Posts under ‘Legal’

Broadcasting & Cable: C-SPAN Loosens Copyright for Some Content Online. C-SPAN is loosening its copyright policy on some material for online use, saying it wants to expand citizens’ access to online video of congressional hearings, White House activities, and other government-sponsored events. Progress, but C-SPAN’s behavior has been a bit obnoxious, and the proof will […]

If this is true — a report that “France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence” — then the French lawmakers have well and fully lost all grip on reality.

New Orleans Times-Picayune: News photographers denied access to LHSAA’s girls state tournament. Several newspapers, including The Times-Picayune, were denied access to photograph the state girls high school basketball championships Monday night when they refused to sign a document limiting the right of newspapers to resell their photos to the public. If I was the editor […]

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 […]

Slate’s Jack Shafer tries to unravel “The BALCO mess or travels in the gray areas of confidential source arrangement,” and writes of the San Francisco Chronicle reporters whose source for grand-jury minutes turned out to be a defense attorney: Having found their leaker, the feds dropped the subpoena against the reporters. But a number of […]

Take a look at jerryrobertsandfriends.org, created in the wake of the bizarre goings-on at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press, where the owner has been firing people right and left — and suing journalists who write what she claims are unfair stories about her actions: Amid the ongoing exodus of dozens of professional journalists from the […]

Democracy Now has an interview of note: Imprisoned Journalist Josh Wolf Speaks Out From Jail After Over 170 Days Behind Bars. The Josh Wolf case is a disgrace in all kinds of ways, as we’ve noted before.

Times of London: Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’. Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year. Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall […]

The SF Chronicle catches up with a somewhat old story today with a piece called “Creeps beware: Web gives women revenge / Catcall recipients share their stories — and men’s photos” — an article focusing on the way female bloggers are using the HollaBack sites to “post pictures and videos of guys who harass them […]

SF Chronicle: Blogger jailed for defying grand jury sets record / He’s U.S. journalist imprisoned longest in contempt of court. Josh Wolf, a blogger who refused to give a videotape of a San Francisco anarchist protest to a federal grand jury, achieves an unwanted distinction today, when he becomes the longest-imprisoned journalist for contempt of […]