News & Media

Censorship often comes along with a side order of good intentions — or at least that is in the marketing materials for the proposed censorship. You want a world without racism? Lets ban racist speech! But, the problem is that censorship almost always turns into a tool to seize or maintain a grip on power. (What We Risk When We Ban Racist Speech) A Kentucky legislator recently proposed a narrow restriction on free expression — and it seems that it came from reasonable and logical intentions. Unfortunately, when you consider this idea while keeping the First Amendment in mind, the

South Carolina’s house bill 4702 seeks to create “The South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry.” The bill sounds like a pretty good idea. Lets face it, there are a lot of terrible journalists out there. A lot of hacks who don’t deserve the name. When Sabrina Erdely made up the Rolling Stone story about gang rapes at a frat house at UVA, I called it “journalistic malpractice.” But, I spoke merely hyperbolically. Wouldn’t it be great to have a “reporter’s license” that you could lose if you committed grave transgressions like that? If you’re nodding your head right now, slow down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGKdle1bbvo Some people in our audience do not know the finer points of trolling… Wow… there I was, all proud of the article I just wrote about journalism licensing. And five minutes after posting it, I get word that I’ve been trolled. Yep. The proposed law was a Second Amendment protest. I would love to say “I knew that all along.” No, I did not. I failed to critically examine the story. Epically failed. I thought about updating the post. No. When I get trolled and epically owned, I need to go to the box for two minutes by myself,

If I were to write about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s contribution to civil rights, I think I would be wasting my time. Far more qualified views are out there, especially today. However, I feel like it is worth mentioning that he had a part in a profound change in favor of Civil Liberties as well. I speak of nothing less important than N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). That case is the foundation upon which stands most of our modern First Amendment jurisprudence, without which we would not have modern investigative journalism, the right to express our

If the title doesn’t grip you, it discusses “The Slants” case, CUMFIESTA, Fuckingmachines, SCREW YOU, Nutsacks, and Japanese porn. Marc J. Randazza, Freedom of Expression and Morality Based Impediments to the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, 16 NEV. L.J. 107. Use the link here to go to the paper on SSRN and please download it!

Netflix announced that it is going to take action to prevent people from logging in through proxy servers. “In coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they currently are,” David Fullagar, Netflix’s VP of content delivery architecture, wrote in a blog post. “We are confident this change won’t impact members not using proxies. Source I understand that Netflix has a problem here. Intellectual property rights are territorial in nature, and thus a movie company can sell the U.S. distribution rights to a film separately from the French distribution

It’s been just over a year since the Charlie Hebdo murders, and I thought it was time to do a little more than simply defy, although I do love that that was Ken’s way of commemorating the date. On January 7, 2015, a group of lowlives attacked the offices of a satirical magazine for no other reason than they disliked its sense of humor. They believed that their religion trumped anyone’s right to mock it. They believed that their umbrage meant that they had the right to take the lives of those who worked there. And therein proved that their

Twitter announced that in order to combat abuse and harassment on its increasingly unpopular online platform, that it would enact new rules and regulations that would hopefully get control of things. The stated mission was to cut down on loosely-defined “harassment.” But, what it seems to really be is yet another example of someone with a little bit of power behaving arbitrarily in favor of their “team.” Twitter didn’t call it “censorship.” They called it “fighting abuse to protect freedom of expression.” Ok, fair enough. Since it gives away accounts for free, and every lunatic has access to a computer,