Week of June 19, 2009 [1]

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...

Andrew Moshirnia dances on the grave of France's Internet Three Strikes law.
Liberte, Egalite, Technologie: The French Resistance and the Anti-Piracy Campaign [2]

Lee Baker sticks up for students' rights to make bad copies of Sublime's CD art.
Principal Censors School Paper: Claims "Old English" Font Promotes Gang Activity [3]

Andrew Moshirnia argues the merits of surfin' it old school.
Crash Diet: Text-Only Browsers as Tonic for Iranian Internet Throttling [4]

Andrew Moshirnia contemplates the black hole that is a ban on Internet access.
Bring Me his Head and Hands: Unconstitutional Internet Proscription [5]

Eric Robinson uncovers the downside of Internet exceptionalism.
Crime Online May Mean More Time [6]

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Recent threats added to the CMLP database...

Zisa v. Labrosse [7]
Posted June 19th, 2009

HIMSS v. PedSource [8]
Posted June 19th, 2009

Target Corp. v. Doe [9]
Posted June 19th, 2009

Blazi v. Wagoner [10]
Posted June 19th, 2009

Suarez v. Mecca [11]
Posted June 19th, 2009

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Other citizen media law news...

The Many Deaths of Privacy
Balkanization [12] - Thur. 6/18/09

Bunning bars C-J reporter from calls
Louisville Courier-Journal [13] - Wed. 6/17/09

Criminal Cases Push Newspapers to Identify Anonymous Commenters
MediaShift [14] - Wed. 6/17/09

Holder: Justice can support shield law, with limits
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press [15] - Wed. 6/17/09

A.P. in Deal to Deliver Nonprofits’ Journalism
The New York Times [16] - Sat. 6/13/09

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The full(er) Brief...

"The music and motion picture industries suffered a setback in their global anti-piracy carpet-bombing campaign on June 10, when the French Conseil Constitutionnel struck down the internet-banning portions of the HADOPI law. The court held that 'free access to public communication services online' was a fundamental human right and could not be stripped from users (read: merely accused illegal downloaders/ pirates ... arrr) without case-by-case judicial approval. Industry brass had hoped that the French legislation would be a successful prototype, a terrifying copyright super-weapon free from the burdensome moving parts of due process or judicial oversight. But it was not to be. French Socialists prevented the deployment of the policy, and bought French Internet users a brief reprieve. The decision is all the more surprising considering the recent successes of the two entertainment juggernauts. In April, a Swedish court sentenced Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström (the pirates of PirateBay) to a year in jail for facilitating illegal file sharing. If we are being fair, the MPAA should get most of the credit for that achievement, having helped spur the original raid on Piratebay in May 2006. But the Music industry is no junior partner in the copyright entente. In 2005, the combined efforts of the RIAA and MPAA midwifed the monstrous Grokster decision, while simultaneously strangling Betamax in the crib. . . ." 
Andrew Moshirnia, Liberte, Egalite, Technologie: The French Resistance and the Anti-Piracy Campaign [2] 

"Another week, another restriction of student speech. S.K. Johnson, the principal of Orange High School in (where else?) Orange, California, has confiscated copies of a student magazine prior to publication. His main complaint about the latest issue of PULP concerns the cover, which features a faux full-back tattoo with the publication's name and a picture of a panther, the school mascot. The principal alleges that the image promotes gang life and might encourage students to get tattoos, singling out the use of Old English font to create 'gangster-style writing.' While the school has a legitimate interest in preventing the glorification of gang culture, one of Mr. Johnson's proposed solutions - to affix an addendum or edit the accompanying article on student tattoos to indicate that tattoos are permanent - demonstrates that this is not actually his primary concern. Although it may be helpful for students to be reminded of the difficulty of tattoo removal, such a concern should not give a school principal the legal right to suppress student speech. Despite the essentially unlimited reach of Hazelwood with regard to school-sponsored speech. . ., sanctioning censorship in order to protect students from making bad decisions on skin art almost certainly pushes it too far. Furthermore, according to Student Press Law Center attorney advocate Adam Goldstein, California state law has more stringent restrictions on censoring student speech. . . ." 
Lee Baker, Principal Censors School Paper: Claims "Old English" Font Promotes Gang Activity [3]

"For years, the Iranian government has had to deal with the pesky problem of citizens trying to use the Internet to access information from the outside world. The powers that be usually go about solving this problem in a hamfisted way, banning huge swaths of the internet or shutting down access entirely. But unsophisticated filters, that block searches as basic as 'woman,' can and have been defeated by Iranians employing both proxy sites and anti-filtering software (interesting side note, one such package was authored by the Falun Gong.) But the issue recently has become acute due to outcry over the latest 'results' for the 'election' of the next Iranian president, and the censors (like the Borg they are) have adapted. Now, the WSJ reports that the government appears to be 'allowing the Internet to operate, albeit at a slower speed, while using a more centralized approach to blocking specific Web sites.' This cripple-not-kill approach has the advantage of allowing the government to 'say it didn't disconnect the Internet, but the reality is you can't really use it.' Throttling the Internet seems like an ideal way of stifling use without dirtying your hands. A browser developed for web-developers and rural users might defeat this attempted manipulation. . . ." 
Andrew Moshirnia, Crash Diet: Text-Only Browsers as Tonic for Iranian Internet Throttling [4]

"Dear friends, let's begin with a little story about the death of liberty at Rome. When Mark Antony had the chance, he proscribed (read: murdered) the orator Cicero. To emphasize the effective silencing of his largest critic, the triumvir had Cicero's head and hands put on public display. If you think we have progressed from mutilations and ostentatious displays of State power, note the case of Alex D. Phillips. Now this young man is no Cicero. But the twenty-year old is just as dead, as far as the Internet is concerned. When Phillips was 17, he posted (probably with malice in his heart) two nude photos of his 16 year-old ex-girlfriend on his MySpace page. The Furies of Wisconsin descended, arresting Phillips and charging him with sexual exploitation of a minor, possession of child pornography, defamation, and causing mental harm to a child. The crafty DA created a giant gift for Phillips, a huge wooden horse called Plea Bargain. The State would drop the kiddie porn, exploitation, and defamation charges, if Phillips would plead to causing mental harm to a child. Phillips accepted this gift. . . . He surely considered himself lucky not to be on a sex offenders' list. But dear friends, Phillips' name is on a list after all, an execution order hidden inside the proffered gift. For the duration of his probation, Phillips is 'not to own, operate or possess a computer, software, modem, cell phone or any gaming system that has internet access capabilities including [F]acebook and [M]y[S]pace.' Phillips is, for all intents and purposes, digitally dead. . . ." 
Andrew Moshirnia, Bring Me his Head and Hands: Unconstitutional Internet Proscription [5]

"In Hawaii, a 22-year-old former hospital worker was recently sentenced to one year in jail, five years probation and 200 hours of community service on a felony charge of 'unauthorized computer access to confidential records' (apparently under Haw. Rev. Stat. §708-892, Computer damage in the first degree) after she obtained a patient's records stating that he was HIV-positive and gave them to the patient's sister-in-law, who posted them on her MySpace page. The prosecutor had recommended a sentence of only 30 days, but Circuit Judge Randal Lee reportedly said during sentencing that 'Young people in this society have to realize that the Internet is not something that can be taken advantage of. You can't use the Internet to do unlawful conduct.' . . . . But it isn't just the online posting of medical information that can get you in hot water. In a DWI case in Pennsylvania, a judge imposed a 33-day sentence after prosecutors discovered that the defendant had sent Twitter messages on the day of his trial disparaging the police who testified. One of his Tweets, for example, said, 'When all else fails, try ignorance. I watched four cops lie on a witness stand today and I didn't say a word.' At sentencing, the prosecutor argued that the messages showed the defendant's disregard for authority. In both cases, it is clear that the courts meted out harsher criminal penalties for posting material online than they might have had the Internet not been a factor. . . ." 
Eric Robinson, Crime Online May Mean More Time [6]

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