SLAPP suits are never pretty. This one is particularly troubling. A couple of members of the Steubenville, Ohio Big Red football team were accused of kidnapping and raping a 16 year old girl at a party. (source, source) A blogger, Alexandria Goddard, wrote about the incident. Naturally, she was outraged. She wrote another...
By J. DeVoy Around this time last year, large bands of police descended upon "Occupy" encampments from coast to coast, seeking to decamp the rebelling hipsters once and for all. What you may not know, though, is that the Los Angeles Police Department radically changed their press policy immediately before its...
[caption id="attachment_3834" align="alignright" width="200"] Steve Swander, R.I.S.[/caption] We lower the Satyricon's flag to half mast today in honor of Steve Swander, the Immediate Past President of the First Amendment Lawyers' Association. Mesothelioma took his life at 3:45 AM today. His practice was based in Fort Worth, Texas, where the...
By Marc J. Randazza The U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Tennessee at Knoxville recently granted a motion to dismiss after it determined that a plaintiff hotel failed to successfully state a claim of defamation against defendant hotel review site TripAdvisor. In Kenneth M. Seaton, d/b/a Grand Resort Hotel and...
In May of 2010, Thomas Privitere and Brian Edwards, a gay couple, hired a photographer to take pictures of the two men in a New York City park. Their favorite photograph displayed the two men kissing and holding hands with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. The couple liked the...
[caption id="attachment_14462" align="aligncenter" width="190"] Read this today[/caption] In 1982, the Supreme Court found that students’ First Amendment rights were violated when the Island Trees School District removed Slaughterhouse Five and eight other books from library shelves. This served as the inspiration for a week-long celebration of the freedom to read,...
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the director of the “Innocence of Muslims” movie, which has been blamed for setting off riots and murders in Islamic countries, has (conveniently?) been arrested for violating the terms of his probation. Among the terms of his probation: He was not allowed to se the...
The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority recently came under fire for allowing advertisements on the New York subways that say, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." [caption id="attachment_14442" align="alignright" width="225"] Goebbels would be proud [/caption] The MTA initially refused...
The Supreme Court of Arizona recently held that obtaining a tattoo is pure speech and is therefore subject to the highest protection by the First Amendment. The plaintiffs in Coleman v. City of Mesa (Case No. CV-11-0351), requested a Council Use Permit (CUP) from Mesa, Arizona, to open a tattoo parlor. The city...
Back in April, I wrote an article "Challenging The Copyrightability Of Porn" (html version - digital mag version) This was to confront a growing chorus of voices questioning whether porn can be copyrighted. You likely don't need to read my article to know where I come down on it. ...
