1st Amendment

Is your hairdresser a journalist?

Asking if your hairdresser is a journalist may seem a bit absurd, but the reality is that for many people a trip to the salon is also an opportunity to pick up the latest dirt on who's dating who and other town gossip. We don't usually think of gossip as being journalistic; however, many newspapers have a reporter on staff whose primary duty is to share gossip. Most everyone would consider him or her to be a journalist so why is the idea of your stylist being a journalist considered such a radical idea?

With a Federal Shield law having recently made it out of committee in the House, a debate has flared over who should be protected under the law. A recent amendment to the Shield Law states that only those who benefit financially from their journalism are covered; those who provide the news as a labor of love are excluded. While many of the journalist organizations have applauded this compromise, I think it's important to look at who is excluded and how journalism is an activity that should be protected by a far larger contingent than those qualified under the proposed law.

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Federal shield law clears committee in House

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee approved an amended version of the Free Flow of Information Act. If passed, the act would shield reporters from having to testify about information they obtained through their journalistic activities. This significant step toward passing a shield law comes one year from the day I was escorted out of a Federal court room and held in civil contempt for asserting a journalist privilege.

As CNET reports, In response to concerns raised by the Bush administration and other politicians, the revised bill attempts to exclude the "casual blogger" from reaping those benefits by stipulating the protections apply only to those who derive "financial gain or livelihood" from the journalistic activity, Boucher said Wednesday. That broad rule could, however, include part-time writers who receive even a trickle of revenue from Google Ads or Blogads.com.

While the revised form of the law is not perfect, it does appear to offer a level of protection against Justice Department inquiries that doesn't currently exist. Although 33 states have some form of shield law, these protections do not apply in a federal context and several U.S. journalists have found themselves imprisoned in recent years as a result.… Read more

Cheap hosting and free speech

If you visit www.vivoleum.com today you'll find nothing, but last month the site was the home of the Yes Men's latest experiment in political theater and a protest against Exxon Mobil. Apparently Exxon Mobil was not amused, and as The Inquirer reports, the Yes Men soon found themselves without a Web site and their e-mail access severed. Broadview Networks, the group's Web host, refused to restore their e-mail until they had removed all mention of the oil company.

Sadly, the Yes Men's story is not unique, and Jimmy Atkinson of The Dedicated Hosting Guide … Read more

EFF sues Universal over 'fair use' of song in YouTube video

We all heard the stories about the Recording Industry Association of America lawsuits and the mostly college students who found themselves in the crosshairs several years ago.

Many people are opposed to music piracy, but far fewer actually agreed with the RIAA's heavy-handed legal approach.

Among dissenters is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against RIAA member Universal Music Publishing Group after the company asked that a home video be removed from YouTube due to copyright infringement. The video features 18-month-old Holden Lenz dancing to Prince's "Let's Get Crazy" and runs for a total of 29 seconds. Following Universal's complaint, the video was removed by YouTube and remained offline until recently.

The EFF points out that, "Under federal copyright law, a mere allegation of copyright infringement can result in the removal of content from the Internet." This legal framework mandates that services take down material that may actually be completely lawful or protected under fair use, and this situation is the impetus for the suit.

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Supreme Court Rules on Bong Hits For Jesus

Although the story behind Morse v. Frederick is quite humorous and littered with absurd details, the ramifications of the Supreme Court's decision goes beyond entertainment and is far more than a joke. After five years Joseph Frederick's "experiment in free speech," is finally over. Today's US Supreme Court ruling reversed a Ninth Circuit finding and concluded that school officials "did not violate the First Amendment by confiscating the pro-drug banner and suspending the student responsible for it."

As a senior in high school in the city of Juneau, Alaska, Mr. Frederick created a large banner that read "Bong Hits For Jesus" and unveiled the banner outside his school on the sidewalk while the Olympic torch relay accompanied by television camera crews passed by on the way to the 2002 games. Upon seeing the spectacle, the principal, Deborah Morse, seized the banner and suspended Frederick for violating the school's anti-drug policy. Frederick appealed and eventually filed a lawsuit in federal court.

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Privacy v. Piracy

Back in April of last year, you probably read in Wired or some other publication about how AT&T had a secret room in its San Francisco office where the NSA was "listening" to every communication going over the telecom's lines. Well it seems that it might be happening again. This time the AT&T partnership with Big Brother isn't to scoop up the terrorists; no, this round is all about pirates and their intellectual booty.

In a June 14th article for AP, Gary Gentile writes, "Although details remain sketchy, the effort worries privacy advocates, who fear the San Antonio-based company could become a beat cop, monitoring which Web sites customers visit and what computer files they share." Like other invasive maneuvers the initiative is apparently focused on those overseas, but who's to say that your own computer wouldn't be flagged for watching the wrong video on You Tube or downloading the latest mix-tape from your favorite hip-hop DJ?

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Why A Democracy Depends on a Free Press

I recently started reading Al Gore's latest book The Assault on Reason, and have found his analysis on the role of today's media elites to be particularly insightful. Gore writes: If the forum is not fully open, then those who control access become gatekeepers. If they charge money in return for access, then those with more money have a greater ability to participate. Good ideas in the minds of men and women who cannot afford the price of admission to the public forum are then no longer available for consideration. When their opinions are blocked, the meritocracy of ideas that has always been the beating heart of democratic theory begins to suffer damage. The conversation of democracy then comes untethered from the rule of reason and can be manipulated.While perusing this passage, I was reminded of a short educational film made in the 1940s which outlines the continuum between democracy and despotism.

The full video can be found here.… Read more

Without a Shield: A Free Press in Peril

I headed to Washington DC last month to meet with members of Congress and their staff about the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 which had just been introduced days before my visit. For those that don't know, the bill would extend the same protections journalists are afforded in most state courts to the Federal level. These laws are generally known as shield laws and offer legal protections against forcing journalists to testify about their work, and there is some level of shield afforded to journalists in almost every state.

So why are these shield laws important, and why should journalists be afforded this protection in the first place?

One of the basic defining principles of a democracy is a free press. If information is being stymied by the government, or the political conditions make it impossible for people to engage with the press then the public is robbed of all the facts they need to make an informed decision. Much of the work that journalists due relies on a trust relationship between their contacts, and the material uncovered through the investigative process is not dissimilar from that of detectives. Unless there are protections established than journalists can easily be subpoenaed and forced to do the work of law enforcement thus muddying their position as the Fourth Estate and the trust they have worked so hard to establish.

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