Category Archives: Free Speech

The Yosemite Community College District Board of Trustees on Wednesday introduced its newly-phrased policy on free speech, after drawing criticism in September that led to a lawsuit.

It was the first meeting run by Lynn Martin, of Sonora, former Columbia College counselor and instructor, who was recently elected board chairwoman.

Martin has served on the board since 2010, representing Area 1, including Tuolumne County, eastern Stanislaus County and parts of Calaveras counties. She was selected chairwoman at the its annual organizational meeting in December and succeeds chairman Abe Rojas, of Turlock.

The meeting saw the first reading of the districts revised Time, Place and Manner policy governing free speech on district property.

The district drew national attention after Army veteran Robert Van Tuinen, a student at its Modesto Junior College campus, was prevented from handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, which is Constitution Day.

Van Tuinen sued the district, claiming infringements on his First Amendment rights protecting free speech. Talks over the lawsuit continued Wednesday in closed session.

For the full story see today's Union Democrat.

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Free speech policy gets reworking

Ian Threatened With Arrest for Free Speech at New Courthouse
I was nearly arrested today at the new superior court building while doing jury nullification outreach for the first time in 2014 and also the first time at ...

By: FreeKeene

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Ian Threatened With Arrest for Free Speech at New Courthouse - Video

Dawalt lectures Con LAW II GITLOW free Speech
These are a series of lectures for various college courses on crime, corrections, laws and so forth. It is not legal advice.

By: Phillip Dawalt

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Dawalt lectures Con LAW II GITLOW free Speech - Video

Student Free Speech Akin to Prison Speech in "I Heart Boobies" Case?: Atty. John Freund comments
The "I Heart Boobies" case has caught the attention of the nation and perhaps the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court. Atty. John Freund comments on whether ...

By: KingSpry21

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Student Free Speech Akin to Prison Speech in "I Heart Boobies" Case?: Atty. John Freund comments - Video

AUSTIN, Texas They say nothing on the Internet ever really goes away, but the Texas Supreme Court is considering whether defamatory postings might be worth the effort to try.

Justices on the state's highest civil court on Thursday weighed broader questions about cyberbullying, hate speech and the First Amendment while hearing a case with far lower stakes. At issue is whether a company can be forced to remove from its website damaging personal comments about a fired Austin businessman.

Lower courts already have ruled that Robert Kinney's former company, Los Angeles-based BCG Attorney Search, can't be forced to remove the comments, even if a judge or jury eventually finds it defamed Kinney on the company's website by accusing him of running a kickback scheme. That's because defamatory speech still has protections under the law.

But Kinney's attorneys told the nine-member court that it's time for Texas law to catch up with technology.

"It was a little harder to defame someone before the Internet. Now, on my cellphone, I can walk out of here and in five minutes I can say something defamatory about somebody and hit a button, and it's there worldwide," said Martin Siegel, Kinney's attorney. "And it's potentially there for perpetuity."

Anthony Ricciardelli, an attorney for BCG, said forcing the comments to be removed would "set a dangerous precedent that will have a chilling effect on speech and may lead to a slippery slope."

The court isn't expected to make a ruling for several months.

Justices asked both sides to consider more divisive cases involving cyberbullying or hate speech whether a court should be able to issue orders to stop online antagonists from harassing others, for instance, even if no defamation was present.

Siegel said it's time for Texas to join a "modern rule" of decisions in five other states where injunctions against defamatory speech have been granted. The Kentucky Supreme Court in 2010 ruled in a case that the future speech of a party could be restrained so long its original comments were ruled defamatory.

Michael Fertik, the CEO and founder of reputation.com, said the broader problem of defamation in the digital age needs to be addressed. He said people need to be "giving a fighting chance" and pointed to how publishers can be forced to remove defamatory material from books before additional printings.

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Free speech or scrub from Internet? Texas court weighs right to preserve defamatory posts

The Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled on Tuesday that Yelp has to reveal the names of reviewers who left anonymous, negative reviews of a business. Some are calling the ruling a blow to free speech. The business in question maintains that the names are critical in pursuing a defamation case against the reviewers over what it claims were false reviews from non-customers.

The business were talking about is Hadeed Carpet Cleaning in Alexandria, Virginia. It alleges that reviewers are in violation of Yelps terms of service by not being real customers.

The Circuit Court for the City of Alexandria held Yelp in contempt for not complying with a subpoena, but Yelp argued that this was a violation of the First Amendment. Some would agree considering that the business has apparently been unable to prove that it had legally and factually sufficient claims against each defendant.

Either way, the Appeals court was apparently convinced enough by Hadeeds argument.

It explains, As of October 19, 2012, Yelps website displayed seventy-five reviews about Hadeed and eight reviews about a related company, Hadeed Oriental Rug Cleaning. These reviews were posted by various Yelp users, and a number of the reviews were critical of Hadeed. Hadeed filed suit against the authors of seven specific critical reviews. In these reviews, the authors implicitly or explicitly held themselves out to be Hadeed customers. In its complaint, Hadeed alleged that it tried to match the negative reviews with its customer database but could find no record that the negative reviewers were actually Hadeed customers. Consequently, Hadeed alleged that the negative reviewers were not actual customers; instead, the Doe defendants falsely represented themselves to be customers of Hadeed. Hadeeds complaint further alleged that the negative comments were defamatory because they falsely stated that Hadeed had provided shoddy service to each reviewer.

You can find the full legal document here.

Yelp (incorporated in Delaware) also argued that the trial court erred by asserting subpoena jurisdiction over Yelp, which is a non-party, foreign corporation. The court found that the service of the subpoena on Yelps registered agent in Virginia provided jurisdiction.

The Washington Times shares a statement from a Yelp spokesperson:

We are disappointed that the Virginia Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that fails to adequately protect free speech rights on the internet, and which allows businesses to seek personal details about website users without any evidence of wrongdoing in efforts to silence online critics, Yelp spokesman Vince Sollitto said in a statement. Other states require that plaintiffs lay out actual facts before such information is allowed to be obtained, and have adopted strong protections in order to prevent online speech from being stifled by those upset with what has been said. We continue to urge Virginia to do the same.

In September, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced that nineteen companies agreed to stop writing fake Yelp reviews and pay over $350,000 in fines.Yelp said at the time that it would like to work with law enforcement officials in other states to crack down on the practice.

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Court Orders Yelp To Identify Anonymous Reviewers

Australia's new human rights commissioner argues free speech has been pushed aside in favour of laws designed to stop people being offensive to each other.

The appointment of Tim Wilson, from the conservative think tank Institute of Public Affairs, is a deliberate move by the Abbott government to bring balance to the debate over individual liberty.

Attorney-General George Brandis, in making the appointment, described Mr Wilson as one of Australia's most prominent public advocates of the rights of the individual.

Mr Wilson says Australia's most fundamental human rights have been diluted over decades.

'Increasingly free speech has been pushed aside in favour of laws and regulations designed to stop people being offensive to each other,' he wrote in The Australian on Wednesday.

Mr Wilson blamed a steadily expanding corpus of anti-discrimination and defamation law, and the growing momentum towards restrictions on speech online.

As freedom commissioner he plans to reorient the human rights debate towards liberal democratic values and the philosophy of individual freedom.

Central to his plans will be to support a repeal of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, used to successfully prosecute controversial conservative commentator Andrew Bolt.

'It is an unjustifiable limitation on free expression,' Mr Wilson said.

'The best way to undermine offensive or hateful language is not to shut it down, it is to challenge it, expose it for its flaws.'

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'More free speech needed'

Fair warning: This is about the Duck Dynasty controversy. Yes, I know. Im sick of it, too.

Still, relying upon my First Amendment right to freedom of speech, I will make a few observations about Phil Robertson, the grizzled Louisiana duck hunter turned reality TV star whose comments about black and gay people recently got him suspended and then unsuspended by A&E. If you find my observations disagreeable you may, relying upon your own First Amendment rights, protest to my employer. Assuming enough of you bring enough pressure, my employer may dump me. Feeling angry and betrayed, I might heres that First Amendment again blast my now-former bosses for defects of character, courage or cognition.

But one thing I could not say at least not credibly is that theyd violated my First Amendment rights. There is nothing in the First Amendment that says a private company cant fire you.

Well return to the First in a second. Right now, let me offer the promised observations about Mr. Robertson: Man really needs to wake up and smell the 21st century.

His comments, made in an interview with GQ, are almost cartoonish in their stupidity. They sound less like they were made by a backwoods ignoramus than by someone doing a takeoff on a backwoods ignoramus.

For instance, Robertson explains his aversion to homosexuality by discoursing on the comparative merits of the male anus and the vagina. For good measure, he invokes bestiality and the Bible. He also notes how black people were singing and happy when he was young. Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare they were godly, they were happy, no one was singing the blues.

Ahem.

So anyway, A&E was shocked shocked, I say, shocked! to learn that a self-described redneck from the Louisiana woods harbored such illiberal views. It suspended Robertson, thereby igniting a scrum of conservative pols jockeying to express newfound love for the First Amendment.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal says he can remember when TV networks still believed in it. Sarah Palin calls free speech an endangered species. Mike Huckabee says, Stand with Phil and support free speech.

Yeah. Because freedom of speech means you can say any asinine thing you want and nobody can call you on it or punish you for it. Right?

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Free speech: What it is — and isn’t

Sky Broadband Denies TorrentFreak Fundamental Right to Free Speech

January 5, 2014

Thomas Mennecke

This porn filter is generating a startling array of collateral consequences - such as the silencing of the popular technology and political news publication (or blog) TorrentFreak. TorrentFreak, as many know, is a purveyor of free speech, distribution of information, and minimal government involvement in those disciplines. You may remember that back in 1998, the United States tried passing its own "let's protect children with broad sweeping powers" legislation under the Child Online Protection Act, signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. The law was spectacularly shot out of the sky in the landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision, Reno v. ACLU.

Needless to say, pornography is protected speech under the First Amendment. Why? Because of the very reason that is now happening in the United Kingdom and TorrentFreak.

Here's the thing. The Supreme Court, and indeed much of the populace, realizes there's a balancing act that must occur when regulating speech - do we really want the government encroaching on various forms of expression, or are we willing to accept objectionable material in order to preserve our freedoms? Most people are willing to side with the latter. In other words, sure, people out there might find porn offensive, but there's always the on/off button if you don't like it. Without a logical stopping point to such laws, even the most ardent conservative is loath to accept government regulation in this realm.

From that stems the danger that we now see happening in the United Kingdom against TorrentFreak. Broad, sweeping legislation designed to "protect the children" usually goes far beyond those intentions. Taking a Gatling gun to a perceived illness not only hits the intended target, but just about everything else unlucky enough to be within the periphery. The problem isn't simply resolved by using TOR, proxies or other VPN service. Sure, they might help, but they are besides the point. The point is, the UK and UK ISPs have signed on to a dangerous piece of legislation, and in the process, have begun down a potentially devastating path of chilling speech.

We've tried reaching out to Sky Broadband on this issue, but have not received a response in time for publication. You can read more about this developing issue here.

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Sky Broadband Denies TorrentFreak Fundamental Right to Free Speech

In and Around Free Speech Corner Dathote Paachot 261213

By: Tanveer Ahmed

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In and Around Free Speech Corner Dathote Paachot 261213 - Video