Posts under ‘Free Speech’

The Washington Post and others are reporting that the Pentagon is blocking soldiers’ access to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other social-media sites. The reasons: bandwidth pressures — an entirely bogus claim — and worries about the “disclosure of combat-sensitive material,” a more understandable consideration. Combined with tighter restrictions on soldiers’ blogging, the plain intent by […]

NY Times: How a Number Became the Latest Web Celebrity. A throng of tech-savvy Internet users have banded together over the last two days to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the movie industry to prevent illegal copying of high-definition movies. The broader distribution of the code may not pose a serious […]

Last week, March 11-17, was known in journalistic and (some) governmental circles as “Sunshine Week” — a tribute to notions of open government, and a call to action to make it more so. Freedom of information was on tap in all kinds of ways. But now that the official celebration is over, I want to […]

UPDATED Howard Kurtz, in his online Media Notes Extra column at the Washington Post, fulminates about some disgusting comments posted on a well-known blog site. He writes: I know we’re living in a polarized time. I know there are people who absolutely detest George Bush and Dick Cheney. I know they like to vent their […]

New Orleans Times-Picayune: LHSAA rescinds block of photo sales. Calling the matter a misunderstanding, Louisiana High School Athletic Association Commissioner Tommy Henry on Tuesday rescinded a policy that sought to block newspapers from selling to the public photographs taken at state athletic championships. No misunderstanding: As noted yesterday, this was a flat-out attempt to monopolize […]

Reuters: Egyptian blogger jailed for insulting Islam. An Alexandria court sentenced an Egyptian blogger to four years in jail on Thursday for insulting both Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Abdel Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student who has been in custody since November, was the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for […]

Mac News Network: Apple pays $700,000 for bloggers’ legal fees. In total, Apple was ordered to pay nearly $700,000 — a small amount for a company that reported nearly $1 billion in profit in the December quarter, but a large moral victory for bloggers, journalists and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which helped defend against […]

A new site, Defend the Press, is taking up the case of Sarah Olson: a journalist who published an exclusive interview with Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the highest-ranking member of the military to refuse to deploy to Iraq. Now, the Army wants Olson to be their witness in the lieutenant’s upcoming court martial. The […]

Rebecca MacKinnon: Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Vodaphone display some cojones. Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Cisco and others have been getting a lot of heat over the past year for colluding with human rights violations and state censorship in countries like China. Fortunately, three of those four companies have found the wherewithal to do more than just […]

SF Chronicle: Owner of conservative radio station KSFO demands liberal critic quit using audio clips. Now, bloggers and media freedom advocates are concerned about the legal reaction from Disney/ABC-owned KSFO. Shortly before Christmas, an ABC lawyer demanded that Spocko remove audio clips from his blog on the grounds that Spocko’s posting of KSFO content was […]