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Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?: A Few Modest Thoughts on Mass....
On February 7, 2012, the Joint Committee on the Judiciary of the Massachusetts Legislature will hold a hearing on Massachusetts Senate Bill No. 785, entitled "An Act relative to the protection of child...
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Is It a Prior Restraint for Police to Delete Video of Their Conduct?
A pedicab driver was arrested in D.C. recently for pretending to record police arresting one of his passengers. He wasn’t actually filming anything – apparently he wasn’t even sure how to operate his...
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Lèse Majesté: 16th Century Censorship Meets 21st Century Law
When hearing the expression “lèse majesté,” images of the Queen of Hearts ordering heads to be chopped off ASAP may come to mind. Marie-Antoinette, the queen who was once a “majesté” in France, herself...
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Stolen Valor, Part II: The Legislative and Executive Branches Take the Hint
On June 28, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional because it penalizes speech (albeit false speech) without consideration of less restrictive alternatives or a...
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Olympic Citius Altius Fortius Pan-American: The U.S. Olympic Committee's...
The U.S. Olympic Committee ("USOC") has a reputation for aggressively policing their exclusive rights to certain words, phrases, and symbols. And they have a special act of Congress to back them up....
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How Do You Say 'Public Forum Doctrine' in Hawaiian?
It is ridiculously easy to create an online forum. Even just a few years ago, you had to have a fairly high level of technical savvy to put together such a thing - maybe some php or other coding...
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No More Art Cops in Los Angeles?
You might recall the Los Angeles Police Department's infamous Special Order No. 11, which directed officers to document in a so-called Suspicious Activity Report ("SAR"): [A]ny reported or observed...
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Twitter, France, and Group Libel
On October 16, the Union des Étudiants Juifs Français (Union of French Jewish Students, UEJF) asked Twitter to remove several racist and anti-Semitic tweets. Using the hashtags #unbonjuif and...
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RT the Hate: France and Twitter Censorship, Part Two
Last October I wrote about the rise in popularity among French Twitter users of the hashtag #unbonjuif ("a good jew"). In December we saw a growth in other offensive hashtags, including the homophobic...
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@Parody or @Crime? AZ Bill May Blur the Line
Arizona State Representative Michelle Ugenti (R-Scottsdale) introduced Arizona House Bill 2004 in December, which would amend Arizona’s criminal code and make it a class 5 felony to impersonate...
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Heads Up, Online Radicals -- You're Next
For me, thinking about one of the Obama administration's latest initiatives to keep us all safe online is like one of those pattern recognition puzzles (you know, like "What is the next term in this...
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3D Printed Guns and the First Amendment
Severalnewsorganizations are reporting today that the U.S. Government, through the Department of State, through the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), sent a letter to the organization...
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An Increase in Infringement or the Promotion of Censorship? The Growing...
In the days of unwarranted government surveillance and elaborate data collection, people increasingly rely on anonymizing services to keep their online activities private, such as proxy servers,...
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After On-Air Mishaps, Embarrassed Newscasters Turn to Copyright Law
Whether we consider the purpose of copyright to be to protect economic rights or moral rights, copyright is a powerful yet dangerous instrument. Abuse of copyright, particularly using the Digital...
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Baidu's Political Censorship is Protected by First Amendment, but Raises...
Baidu, the operator of China’s most popular search engine, has won the dismissal of a United States lawsuit brought by pro-democracy activists who claimed that the company violated their civil rights...
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