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...

David O'Brien notes that Florida Circuit Judge L. Page Haddock got knocked down, but got up again to keep courtroom blogging down.
Florida Court Restricts Reporter's Use of Laptop During Murder Trial

Sam Bayard reports that the world remains safe for tweets about mold.
Landlord's Defamation Suit Against Tenant Over Moldy Apartment Tweet Dismissed

Justin Silverman explains why you might want to think twice before pulling your iPhone on a Massachusetts police officer.
The Free Citizen as a Nuisance

Andrew Moshirnia still has a bee in his bonnet (but not a birdhouse in his soul) about Internet bans.
The Digital Riddle: When Sex Laws Meet the Internet, Confusion Reigns

Arthur Bright asks why we all can't just get along in the comments section.
The Double-Edged Sword of Online Free Speech

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Recent threats added to the CMLP database...

Conde Nast v. Does
Posted Jan. 21, 2010

Levinson Axelrod v. Heyburn
Posted Jan. 20, 2010

Peabody Energy Corporation v. DeSmet
Posted Jan. 20, 2010

Massachusetts v. Peyton
Posted Jan. 19, 2010

Circuit Court v. Florida Times-Union
Posted Jan. 19, 2010

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Other citizen media law news...

Vision Media TV Tries to Evade Section 230 Immunity to Squelch Criticism
Consumer Law & Policy Blog - Thurs. 01/21/10

Manchester United Bans Twitter, Facebook for Players
IT Business Edge - Thurs. 01/21/10

The Need for a Reverse Creative Commons
Plagiarism Today - Wed. 01/20/10

Supreme Court Affirms Right to Attend Jury Selection
The Newsroom Law Blog - Tues. 01/19/10

Court orders anonymous GQ blogger and hacker to be identified
Internet Cases - Tues. 01/19/10

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The full(er) Brief...

"As if there hasn't been enough judicial scrutiny of live media coverage during ongoing trials recently, last week a Florida court banned a Florida Times-Union reporter from live-blogging during a high-profile murder trial in the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court of Duval County, Florida. An appeals court reversed the trial judge's ruling on Wednesday, but restrictions on the use of media in the courtroom remain in place. The case in question, dubbed the Dubose Murder Trial, involves three brothers being tried for the murder of a 9-year-old girl. It has attracted significant public interest in the Jacksonville area. During the first day and a half of trial, reporter Bridget Murphy was sending periodic updates from her laptop in the courtroom to a dedicated blog page on the Times-Union's Jacksonville.com website. According to documents filed in the court, after the first day of live online coverage the blog had received over 1,000 hits and was laden with commentary from interested readers. Even the State Attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit, Angela Corey, who had stopped by the trial in a supervisory capacity on the first day, said she was a fan of the live coverage and called the blog 'awesome,' according to the newspaper's petition on appeal. On the second day of trial, Circuit Judge L. Page Haddock expelled Murphy and her laptop from the courtroom. The ban was curiously raised sua sponte -- meaning that neither the prosecution nor defense teams complained about Murphy's coverage, rather, the judge acted on his own account. . . ."  David O'Brien, Florida Court Restricts Reporter's Use of Laptop During Murder Trial

"Surely you remember this gem from last summer? The landlord that sued its tenant for tweeting to all of 20 followers that her apartment was moldy; the management company that made—and then backpedalled on—one of the greatest statements (foot-in-mouth-wise) of all time: ‘We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.' Ah, good times indeed. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen found that Bonnen's tweet wasn't capable of supporting Horizon's claim because it was ‘too vague to meet the legal standards of libel' . . . . It's hard to say what the court had in mind without seeing a written opinion, but perhaps Judge Larsen reasoned that the use of ‘moldy' in this context didn't create a sufficiently precise meaning in the mind of the average reader. . . ."
Sam Bayard, Landlord's Defamation Suit Against Tenant Over Moldy Apartment Tweet Dismissed

"[T]he Massachusetts wiretapping statute, MGL Ch. 272 § 99 . . . clearly outlines two goals: To allow law enforcement to listen to the private conversations of those suspected of organized crime, and to protect everyone else from having their private conversations recorded. . . . Most states, however, allow recording with only one party's consent. But not Massachusetts, and that's how those like Simon Glik end up in jail. Boston police arrested Glik in 2007 when he began recording three officers struggling to pull a plastic bag from a teenager's mouth during an apparent drug bust. . . . Finding his curiosity to be a distraction, the officers arrested Glik under the wiretapping statute because his recording captured audio, and they hadn't consented. See, police are trained on how to make a drug bust and how to treat a criminal. They are not trained on how to treat a law-abiding citizen whose camera phone may be distracting or embarrassing. . . . There are strong First Amendment grounds to support recording in these circumstances and Massachusetts should acknowledge them. . . ."
Justin Silverman, The Free Citizen as a Nuisance

"Predictability is important when it comes to the law. Citizens should know what sort of punishment they should expect for engaging in criminal behavior. . . . So it's more than a little disturbing that courts cannot decide whether or not an individual's criminal acts can justify a ban from the entire Internet. . . . Like its sister Circuits, the Third Circuit has been struggling with the idea of banning Internet access for sex offenders. The logic goes something like this: because convicted sex offenders might use the Internet to exploit children, sentencing courts may simply outlaw their access to the Internet. . . . In United States v. Crandon, 173 F.3d 122 (3d Cir. 1999), the Court of Appeals imposed a three-year partial Internet ban as a condition of release for a convicted sex offender. After the offender had completed his prison sentence, he was "not to possess, procure, purchase, or otherwise obtain access to any form of computer network, bulletin board, Internet, or exchange format involving computers unless specifically approved by the United States Probation Office'. . . . So what is the take away? You can bar predatory users from using the Internet, so long as the length of the ban is quantified and the ban allows a probation officer to grant case-specific exceptions. . . . Perversely, the maximum amount of time marked for digital exile seems to be growing, just as the Internet is becoming more pervasive. . . ."
Andrew Moshirnia, The Digital Riddle: When Sex Laws Meet the Internet, Confusion Reigns

"From a functional perspective, I think that the First Amendment is the most important amendment in the bunch, because it ensures that the people can denounce any injustices the government perpetrates. . . . But that said, free speech without any limits imposed by government, private party, or simple civility has its drawbacks. Such is the topic of an interesting post by Gene Policinski, the executive director and VP of the First Amendment Center[, who] points out that while the Internet has brought unparalleled ability to the masses to speak their peace on every topic known to man, it also seems to have brought about an amazing level of vitriol, unfiltered by either law or simple civility, as well. . . . It's deeply unfortunate, because such comments, like the Internet generally, could be such a positive tool for communicating ideas. In many cases of course, it still is. But the way such comments have devolved into morasses of spite show that free speech, empowered by technology, is no panacea. There still needs to be some kind of limit on speech, and while it shouldn't be marked out by law, simple civility doesn't seem to be delineating it either. . . ."
Arthur Bright, The Double-Edged Sword of Online Free Speech

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