blog for Defamation and Invasion of Privacy

Posted on February 13, 2008
On Monday, a prominent couple from Old Hickory, Tennessee sued three anonymous defendants for defamation and invasion of privacy over statements appearing on the Stop Swartz blog and craigslist. The plaintiffs, Donald and Terry Keller Swartz, buy and sell a lot of real estate in Old Hickory, and a bit of local political maneuvering on their part seems to have earned them some enemies...

Federal Case Law Archive Now Online and Free

Posted on February 12, 2008
Public.Resource.Org and Creative Commons announced that they've released the first batch of case material in their free case law archive. Yesterday's release encompases over 1.8 million volumes of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754...

Highlights from the Legal Guide: Getting Your Words and Other Content Out to the World

Posted on February 11, 2008
This is the second in a series of posts calling attention to some of the topics covered in the recently launched Citizen Media Law Project Legal Guide. The first topic we took up was choosing a business form for your online publishing activities. In this post we discuss the various issues, both legal and practical, that arise when you select a platform for your online speech...

Judge Reduces Verdict in Snyder v. Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church Still on the Hook for $5 Million

Posted on February 08, 2008
Earlier this week, a federal District Court judge in Maryland more than halved a $10.9 million jury verdict against the Westboro Baptist Church, a fundamentalist Christian church in Kansas, and three of its leading members. Among other things, the church publishes a website at "www...

Bush Refuses to Fund New FOIA Ombudsman, Takes the Heart Out of Open Government Reform Law

Posted on February 07, 2008
Well, that was quick. Mere weeks after signing the "OPEN Government Act of 2007" on December 31, 2007, which significantly reformed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), President Bush is now attempting to cut out the heart of the OPEN Government Act by refusing to fund the newly created FOIA ombudsman's office...

Krinsky v. Doe 6: New Decision from California Provides Strong Protection for Anonymous Speech

Posted on February 07, 2008
A California appellate court issued a new anonymity decision yesterday in Krinsky v. Doe 6, H030767 (Cal. Ct. App. Feb. 6, 2008). (For background on the facts of the case, see the CMLP database entry, Krinsky v. Doe 6.) In line with the recent trend towards increased protection for anonymous speech online, the California court came out with a test that puts a significant evidentiary burden on a plaintiff before allowing disclosure of an anonymous Internet speaker's identity...

Highlights from the Legal Guide: Choosing a Business Form

Posted on February 05, 2008
This is the first in a series of posts calling attention to some of the topics covered in the recently launched Citizen Media Law Project Legal Guide. The first topic we'll take up is choosing a business form for online publishing activities. There is increasing awareness that, especially if you publish content in collaboration with others, it may not be smart to simply leave the relationship "natural" or informal...

Goodale TV on CDA 230 and AutoAdmit

Posted on February 04, 2008
Sam Bayard blogged previously about James Goodale's article on CDA 230 and the highly publicized AutoAdmit case. In the article, Goodale argues that CDA 230, the federal law that shields providers of "interactive computer service[s]" from liability for defamation and other torts for publishing the statements of third parties, should be amended to impose liability in cases where a website operator "knowingly causes defamation by refusing to take down libelous posts...

Citizen Media Law Project Launches Legal Guide

Posted on January 31, 2008
Today we are launching the first sections of the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide. The guide is intended for use by citizen media creators with or without formal legal training, as well as others with an interest in these issues, and addresses the legal issues that you may encounter as you gather information and publish your work online...

Savage v. CAIR: The Council for American-Islamic Relations Asks Court to Dismiss Michael Savage's Lawsuit

Posted on January 31, 2008
I've blogged before about the Savage v. CAIR lawsuit, in which the conservative talk show host claims that CAIR violated his copyright (and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act!) by posting and commenting critically on an audio clip from one of his shows, in which Savage makes all sorts of hateful and inaccurate claims about Muslims and the Islamic faith...

CUNY Journalism School Launches Website to Help Citizen Journalists Avoid Legal Risk

Posted on January 30, 2008
In a project headed by Associate Professor Geanne Rosenberg, CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism has launched a new website -- Top 10 Rules for Limiting Legal Risk. The project, which is carried out in collaboration with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Knight Citizen News Network, aims to provide training to citizen journalists on the legal rights and responsibilities that go along with newsgathering and online publication...

Plaintiffs Seek Information to Unmask Pseudonymous Defendants in AutoAdmit Case

Posted on January 28, 2008
Last Thursday, the plaintiffs in the AutoAdmit case filed a motion for expedited discovery, seeking permission to serve subpoenas on a number of ISPs, universities, and websites demanding information about the identities of the the pseudonymous posters named in the lawsuit...

Students Shown Drinking on Facebook Banned From School Activities

Posted on January 28, 2008
School officials at Eden Prairie High School outside of Minneapolis punished 13 students after discovering photographs of them drinking on Facebook.com. As punishment, the students were banned from their sports teams or other extracurricular activities...

Court Awards Perez Hilton Nearly $85,000 in Attorneys Fees in Ronsen Suit

Posted on January 25, 2008
I previously blogged at length about Mario Lavandeira's victory under California's anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. � 425.16) in the libel lawsuit brought against him by celebrity DJ and Lindsey Lohan pal Samantha Ronsen. Now, my RSS feeds are clogged with reports that the California court has awarded Lavendeira nearly $85,000 in attorneys fees under the anti-SLAPP statute...

Primer on Copyright Liability and Fair Use

Posted on January 24, 2008
As a lead up to the launch of the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide later this month, we are putting up longer, substantive blog posts on various subjects covered in the guide. This post is the second in our series of legal primers. The first addressed the subject of immunity and liability for third-party content under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act...

Mashups, DVD Ripping, and Fair Use

Posted on January 23, 2008
Chris Soghoian at CNET Blogs published an interesting post yesterday -- Did Slate violate copyright law? It talks about a hilarious mashup video that Slate posted a few days ago called Hillary's Inner Tracy Flick, which juxtaposes images from the 1999 film Election and current footage of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton...

Fernando Rodrigues Discusses Access to Public Information in Brazil

Posted on January 22, 2008
Today at the Berkman Center, Fernando Rodrigues, a journalist from Brazil who is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, spoke about "Journalism and Public Information in Brazil." In 2002, Rodrigues launched "Pol�ticos do Brasil," a website that contains approximately 25,000 records of Brazilian politicians showing electoral information and personal data ? including the list of personal assets of each politician who ran for office in the past three general elections in Brazil...

Comparative Analysis of Copyright Fair Use in Canada, United Kingdom, and United States

Posted on January 20, 2008
Giuseppina D'Agostino, a law professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, has a new paper coming out entitled "Healing Fair Dealing? A Comparative Copyright Analysis of Canadian Fair Dealing to UK Fair Dealing and US Fair Use." Here is the abstract: As a result of the March 4, 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision in CCH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada for the first time in Canadian copyright history, the court determined that Canadian law must recognize a "user right" to carry on exceptions generally and fair dealing in particular...

Gawker Defies Demand from Church of Scientology to Remove Creepy Tom Cruise Video

Posted on January 18, 2008
Earlier this week, a promotional/inspirational video for the Church of Scientology featuring Tom Cruise began circulating online. The video is bizarre -- against the background of what sounds like the Mission Impossible theme, Cruise extols the virtues of Scientology and urges viewers to embrace its ethics and worldview...

New Hampshire to Stop Issuing ID Cards to Journalists

Posted on January 17, 2008
The Associated Press is reporting that New Hampshire will no longer issue identification cards to journalists. According to a report in Seacoastonline: The man who handled the chore ? Jim Van Dongen of the state Department of Safety ? says the decision is based on the proliferation of online and specialty news outlets and technology that allows just about anyone to call himself a journalist...

Court of Appeals Affirms that Single Publication Rule Applies to Internet

Posted on January 16, 2008
In a case of first impression in Texas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the "single publication rule," which states that the statute of limitations period for libel begins to run when a defamatory statement is first published, applies to publications on the Internet...

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