Free Speech And WebLogs

welloy writes "The WashingtonPost has an article regarding free speech and web logs. Its focus is on how web logs are governed by the same laws/rules of standard print journalism. The header quote: "Bloggers" surprised by legal limits on Web journals."

Comments

Makes sense...

[Overloadplanetunreal]

It only makes sense that it is governed by the same laws as printed material. I mean, it has the potential of reaching just as many people...

Legal Limit

[CharlieO]

There should be a legal limit on first posters...

Re:Legal Limit

[CharlieO]

You know they say gun cultures don't effect the way you see the world.

I meant 'Legal Limit' in the context of 'They shouldn't be allowed to do it'

You read 'Legal Limit' in the context of 'There should be a limit to the amount you can cull'

Awww heck, now I don't know which is funnier and if I should give you my karma!

*grin*

I would hope...

[craenor]

That in the coming years some legal precendent could be made for the legality of classifying Weblogs as form of media to which the laws of copyright and ownership must apply.

Seriously, if I tell people about my experience with a book, quoting passages of the book to establish reference. Or if I post to my online diary with those statements. I should be free of legal repercussions. But where do you draw the line?

Re:I would hope...

[stratjakt]

That wasnt the point of the article. The article was about a guy who posted details about a project he worked on, violating an NDA he signed.

If he published it in a book, wrote it on the mens room wall, or told his neighbours niece, it would result in the same consequences.

Theres no big shocker in this article, you have the same free speech on the web as you do in print, but this guy broke a binding agreement that he'd signed.

The line's already been drawn, and fairly clearly too.

Rights of a blogger

[davidmcn]

I don't see how what a blogger posts could be any different from a person who posts a web-page discussing their personal beliefs or opinions. You find hateful slanderous material all over the internet, and your gonna crack down on people that keep what amounts to a journal online for expressing themselves? Gimme a break.

Re:Rights of a blogger

[rdmiller3]

David wrote:

I don't see how what a blogger posts could be any different from a person who posts a web-page discussing their personal beliefs or opinions. [...]

Exactly so! These "surprising" ramifications of posting derogatory or revealing comments about people have been appearing in courts ever since Netscape became popular. There is no difference for legal purposes between a blog and a hand-written web page. The difference is what you say.

It may only be that the whole purpose of a blog is to enter day-to-day personal details that runs them into this trouble more often than static pages of whatever a person's hobby interest happens to be. My flute-making pages (plug-plug-plug) aren't likely to get me into any trouble, but don't read my Slashdot journal!

What happened to you today? You probably went to work, had private conversations, and if you're lucky you got a little nookie too. Now since you didn't likely get the written consent of other participants to publish the procedings of your encounters, most countries' understanding of "privacy" would put you at legal risk if you do publish.

...no matter what media you choose.

-Rick

Re:Rights of a blogger

[Sylver Dragon]

I don't think they are going after the people that just rant about nothing in general. The people they go after, are the ones that reveal company secrets, or who say things that would have gotten them fired anyway.
Take for example, the lady who got fired for blasting her co-workers in her blog. Sure it was thinly veiled, but it would seem that her intent was obvious enough for her managers to catch. Now, if I were to do something similar on dead trees, write derogatory comments about my co-workers and start passing it out, if my company caught wind of it, they would probably dump me as being a disgruntled worker, or "not a teamplayer" as the jargon goes. Why should it beng on the internet be any different, its still distributing derogatory comments about your co-workers. You are making a problem of yourself, and they are going to fire you.
As for posting hateful stuff, at least in the US, its still allowed. I've not bothered to check but I have a feeling that there is something like a neonazi.com out there calling for the extermination of the Jews. And I'd expect the KKK and Black Panthers to have websites. So, you can still get away with that. Though again, your company may take a dim view of your personal beliefs, and may look for a way to "right-size" you out of a job.
Slanderous, is a bit more different. Those do tend to be tracked down, as they should be. Though you have to prove that it is actually slander, and not just a statement opinion about a person.
And lastly, you have the posting of comapny information, and/or secrets. This is going to get you canned, and possibly sued, as it should. You signed a contract with your employer, you breach it you are on the hook. Sure, its in your journal, but its a journal that you have specifically made publicly accessable, and you know it.
I don't feel any sympathy for the people that gat nailed for putting stuff in thier blog that should not have been there. If you want to write about this sort of stuff, do it in a dead tree journal, and don't pass it around. If you are going to put it on the web, then you need to be a bit more responsible about what you say. Yes, you have the right to free-speech, that doesn't mean that your employer has to like what you say, and if you signed an NDA with them and you break it, well, sucks to be you.

Re:Rights of a blogger

[reallocate]

There's no difference between someone posting to a weblog and someone posting to a web page. They're the same thing. The medium, the method of transmission, isn't the issue. The issue is the information that you post. If you violate an NDA, you've violated an NDA. The medium you used to convey that information to other people is beside the point. Ditto if you knowingly publish false and disparaging information about someone on you website, or calling into to talk radio, etc. Even if it's clearly labelled opinion, you're subject to legal action.

U.S. persons have the free speech rights on the Web as they do anywhere else. And the same responsibilities.

Re:Rights of a blogger

[ninewands]

Quoth the poster:

I don't see how what a blogger posts could be any different from a person who posts a web-page discussing their personal beliefs or opinions. You find hateful slanderous material all over the internet, and your gonna crack down on people that keep what amounts to a journal online for expressing themselves? Gimme a break.

Well, actually, the standard in the US for a defamation suit against a media defendant is somewhat MORE stringent than for one against a private individual. This is because the US Supreme Court is VERY protective of Freedom of the Press. If I were to be sued for libelling Hillary Rosen in my weblog, I'd MUCH rather be judged by the standard of New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 US 254 (1964) (because Hillary seeks SO much news coverage that she MUST be considered a public figure) than by the standards of Texas tort law (which is, for the MOST part, quite pro-plaintiff).

Two-edged sword

[JanneM]

_If_ bloggers are considered the same as print journalism, they should, on the balance, be happy about it. It would mean they have a right to protect their sources, for example, among other special considerations. Of course, if this implies they have all the responsibilities and none of the rights it's a different matter...

Re:Two-edged sword

[warpath]

It would mean they have a right to protect their sources, for example, among other special considerations.

The problem is we don't know that these benefits we are supposedly getting are going to stand up in court. If it ever came to trial and a blogger tried to "protect their source" a judge/jury might find that they aren't 'real' journalists and therefore aren't afforded the same protection.

You're certainly right about it being a two-edged sword, I'm just worried about getting cut by both edges.

Re:Two-edged sword

[blitziod]

here in Texas a woman was jailed for refusing to give up a source. The judge said she( writing a book about a trial under contract from a publisher and published other places) was not a "real" journalist. This really gets to the heart of a problem in the US. "Real journalists" are often allowed freedoms other people are not.
While i think journalists are needed and these freedoms are important. I am also concerned that alternative voices( anything from hightimes to maximumn rock and roll to weblogs) may be silenced by not having access to these freedoms. This will basicly make the only "real journalists" people who write for corperate owned media outlets.

Re:Two-edged sword

[buswolley]

and press passes. right? Hey Mr. president

Re:Duh!

[eyegor]

Ever hear of web server access logs? Most ISPs also keep track of who has what IP when. Unless you limit yourself to editing your blog from the public library or from open WiFi access points, "the man" can find you and squash you when "they" feel it's appropriate.

It does make sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing in the article is too suprising if you take a minute and think about it. Blogs are print, thus there is an obligation to mark opinion as opinion, and not try to present it as fact. The difference will be instead of seeing:

Person X is an incompetant fool.

It will be seen as:

I think Person X is an incompetent fool.

There's no real difference except that one statement can be called libel. It's not like they are trying to make Bloggers apply journalistic standards to their writing. It's more like a heads up warning them to be more careful how they commit things to print.

Re:It does make sense.

[Zebbers]

ummm calling someone a fool is not libel.
Saying 'someone did X' can be libel
but mere name calling is not.

This brings blogs down the earth

[rtphokie]

For some reason, Blogs have been treated as something special for a while. Perhaps it's the media attention to the phenomenom.

Blogs aren't anything special. They are just webpages that happen to get updated far more frequently than most. They still contain information, they should be treated like any other webpage.

They aren't diaries. If you keep a text file on your local machine for "blogging" purposes, that's comperable to a diary but the file you make available for all to see isn't.

Re:This brings blogs down the earth

[Evan927]

So, Anne Frank didn't write a diary? I mean, it was published, so it must not be a diary, right?

If a girl shows her best friend her diary, does it suddenly stop becoming a diary, and become something else?

Look at the definition of a diary, and tell me where it says diaries can't be published.

Re:This brings blogs down the earth

[FreeUser]

They aren't diaries. If you keep a text file on your local machine for "blogging" purposes, that's comperable to a diary but the file you make available for all to see isn't.

Ahem. A diary is a diary, whether you keep it locked in a cabinet or publish it for all the world to see. The number of readers it has makes absolutely no difference to what it is.

Re:Duh!

[PCM2]

Better solution is probably to just not host child pornography -- cuz, after all, it's pretty messed up.

Isn't that ironic?

[HelbaSluice]

In the early days of personal websites (out of which the phenomenon of Blogging emerged) it was this great breakthrough thing--EVERYBODY gets to be a journalist.

Nowadays everybody HAS to be a journalist!

Re:Isn't that ironic?

[karlandtanya]

This is the problem:

"Everybody gets to be a journalist."

It is the nature of power to concentrate itself. I'm not speaking about any "evil, corrupt conspiracy"; just the nature of power. Make no mistake about it, speech and the right to be heard is POWER. That's why it's protected by the FIRST amendment to the US Constitution.

The problem with "everybody is a journalist" is that the power of speech becomes distributed among the masses. This is not a stable (as in equilibruim) situation. It will not persist. It cannot persist.

I like the idea of a "frontier", where everybody pretty much does whatever they want and leaves each other alone. If ever there was an ideal "place" for such a frontier to exist, the internet is it. It's potentially infinite in size. Participation is piecewise voluntary--if you don't like what's going on, you can simply take what you want and leave the rest. Heck, there's software that will ignore it for you. Most people can live with that.

Citizens, it ain't gonna happen. Some, however, have a need to control everything they're aware of. Not many, actually, and even fewer that can do it effectively. But enough so that when that sort of person notices something--even something that has nothing to do with them--they feel a need to control it. Why does Pat Robertson want to control the behaviour of two gay lovers in their own house? Because as surely as those lovers say they were made to be gay, Pat was made with a desire to control. It's his nature. Once such people become aware of the internet as a place, those people have a need to control it. And some of them have the talent necessary to accomplish the task. The "tragic flaw" of the Libertarian ideal is that it doesn't want to control anything (Shut up, I said "ideal").

As long as we persist in the delusion that the internet will remain an unregulated frontier, we are lost.

Rules and laws will regulate the internet.

We do not get to choose whether the regulations are applied. We do, however, get to choose what those regulations will be.

A successful effort at preserving freedom will not be based an anarchistic ideal.

Successfully preserving freedom depends on the creation of regulations that specifically reserve rights to the people.

Do this exercise: Choose a state of in which power is distributed. Choose another in which power is concentrated. Examine the initial ideals of those states. Now investigate the political structure of those states. You'll find that societies whose legal and political structure are consistent with their original ideals were engineered with the more skull-sweat than a chemical plant or successful operating system.

Starry-eyed dreamers saying "why can't we all just get along" will NOT achieve their goals. Political and legal engineers will. We need to get the engineers working for us. Can you name the profession these "engineers" pursue?

Re:Isn't that ironic?

[buswolley]

Mod this parent up! one of the more ntelligent repleis i have read in a week. dang it and I just used up my mod points.

Re:Isn't that ironic?

[kcbrown]

Rules and laws will regulate the internet. We do not get to choose whether the regulations are applied. We do, however, get to choose what those regulations will be.

We get to choose what those regulations will be to the same degree that we got to choose whether or not the DMCA would become law.

In short, there isn't nearly as much choice about this as you seem to think.

Friends and groups

[RASTERB8]

What would the implications be if the blog were limited to subscribers or "friends" as is the case in Livejournal. Would a "terms of use" email between the two parties absolve the blogger from any accountability?

Re:rediculous

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

media and justice systems being run by the Washington fat cats and the Jewish media moguls in New York and Hollywood

Sir, you have no proof whatsoever that the people who control our media are Jewish. Please refrain from posting such offensive garbage.

Re:rediculous

[maroberts]

Until you started on Washington fat cats and Jewish moguls, one would suspect you were being sensible.

Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[FreeUser]

This underscores why the greatest dangers to our freedoms, including our freedom of speech, doesn't come from our government (although it is a threat, as current trends toward greater authoritariansim in the terrorist hysteria left by the wake of 9/11), but from private enterprise, corporations, and simple, unfettered greed.

Whether it is Hollywood, the Recording Industry, Microsoft, or Joe Blow's employer firing them for an unflattering entry in their blog, the trend is clear: "Your freedom of speech exists only on paper, and we're going to make sure it isn't worth even the paper it is written on."

Consider

"With the advent of cyberspace, we've had to evolve these policies," Farr said. "Somewhere between First Amendment rights and total repression there is a practical middle ground."

If that mentality doesn't concern you, much less send chills down your spine, then nothing will. You can't have "a little bit freedom of speech" any more than you can be "just a little bit pregnant." Any compromise of this nature must inherently mean you do not retain your freedom of speech (hint: the freedom to only do or say what is approved isn't freedom. Until people figure this out our trembling democracy will remain in need of serious triage).

The barbarians are at the gates and Rome is about to fall, and they are wearing suits and ties, wielding pens, and sidestepping the will and intent of the Consitution at every opportunity.

What is worse, we are passively letting it happen.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[arkanes]

Exactly right. The whole point of Constitutional rights is that they are inherent, essential rights that must not be abridged. The very idea that there exists a "practical compromise" between then and ANYTHING is offensive.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[TBone]

You give up some of your freedom of speech almost every time you enter into an employment agreement, a contract of some sort, or any other number of legally binding arrangements. To be so blind as to that fact to say "you can't have a little bit freedom of speech" (sic) is to judge everything you come in contact with as either good or bad, white or black.

You work for a company? In return for their employing you, I suspect part of your employment contract prevents you from discussing company policies or secrets that you may have access to. Don't like that? Find another job.

Beta testing that new MMORPG? There's a clause in that agreement that you not disclose any information about the game until such-and-such time, after the beta has been finished.

And of course, there's the whole libel and slander issue. Your right to free speech does not carry over into a right to say whatever you want without repercussions.

In your pull-quote up there, Farr is right - there is a balance between free speech and total repression that should be reached; to preserve your right to speech, and your employer's right to their trade secrets, and your co-workers' rights to be free of libelous writings.

Free speech != unrestricted speech

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[pknoll]

Your quote:

"With the advent of cyberspace, we've had to evolve these policies," Farr said. "Somewhere between First Amendment rights and total repression there is a practical middle ground."

is taken somewhat out of context. The policies referred to are those held by a company concerning what an employee may publicly say about their employer, and whether it is opinion or fact. Surely you're not unfamiliar with this concept? Companies have had these policies for some time. As an example, stockholders are often restricted from what they may discuss in public about a company's business, and for good reason.

This statement does not refer to a person's absolute freedom of speech, but rather their freedom to speak on a specific topic, which in certain cases IS restricted.

The First Admendment does not guarantee your right to say anything you like, it guarantees that Congress won't pass a law that restricts that right.

A contract, implied or literal, between an employee and their company, is a different matter.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[Fnkmaster]

Wrong. I hate to tell you but the ENTIRETY of American jurisprudence exists because rights aren't absolute, but rather exist in balance with each other. While I hold the First Amendment particularly dear to my heart (and I'm pretty sure there's a reason it comes first in the list), it still exists only in balance with other fundamental rights, as outlined by the constitution, common law practices, and jurisprudence. I think this basic principle is pretty much the same in the legal systems of all democratic countries.

I do not of course claim that the judicial system does a perfect or even near perfect job at upholding our rights, and often makes the fallacious assumption that a corporation's rights should be on par with the rights of large numbers of individual citizens, or often even superceding them. While corporations should be treated justly under the law, their "right to profit" or "right to not be criticized by individuals" don't exist in the constitution and should never be seen as higher priority than something as fundamental to our society as the First Amendment. But, that being said, there are laws about libel and slander, jurisprudence about the difference between commercial speech and political speech and so on that try to clarify all the intermediate grey areas and fill in the gaps that the Constitution doesn't specify. And that is, at its heart, a good thing. Perhaps we should push for more accountability in the judicial branch, and perhaps we should elect a President that will appoint judges who aren't fucking corporate whores, mmm?

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Wrong. I hate to tell you but the ENTIRETY of American jurisprudence exists because rights aren't absolute, but rather exist in balance with each other.

If you read the original comment again, you will see that the person is objecting to a balance between what is guaranteed and total oppression. I don't need to tell you that this is a really bad thing, do I? I mean, constantly asking for a balance between what has been agreed and what you want is just another tactic to crush the opposition.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[daytrip00]

• "Your freedom of speech exists only on paper, and we're going to make sure it isn't worth even the paper it is written on."

Ok. I think people often misunderstand what this means. Freedom of speech implies a freedom to have your opinions and let them be known. It however, does not guarantee you a freedom from consequences, because we must live with the consequences of what we and others say. If you call your best friend a "lying, cheating bitch" you must then live with the consequence that he may no longer be your friend. Similarly, there are consequences for others based on what you say. To allow total license to make completley unsubstantiated claims that damage another's credibility or reputation with no consequences, however, seems not to be guaranteed by the constitution.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[sql*kitten]

Exactly right. The whole point of Constitutional rights is that they are inherent, essential rights that must not be abridged. The very idea that there exists a "practical compromise" between then and ANYTHING is offensive.

It's not only offensive, it's treasonous (altho' of course the First Amendment grants him the right to say what he says, just not to do it). A bunch of people - including the President and the Marines - are sworn to protect and uphold the Constitution. That's it. If the former isn't doing the job, the latter should do something about it.

All enemies, foreign and domestic. That's the oath.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[poot_rootbeer]

No. The point of the Bill of Rights is that CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW abridging those rights.

Your employer can impose a gag order preventing you from exercising your speech as it relates to your work. That's not unconstitutional.

It's also been well established that Freedom of Speech is not protected equally across the board, but varies based on the type of speech. Political protest enjoys greater protection than commercial speech, for example. Yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater is not protected at all, nor is slander.

If Constitutional rights were as simple as you suggest, the Supreme Court would be a lot less busy, wouldn't they? It's a complex issue which often merits vigorous debate.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[Detritus]

See the 14th amendment and the incorporation doctrine.

Re:Corporatizing the Death of Democracy

[Planesdragon]

You can't have "a little bit freedom of speech" any more than you can be "just a little bit pregnant."

Sorry, you're wrong. Freedom of speech is abridged all the time--for example, by NDAs, by dangerous circumstance, etc, etc.

It's NOT the kind of absolute right that, oh, the right to keep on breathing is.

(hint: the freedom to only do or say what is approved isn't freedom. Until people figure this out our trembling democracy will remain in need of serious triage).

You've got it wrong. The freedoms isn't "do what is approved." It's "do anything but what's barred." And even then, if you've got a good reason or circumventing details (either the stage IS on fire, or you're up in front of the stage play-acting in a musical about a fire...) you can get past the prohibition.

Re:Duh!

[TerryAtWork]

Look bro - kiddy porn is the root password to the Constitution (along with drug possession) so yes they WILL bust your ass anyway.

Ahh, the memories of Usenet

[hacksoncode]

This reminds me of my early days in Usenet.

The best rule to follow is: never say anything in email or in a posting that you would mind saying in person to everyone you know.

Information wanting to be free is a 2 edged sword.

Re:Ahh, the memories of Usenet

[Sunkist]

The best rule to follow is: never say anything in email or in a posting that you would mind saying in person to everyone you know.

...or in court

Re:Ahh, the memories of Usenet

[Kaa]

The best rule to follow is: never say anything in email or in a posting that you would mind saying in person to everyone you know.

There is a better rule. You should never post onto the Usenet/Web anything that you would mind saying in person to everyone you know, or anything that you'd be uncomforable with when it's pulled out of the archives twenty years later.

I know several people who were highly embarassed when Google made available old Usenet postings...

Re:Ahh, the memories of Usenet

[Crispy Critters]

The best rule to follow is: never say anything in email or in a posting that you would mind saying in person to everyone you know.

Especially since we all post to \. using our real names...

Re:Ahh, the memories of Usenet

[SagSaw]

A (very large) company I spent some time interning for had the following to say regarding e-mail and other electronic communications (paraphrased):

Do not write anything in an e-mail you would not want read on national television.

bradpitt.diaryland.com

[Bartacus]

This reminds me of the Brad Pitt diary/blog that existed on Diaryland from 4/2000 to 12/2000.

It was expertly written (incognito at the time) by the well-known diarylander Uncle Bob, until a cease-and-desist order was issued by Brad Pitt's legal team.

It was insanely funny, and no one would've ever actually believed that it was Mr. Pitt, but someone got their panties in a wad over it.

No balls

[Apreche]

People have no balls these days. If someone ever sends me a C&D letter, I'm going to say no. I wont bend over for anyone. I've got nothing to lose. The worst you can do is sue me, and I've got no money! What are they going to do? Jail me for writing something and putting it on a website? I doubt it. If somehow they do, then I'll do my best to become a martyr for the cause.

Knowing slashdot some of you will think I'm an idiot. But the reason that there's so much wrong going on lies mainly in the fact that people no longer stand up and fight. They sit back and take it in the ass. Every great movement in history was started by a few people who said "screw this shit!" and did something about it. So, to everyone who has gotten or will get a C&D letter from anyone. If you feel that what you were requested to cease doing is not wrong (read: wrong as in evil bad, not wrong as in illegal. What is legal and what is just are completely different) join me in saying "SCREW YOU!"

Most of the time they simply expect you to comply, it will be a great shock when you don't. Often so much of a shock that they wont even follow up. Especially when they realize the legal costs are sometimes greater than what they can get out of you.

Re:No balls

[macrom]

The worst you can do is sue me, and I've got no money! What are they going to do? Jail me for writing something and putting it on a website?

Having money is not a requirement for you to be the defendant in a lawsuit. The court can have your paycheck garnered for the rest of your life until you pay back what you owe. Should you refuse to work and/or pay out what you owe as the result of a settlement, then jail is an option. There you can slave away in the cafeteria for X number of years to payback the debt.

Face it, some way or another you're gonna take it in the ass. Personally, I would rather take it in the ass in the proverbial sense rather than the physical sense.

Re:No balls

[TerryAtWork]

It's not that they sue you, it's that they threaten to sue your ISP unless they instantly shitcan your account, which, surprise, they do.

Re:No balls

[infolib]

If someone ever sends me a C&D letter, I'm going to say no.

I don't know what I'd do, except for one thing:
Post the "Cease and Desist" to my page immediately

That brings the opponent out in the open, something that can only work to advance justice (or what? IANAL!)

I'd probably also submit it to chillingeffects.org. This is a truly cool place for information on this topic. Go there.

Re:No balls

[blitziod]

actually having money really is a requirement. In the state that I live in it is almost impossible to collect money from a person on unsecured( not a house , car etc) debt. Plus anywhere in the US you can file bankruptcy pretty cheap. BAnkruptcy is a hassle BUT no lawyer will sue somebody unless they have assetts that can be attached to. If you do not own a home, company, stocks or securities( and anything in your IRA or 401k can't be sized from a lawsuit) property of some kind a judgement is IMPOSSIBLE to collect from you.

Re:No balls

[Fnkmaster]

Hehe. I got cease and desisted by the MPAA for distributing DeCSS back when I was in college (I had a web page with a bunch of DVD-related downloads, including DeCSS, LiViD project info and so on). I did fight it, and publicize it - was written up in the Harvard Crimson. But you see, I was a senior at Harvard University, and it turned out I did have something to lose - my diploma at the end of the year. Thanks, DMCA. To the US Congress - suck my gonads.

Re:No balls

[Kintanon]

You can not be compelled to work. You can go to prison, set in your cell and refuse to move. They aren't allowed to beat the shit out of you for that.

Kintanon

Re:No balls

[Fnkmaster]

Oops, I cut the original ending I wrote for the post. I did back down and removed it, after several discussions with Harvard's General Counsel. However, he was willing to be satisfied with the most narrow interpretation possible of the request, and we agreed that I only needed to remove that one executable file, so that Harvard could cover their asses. Any other source code or content was fine. So I put everything else that could possibly offend the MPAA up on my site, including various forms of the DeCSS source code. :)

People are surprised?

[bmetzler]

People are surprised that protection laws applied to speech, actually applies to speech? Where is the surprise here? Did people really think that laws applying to speech might only sometimes apply to speech?

Do other laws work this way? Do laws apply to fraud only sometimes apply to fraud? How about shoplifting. Hey, maybe Winona's only crime was that she didn't check to see when the law applied. Maybe she was only a few hours or even feet from having shoplifted legally!

-Brent

Re:rediculous

[Master Bait]

Article One:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now watch... Clarence Thomas got pubic hair on his coke can because he sucks donkey dicks.

Re:rediculous

[cpt kangarooski]

What regulation of print journalism would that be? I cannot think of a single thing that specifically applies to it. There's relatively little wrong with the laws as applied to the net, particularly in the post Reno era. (the case, not the person)

Did you have something specific in mind?

My opinions

[sickboy_macosX]

I think the reason why the government is making arcane internet laws is because they are scared, nothing has ever been this powerful, to think that I can make my own website and host it for less than one hundered dollars and talk about how George W. Bush the president is a crack whore. The government is worried more about what someone is going to say, and working on getting them arrested or removed or killed. I personally think the first ammendment right should apply online. But hey, I also think we should end the war on terrorisim and make microsoft go away and let Linux take over.

Re:rediculous

[Dunark]

Regulation of print journalism was necessary because the barriers to entry were so high; it was not reasonable to expect Joe Sixpack to purchase his own printing press and retaliate against libellous allegations...

I saw an interesting alternative reason (I wish I could remember where): It's not the expense of publishing a rebuttal that is significant, but rather the difficulty of bringing the rebuttal to the attention of people who may have seen the original libelous statement. I think this alternative argument *is* applicable to "publishing" on the internet.

Whats the American court system to do

[TerryAtWork]

If the libelous blog is published anonymously from a server in, say, Lebanon?

There's only two real rules in cyberspace that apply everywhere.

1 - Large prime factors are hard to find.

2 - Everything is a bitstream.

That's it - everything else is a matter of quaint local customs and luck, good or bad.

Re:Whats the American court system to do

[cosmosis]

Hi,

Actually, prime numbers just got easier to find, making practical very strong cryptography that much more practical.

BTW, I liked your other post, especially about the disruptive technologies and the showdown between them and TIA, Big Brother, etc.

Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.

Re:Whats the American court system to do

[TerryAtWork]

That's a cool article thanks for pointing that out. And thanks for the props for the other post - I was wondering if I got as bit too theatrical for it.

MOD PARENT UP YOU NASTY, NASTY MODERATORS

[mcpkaaos]

He makes a great point - it's nice to hear people called out to (attempt to) make a difference. Besides, the more web loggers that stand up for their written words, the better the chances of the legal system becoming too bogged down to worry about all of my parking tickets. Er, forget I said that. Revolution!

--
mcp\kaaos

Re:rediculous

[aengblom]

Regulation of print journalism was necessary because the barriers to entry were so high; it was not reasonable to expect Joe Sixpack to purchase his own printing press and retaliate against libellous allegations. The Internet does away with all that.

I actually modded you up, but wanted to reply (sorry ;-) ).

This is a very good point, but there are very interesting legal and ethical questions. If, say the Drudge Report slanders me--is it also libel as it would be in print?

Sure, I can respond with my own web page, but no one will see it. In other words, I don't have an equal chance to make my point and defend myself. This can cause actual monetary and emotional damages.

I think such protection should be required or else large internet media outlets could abuse their power.

However, if I slander someone on my web page--only my family and a few friends will ever really know. It would clearly be restrictive if we all needed libel insurance to publish a web page.

I think the answer--as it does in the print world---will have to lie in page views. After a certain amount of people have seen it--it goes from slander to libel.

Andrewsullivan.com: Subject to libel laws
Talkingpointsmemo.com: Subject to libel laws
Livejournal.com/~aneng: Not subject

This is all sort of a side point anyway. The article mostly deals with people getting fired for breaking company policies. (First rule of fight club, don't talk about your company ;-)

Re:ridiculous

[Triv]

This misapplication of outmoded laws is a direct result of the media and justice systems being run by the Washington fat cats and the Jewish media moguls in New York and Hollywood.

Sigh. If you want to read some good journalism on the "Jewish Conspiracy" check out this book by Jon Ronson. It's called "Them: Adventures with Extremists." You can read an interview with the author here. He basically investigates cults of all forms and sees what's true and what's not. Spoiler: A lot of it's true but not at all in the way you think. It's a great read. Until then, knock that unsubstantiated, mildly racist shit off, will you?

Triv

Well DUH!

[www.sorehands.com]

Back in 1938 the Supreme Court (Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, has given the lonely pamphleteer the protects as a newspaper. If it is printed, then it does not matter if you print on a sheet of toilet paper and hang it in the men's room or a full page advertisement in the New York Times.

The tort of libel has never depended on the number of readers, but on the issue.

Re:rediculous

[Guppy06]

"I can't believe how these archaic laws that are necessarily steeped in obsolete technology are being abused to limit online speech, which is by nature completely free and above the laws of any one nation."

Personally, I can't believe there are still idiots like you who believe that the internet is "special" and requires "special" laws that only apply to it. The only new questions the internet brings up are questions of jurisdiction. That's all.

"Regulation of print journalism was necessary because the barriers to entry were so high; it was not reasonable to expect Joe Sixpack to purchase his own printing press and retaliate against libellous allegations."

You missed the entire point. It has nothing to with whether or not "Joe Sixpack" can afford a printing press or not, it's about Joe Sixpack seeking compensation and/or retribution for damage to his character through outright lies and falsehoods.

If publication A (and "publication" does include publication on the internet) says "Joe Sixpack is a child molester!" what can he do? In your idiotic worldview, he'd publish something saying "No, I'm not," but where would that leave him? He'd be a child molester in denial, that's where (and him denying it only goes to prove publication A's point). The only thing that would have done for him is to take a bite out of his wallet (even web servers aren't free).

And why should he have to do this? It's not like it's his fault that publication A lied about him. If anything, publication A should be held responsible for the damage their actions have caused.

Libel and slander laws have nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with personal responsibility. Just as the Second Amendment doesn't give you the right to shoot people, the First Amendment doesn't give you the right to slander. It does nothing more than give you enough rope to hang yourself with.

And when all is said and done, I'd much rather deal with slanderous allegations in a civil trial than in the court of public opinion. Especially when the court of public opinion includes "people" who would write that last paragraph in your post.

Re:Duh!

[Kaa]

I have this on good authority. It may alert them to your presence and cause them to raid your house, but if when they raid the house they find nothing in your posession, you're scott free.

Don't be an idiot.

Do you really want to explain to a jury of regular middle-class people that "Yes, this picture of a 10-year-old being fisted was on my free website, and it came from my IP, but you didn't find it on my hard drive, so na-na na-na-na, you have to let me go free"??

And also, I have it on good authority that you can buy a Brooklin Bridge really cheap...

Nonsense.

[kevlar]

This article has nothing to do with Free Speech. You can say whatever the hell you want so long as you do not bind yourself legally not to. In this case, he violated a non-disclosure agreement. This has nothing to do with Freedom of Speech.

Re:Nonsense.

[ftobin]

Bullocks

The case isn't always clear cut. Not all contracts are legally binding. Furthermore, your rights for Freedom of Speech may trump part or all of an NDA.

Blogs as regulated speech? *snort*

[russotto]

If I didn't know better, I'd think the Washington Post was feeling threatened and was trying to create a bit of a chilling effect on their own.

Their first example was about a cease and desist order from a _former employer_ about violating a nondisclosure agreement for merely mentioning a project. If the facts are as presented, that's no threat to free speech. First of all, since we aren't talking classified information or even trade secrets, the nondisclosure probably wasn't even violated: a nondisclosure agreement doesn't mean you aren't allowed to talk about your work in public!

Second a threat about violating a nondisclosure from a FORMER employer isn't what I call compelling. Sure, as long as you work there they've got you by the short hairs, but once you're gone the only way they can deal with you is to sue, and that's going to be a lot of work for them and no guaranteed win.

Their next example of
"Our server crashed today, and the idiot IT person at our company couldn't get the thing running." isn't likely to be actionable either, even if it isn't true. Calling someone an idiot is an opinion, not slander, unless their lawyers can twist it into making it look like you were actually claiming they were mentally defective rather than just delivering an insult.

Yeah, if you badmouth your own company in public, you might well get fired. That's as true in a web log as anywhere else. But the rest of it is mostly overblown threats.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and don't play one on the net.

P.S Oh, and if anyone thinks I speak for any of the companies I have worked for or the company I now work for -- you're out of your mind.

MOD PARENT UP

[sulli]

Everyone who didn't RTFA should. This is about (a) somebody who violated NDA; (b) somebody who was fired for posting derogatory stuff about her employer (if you don't like it don't work there!); (c) a dumbass HR consultant who said moronic things about the First Amendment; and (d) a dumbass journalist who didn't understand the issues at all, including (i) the nature of contracts with one's employer, (ii) what a C&D letter is (HINT, YOU MORONS, IT IS NOT A LAWSUIT), and (iii) the First Amendment.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[ChaosDiscord]

somebody who was fired for posting derogatory stuff about her employer (if you don't like it don't work there!);

Well, that's not entirely fair. It may be that for reasons out of the employee's control that they are at the only job available. That said, even if you hate your job with a passion, unless you're planning on leaving already, badmouthing your job in public is a good way to get fired.

what a C&D letter is (HINT, YOU MORONS, IT IS NOT A LAWSUIT)

No it isn't a lawsuit, any more than my pointing a gun at you is attempted murder. It's just a threat. In this particular case it's a threat by someone with a great deal more power and money than you who could effectively bankrupt you in could. Of course, like all threats, it could just be a bluff, but, like when a mugger points a gun at you, are you really willing to risk it? A Cease and Desist may not be a lawsuit, but for most people it effectively stops their behavior, even if their behavior is legal and ethical. (I'm not arguing the specific case of C&D use in the article, it sounds like the guy accidentally did violate his NDA, he got warned to fix the situation, and he did. C&Ds can be used in perfectly ethical ways.)

Don't overreact to this story.

[sulli]

Farr is an HR consultant. You're treating him like a First Amendment scholar, or a lawmaker. Don't.

Re:rediculous

[freeweed]

Sir, you have no proof whatsoever that the people who control our media are Jewish.

I think the bigger point is WHO CARES?

It's a pretty well-established fact that there are more Jewish entertainers, compared to the proportion of Jews in general society. WHO CARES?

A lot of people in charge of studios/media companies have been, and are, Jewish. (Hint: look up MGM sometime :). But WHO CARES?

Oh no! Negroes are controlling the NBA and NFL! Whatever shall we do?

However, denying the preponderance of a certain race/ethnicity is equally as silly. Facts are facts. Doesn't mean sweet diddly, though.

Re:Duh!

[jerrytcow]

For instance, if you get free storage from a free hosting site, and you put, say, child porno on that site, do you own the child porno? No. So you can't get busted for posession. The trick is to keep stuff off of your computer and host it on someone else's computer.

OK, I'm going to call bullshit on this one. I simply don't believe that they can't bust you because you don't own the computer it's on. The ISP would be able to show who is using the storage space from their logs.

I'd bet that if you rented one of those self storage garages and stored drugs in there you'd get busted just as if the drugs were in your house/apartment.

Re:Duh!

[YaRness]

i was going to joke and say "what the hell is that, scientology," thinking it was a quote from some sci-fi book.

but google showed me to be correct on both counts.... that's some weird shit.

This happened to me...

[wumarkus420]

I received a DMCA-formatted cease and desist from ALS Scan over a stupid fake picture that I copied from stileproject.com. It was a modified pr0n picture that had been edited in a humorous way. Nothing happened, but the email was accepted by Chilling Effects. You can view it here. Needless to say, I am much more careful about what I post on my site, and urge others to be, as well. What I don't understand is why they didn't go after stileproject.com - a site that makes money off these things. I was just a college student running a stupid blog that got 20 hits a day from my friends. Oh well, DMCA sucks.

opinion vs fact

[Black Copter Control]

In my view, blogging is publishing (so is posting on slashdot).

For reasons completely unrelated to blogging, I've long since learned to do my best to separate fact from opinion. Modifiers like "I (don't) believe", "In my opinion", and "It seems like", or even just a simple "IMHO", mark opinion clearly as such.

When I post stuff to my (or any) website, I'm fully aware that I have a potential audience of millions (even though I'm usually happy to get 5000 hits/month). I believe that postings on the net (including blogging) should have the same rights (and therefore responsibilities) as publishing a 'dead tree edition'.

I remember in one case, I was responding to someone's request to remove a neo-nazi site from a machine hosted by my employer/client. I actually gave her two responses. One was the official one. The other was a personal response given from my personal account. To make it even clearer, I prefaced my personal comments with a note that the reason why I was using a different account was to make it clear that my response was a personal opinion, not a corporate one.
I was explaining to her why I felt that the site should not be forced off the air for freedom of speech reasons, even though I (like her) found the contents repugnant.

Some years previous to that, I was working at UBC during the Clayoquot Sound protests in BC (1993). I did a good bit of posting to local usenet groups -- often using my university account after hours. For those postings, I changed my 'organization' field to 'Just Another Radical' -- once again to provide the distinction between my employer and my opinions.

Such little touches allow me to express my own opinion more freely while/by being responsible for my employers' legal fears.

As for posting on the net about what goes on at an employer where I have a non-disclosute agreement, that's just a legal minefield from day one. Even when writing about personal feelings about what occured, I'd be careful to only explain my feelings, not what occured -- until, and unless, I got an OK from my boss for the types of stuff I wanted to write about.

There's a big difference between writing about events in a personal diary vs. in a blog. A personal diary has some expectation of privacy and non-publication (at least until I get around to publishing my memoirs 30 years down the road). 'Blogs, on the other hand, start public. They have absolutely no pretense of privacy. Putting stuff that might turn out to be sensitive in such a location seems simply silly.

If I wouldn't put it in a letter to the editor (presuming that they'd publish it), then I wouldn't put it in my web log. Period.

Re:The value of archives

[adb]

When a newspaper retracts information, people don't go around redacting it from all library archives. If anything, it's easier to remove information from the web: there is usually only a single source for a web site and perhaps a few archives of it, rather than thousands or millions of copies of a newspaper (hundreds or thousands of which are in libraries).

Oh Poo.

[raehl]

This has nothing to do with quashing people's freedom of speech. It has to do with quashing people's ability to lie, character assassinate, and give away stuff that isn't theirs.

So you can be held liable for giving away trade secrets online You can be held liable for violating the contract you have with your employer, you know, the guys who make sure you have money to eat. You can be held liable for making up and saying stuff about people that isn't true. Big deal. Your employment contract says "Do not disclose private company information, do not represent the company in a negative light, do not create a hostile environment for your coworkers" - it does *NOT* say "Do not do these things, EXCEPT on the internet, where you can do whatever you want."

What is amazing is that people think the internet is supposed to be some parallel dimension where they can do whatever they want without consequences.The internet is a tool, probably the best tool ever invented, but it's still just a tool. Using the internet to do something illegal isn't any different than using a baseball bat or printing press to do so.

"You are being sued for saying that Person X screws monkeys." "What? I only said that on the internet!"

Duh!

[Guppy06]

In other news:

• People are held personally accountable for their own actions
• "Equal protection under the law" means just that
• The phrase "except on the internet" to be found nowhere in US Constitution

Why do so many people here have such a problem with this?

Publish your writings (on the internet or otherwise)? Don't want to get sued for slander? Use the five magic words:

"I believe..."
"In my opinion..."

It's not that difficult!

Press Rights

[Alethes]

Is there anything in writing enumerating the rights of the press? I've done some googling, but I'm not finding anything like what I'm looking for.

Re:Press Rights

[djembe2k]

Generally, the "rights of the press" aren't enumerated in any single piece of writing or law (unless you count the first amendment, which is where it all starts, in the U.S. at least), so much as they are built up by years and years of case law. There's plenty on the web that talks about freedom of the press and various interpretations of it. One good source I found with a quick google is actually A U.S. State Department website on press freedom.

But the thing to keep in mind is that there are hundreds of cases, Supreme Court and many lower federal courts and state courts as well, that spell out and interpret various rights and responsibilities of the press. Some decisions contradict others, or only apply in certain circuits or states. It isn't easy to summarize with a single enumeration, beyond "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press."

Re:Press Rights

[sql*kitten]

Is there anything in writing enumerating the rights of the press?

What about the Constitution?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Honestly, it's no wonder that it's so easy for Ashcroft and his minions to undo the work of the Founding Fathers when so many people don't even know what's in the fucking Constitution!

Re:Press Rights

[Ringwraith]

The right to keep your sources confidential operates on the state level, so they'll change from one state to the next. Some have no right, some have mixed, some have strong rights. Not a very specific answer, but hope it helps.

Be derogatory over the air, and not get caught

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Just get your Amateur radio license and bitch about the problems at your company to fellow HAMs during your commute.

Chances are, you're the ONLY one in your company that even comes close to listening/using the HAM radio bands.

Only use blogs for what their meant for, to talk about the newest color of your baby's poo. Which in itself, can be a metaphor for work.

easy to say until it actually happens

[endoboy]

everybody's got something to lose

In the face of an opponent with (for your purposes) infinite resources, folding your tent and going home begins to look attractive fairly quickly--and I say that from unhappy experience. Conceptual martydom is a much more appealling thought that the imminent prospect of actual martyrdom.

Re:Duh!

[eddy the lip]

Putting aside the flame-inducing child porn reference, you're still way off. The host is more like a news stand, and you're the author of what they're distributing.

This is about authorship. If I post on a blog "Hilary Rosen is a heroin addict, it's affecting her judgement, and I have proof, here are the pictures [insert doctored photos here]", she can sue your ass for libel, and rightfully so (assuming you don't have real proof that she is, of course). There's no reason web content should be immune from standard libel laws, or other laws that govern free speech.

Of course, they should also be protected by those same laws. What's really distressing are moves by various entities that are trying to exert more control over online publishing than they'd have over traditional media.

IJBT (I've Just Been Trolled)

Oh cmon

[mao che minh]

This is like limiting what one can write in their journal. Well, except that these journals have the potential to reach a billion people. Anyways, no one that would happen to stray across my blog could ever mistake it as anything serious or to be taken literally. The same goes for most blogs. I mean, while it might be interesting to hear what Wesley Crusher thinks about the political strife in the Middle East, or why CamGURL8080XXX chooses Microsoft operating systems over Macintosh, they are not going to start any controversy or spark rebellion.

Have A Nice Trial and Conviction!

[reallocate]

That's one of the lamest, most ill informed, statements I've ever seen on Slashdot (...think about that.)

The data you post to a web site that is under your control is just that, under your control. Your assertion that you are not liable for illegal material that you collected and placed on a server that is owned by someone else is fatuous. You're renting space on that server, and you're responsible for what you put in that space.

And don't get to cute about imagining you can post pseudonymously or anonymously and evade responsibility. Your IP address points right back to you. Any prosecutor worth his/her salt can get a warrant compelling your ISP to trace that info and identify the person who made the post. (Happens a lot to AOL in the Loudoun County, Virginia, courts.)

Re:rediculous

[Guppy06]

"Honey, that's an amendment, not an article."

Which means it's the first article of amendment. It's written right under the phrase (emphasis mine):

Articles in Addition To, and Amendment of, the Constitution of the United States of America(.)

MOD PARENT TROLL!

[infolib]

For instance, if you get free storage from a free hosting site, and you put, say, child porno on that site, do you own the child porno? No. So you can't get busted for posession.

I simply don't believe you. If you put the content on the server you are responsible. The minor detail of who owns the computer is not relevant.

I have no facts to back my opinion, but neither have you.

Re:Duh! (Hmmm...)

[Malic]

Has inmyopinion.org be reserved yet...? Set up subdomains for all bloggers under it? ;)

Speech is Speech, Regardless of the Medium

[reallocate]

The laws and Constitutional guarantees regarding free speech concern themselves with speech, not the medium by which that speech is transmitted. Knowingly posting lies about someone on your weblog is equivalent to posting the same lies in an ad you bought in your local newspaper. Or a commercial on TV. Or splashing it on a billboard next to the Interstate.

The fact that the Internet uses different technology that radio, TV, newspapers, etc., doesn't mean the rules have changed.

Re:No balls: Your reputation and freedom

[dagg]

The problem is, they can take non-monetary things from you. With the "SCREW YOU!" attitude, a judge might throw you in jail just for spite (your freedom was taken away). If word gets out that you disparage your employers (or former employers), then companies will not hire you (your reputation was taken away).

OT: Here is a funny journal entry about balls.

Internal Memos

[Eric Jaakkola]

I wonder what she would have to say about Internal Memos where all you do is post secrets about your company.

Re:Internal Memos

[LostCluster]

Pud's constantly crossing the line and then retreating back when he gets a C&D that his lawyer tells him is going to stick. (Even though he'll gladly taunt anybody who sends a C&D when they can't follow it up.)

Everything on InternalMemos.com is leaked and confidential information that companies could sue to remove. However most companies would need to buy the rather expensive subscription and assign somebody to regularly checking the site to see if they've been violated. Worst of all, they wouldn't get any money out of their efforts, because Pud would pull the offending memo as soon as the C&D came in.

For most companies, the return isn't worth the investment, so they let it all slide.

Re:Internal Memos

[/dev/trash]

Is it that expensive? And why assign someone to look? Subscribe and then write a perl script to search the site. Once a hit is made, have a lawyer read it. If it's actionable, sue.

Re:The value of archives

[Animats]

Unfortunately, it's easy to make your site disappear from Archive.org. Just put up a robots.txt file that prohibits archive.org access, and archive.org will immediately block access to copies of that page they've already archived. You'll see a message that access has been blocked.

And yes, the backup copy of the archive in the library of Alexandria, Egypt blocks access, too.

Free Speech is a delusion only.

[nurb432]

Its never truly existed and doesn't today.

The only speech that is allowed is what your respective government permits AT THAT TIME.

If you dont believe me, tell an FBI agent how to blow people up and that you want too.. ( or a web page with instructions, they will come to your house so you can tell them in person ) or that xyz race should be burnt at the stake, or that the president should be shot.. ( or what ever other ruler you have in your country ). Or about telling a US judge how to decode a DVD encryption, or give him a serial number to windowsXP...

See how fast your speech is squelched..

or give Paladin press a call.. or most any other company that has 'alternative' information. They have plenty of experience with being told 'no that is restricted information'..

The examples are endless.. so why bother even pretending we have any true freedom in what we say or do?

Freedoms vs Freedoms

[serutan]

One thing I love about the Internet is that it screws with so many accepted institutions, often revealing how heavily they rely on assumptions about things like distance, scale and difficulty, and how fragile they are when those assumptions stop working.

The ideas of libel and slander evolved in a world where there were major practical differences between privacy and publicity. It was easy to outlaw certain things in public declarations while still allowing people to speak freely in personal conversations and private letters. Now along comes the Internet, which not only gives individuals the capability to publish their private thoughts to the whole world with ease, but lets them do it in a way that feels as normal and natural as writing a letter to a friend. Or for that matter, loaning someone a book or whistling a popular song in public. It's definitely not a given that people should be prohibited from treating the world as a big group of close friends, or that the limits created for a world in which that was impossible should continue to apply.

While there are such things as trade secrets and business confidentiality, a company's right to limit its employees freedom to speak about things that go on at work should not be unlimited. I understand that companies have good, practical reasons to want to control absolutely everything that's said about them. But they don't necessarily have the right to do it.

Most of us are used to the idea that our companies can limit what we say about them. We could just as easily get used to the idea that a lot of people shoot their mouths off meaninglessly in blogs and learn to ignore most of it. In my mind this would be better than going in the other direction and treating everybody on Earth like a 20th century publisher.

Web Authors Have Same Rights as Any Publisher

[reallocate]

Your rights to publish what you choose on a website are exactly the same as they would be if you published the same information in a newspaper that you owned or broadcast it on a radio station that you owned, or stood up and shouted it at a public meeting.

Challenges to published information happen every day in all the media, and they've been happening for hundreds of years. (And if to you are ever slandered or libeled, you'll be glad of it.) The web is just another way to publish, that's all.
No need for displays of testosterone. If you get a C&D letter, just get a lawyer and contest it.

Re:rediculous

[meringuoid]

media and justice systems being run by the Washington fat cats and the Jewish media moguls in New York and Hollywood

Sir, you have no proof whatsoever that the people who control our media are Jewish. Please refrain from posting such offensive garbage.

Um... this reads to me as if the people controlling the media might have been offended to be called Jews, rather than vice-versa. Probably not what you wanted to say.

One intersting Quote though...

[EccentricAnomaly]

An interesting quote from the article:

"With the advent of cyberspace, we've had to evolve these policies," Farr said. "Somewhere between First Amendment rights and total repression there is a practical middle ground."

It's one thing to enforce NDA's that an employee willfully signed its another thing to find some "middle-ground" with rights in the first amendment. The whole point of calling something a right is to say that there is no middle ground.... a "right" is an absolute... otherwise we would call it first amendment privileges.

If you don't voluntarily sign away a right with an NDA, you should have complete freedom to exercise that right. I think Madison and Jefferson would back me up here.

Too often management types think they can freely bend the rules in order to make their job easier and they never really worry about what the long term negative effect on society of reducing the rights of employees to speak their minds.

Just look at how the ITAR restrictions on academic speech are killing the American Aerospace Industry, and how DMCA is killing research into encryption.

Re:Duh!

[sql*kitten]

That's why it's so important to look at the legal concept of ownership. For instance, if you get free storage from a free hosting site, and you put, say, child porno on that site, do you own the child porno? No. So you can't get busted for posession. The trick is to keep stuff off of your computer and host it on someone else's computer.

Nonsense. If you rent an apartment, does that mean that stuff you put into it is not yours? Of course it is yours, storage is storage whether it is physical or virtual.

What these people need to wise up to is that you should just make yourself a pseudonym, use no personally traceable information

Can you do that? I can't, not with absolute certainty, and I know Unix backwards, frontwards and upside down. It's easy enough to defeat a casual attempt to trace you, but if the FBI subpoena your ISP's billing records and proxy cache logs, what are you gonna do then?

Then it's someone else's problem, not yours, and there are no consequences.

I'll be amused to read about you on the frontpage of /. when the FBI haul you away :-)

one responsibility is review before publication.

[DunbarTheInept]

A blog cannot carry out the responsibilities of a print journalist unless it has a very small number of submitters. Something like Slashdot cannot do it because there's too many people putting things up on the page, in the form of comments. In a newspaper, every editorial is reviewed before being published. Every letter to the editor is looked at before it is published. Slashdot doesn't do that with it's comments, and any other blog of similar size won't do it either, because there's no time to view everyone's submissions. That is one key way in which a blog cannot be a "real" journalistic outlet at cannot be held responsible for things said on the site. But that also means it doesn't get the protection "real" journalistic outlets get.

Re:Duh!

[Dirtside]

So you can't get busted for posession.

Even if this is true, they can still get you for trafficking. And if you're uploading it to a free hosting site, well, it had to be on your computer at some point (and they can get you for possession then). Once they suspect you (and, hopefully, get a warrant), they'll start tapping your data lines (or even just break in and install monitoring software), and catch you anyway.

Uh...thanks?

[Alethes]

I'm not an idiot, as you'd like to think, and I'm well aware of the first amendment, however, I was referring to specific rights such as mentioned in the parent post -- "it would mean they have a right to protect their sources". I'd like to know where that right is listed and if there are others, but don't bother replying. It's apparent that you don't know the answer to this question.

Re:rediculous

[Dirtside]

It would clearly be restrictive if we all needed libel insurance to publish a web page.

Why would we need libel insurance if we're not posting libel? If someone is so lazy that they can't be bothered to check facts before posting them, but is willing to pay for libel insurance, they deserve to get sued.

Re:rediculous

[Dirtside]

I agreed with most of your post, but I wanted to respond to one thing:

The only new questions the internet brings up are questions of jurisdiction. That's all.

They're questions of jurisdiction, sure, but the important questions aren't ones like, "Who has jurisdiction over something written by person A in country B and viewed by person C in country D, where that something is illegal?" The questions are, "What do we do when real-world jurisdictional models don't even remotely apply to the Internet?" No one's even come close to having a real answer to this question, yet -- most of the time, it's devolved to, "If it's viewable where it's illegal, then even if it's not illegal where it was posted from, we have to pressure the foreign government to forcibly take it off the net!"

Re:yet another way to get arrested.

[macdaddy357]

Any company that has such an oppressive corporate climate that they monitor what their employees write in blogs is probably going to have someone go postal. That kind of environment breeds the kinds fear and paranoia that can make someone snap.

header quote

[jdavidb]

"Americans" surprised by legal limits on 1st amendment.

abridge

Your freedom of speech is intact.

[raehl]

Your "freedom" to be paid by the people you are speaking negatively about is not.

Freedom of Speech does *NOT* mean someone is obligated to keep paying you if you decide to speak negatively about them.

Re:one responsibility is review before publication

[LostCluster]

On the top of every page of Slashdot comments is "The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way."

Which basically says if you're upset about something said on Slashdot, you sue the person who wrote it, not Slashdot.

So, if somebody wants to sue an Anon Cow, they just have to convince a judge to subpeona Slashdot to reveal what they know about the post... the date, time, and the IP it came from. Find out who owns that IP space, then find out what user account had that IP at the time the post was made, and get the billing information from the ISP. You've now tied it down to a household, and it should be easy to figure out who did it from there.

Yep, you can be sued for anything you say on Slashdot.

Re:Duh!

[rmohr02]

Most public libraries keep track of who's using what computer when.

Re:one responsibility is review before publication

[exhilaration]

read the faq - slashdot doesn't log ip's - say whatever the hell you want, we have a moderation system that removes comments from the eyes of most slashdot visitors

Re:Duh!

[susano_otter]

Isn't it also entirely possible that with nothing but circumstancial evidence, the case might get thrown out long before it gets to trial?

Re:Duh!

[susano_otter]

How about trial by combat? No tasting of hot coals, plus you get to deliver severe beating to Hilary Rosen.

Or her chosen champion... maybe trial by combat isn't such a good idea.

Re:Duh!

[ftobin]

Publish your writings (on the internet or otherwise)? Don't want to get sued for slander? Use the five magic words:

Why should that burden be placed on every person who writes anything? Rather, persons reading others's personal writings should compelled to know better. We need Caveat Emptor for readers.

Re:Duh!

[Guppy06]

"Rather, persons reading others's personal writings should compelled to know better."

No, people publishing their "personal" writings should know better. It's not like somebody's diary was broken in to.

Re:Duh!

[ninewands]

Somebody mod THIS one up again with an "Insightful" ... this is EXACTLY the point of the article ...

IMNSHO

[ninewands]

The best part of the article is down toward the end:

Ultimately, it comes down to "learning to be street smart on the Internet," said Dan Bricklin, chief technology officer and founder of Trellix Corp., a Concord, Mass., firm that makes Web site authoring and blogging tools.

Of course, I always thought Dan Bricklin had a pretty fair head on his shoulders. :)

Some companies have active Amateur Radio groups

[Cerlyn]

Umm... I wouldn't count on that. Some big communication conglomerates have club stations at many of their offices.

Thanks to vanity callsigns in the US, Motorola, for example, has the club callsigns K9MOT, KE9MOT, KM0TO, W7MOT, 4Z4HX (Israel), VE7MDI (Canada), and others. Many of these sites have their own radios, repeaters, etc.

And no, I don't work for Motorola; I'm just using them as an example since they don't mind having such Amateur Radio clubs onsite. This information is not secret; anyone can search for it.

I agree though that in some areas the Amateur Radio bands may seem quite dead. However, I assure you that in certain areas (such as well around New York City), there is a lot of activity.

Re:Duh!

[sg_oneill]

Hey dude. With due respect, if you are planning on getting the dot grotesquelly reamed by evil corp lawyers, that's a pretty good way to do it.
I believe /. has already been successfully cease and desisted for folk posting "Operating Thetan III" type mumbo jumbo on /.

That of course is not to deny that scientology is an evil headfucked cult that ruins peoples lives and allegedly has been responsible for many deaths.

Re:The value of archives

[adb]

The point is, if you take down the web site, you've done all you reasonably can (and more than a newspaper can do). The existence of third-party archives should be handled in the same way as library archival of newspapers: in neither case can the publisher take it back; all they can do is publish a retraction and stop distributing the original. The damage that's done in both cases depends on how far the message ends up getting, and that depends on a lot of factors besides the medium.

Re:one responsibility is review before publication

[DunbarTheInept]

Nothing you said contradicted what I said in the post you were replying to. Yes, Slashdot says they aren't responsible for content in comments. That doesn't change the fact the since the site maintainers never review the comments before publication like a "real" newspaper does with letters to the editor, they aren't in the same category, legally.