Scott Greenfield is feeling defiant over the news service’s theory (disputed by some others) that websites are infringing its copyright if they copy so much as a headline and link from its stories without permission. More: Windish, Morrissey, Citizen Media Law.
Posts Tagged ‘newspapers’
May 22 roundup
- Recruiting municipalities to sue: “Class-action lawyers target online travel sites” [Roger Parloff, Fortune, earlier]
- “New York press shield law would extend to bloggers (and define blogging)” [Turkewitz]
- Keep publishing that paper or else? Arizona Attorney General sues Gannett to make it keep Tucson Citizen alive [Legal NewsLine] More: Ken at Popehat has further thoughts on entanglement of government and press.
- Prediction if the feds bail out Sacramento: “bondholders will get 10 cents on the dollar, and the SEIU will be given 55% ownership of California.” [Coyote, Nick Gillespie/Reason]
- “Top Conservatives on Twitter” organizer takes critic to court [Citizen Media Law, Patrick @ Popehat]
- Louisiana woman sues Wal-Mart over unwanted in-store encounter with nutria (muskrat-like rodent) [Lowering the Bar, On Point News]
- Annals of zero tolerance: student expelled over eyebrow trimmer [KDKA, Pittsburgh, via Obscure Store]
- Program encourages Brits to report their neighbors to the cops if they seem to be living beyond their means [Radley Balko]
April 9 roundup
- Teacher’s aide in Queens, N.Y., sues 11 year old, saying he was dashing for ice cream and ran into her (this happened when he was eight) [WPIX; Rosanna Tomack, Joseph Cicak]
- Extraterritoriality, or exit fees? Stiff taxes these days on Americans who renounce their citizenship [Coyote Blog]
- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell hires Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, big campaign-donor law firm for anti-drugmaker suit [WSJ, Point of Law, ShopFloor, Adler @ Volokh]
- Injured in wrestling fall, will get $15 million from school district [Seattle Times]
- Feds seized Petri dishes at Buffalo professor’s home and word spread of major bioterror bust. Oops [Andrew Grossman, Heritage]
- Toward “public control over the media”: Creepy ideological origins of Nichols/McChesney scheme to subsidize newspapers [Adam Thierer, City Journal]
- Thanks to expensive modern medicine Virginia Postrel has been doing well in her fight against breast cancer, story might not have been so happy in some countries [The Atlantic, second essay responding to letters]
- Jury awards $22.5 million against vaccine maker to man who says he caught polio from daughter’s shot [Staten Island Advance]
February 8 roundup
- There’s money in lost personal data: “Counsel Could Rake in $5 Million from Veterans Settlement” [Weissmann/BLT]
- Commentaries on now-settled GateHouse v. NYTimes lawsuit (news organization grabs/aggregates rival’s reports) [Ardia and Lindenberger, Citizen Media Law; Nieman Journalism Lab]
- Funny and instantly recognizable: cop talk converted to human talk [Legal Antics]
- No need to worry about revival of Fairness Doctrine, they told us — uh-oh, here comes talk radio “accountability” [Patterico]
- Lenders whipped up one side of the street for too-easy credit standards, then down the other for tightening them [McArdle]
- Murder convictions for drunk drivers? Not so fast, a New York appeals court decision suggests [Greenfield]
- When no one writes a leniency letter at your sentencing, maybe problem is not so much that you’re a crooked lawyer as that you’re a powerless lawyer [YallPolitics on Tim Balducci, Mississippi]
- If lawyers strike everyone who’s griped about jury duty on Facebook “we’re going to run out of jurors really fast” [Anne Reed]
Finally, a revenue model for newspapers
January 17 roundup
- Tons and tons of favorable reaction to my Forbes piece on CPSIA: commenters there, Etsy thread, sampling of blogs: Polka Dot Patch, Heartkeeper’s Common Room, Colby Lane Designs, Baby Gardner’s (aw), Tristan Benz (double aw). Others who’ve gotten into the act: Iain Murray/Open Market, Jeff Nolan, Patrick @ Popehat (SSFC). New: Superblogger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, John Schwenkler, Carter Wood at ShopFloor, Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review “Corner”.
- “California Lawmakers Rush to Rescue Good Samaritans in Wake of Court Ruling” [The Recorder, Calif. Civil Justice Blog, earlier]
- “America needs a tax code simple enough for the Treasury secretary to figure out” [Taranto, WSJ]
- “Federal judge might ax $2M legal fee in Seattle ‘pro bono’ case” [ABA Journal, earlier here and here]
- Indictment of Long Island attorney Felix Vinluan dismissed; charged for advising nurses it was okay to quit their jobs [Cernovich, Volokh, Greenfield, Mitchell Rubinstein]
- “Apartment owner sued for common area second hand smoke” [Womble Carlyle]
- “Tulsa World sues alt-weekly over circulation story” [Romenesko and more, Shafer, BatesLine with many links] Update: drops suit against publication, leaving suit against columnist [Romenesko]
- “No evidence of a causal link between restaurants and obesity”. Hey, that could derail some lawsuits [Pethokoukis, U.S. News, on Northwestern/Berkeley study]
Daily Roundup 2008-12-28
Daily Roundup sounds better than Microblog, if you ask me.
- I thought we already had a gas tax. Farmers protest EPA plans to tax greenhouse gas “emissions” from cattle (Via Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who will probably have to come up with a new name in a few weeks);
- Another way to reduce discrimination against fat people: taxpayer funded stomach stapling;
- Navy settles anti-sonar environmental lawsuits filed by Natural Resources Defense Council. I can’t tell from reading this AP story precisely what good the settlement will do for the Navy, or for whales, porpoises, and dolphins, but it appears money is changing hands;
- This explains a lot: former attorney general John Ashcroft makes his best decisions “when I have a lot of morphine in my system” (Via Classical Values);
- A perfect season for the Detroit Lions;
- You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch: Alabama man sets own home ablaze in rage over not receiving Christmas presents;
- Newspapers are receiving and printing outsourced, slanted opinion pieces for free. Question: how does this differ from blogging? Answer: I’m wearing pajamas (well, a sweatshirt and sweatpants), as I write this, and I have a dog in my lap. Presumably the outsourced writers wear business casual in a fur-free environment;
- If you read the European libertarian blog Samizdata, send good wishes to Brian Micklethwait, one of their best writers, who has unfortunate news to report.
Tomorrow, I predict that somewhere, someone will be sued.
Excessive entanglement of press and state
One reason of many it’s a bad idea:
[Illinois Gov. Rod] Blagojevich, Harris and others are also alleged [in the federal indictment] to have withheld state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field. The statement says this was done to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members who were critical of Blagojevich.
More: Eugene Volokh. Similarly: Patterico.
P.S.: “When the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs wanted permission to install lights at Wrigley Field, Ald. Ed Vrdolyak let it be known it would require an end to editorial criticism of him. An editorial responded that the Cubs would ‘be playing morning games on a sandlot in Gary first.’ Vrdolyak — this will surprise you — is now headed for prison, another victim of Fitzgerald.” (Steve Chapman, Reason, Dec. 11).
October 17 roundup
- Anyone suing over anything dept.: Kansas City attorney Mary Kay Green sues McCain, Palin, for supposed hate speech against Obama [KC Star, Feral Child, Above the Law; related, my article the other day for City Journal]
- Got $331K from victim fund claiming severe injuries from Pentagon 9/11 attack, yet “kept playing basketball and lacrosse and ran [NYC] marathon in under four hours two months after the attacks” [Maryland Daily Record]
- Krugman claims Fannie/Freddie not big culprits in mortgage meltdown, but Calomiris and Wallison show him wrong [Stuart Taylor, Jr., National Journal; also note this Goldstein/Hall unlabeled opinion piece from McClatchy pushing the Krugman line]
- Government bailout of newspapers? Who’s trying to float this idea, anyway? [Bercovici/Portfolio via Romenesko] Update: maybe this?
- Colluded with chiropractor to generate bills for imaginary treatment, then pocketed clients’ insurance settlements without telling them [Quincy, Mass., Patriot-Ledger; Bruce Namenson sentenced to 5 years and “cannot practice law for at least 10 years after he gets out of jail”]
- Ontario: “Killer awarded $6K over wrong shoes in prison” [National Post]
- “Is there any doubt that Lucy grew up to be a lawyer?” [Above the Law on Doyle Reports, Judge Robertson ruling in patent case]
- Jury hits Jersey City, N.J. rheumatologist with $400K verdict (including $200K punitives) for not hiring sign language interpreter at his own expense for deaf patient [NJLJ, Krauss @ PoL]
Microblog for 2008-09-21
- Seems they’re a fragile bunch: 97% of LIRR employees “disabled” on retirement [New York Times investigation] #
- Lawsuit-proofing the bailout? Very sweeping immunity language in new bill [Gryphon, Point of Law] #
- Superior alternatives to the bailout? [Mallaby, WaPo] #
- “[L.A.] Times veterans should not be suing Zell. They should be suing themselves.” [Jeff Jarvis, earlier] #
- Jones Day gets bad publicity in hometown over blog-muzzling lawsuit [Cleveland Plain Dealer; earlier here and here] #
- Cool origami [MIT contest] #