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The media don't have a concern to call out police overreach because frankly, they rely on police for 90% of their reporting. If you don't have a source to start the story, you're out. If you don't have a source to confirm the story, you're out. And if you question what the police tell you, you don't have a source anymore.

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/09/misconduct-is-only-news-when-journalists-say-it-is/

http://www.popehat.com/2012/03/21/chelsea-kay-of-krcr-tv-supports-shooting-being-a-lapdog/

http://www.popehat.com/2013/07/12/a-brief-story-illustrating-my-view-of-law-enforcement-and-the-media-that-covers-it/

Ken White over at Popehat seems to have nailed everything I would have said, and done it much better than I would have.

http://www.popehat.com/2013/07/09/ive-decided-to-give-orson-scott-card-the-benefit-of-the-doubt/

There are in fact pro se defendants on some of these porn-troll-extortion cases. In one case Prenda counldn't easily dismiss a weak case because the the one pro se had already filed a response. So yeah, filing stuff is the right thing to do. Since he was quicker to answer than most of the lawyers, he's one of the ones who has a chance at receiving damages for the bogus suit.

You can follow it all at http://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/ and http://fightcopyrighttrolls.com/ and http://www.groklaw.net/index.php

But yeah if in addition to not being a lawyer, you're also a regular Joe who doesn't follow legal cases and read judgements relating to your industry, you'd probably be a fool. These trolls are starting to lose so badly and quickly in court now that it should be easy to find a pro bono working for the sanctions he can claim. When lawyers get fined for being naughty the money isn't collected by the government, it goes to the lawyers on the other side!

Arms=small arms and nuclear arms.

It's interesting that you're willing to draw lines with regard to free speech, but incapable of drawing lines with regard to second amendment arms. Like it or not, semi-automatic handguns and long rifles are within the bounds of the second amendment. Nuclear arms are not. The second amendment does not support your supposed line drawing against machine-printed semi-automatic guns and gun components.

Free speech famously has limits (falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater) so where do we draw the line here?

That old saw does not cut it. The pro-censorship crowd famoulsy assume that a line must exist for any given situation, and then seek to draw it wherever is necessary to achieve their goals. What is false in the digital files describing how to manufacture a machine-printed semi-automatic handgun? Nothing. You want to censor true speech. Trotting out a rhetorical flourish concerning false speech does nothing but demonstrate that you have no sound basis for suppressing true speech.

Whatever line may exist is far, far behind you.

-----
"Suppression of speech as an effective police measure is an old, old device, outlawed by our Constitution." - William O. Douglas, Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969).

It never ceases to amaze me how people are able to seize on the Amendments to justify their own short-sighted, stupid, destructive, extremist and anarchist hankerings.

Of course there are limits to how far you can push your first-amendment rights; there have to be. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution and scroll down to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who formulated the clear and present danger test for free speech cases.

Thing is, Holmes was wrong in that case.

I agree, but the way in which he did it could be better. Head over to the Popehat article and read about the judge littering his order with Star Trek puns. Nerd joy? Yes. Appropriate in the courtroom? Hell no. Dude needs to take his job seriously.

Referring to the U.S. Attorney's Office and the IRS's CID is like siccing both the Klingons and the Romulans on Prenda, except that the Romulans have a somewhat better grasp of due process than IRS CID.

Prenda Law certainly won't live long and prosper

The T was closed. Which means among many, many other things some people couldn't even easily get to medical care.

As officers fanned out across the Boston area, Bryce Acosta, 24, came out of his Cambridge home with his hands up.

"I had like 30 FBI guys come storm my house with assault rifles," he said. They yelled, "Is anybody in there?" and began searching his house and an adjacent shed, leaving after about 10 minutes.

*****

Watertown, Mass. — Samantha Piccaluga, a 23-year-old university student, said that at about 3:30 p.m. Friday, jittery police whipped out their guns and rushed toward a man who appeared to come out of a house on Dexter Street in Watertown, near where the shootings had occurred in the early morning.

The neighborhood has been cordoned off by police, who have ordered residents to stay inside.

“They’re yelling, ‘Why did you get out of your house,’” Piaccaluga said, as she watched the drama unfold from her upstairs window on nearby Nichols Avenue. Angry, cursing police were “in his face,” she said. They then slapped handcuffs on the man, who was about 40 years old and was wearing a T-shirt, she said, and then began interviewing him.

Early in the morning, she said, she saw officers bring a nude, handcuffed man down the street and put him into a patrol car. “He was completely naked, no underwear,” she said, adding that police brought the man a blanket. At around 4 a.m., the man was taken out of the car and apparently transferred away in an ambulance, she said. She said she did not know who the man was.

*****

Apparently the police in Boston and the IRS have a slightly different definition of "voluntary" than you or I.

(found here)

Second, they may have interned US citizens, but let's not switch topics from the fact that they didn't panic and shut down their cities. :) And by the way, what did it take them to even start interning people? Wake me up if Al Qaeda manages to field a million person army and expresses intent to invade and occupy. Yes 9/11 is scary and the Boston bombing is scary, but let's not forget, these people are just criminals with a bit of creativity, hoping for some free PR for their cause. This is theater, and this level of panic is like giving the terrorists a standing ovation. With this kind of encouragement, expect repeat performances.

Here's (popehat.com) some info about Miranda. I'm not sure we all understand Miranda, apparently due to Law & Order!

200 whole rounds of ammo? I cringe in wide-eyed fear. The NYPD once spent 41 rounds of ammo shooting at a single unarmed civilian (reference).

Cops are way more likely to kill you by accident than terrorists are on purpose (reference).

If the cops really thought it was dangerous outside, instead of just putting on security theater, they'd have let the donut shops close too (reference).

The war on terror is like real war, except that we have millions of people in our "army" and they have dozens in theirs. Peanut allergies kill more Americans than terrorists.

This cowardly attitude is an open invitation for any terrorist or hostile foreign government to shut down any American city any time they choose by sending one or two armed men to our shores. Or, apparently even recruiting one or two people from our labor pool. If our grandparents thought this way while fighting the Nazis, Hitler could have won the war against the allies with a hundred "terrorists."

And... we shut the whole city down - except for the Dunkin Donuts shops?

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/20/security-theater-martial-law-and-a-tale-that-trumps-every-cop-and-donut-joke-youve-ever-heard/

We cower in fear from these two kids, so that we don't even read them their rights when we arrest them?

Somewhere your grandparents are rolling in their graves from shame, that this is the once mighty country they fought wars to defend.

It wasn't optional. My job closed. My school closed. My government office closed.

Everything closed but Dunkin Donuts, because... well, read it:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/20/security-theater-martial-law-and-a-tale-that-trumps-every-cop-and-donut-joke-youve-ever-heard/

Hmm. You call it voluntary. But whatever the police said caused most businesses, schools, and government agencies to close. Except the donut shops, of course. Those, the police kept open.

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/20/security-theater-martial-law-and-a-tale-that-trumps-every-cop-and-donut-joke-youve-ever-heard/

You say they are not likely to do it again except in equally extreme situations. I say we rolled out the red carpet to the world's terrorists and foreign governments, showing what a panicky bunch of children we are. I say anyone with a violent agenda in the entire world is likely to do this again whenever they wish to send one or two armed men to our shores (or even recruit from the innumerable, mediocre candidates available domestically), and that will be at times of their choosing.

The problem is not banning libel/slander. The problem is that in the UK they don't have anything like anti-SLAPP laws and its much easier to punish people with legal fees using defamation claims. I first heard about this situation from popehat.com, a blog that runs articles on internet related legal issues. http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/15/in-which-a-london-solicitor-threatens-me/

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/15/in-which-a-london-solicitor-threatens-me/ Entertaining legal letters included. (Such things DO exist!)

But the Boston police didn't shut down an entire city. They shut down an entire city except for the donut shops.

http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/20/security-theater-martial-law-and-a-tale-that-trumps-every-cop-and-donut-joke-youve-ever-heard/

Because, well, they have donuts.

How about this, instead?

Abstract: In the 1996 Olympic games bombing the FBI was quick to release information about a "person of interest", which several reputable news sources were quick to publish. Not only was he not the bomber, he was the one who found the bomb and helped evacuate the building. It took two years to clear his name, and an apology has never been issued. The man carried the punishment of doing a good deed to his last day.

EFF only helps with the most high-profile cases. They aren't around to help with more low-profile, but just as scary attempts to stifle free speech such as the Scuba Board lawsuit. As I recall, about a decade ago, when approached to help with a similar libel lawsuit brought on by one John Novak against people critical with his company, the EFF said they don't help with "routine libel cases".

Sheesh.

Much more helpful is the lawyer at Pope Hat, who helps bloggers and other being attached with frivolous libel suits, whether the suits are high-profile or low-profile.

If you read the full story behind what's going on here, you'll see that the lawyers who filed this motion are all getting dragged in front of a federal judge that they've managed to piss off. The judge has been throwing phrases like "defraud the court" and "incarceration" so Monday's hearing should be fun to watch.

There are a number of problems with this subpoena.

First, once Cooper and Godfread filed their notice of removal, the state court lost all jurisdiction over the matter (at least unless or until the case is sent back) and all proceedings in state court halted by operation of law — including the obligation to respond to outstanding discovery. Prenda Law would need to re-issue the subpoena in the federal proceeding.

Second, though I am looking into it, it's not clear to me whether Prenda Law followed the requisite procedure under the Uniform Interstate Discovery Act required for them to serve a subpoena on a California company in an Illinois case. We'll see.

Third, the subpoena is ridiculously overbroad. It asks for the IP addresses of everyone who visited the sites, not just people who made specified comments — let alone comments that could plausibly be deemed defamatory. Moreover, it demands IP addresses for a period in 2011 before Prenda Law existed, and therefore before it plausibly could have been defamed or wronged.

Fourth, under emerging doctrines governing attempts to discover the identity of anonymous commenters, it is doubtful that Prenda Law can justify its broad subpoena. Prenda's lawsuit, as I earlier pointed out, is a mish-mash of complaints about statements of fact (which could conceivably be defamatory) and statements of opinion (which cannot). Under these circumstances a court should quash the overbroad subpoena under the increasingly prevalent rule that a plaintiff must make some sort of preliminary showing to discover information about the identities of anonymous speakers.

Popehat (a great legal blog - I have no affiliation, just a fan) has a great and hilarious summary of the case including why Prenda's lawyers could be facing jail on March 11:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/05/prenda-law-researches-streisand-effect-says-i-gotta-get-me-some-of-that/

and

http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-los-angeles/

Popehat (a great legal blog - I have no affiliation, just a fan) has a great and hilarious summary of the case including why Prenda's lawyers could be facing jail on March 11:

http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/05/prenda-law-researches-streisand-effect-says-i-gotta-get-me-some-of-that/

and

http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/06/what-prenda-law-is-facing-in-los-angeles/

Or, as Ken White of Popehat put it, SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP.

Reagarding #1 I disagree. If no one actually reacts in a way that leads to chaos, the state should not press charges. Laws about incitement should only deal with actual results, not content of the speech.

People seem to forget that Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an authoritarian with little respect for free speech.

"I know you are out there, gamers and science fiction readers. Even if you're not an attorney, you can help. You can help by sending an email (edit: in the comments, Patrick offers the email to use) to Games Workshop telling them you won't buy their products while they engage in meritless trademark bullying. (Edit: or communicate with them by their Twitter account, https://twitter.com/VoxCaster.) You can help by spreading this story — and getting others involved — on every gaming and science fiction blog and board and forum out there. Inflict upon Games Workshop the consequences of their actions."

there actually isn't a law against yelling fire in a crowded theater. info here

She made two statements of fact:

• Invoice for services not rendered
• Stole her jewelry

How do you decide if someone did a "bad job" or not?

That may be open to interpretation, but "billed for work that was not performed" (IIUC he already sued her over those bills and won) and "stole jewelry from my house" is not. Those are statements of fact which she will have to either prove or retract.

Best summary I've read, by someone who is usually opposed to this kind of lawsuit but sees this particular case in a different light:

http://www.popehat.com/2012/12/06/yelping-about-bad-publicity/

I'd note that in this case the review went beyond merely "I think they did bad work.". As noted here the contractor's allegations are of false statements of fact, eg. that the review stated that the contractor had invoiced for work not performed. That's not a matter of opinion, that's a statement of fact that's either true or false and if she did falsely claim she was invoiced for work nor performed when either she wasn't invoiced or the work was in fact performed (even if performed badly) it is legitimately actionable. The contractor may or may not be able to prove his case in court, but it's not the usual nebulous "they said bad things about me" lawsuit.

I realize I'm late to the party, but this still may be useful. A respected legal blogger explains why Michael Mann's lawsuit is hopeless.

Quick summary: Comparing Mann to Sandusky and accusing him of sexually abusing his data is hyperbole, i.e., an expression of opinion not meant to be taken literally. To be guilty of libel, you have to present something false, that is meant to be taken as a fact. Other accusations in Mann's suit are similar - all are protected expressions of opinion, not libel. Worse, his suit appears to be meant primarily as a way of shutting down continued discussion of this time, which means that he is likely to be nailed with a SLAPP suit.

If you haven't seen the text of the Inman suit against Carreon it is required reading. Someone is going to jail for this one.

Apparently there's a nutcase filing frivolous lawsuits using Matthew Inman's name for that court filing. Ars Technica has more on it.

If you haven't seen the text of the Inman suit against Carreon it is required reading. Someone is going to jail for this one.

At least accordingly to this blog post [1], the same person who thinks that a cartoon having no real persons in it [2] is offensive, has published pictures of former president having sex [3] on his own website [4], which Charles and Tara Carreon maintains.

So I would see Charles Carreon as a definition of hypocrite in this context, by publishing pictures of sexual nature with real people in them and judging others because they use freedom of speech and create art.

[1] http://www.popehat.com/2012/06/17/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iv-charles-carreon-sues-everybody/
[2] http://www.indiegogo.com/bearlovegood
[3] http://www.american-buddha.com/mondo.sceptre.htm
[4] http://www.american-buddha.com/what_is_buddhism.htm

The same happened to Amy Alkon. They gave, and continue to give, her a hard time over opting out. The scanners as well as the TSA have to go. Neither are American.

Really? That's not what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws says

I can't wait for the day a defense attorney gives a wiki link as evidence.

Hmmm... Would you count a plaintiff's attorney submitting an article?