Welcome to the Citizen Media Law Brief, a weekly newsletter highlighting recent blog posts, media law news, legal threat entries, and other new content on the Citizen Media Law Project's website. You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in the CMLP or registered on our site, www.citmedialaw.org. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe by following the link at the bottom of this email or by going to http://www.citmedialaw.org/newsletter/subscriptions.

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The latest from the Citizen Media Law Project blog...

Arthur Bright reports on a free speech flap Down Under. 
Australia's Facebook Five and the Right to Whinge About Your Boss Online

Sam Bayard finds yet another opportunity to invoke the "Skanks in NYC" case.
Splitting the Digital Baby: California Court Creates New Procedure for Uncovering Anonymous Commenters

Andrew Moshirnia has a recommendation for Valerie Bertinelli's replacement if she pulls a Kirstie Alley and gains all the weight back.
Weight Watchers from Hell – Iran’s New Method for Slimming Tortured Bloggers

Sam Bayard ponders the latest legal mystery out of New York.
Citing Anti-SLAPP Law, New York Court Dismisses Libel Case Against Unmasked Commenter

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Recent threats added to the CMLP database...

Przydzial v. Alkhateeb
Posted Sept. 18, 2009

Sarah Palin v. "Gryphen"
Posted Sept. 17, 2009

Admission Consultants, Inc. v. Google
Posted Sept. 16, 2009

Chang v. Greenwald
Posted Sept. 16, 2009

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Other citizen media law news...

Editorial — Freedom of the Press
The New York Times - Thurs. 09/17/09

Impolitico
Likelihood of Confusion - Thurs. 09/17/09

Government unveils plan to close UK's 'libel floodgates'
TimesOnline - Wed. 09/16/09

iStockphoto seeks profit from others' legal worries
CNET - Tues. 09/15/09

UK lawyer threatens Facebook, mulls action against ISPs to block defamation
Out-Law.com - Tues. 09/15/09

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The full(er) Brief...

"It's hard to be a prison guard in Australia, and not just because the entire country is a penal colony — zing!  Apparently you run the risk of being fired for griping about your job in a private Facebook group, even if other corrections officers are the only ones reading your complaint.  Such is the threat looming over those officers whom the Australian press has dubbed the Facebook Five. (Although apparently there are six of them.  Go figure.) . . .  Now, just based on common sense, the officers would seem to have a reasonable case.  It's difficult to see that communication to a private group online, even if hosted by Facebook, constitutes a fireable offense. But I know very little about Australian law, so let's take a look at some of the talking heads cited for legal expertise by the various reports on the case. . . ."
Arthur Bright, Australia's Facebook Five and the Right to Whinge About Your Boss Online

"It's amazing how many times you can hear a phrase without really understanding it. Take 'splitting the baby' for instance. Excuse my ignorance, but I'd always thought it had a more-or-less neutral connotation, suggesting a pragmatic compromise to a question or problem. But consider the Solomonic origins of the phrase, and you get quite a different picture. Split the baby and you kill it, and nobody likes a dead baby. So, I have to apologize up front for the title of this post - I haven't decided yet whether the approach to unmasking online commenters described below deserves praise or blame, but I couldn't resist this awesome wikicommons reproduction of Guissepe Cades' Judgment of Solomon. The Sacramento Bee and the Chronicle of Higher Education point us to a new online anonymity case from California. Last week, Superior Court Judge Shelleyanne Chang ruled . . . on blogger David Greenwald's motion to quash a subpoena seeking the identity of commenters to his blog, the People's Vanguard of Davis. Taking an approach I've never seen before, the court - ahem - split the baby. Judge Chang decided that former UC Davis police officer Calvin Chang (no relation to the judge) cannot obtain directly any identifying information for the commenters in question, but he can employ a third-party expert to determine whether the comments were posted by specific UC Davis personnel whose names Chang will provide in advance. . . ."
Sam Bayard, Splitting the Digital Baby: California Court Creates New Procedure for Uncovering Anonymous Commenters

"A little while back, I wrote about the Iranian persecution of bloggers and opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There is so much evidence of this systematic assault on liberty that it was difficult to pick just one Exhibit A. I finally settled on the before and after pictures of Mohmmad Ali Abtahi, which showcased the effects of torture on a former vice president and leading cleric-blogger. The image of a formerly rotund, sanguine Abtahi transformed into that of a haggard immate seemed the easiest way to confirm allegations of mistreatment of political detainees. No so fast, said Abtahi's jailers. According to the New York Times, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, President Ahmadinejad's adviser for press affairs, said that these pictures point not to torture but to self-improvement derived for deep contemplation. Javanfekr, apparently with a straight face, argued that '[i]t is only natural for a person who has gained an excessive amount of weight to come to his senses in prison that being overweight is not good for your mental or physical health.' The Iranian authorities have truly outdone themselves this time. I dare you to come up with a more asinine excuse. Oh, and be sure to utter that fable against the backdrop of allegations of widespread detainee rape. . . ."
Andrew Moshirnia, Weight Watchers from Hell – Iran’s New Method for Slimming Tortured Bloggers

"Long before Liskula Cohen's case brought online anonymity into the mainstream press, New York courts were already struggling with the law surrounding the outing of anonymous Internet speakers. For example, back in October 2007, a court in New York County denied a school board member's request to unmask 'Orthomom,' an anonymous blogger who had published critical comments about her. In June 2008, Judge Rory Bellantoni of Westchester County ruled that ex-Congressman Richard Ottinger and his wife could obtain the identity of an anonymous commenter to a forum on LoHud.com, an online news site operated by The Journal News that covers New York's Lower Hudson Valley. In a recent development in the latter case, last month another judge in Westchester county dismissed the Ottingers' subsequent defamation lawsuit against Stuart Tiekert, the commenter unmasked in the previous proceeding. In his ruling, Judge Richard Liebowitz invoked New York's anti-SLAPP law and ruled that the Ottingers 'failed to demonstrate that their action has a substantial basis in fact or law.' How can this be? Didn't the Ottingers have to make some kind of legal and factual showing in order to get Mr. Tiekert's identity in the first place? In fact, they did. . . ."
Sam Bayard, Citing Anti-SLAPP Law, New York Court Dismisses Libel Case Against Unmasked Commenter

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