Arthur Bright's blog

Britain's New Libel Bill: Better on Libel Tourism, But Worse on Anonymous Online Speech

Britain's effort to reform its defamation laws and shed London's title of "libel capital of the world" has been chugging along for several years, but now it looks like it's in sight of the last stop: The government unveiled its proposed new defamation bill in early May.  So what has all this time and effort wrought?

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U.S. Marine Faces Uphill Battle in First Amendment Challenge

What happens when the First Amendment collides with military decorum and respect for chain of command?  

It looks like we'll get to find out as the matter of Sgt. Gary Stein, the Marine who on a Tea Party Facebook page slammed President Obama and threatened to disobey his orders, rolls ahead. 

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Is 'Liking' on Facebook Protected Speech?

Venkat Balasubramani and Eric Goldman, over on Eric's blog, have highlighted a rather interesting if fundamentally flawed decision from the Eastern District of Virginia. 

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The Wasted Effort of Connecticut's Feeble Cop-Recording Bill

Connecticut, like most states these days it seems, has been having a problem with cops interfering with people photographing or filming them. Members of the Connecticut legislature are concerned about citizens being harassed for filming cops, and are working on passing a bill, No.

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Mexico Takes a Big Step Forward in Protecting Professional and Citizen Journalists

Thanks to its ongoing war against the drug cartels, Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world for a journalist to work. 

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Righthaven is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker!

If there is a polar opposite to organizations like ours, it is the intellectual property troll.  And in the IP troll heirarchy, one of the trolliest has long been Righthaven, the self-described "pre-eminent copyright enforcer" that sued hundreds of bloggers and other Internet denizens apparently as part of its business model.  If the DMLP, the EFF, Public Citizen, and the like are the Justice League, Righthaven would be in the Secret Society of Supervillians.

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Ron Paul Campaign Gets a Lesson on Civil Liberties

Ron Paul's presidential campaign has been having a rough go of it: He has yet to win a Republican state primary or caucus.  But now his campaign's also-ran streak extends into the courtroom too, in a victory for the right to anonymous free speech.

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We're Live, So Could Someone Please Wake Justice Ginsberg?

A bit of good news for those of us keen on open government: The Senate Judiciary Committee today voted 11 to 7 to allow television cameras into the Supreme Court.

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Why Twitter's New Censorship Tool Isn't As Bad As It Seems

Last Thursday, Twitter announced that it would start censoring tweets by denying access to specific tweets in countries where those tweets would be illegal.  Naturally, this has caused a lot of concern online

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SOPA/PIPA Protest Day is Over, But the Battle is Not

The day of protest against the now (hopefully) infamous "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) and "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011" (PROTECT IP Act, or PIPA) has ended.  Baffled students can once again access Wikipedia to do their homework; the Google doodle is no longer black

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A New Heavyweight Steps in the Ring as Round 2 Begins in Obsidian v. Cox

Given the hoopla it caused a few weeks ago, you may already be aware of the somewhat notorious ruling in the Obsidian Finance Group v.

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Want to be the New Righthaven.com? Just Three Shopping Days Left!

It's been a few months since we've checked in with everyone's favorite copyright troll, Righthaven. 

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Hate Speech v. Freedom of Expression in a 'Pleasantly Authoritarian Country' (aka Canada)

The United States is something of an outlier in the world when it comes to hate speech.  Whereas laws prohibiting hate speech in the U.S.

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