Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘online speech’

Groklaw shuts down on NSA privacy fears

Chilling effects of the surveillance state [Glyn Moody, ComputerWorld UK]:

Groklaw is shutting down, as a direct result of the revelations that the world’s communications – including our emails – are being spied upon by the NSA and GCHQ. That’s a huge loss for the open source world: Groklaw played an immensely important part in fighting off the absurd but dangerous SCO attack on free software. Alongside that main work it has conducted countless legal analyses of various other attempts to use patents and copyright to undermine open source. And it has done it applying the open source method of collaboration, a significant achievement in itself.

But the guiding force behind Groklaw, PJ, feels she can’t go on when something so fundamental as the privacy of her communications can no longer be taken for granted. In her final post, she compares the feeling to an earlier one when her flat was broken into, and someone went through all her belongings.

More: Brian Barrett, Gizmodo. We’ve cited Groklaw a number of times in this space.

Not unrelated: “What Should, and Should Not, Be in NSA Surveillance Reform Legislation” [Electronic Frontier Foundation]

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Police and prosecution roundup

  • Body cameras protect both police and the citizenry [Steve Chapman]
  • “Federal Prosecutor Disciplined for Making False Statements” [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum]
  • “The more popular view is that the role of a jury is to deliver a guilty verdict when the government accuses someone of a crime” [Ken at Popehat]
  • More on forfeiture following New Yorker piece [Steve Greenhut, ABA Journal, earlier]
  • How feds went after maker of secret automotive compartments [Brendan Koerner, Wired, April; Amy Alkon] Held at gunpoint for half hour+: massive Texas SWAT raid on organic farm yields okra, no pot [Radley Balko] Mother Jones magazine is perfectly happy to cheer on Drug War lunacy when that affords a chance to bash big pharma [Cathy Reisenwitz, Thoughts on Liberty]
  • “Law Enforcement Wants To Weaken Section 230: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” [websites’ immunity for content left by visitors; Popehat]
  • Eliot Spitzer’s prosecutorial sins catalogued [Lawrence Cunningham]

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Free speech roundup

  • “Bryon Farmer of the Blackfeet Tribe Jailed For Talking About Corruption In Tribal Government” [Ken at Popehat] “Popehat Signal: Vengeful AIDS Denialist Sues Critic In Texas” [same]
  • Persons with federal government contracts can’t give to federal candidates or parties. Too broad? [Ilya Shapiro and Trevor Burrus, Cato]
  • “Together at last! ‘Some US conservatives laud Russia’s anti-gay bill.'” [@jon_rauch on Associated Press re: “propaganda” measure]
  • More on Second Circuit decision ruling scientific conclusions akin to protected opinion for defamation purposes [Digital Media Law Project, earlier]
  • San Antonio bars appointment to its city boards and commissions of anyone who has ever said anything demonstrating bias “against any person, group or organization on the basis of race” or various other protected categories [Eugene Volokh]
  • Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader wins defamation suit holding gossip site operator liable for user comments [Sporting News] Michigan: “Ionia newspaper editor files defamation suit against critics” [MLive, Popehat with a critical view, update at Popehat following dismissal]
  • “Hate speech” at issue: “Twitter releases users’ identities to French authorities after tough legal battles.” [JOLT]

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July 18 roundup

  • “This is just stunning. DOJ is soliciting tips from the public in order to build a case against a single citizen.” [@radleybalko, William Jacobson, @andrewmgrossman] Apparently, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has the power to remove prosecutor Angela Corey from office, and her post-verdict description of Zimmerman as “murderer” is the sort of unprofessionalism that might advance that day [Ian Tuttle with much more about her career, earlier] Ken doesn’t hold back from telling us what he thinks of Nancy Grace [Popehat, earlier]
  • Washington Post covers USDA mandate of disaster plan for magicians’ rabbits [Lowering the Bar, David Fahrenthold/WaPo, earlier]
  • “Joel Tenenbaum’s $675,000 Music Downloading Fine Upheld” [AP]
  • “Hey look, an actual Third Amendment case” may be premature regarding this Nevada dispute, especially if we’re not sure cops = soldiery [Ilya Somin]
  • “Why The State Attorneys General’s Assault On Internet Immunity Is A Terrible Idea” [Eric Goldman, Forbes]
  • Connecticut: “Supreme Court Upholds $2.9 Million Award For Injured Bicyclist” [Courant]
  • The ABA’s annual Blawg 100 nominations are now open, in case, you know, (nudge)

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“…It was certainly *not* some impulsive, ham-fisted attempt to bully a local resident…”

The township of West Orange, N.J. sends a cease and desist letter to a local political activist who runs the domain westorange.info and gets the following response from attorney Stephen Kaplitt (via Above the Law):

Dear Mr. Trenk:

I am pro bono counsel to Jake Freivald and write in response to your “cease and desist letter,” dated May 13, 2013, regarding his domain westorange.info. Obviously it was sent in jest, and the world can certainly use more legal satire. Bravo, Mr. Trenk! ….

Oh, and just to play along, had you intended for your letter to be taken seriously, even in some small measure, we would have sent in response something along the following lines: …

[several legal points follow about municipalities’ general lack of a right to exclude others from using their names as part of domains]

If you manage to produce supporting authority that even remotely passes the laugh test, I will donate $100 in your honor to the American Civil Liberties Union — N.J. chapter. I plan to make the donation online, assuming the state of New Jersey has not shut down aclu-nj.org.

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Pending ADA regulations menace Internet freedom

It’s potentially the biggest regulation in the federal pipeline that most people don’t know about — and it’s aimed straight at the freedom to publish of the Internet. I explain at Cato at Liberty. More: Coyote (“The implications could be staggering, and in certain scenarios would basically force me to certainly close down this site, and likely close down many of my business sites.”)

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Free speech roundup

  • More on Mayor Michael Nutter’s investigation of Philadelphia magazine for sin of committing unwelcome journalism [Mark Hemingway, Weekly Standard, earlier]
  • Standing on principle: liberal speech scholars defend right to use “gruesome images” in abortion protests [Volokh]
  • GreenTech Automotive files libel suit against Franklin Center’s Watchdog.org [Jim Geraghty]
  • “Dear Mr. Sahota… Your pompous yet feckless bluster distinguishes you.” [Ken at Popehat, Lesley Kemp case]
  • “Plaintiff Who Keeps Suing Search Engines Still Not Clear on Streisand Effect” [Lowering the Bar, earlier here, etc.]
  • “Government Can’t Condition Federal Contracts on Giving Up Constitutional Rights” [Ilya Shapiro on Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International; SCOTUSBlog] Speaking of compulsory sex positions, the problems with an Ohio legislative proposal on sex-ed are many, among them that government isn’t constitutionally free to bar hiring teachers of whose views it disapproves [Chris Geidner, BuzzFeed]
  • Partial fee award to attorneys Paul Alan Levy and Cathy Gellis in case where attorney Charles Carreon menaced blogger [Michael Masnick/TechDirt, Paul Alan Levy, Popehat, earlier here and here]

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Legal threats against “Retraction Watch”

Quoting Ken White at Popehat:

The blog Retraction Watch tracks, and probes, retractions in scientific journals. They say they do so because retractions are a “window into the scientific process,” because doing so helps create a repository of retractions and publicize them, because retractions can be the lead-in for a great story about misconduct, and because tracking retractions can help keep scientific journals honest.

Unsurprisingly, this does not make them popular among some of the scientists they cover. Last month a researcher at a well-known Texas cancer center menaced the site with a lawsuit, soon unleashing the Streisand Effect. And now, in a separate case, a pharmaceutical chemist is threatening to sue them because they reported on one journal’s “Expression of Concern” about one of his pieces, and in the terminology of scientific journals, an “Expression of Concern” is a different thing than a “Retraction,” which, he says, means that the website’s title is exposing him to defamation. Per Ken, this is not exactly the world’s most meritorious theory either.

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