amendment right
A Facebook "Like" is not constitutionally protected speech, says judge
www.theverge.com
A District Judge has ruled that clicking "like" on Facebook does not warrant protection under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. The decision came in a case where Daniel Ray Carter, an employee for Sheriff B.J. Roberts of Hampton, Virginia, was fired after "liking" the Facebook page...
California judge blocks voter-approved ban on anonymity for sex offenders
arstechnica.com
ax2groin On Tuesday, voters in California overwhelmingly approved Proposition 35, which ratcheted up penalties for those convicted of sex crimes, including human trafficking. The proposition included a provision requiring registered sex offenders to disclose to law enforcement all of their Internet connections and online identities. On Wednesday, two of...
Google report says search results protected by First Amendment
news.cnet.com
A report by a UCLA law professor asserts that search engines have a First Amendment right to determine the links that appear in their results. [Read more]...
D.C. chief allows citizens to record and photograph police
news.cnet.com
Washington D.C.'s police chief issues an order that "recognizes that members of the general public have a First Amendment right to video record, photograph, and/or audio record" the police. [Read more]...
Hold cops personally liable for camera arrests? Connecticut bill says yes
arstechnica.com
The Connecticut state Senate passed legislation last week that would hold police officers in the state personally liable for violating a citizen's First Amendment right to videotape their actions. The bill is sponsored by Sen. Eric Coleman (D-Bloomfield). According to The Day, a Connecticut newspaper, Coleman cited the 1991...
Boston pays $170k to settle cell phone recording lawsuit
arstechnica.com
The City of Boston has agreed to pay Simon Glik $170,000 in damages and legal fees to settle a civil rights lawsuit. Glik was arrested in 2007 on Boston Common for using his cell phone to record the arrest of another man. Police then arrested Glik, too, and charged...
Justice Dept. defends public’s constitutional ‘right to record’ cops
arstechnica.com
As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting the First Amendment right of individuals to record police officers in the public discharge of their...
Fifth Amendment shields child porn suspect from decrypting hard drives
arstechnica.com
A federal judge refused to compel a Wisconsin suspect to decrypt the contents of several hard drives because doing so would violate the man's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Judge William E. Callahan's Friday ruling ultimately labeled the issue a "close call." Courts have wrestled with how to apply the...
Judge Quickly (But Temporarily) Blocks New CA Law That Takes Away Anonymous Speech Rights
www.techdirt.com
So, we had just written about the unfortunate (if expected) news that voters in California had overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure which (among other things) would take away anonymous speech rights from anyone on the state's sex offender list (which could include things like people arrested for urinating in public,...
Constitutional showdown voided: Feds decrypt laptop without defendant’s help
arstechnica.com
Colorado federal authorities have decrypted a laptop seized from a bank-fraud defendant, mooting a judge’s order that the defendant unlock the hard drive so the government could use its contents as evidence against her. The development ends a contentious legal showdown over whether forcing a defendant to decrypt a...
Inmate sues over the 'right' to read Facebook from prison
news.cnet.com
Federal appeals court rejects inmate's claim of a First Amendment right to receive printouts of Facebook pages through the U.S. mail. [Read more]...
SCOTUS leaves in place ruling that protects right to record police
arstechnica.com
The United States Supreme Court rejected a request from a Chicago-area prosecutor to review a recent ruling that the First Amendment protects a right to record the actions of police officers as they perform their public duties. The lower court's decision was hotly contested. A two-judge majority ruled in May that...
DC police allegedly steal cellphone unlawfully, one day after receiving explicit orders not to
www.theverge.com
Washington DC's chief of police issued a general order on July 19th that gives officers explicit guidelines on how to respect and uphold the First Amendment right of citizens to record officers on duty in the public, but apparently it wasn't enough to keep DC police from unlawfully interfering...
Twitter argues fourth amendment defence over judge's Occupy order
www.guardian.co.uk
Site appeals against court request to hand over details of tweets relating to Occupy activist charged with disorderly conductTwitter has lodged an appeal against a New York judge's decision that it must hand over detailed information related to an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct.In July, Twitter was...
What the Internet Association is Really About
www.readwriteweb.com
It took 115,000 websites and more than 13 million Internet users to get Congress' attention on January 18 and bring down the SOPA and PIPA Internet copyright bills. But now a new group is setting up shop in Washington to avoid such high-drama confrontations and shape politics with a more...
Shelby County Tries To Reveal The Authors Of Nearly 10,000 Anonymous Internet Comments
www.techdirt.com
We've had plenty of stories about attempts to reveal anonymous commenters. Time and time again, we've pointed out that there needs to be a very high bar for legally requiring the identification of such commenters, because the right to anonymous speech is recognized by the courts as being protected by...
Charles Carreon Claims A First Amendment Right To Make Vexatious Legal Threats Without Consequence
www.techdirt.com
If you haven't had your dose of nutty legal claims of late, Adam Steinbaugh alerts us to the latest in the long and ongoing saga of our buddy Charles Carreon. When we last checked in on Carreon, he had more or less admitted that his legal threats against a satirical...
C&D Squashes Seuss-Style Satire: Where Did The Idea/Expression Dichotomy Go?
www.techdirt.com
One aspect of fair use that often confuses people is the distinction between parody (which is well-established as fair use in many circumstances) and satire (which is not). The basic distinction is that a parody that makes use of a copyrighted work is doing so to comment on that work,...
Prenda Law: Let The Other Shoes Hit The Floor
www.techdirt.com
Ken White blogs at Popehat. He's a litigator and criminal defense attorney at Brown White & Newhouse LLP in Los Angeles. His views are his alone, not those of his firm. All of my coverage of the Prenda Law saga is collected here. Last week I described how Prenda...
FTC's Overzealous Attempts To 'Protect The Children' May Do Serious Harm To The Internet
www.techdirt.com
Earlier this year, we were reasonably worried about the FTC's plan to expand COPPA. COPPA -- the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act -- is one of those laws that appears to have the best of intentions. Who doesn't want to protect the privacy of children, right? But as with so...
Authorities decrypt laptop without defendant's help, Fifth Amendment need not apply
www.engadget.com
Constitutional junkies have had their eyes on Colorado for awhile now, because a federal judge there ordered a woman to decrypt her hard drive in a criminal trial. This, despite her cries that doing so would violate her Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination. The argument is...
Verizon: net neutrality violates our free speech rights
arstechnica.com
"Can you hear me now?" Aurich Lawson Verizon pressed its argument against the Federal Communications Commission's new network neutrality rules on Monday; filing a legal brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The company argued the FCC's rules not only exceeded the agency's regulatory...
Charles Carreon Has To Pay $46K In Legal Fees
www.techdirt.com
Charles Carreon may not be having a very good day. As you may recall, Carreon "represented" an internet site, Funnyjunk, that threatened Matthew Inman over an Oatmeal cartoon that made fun of that client. When Inman hit back with a (very successful) IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for charity, Carreon,...
Judge Says Giving Up Your Password May Be A 5th Amendment Violation
www.techdirt.com
Courts have gone back and forth over the years concerning whether or not being forced to give up your password to reveal encrypted data is a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Now there's been yet another decision saying that someone cannot be forced to give up their password, because it...
FCC points to rogue Google engineer over Street View Wi-Fi snooping
venturebeat.com
While Google got off easy over its Street View data mining case with the FCC — it was only charged a $25,000 fine for obstructing the agency — the full report of the investigation, released today by Google, raises new questions. The report is heavily redacted and blacks out...
Verizon Playing Dangerous Game in Net Neutrality Battle
www.pcworld.com
Verizon cites its First Amendment right to free speech as grounds against the FCC net neutrality rules, but it may like the alternative to net neutrality even less....
Music Company Asks For Permission To Pursue Its Delayed Civil Suit Against Megaupload; States Extradition 'May Never Occur'
www.techdirt.com
It's not just Kim Dotcom that's tiring of the endless procedural delays in the US's prosecution of him and his service. Other plaintiffs who are looking to legally pursue Dotcom for infringement are getting fed up with the length of the process, which still has no end in sight. Microhits,...
Music Company Asks For Permission To Pursue Its Delayed Civil Suit Against Megaupload; States Extradition 'May Never Occur'
US Appeals court upholds Fifth Amendment right to not decrypt hard drives
www.extremetech.com
The 11th Circuit Appeals Court has issued an important ruling on the question of whether or not a defendant can be forced to decrypt a hard drive when its contents could provide additional incriminating evidence. The case in question refers to the actions of a John Doe who was compelled...
Porn Photoshops prompt legislator to introduce bill against 'making fun' of people
www.theverge.com
Georgia State Representative Earnest Smith has a problem: he doesn't take too kindly to images with his head Photoshopped onto the bodies of male porn stars, and he's introduced a bill to ban the practice. "Everyone has a right to privacy," he told Fox News. "No one has a...
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