Sarah Palin wants the media to shut up because if they don't stop calling her campaign negative, they are trampling on her right to say whatever she wants? What? God I will miss this lady when she's gone (nope).
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
The irony here is too beautiful to ruin with an explanation.
"The prospect of congressional approval of a federal 'media shield' law this year dimmed Wednesday when Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources. Supporters of the shield bill said it is possible - but unlikely - that the issue will be revived in September, after the Senate takes a planned monthlong recess starting this weekend. Otherwise, backers of the bill would be forced to begin again in January, when a new Congress convenes." [SFC]
This, when other bills in front of the Senate moving through votes in as little as six seconds. CONTINUED »
Every few months, talk of a federal shield law pops up in the news, only to fizzle out once something more interesting comes along, like a missing white girl. But he were are again, with Judith Miller testifying before Congress as both the House and the Senate seem prepared to endorse some version of protection for journalists looking to out corrupt politicos, or other baddies.. Both Barack Obama and John McCain are on board in some fashion; they've given the thumbs up to the Senate's version of the bill (them beins senators and all.) But can we really trust the possible future leaders of the U.S. to back press freedom? CONTINUED »
You know who would've benefited from seeing this pair of creative ads for Porn Blocker software? Clinton Raymond McCowen, who's on trial in Florida for distributing porn that qualifies, prosecutors are arguing, as "obscene," that nasty over-the-line definition that means whatever the hell you're doing is not protected by the First Amendment.
(This is not to be confused with a similar obscenity trial underway in Los Angeles, where pornographer Ira Isaacs is defending his human-on-animal flicks, and where the Hon. Alex Kozinski recused himself after he was found out for posting some of his own borderline-acceptable porn on what he thought was a private web server.)
McCowen is on trial for producing group sex porn, raking in an estimated $1 million per year from 5,000 subscribers who pay $30/month for their orgy fix. (Also, prosecutors say paying the "actors" amounts to prostitution.)
What constitutes obscenity hinges on the Supreme Court's 1973 decision, which puts forth a 3-part test to determine if material is obscene based on "contemporary community standards"; that is, does the community think the material is obscene? And to argue that it's not, McCowen's attorney is turning to Google — and its cache of data on your search history. CONTINUED »
When the Associated Press meets on Thursday with a group of bloggers, collectively known as the Media Bloggers Association but not exactly elected to speak on behalf of a loosely aligned group of publishers, to discuss the little matter of excerpting their articles, perhaps they'll have a very interest topic to talk about: How the AP expects to be paid for a single five-word quotation. Yes, the wire service is selling "quotation licenses," effectively charging publishers who want to stick a few words between certain punctuation for a legal right they actually already enjoy under the First Amendment's Fair Use provisions. There's a sliding scale, with quotations of 5-25 words a bargain $12.50, while quotes that are 251-plus words going for $100. To the New York Times' Saul Hansell, this policy is just the AP's "attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt." Cute phrasing! CONTINUED »
The Associated Press, made up of a consortium of newspapers that pay into the organization to license content, committed a material sin against new media last week when it threatened a lawsuit against left-y website The Drudge Retort for copy/pasting headlines and article copy in a manner, at least according to the AP's legal counsel, that did not meet the spirit of Fair Use provisions. Then the blogs got up from their chairs, walked over to the filing cabinet, grabbed their machetes, and began slicing through the AP's reputation blog post by blog post. Smartly, the AP retracted its decision against Retort (though kept alive their cease and desist), and now sits in limbo, weighing its options.
It's already involved in court proceedings against VeriSign-owned Moreover, which basically does the same thing as Retort, but with deeper pockets and wider distribution. But the AP's decision to go after "the little guy" has earned in a number of foes, many of whom insist they're boycotting the service, which, uh, they don't even pay for, so big whoop.
But when it comes to The Drudge Retort, and its owner Rogers Cadenhead, the AP might not have to wait very long. Cadenhead is weighing a countersuit. After all, if the AP's claim is that his use of brief excerpts decreases the market value of its product, it could very well be argued that by posting the snippets, Retort is increasing the demand for those stories. CONTINUED »
After sending a cease and desist letter to liberal news website The Drudge Retort citing copyright violations, the Associated Press is, for now, backing off efforts to get the site to pull headlines and copy quotations from the wire service, which it claims are not covered by Fair Use provisions. That the entire blogosphere reacted to the AP's move by taking a big publicity shit on it probably helped bring about the retreat. [NYT]
At R. Kelly's child porn last month, jurors were treated to a special screening of the tape that allegedly depicts the rapper urinating on a 13-year-old girl and having sex with her.
But what if that's actually the better of the "porn at jury duty" scenarios? CONTINUED »
RedLasso, the television clipping service popular with bloggers, intends to keep cutting video from the networks and making it available online, despite a lawsuit from Big Media. Reads the company's statement, in part: "Clip usage by bloggers is an exercise of first amendment rights to provide social commentary on newsworthy events." Oh, and also: RedLasso would love to set up a revenue sharing arrangement with the networks. [B&C]
STAND BACK, POLLSTERS! ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, FNC, and the AP are suing, um, the State of South Dakota(?) and asking a federal judge to strike down a law there that prohibits exit polling within 100 feet of a voting place. Their argument? The law violates First Amendment protections because it infringes upon news organizations' ability to gather information about elections and politics. [E&P] As if a few extra feet are the problem with exit polling.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether saying "fuck" on the air should earn a FCC fine. [AP]
Kentucky Rep. Tim Couch would like to make it illegal for you to exercise your First Amendment rights on any blog or message board. He proposes fines for anyone who posts comments anonymously. By that logic, it should be fair to fine Couch anytime he proposes anything. [MP]
Score one for the First Amendment. And its whiny protectors. The website WikiLeaks.org, which was ordered shuttered last week, plays home to something like 1.2 million documents from businesses and government agencies that were never supposed to come under public scrutiny, like a Guantanamo Bay operations manual. But now its defenders – the EFF and a gaggle of media orgs – say the ruling to close Wikileaks amounts to "prior restraint," a violation of free speech rights that courts have ruled unconstitutional. The site's closure came about after attorneys for the law firm – which else – Lavely & Singer alleged some of the docs violated privacy and bank secrecy laws of Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. But lucky you, even defending national security gets trumped by the First Amendment, and didn't we learn anything from the Pentagon Papers?
After a brief stint in jail last week, the criminal case against Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin on the Phoenix New Times was dismissed.
Last Thursday, the New Times executives were arrested for printing details of the subpoena against them which demanded the Internet records of visitors who had visited the Phoenix New Times website since 2004. Releasing grand jury information is a misdemeanor.
This weekend, the Maricopa Country Attorney Andrew Thomas dismissed the charges against Lacey and Larkin for publishing details of the subpoena. In a press conference, Thomas said, "It has become clear to me that this investigation has gone in a direction that I would not have authorized." Thomas also took special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik off of the case.
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"What I am going through now is exactly what Hugh Hefner went though, and what Larry Flynt went through, and I will prevail, because I've done nothing wrong."
–Pornographer/constitutional scholar Joe Francis, invoking his right to freedom of expression and exploitation of naked teenage girls under the First Amendment.
As you already know, we're totally in favor of free speech and all that other "First Amendment says 'you can't sue us'" goodness.
But as a practical matter, most people tend to discuss more controversial political matters primarily in the privacy of their own homes, out of concern that their remarks will be overheard by someone who violently disagrees. Or, you know, accidentally broadcast in front of millions of people, thereby causing a national outrage and effectively ruining their career—er, careers.
With the Jessica Cutler/Robert Steinbuch case raising wide-reaching questions about a blogger's protection under First Amendment rights—which, in Jessica's case, means the right to publicly document her romps in the sex and potentially ruin her bedmates' reputations with particularly damaging details about their bedroom—everyone is waiting with bated breath to hear what the Supreme Court has to say.
And if Justice Samuel Alito's recent remarks are any indication, then the fate of the First Amendment has never looked better.
We never thought we'd find ourselves siding with Fox (except on matters pertaining to Family Guy), but we are nevertheless pleased that a federal court has tossed the FCC's profanity rulings against said network, after determining that their current "fleeting expletives" policy qualifies as "arbitrary and capricious."
According to the court's 2-1 decision, the FCC's policy was deemed inadequate primarily because the commission had failed to "to articulate a reasoned basis for its change in policy."
In other words, by removing any wider-reaching First Amendment issues from their immediate consideration, the court is essentially saying FCC lost on a technicality.
Predictably, the FCC Chairman was rather agitated by the court's decision, however Fox spokesperson (and HuffPo's melodramatic blogging staff) were overcome by celebratory cheer.
"It does my democratic heart good to see the system work," begins overly effusive blogger Jeff Jarvis, in an understated piece entitled, "The First Amendment Wins One."
Earlier this week, members of the Defense Department announced that—effective as of Monday—soldiers stationed overseas would no longer be allowed to access YouTube or MySpace, citing concerns about bandwith as the primary reason for the new digital restrictions.
Now, YouTube is fighting back against what they perceive to be a miscarriage of justice.
YouTube's cofounders Thursday challenged the Pentagon's assertion that soldiers overseas were sapping too much bandwidth by watching online videos, the military's principal rationale for blocking popular Web sites from Defense Department computers. "They said it might be a bandwidth issue, but they created the Internet, so I don't know what the problem is," Chief Executive Chad Hurley said.
While no one's gone so far as to call this a government conspiracy, YouTube has suggested just enough impropriety to call "bullshit." And we're just glad to be living in a country where people are willing to challenge questionable statements, invoke their First Amendment rights and stand up for what they believe in.
Even if "what they believe in" is off-duty cops accidentally shooting themselves in the leg and overweight boys fighting with broomsticks light sabres.
Every now and then, something stupid happens that enables a bunch of crazy conservatives to re-open the eternal debate over First Amendment rights and FCC regulations. A couple years back, it was Janet Jackson's right nipple. Right now, it's Don Imus. And here's an example of the politically incorrect louts they're staunchly rallying against.
A Jewish group is calling for the firing of an outspoken CNN anchor, Lou Dobbs, after he accused advocates for illegal immigrants of using propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany. "Comparisons to Nazis — especially in this day and age — are abhorrent," the president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Gideon Aronoff, said in a statement yesterday.
Yes, apparently now we're firing people for making tenuous analogies and having the audacity to actually use the word "Nazi." On purpose. To apply to something other than the Holocaust.
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Editorial Director
