A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: free speech

Dec 08 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Appeals court upholds conviction in U.S. anthrax hoax

Appeals court upholds conviction in U.S. anthrax hoax

Jonathan Stempel, Reuters:

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a California man for sparking a nationwide anthrax hoax in 2008, saying his mailings of sugar packets labeled as anthrax did not qualify as free speech.

…

In his appeal, [Marc McMain] Keyser, 70, said that in showing the vulnerability of the United States to an anthrax attack, his mailings qualified as political speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and were not “true threats.”

The 9th Circuit disagreed. “A reasonable sender would foresee that recipients would understand the mailings to be threats to injure them,” Circuit Judge Richard Clifton wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.

Yes, that’s right. A political free speech defense for a disease hoax. That is a thing that happened.

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Nov 11 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Ohio attorney creates fake child porn for case, now must pay $300,000

Ohio attorney creates fake child porn for case, now must pay $300,000

Cyrus Farivar on Ars Technica:

In case it wasn’t clear, you can definitely be busted for digitally manipulating photographs to make them look like child pornography—or as it’s sometimes called, child abuse imagery. And even if it wasn’t against the law, it’s certainly a terrible idea. Still, that didn’t stop an Ohio lawyer and former state prosecutor—who has often been called upon as an expert witness to testify that child porn laws are so overbroad that they cover fictional, digitally altered photos—from doctoring up his own.

On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in favor of a district court in Ohio that had previously found Dean Boland, a self-described “qualified computer expert,” liable to pay $300,000 to the families of the two girls that brought suit against him.

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

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Oct 20 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Amanda Todd, Michael Brutsch, and Free Speech Online

Amanda Todd, Michael Brutsch, and Free Speech Online

If you haven’t heard anything about the suicide of Amanda Todd yet, you may want to skim the Wikipedia article. It’s not necessary, as the piece I’m linking gives a short overview, but the piece isn’t strictly about her and so leaves out a lot of the details.

So, on to the piece. Michelle Dean wrote this fantastic post for The New Yorker’s Culture Desk blog that ties the awful death of Amanda Todd together with recent developments on reddit and the internet’s attitude toward anonymity and free speech. It’s hard to quote my favorite part of the Todd’s piece, as it depends on several of the themes she develops, but the sentence is so powerful that I’m going to try it anyway:

What you could call the Brutschean world view—which takes anonymity as the only meaningful form of privacy, and a key element of free speech—is nearly an article of faith in these lower levels of the Internet. …

But, as the scholar Mary Anne Franks has observed, women haven’t actually achieved this “bodiless” freedom online. They are embodied in distributed pictures and in sexual comments, whether they like it or not. The power to get away from yourself, like everything else, is unevenly distributed. Women have become, as Franks put it, “unwilling avatars,” unable to control their own images online, and then told to put up with it for the sake of “freedom,” for the good of the community.

Emphasis added by myself. It’s really harrowing when it’s put like that, and yet it’s also totally undeniable.

Read this.

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Jul 19 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Judge Rules Nudity Can Be Constitutionally Protected as Free Speech

Judge Rules Nudity Can Be Constitutionally Protected as Free Speech

NIgel Duara, AP:

An Oregon man who stripped nude at Portland’s airport security to protest what he saw as invasive measures was found not guilty of indecent exposure.

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge David Rees ruled Wednesday that John Brennan’s act was one of protest and therefore, protected speech.

Try adding some nudity to your next protest to spice things up a bit!

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May 09 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Court: No 1st Amendment protection for Facebook ‘like’

Court: No 1st Amendment protection for Facebook ‘like’

The AP:

Exactly what a “like” means — if anything — played a part in a case in Virginia involving six people who say Hampton Sheriff B.J. Roberts fired them for supporting an opponent in his 2009 re-election bid, which he won. The workers sued, saying their First Amendment rights were violated.

…

While public employees are allowed to speak as citizens on matters of public concern, U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson ruled that clicking the “like” button does not amount to expressive speech. In other words, it’s not the same as writing out a message and posting it on the site.

I think I agree with Eugene Volokh’s disagreement with the ruling later in the article, but this is really quite new territory.

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