Cit Media

Citizen Media Law Project: Judge in Wikileaks Case Reverses Course, Wikileaks.org is Back Online.

The Citizen Media Law Project has launched the first iteration of its Legal Guide, which

addresses the legal issues you may encounter as you gather information and publish your work. The guide is intended for use by citizen media creators with or without formal legal training, as well as others with an interest in these issues. You can search by keyword, browse by state, browse by section, or simply jump right in.

This is prodigious work by David Ardia, Sam Bayard and a team of interns at Harvard Law School. Congratulations to all.

This announcement — Apple, Think Secret settle lawsuit — says:

Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret’s publisher, said “I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”

The confidentiality begs any number of questions, which I hope some folks will pursue, such as whether any money changed hands.

Early in this case, at the request of Ciarelli’s lawyers, I filed a declaration with the court saying that he was doing journalism that deserved protection from Apple’s attempts to coerce information — about unnamed people inside the company who were allegedly leaking “trade secrets” — that Apple wasn’t pursuing all that hard inside its own shop. Going after a journalist, in California, is the very last thing a company can do, and Apple in this case was essentially going after the journalist first.

Apple lost a related case, badly, and was forced to pay $700,000 in legal fees. I’m guessing, but there’s nothing on the record about this, that the company paid Ciarelli to shut up.
The outward appearance of the case, however, is not pleasant for free speech. Too bad we don’t know, and maybe never will know, what exactly happened here.

Follow the links from Electronic Frontier Foundation page on the bizarre Manalapan v. Moskovitz lawsuit to see a local government running wild against free speech. The town is suing to get the identity of — and all kinds of other information about — a critical anonymous blogger.

Anonymous speech should generally be taken less seriously than speech where the speaker stands behind his own words, and I think this is such a case. But anonymous speech is part of a long and vital tradition in America, and this is also such an example.

Someone should show these officials the Bill of Rights. Kudos to the EFF for pursuing this case.

The Citizen Media Law Project has created a new Legal Threats Database:

Our goal is to create an accurate and complete collection of legal threats directed at online speech. In order to accomplish this goal, we need your help.

The database is here. For background, here’s a news release.

Huge kudos to David Ardia, Sam Bayard and the amazing students and interns who’ve worked so hard on the project.

I’m on the board of the California First Amendment Coalition, which is holding its annual “Free Speech and Open Government Assembly” this week in LA. This afternoon I”m moderating a panel with some prominent bloggers.

UPDATED

Arizona Republic: Sheriff’s deputies arrest ‘New Times’ owners. The charges stem from a story published under their byline in the Thursday edition of New Times, in which they describe a subpoena the paper reportedly received from a grand jury convened by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Lacey has been released from jail after posting bail; there’s no jail record available on the status of Larkin. Efforts to reach them Friday have been unsuccessful. Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the two wondered in the opening paragraphs of the article whether they could face legal repercussions for making the subpoena public, but they viewed the subpoena as an attack on freedom of the press.

The subpoena was reported here, and it’s a beyond-broad demand for information, not only about how the journalists are doing their work but also about the people reading it. If the facts are what the New Times reports, the word “outrageous” is far too mild to describe what the prosecutor is doing.

UPDATE: The charges were dropped and the prosecutor dismissed.

AP: Dan Rather files $70M suit against CBS. Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and his former bosses Wednesday, claiming they made him a “scapegoat” for a discredited story about President Bush’s military service during the Vietnam War.

When, oh when, will journalists stop falling for the bogus PR stunts lawyers and their clients play when filing lawsuits? Apparently, never.

You can file a lawsuit demanding any amount of money. The amount in the claim is totally meaningless. It’s solely about public relations and/or, if the person being sued is unschooled about the system, putting fear into the defendant.

Yet journalists fall for this every time. Argghhh….

Harvard Crimson: Coop Discourages Notetaking in Bookstore:

Coop President Jerry P. Murphy ’73 said that while there is no Coop policy against individual students copying down book information, “we discourage people who are taking down a lot of notes.” The apparent new policy could be a response to efforts by Crimsonreading.org—an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers—from writing down the ISBN identification numbers for books at the Coop and then using that information for their Web site. Murphy said the Coop considers that information the Coop’s intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees. “We don’t think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students,” said Tom D. Hadfield ’08, a co-creator of the site.

So here’s the counter-move, coming to the Coop soon: snapping a quick photo of the price with a mobile phone camera, or better yet, scanning the bar code.

Syracuse.com: SU student questions VA security actions. A Syracuse University graduate student taking photographs outside the VA Medical Center says she was questioned and ordered to delete several images by hospital security officers Thursday afternoon. Mariam Jukaku, 24, of Michigan, said the officers also photocopied her university ID and driver’s license and asked if she was a U.S. citizen. She wonders if her appearance played a part in how the incident was handled.

Let’s be clear: The security officers had no authority to order this woman to do anything of the kind. And if this incident occurred as described (there’s no reason to doubt it), it’s entirely probable that appearances were part of the reason.
These kinds of paranoid acts by officials do nothing to increase security — nothing. They only provide a demontration of what others have called “security theater” — the pretense of protection that does more harm than good.