Category Archives: Free Speech

Beth McEvoy , WCSH 1:36 PM. EDT July 24, 2017

AUGUSTA, Maine (NEWS CENTER) The ACLU of Maine says Governor LePage is violating free speech protections by deleting comments or blocking people from commenting all together on his officialverified Facebook page.

The ACLU sent a letter to the Governor on Monday, saying he must stop selectively deleting comments posted by constituents and reinstate commenting privileges to all people who have been improperly blocked.

The governor doesnt get to decide who speaks and who doesnt, based on whether they are praising him or disagreeing with him, said Zachary Heiden, legal director at the ACLU of Maine.

The First Amendment protects the right of all people to express their opinions to the government. Social media may be a relatively new forum for public speech, but the Constitution still applies.

The ACLU says courts have affirmed that First Amendment's significance of social media.

NEWS CENTER reached out to Governor LePage's office but has yet to hear back.

ACLU letter to Gov. LePage by NEWSCENTER26 on Scribd

2017 WCSH-TV

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ACLU says LePage is violating free speech protections by deleting ... - WCSH-TV

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Posted: Jul 24, 2017 12:01 AM

Hate speech is not free speech, the Left increasingly insists particularly on college and university campuses. In my new book The Complete Infidels Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies), I show why the very concept of hate speech is a scam. Here are the top seven:

1. Twitter decides who has the right to hate speech

Consider, for example, what Twitter does not consider to be hate speech. A Muslim named Obaid Karki, @stsheetrock on Twitter, runs a website headed Obaid Karki St.Sheetrocks Painfulpolitics Offensive Comedy Hepcat and another called Suicide Bombers Magazine. He posted this on one of them in late May 2016, just before the European Union and the social media sites announced their new agreement: Robert Spencer mustnt [be] featured but lynched

Karkis posted this call for me to be lynched on Twitter. But Twitter refused to delete his account or even remove the threatening tweets.

2. Social Media blocks the truth by deeming it hate speech

Videogame developer Mark Kern was suspended from Twitter for writing, I dont see why mosques with radical leanings should be excluded from surveillance when the rest of us get our emails collected by the NSA. The administrator of a proDonald Trump Facebook group was banned for arguing that Trump was not anti-Muslim but anti-ISIS.

In early February 2017, they came for me.

On February 7, 2017, referrals to my website, Jihad Watch, from Facebook numbered 23,783, and from Twitter, 1,718. These numbers were generally representative: referrals from Facebook for several years up to that point had averaged between 15,000 and 20,000 a day, and 1,500 to 2,000 a day from Twitter. But on February 10, 2017, those numbers dropped suddenly and precipitously, with only 2,923 referrals from Facebook and 295 from Twitter. Thats around where they have held since then: on March 20, 2017, there were 1,954 referrals from Facebook and 241 from Twitter.

Did thousands of people who used to click through to Jihad Watch articles from Facebook and Twitter suddenly lose interest on February 10, 2017? Of course not. What happened on that day was that Facebook and Twitter began to censor Jihad Watch as hate speech, in accordance with the assurances they had given to the European Union.

Blocking the Truth

Facebook, immediately after concluding an agreement with the European Union, began moving aggressively against foes of jihad terror and mass Muslim migration in the West. Nina Rosenwald, the president and founder of the conservative think tank Gatestone Institute, on June 2, 2016 recorded Facebooks haste to implement the new speech regulations: On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube. On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestones Swedish expert.

Carlqvists crime, according to Rosenwald, was to take note of real crimes by Muslim migrants: Ingrid had posted our latest video to her Facebook feedcalled Swedens Migrant Rape Epidemic. In that video, said Rosenwald, Ingrid calmly lays out the facts and statistics, all of which are meticulously researched. Rosenwald added that the video was adapted from a research paper that Gatestone published last year. The video has gone viralracking up more than 80,000 views in its first two days. But the EU is quite candid: it is applying a political lens to their censorship....

Facebook banning anti-jihad opinions

Facebook banned the page of a gay magazine, Gaystream, after it published an article by David Berger, its editor-in-chief, criticizing German gay activists and leftists for ignoring the Islamic root causes of the Orlando jihad massacre. Berger wrote, Whoever had thought the culmination of masochism and Islam-appeasement by left-green professional homosexuals was already achieved, will now be mistaken: it becomes even more masochistic and perverse.

5. Deleting jihad awareness

In July 2016, YouTube also invoked hate speech criteria, which supposedly it had developed as a tool to use against jihad recruiting videos, to delete a video critical of non-violent Muslim Brotherhood efforts to advance Sharia in the West.

6. The immunity of the censorship of certain social media groups explain a lot

On July 13, 2016, the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on behalf of Pamela Gellers American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), of which I am vice president, challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which grants Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube immunity from lawsuits, and thus makes it impossible to challenge their consistent bias against foes of jihad terror and tolerance of jihad terror activity.

Section 230 of the CDA explicitly immunizes Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from challenges to anything they do to restrict access to or availability of material that that they deem obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

David Yerushalmi, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, added, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have notoriously censored speech that they deem critical of Islam, thereby effectively enforcing blasphemy laws here in the United States with the assistance of the federal government. It has been the top agenda item of Islamic supremacists to impose such standards on the West.... Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are falling in line, and we seek to stop this assault on our First Amendment freedoms.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watchand author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidels Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies). Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

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6 Incidents Unmasking Social Media Giants as Enemies of Free Speech - Townhall

On June 27, University of California at Los Angeles Professor Keith Fink was told that his 10-year teaching career in the Department of Communication Studies was over. No substantive reason was given; Interim Dean of Social Sciences Laura Gmez simply stated "your teaching does not meet the standard of excellence." The decision attracted national attention in large part because Fink teaches courses on the First Amendment, including a course on Free Speech on Campus a hot-button topic that has become politically-charged in recent years (inversely and ironically so, because the Free Speech Movement was born within the liberal mecca of UC Berkeley in the 1960s).

Today, for reasons worthy of a Ph.D. thesis, Free Speech purism has shifted from a "liberal" cause to a "conservative" cause. The First Amendment (especially with respect to its first clause: speech) should be apolitical. Accordingly, I (and Fink, too) view it simply as a non-partisan constitutional law issue one where the past 10 years of campus speech codes, mandatory "diversity training," "hate speech," so-called "safe spaces," and "trigger warnings" all fly in the face of dozens of Supreme Court opinions, none of which lend any credence to the legality of the aforementioned "ideals."

The facts of Fink's case alone are intriguing, especially insofar as they highlight UCLA's lack of commitment to academic freedom, due process, and fundamental fairness. His case also illustrates the growing intolerance on campuses toward ideas that do not conform with their traditional progressive agendas, especially among faculty.

While American research universities have historically dominated international rankings, largely due to their willingness to support a wide range of intellectual beliefs, academic freedom is under siege. Administrators, who rarely are zealous defenders of academic freedom and instead are typically trained in problem mitigation, are undermining the very purpose of the modern research university: to promote the free exchange of ideas. This, in turn, leads to them targeting students, faculty, and ideas that are at odds with their own.

Indeed, Fink, a rare conservative on a campus largely comprised of left-leaning faculty and ideologues, is not the first victim of viewpoint and/or political discrimination at UCLA: there are striking parallels between Fink's story and those of Political Economist Tim Groseclose and Epidemiologist James Enstrom. The nexus between these three cases is UCLA's cultural intolerance towards "conservative" views, or more precisely, views that contradict those of the faculty majority.

Particularly galling, however, are the stark differences between Fink's treatment and that of Gabriel Piterberg, the disgraced Professor of History and sexual predator.

By all outward measures, Fink is an excellent teacher.

His qualifications to teach the subjects of free speech on campus, free speech in the workplace, entertainment law, and contemporary social issues are unparalleled. He's a renowned attorney who specializes in these fields, and won the National Collegiate Debate Championship for UCLA for three consecutive years a record unmatched to this day. His students (liberal and conservative alike) universally love his teaching and describe his classes as among the most influential and developmentally-important classes they've taken at UCLA, some going as far to say that his classes "teach tolerance without imposing tolerance." Students characterize his lectures as dynamic and engaging; he's garnered widespread admiration for the attention he gives to students' individual academic and professional pursuits.

His instructor ratings and course ratings are significantly higher than those of his peers a point that his department chair, Kerri L. Johnson, even concedes which has propelled his classes to the top of students' lists of favorites. Fink can easily fill classrooms with hundreds of eager students; there are always students that are turned away due to lack of space (or more recently, arbitrary and dishonestly-justified caps on his courses' enrollment).

In short, he's an excellent teacher with a virtually impeccable teaching record.

Piterberg's case is a totally different story.

Piterberg has been sanctioned by the UC Regents as a result of allegations of sexual misconduct with two graduate students. His settlement includes a minor reduction in pay along with a conveniently-timed quarter away from UCLA where he could instead pursue a prestigious fellowship, thereby boosting his (and UCLA's) academic credentials. As Cassia Roth notes, "Piterberg's 'quarter off' may have cost him financially, but it actually boosted his real academic capital, his research status. And it also enhanced UCLA's own academic standing."

Even before his sexual assault fiasco, he was not particularly popular in the classroom. Students characterize his lectures as monotone and unorganized; he's not known for his concern for students, and students generally note that success in his courses requires mere regurgitation of facts and that he is "not so great a lecturer."

That's no way to teach a subject as important as history. Many students are skeptical of taking his courses, with some even protesting his mere presence on campus. His classes this past year have failed to attract even 50 students. "[I]ts not a good learning environment," says one student who recently took his course.

Although the disgraced Piterberg may be tenured, sexual assault is absolutely "for cause" grounds sufficient enough to justify early dismissal yet he remains on campus. Fink, a lecturer up for promotion to Continuing Lecturer (effectively granting job security), who boasts an objectively excellent teaching record and well-documented influence on thousands of students easily exceeds the criteria set forth for his advancement yet he was shown the door.

These cases have diametrically different outcomes, but why?

This dissonance sheds light into some of the less-glorious aspects of UCLA's inner workings. It exposes a system where department chairs like Kerri L. Johnson can make up rules to suit their interests; it highlights UCLA's flagrant disregard for their very own rules; and perhaps most shockingly, it shows a top-down culture whereby deans and vice chancellors (such as Laura Gmez and Jerry Kang) don't simply administrate, but rather dictate their campus' intellectual climate in complete derogation of academic freedom (a principle they pay lip service to but rarely match it with their actions).

It's no surprise that Jerry Kang (Vice Chancellor of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) dislikes Fink's presence on campus. Fink regularly takes Kang to task about issues related to student speech, conduct, and academic freedom typically using Kang's in terrorem email missives as springboards to highlight how the abstractions of First Amendment jurisprudence commonly pan out in public universities.

After all, what better way to teach free speech on campus than to use examples from students' own university?

But when Kang and his peers took issue with this, they should have addressed their concerns directly, expediently, and professionally rather than waiting until Fink's eighteenth quarter where they could sheepishly assemble a star chamber review process rigged against Fink from the outset.

For now, Johnson, Gmez, Kang, and the other administrator-bureaucrats who orchestrated Fink's Kafkaesque review may be rejoicing in the fact that they successfully eliminated Fink's outspoken, popular, and intellectually-competing voice from their campus.

But their rejoice will be short-lived: UCLA is already suffering as a result. Fink will not put this battle to rest, not because it involves him, but because it threatens all lecturers' academic freedom and belies the very tenets upon the modern research university are predicated.

Andrew Litt is a law clerk at Keith A. Fink & Associates. He was a teaching assistant for Fink at UCLA.

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At UCLA, free speech is suppressed and double standards reign - Washington Examiner

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Visitors walk through Sather Gate at UC Berkeley.

Visitors walk through Sather Gate at UC Berkeley.

Give UC Berkeley credit for learning from the past years intensive course in free speech and right-wing provocation. After a series of standoffs with conservative speakers left the university looking less than eager to accommodate all comers, its approach to the latest controversial invitation strikes the right tone by making unfettered expression the clear priority.

University officials initially expressed reservations about the time, date and type of venue requested for the Berkeley College Republicans next would-be guest, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, prompting the group to revive its accusations of a consistent bias against right-wing speakers. But the university announced Thursday that it would take additional steps, including possibly paying or waiving venue fees, to make the speech happen on the September evening requested by the student organization.

UC Berkeleys new chancellor, Carol Christ, said in a statement that the university welcomes a broad range of perspectives, including Shapiros: We believe deeply in the value and importance of free speech and fully support student groups right to invite speakers of their choice to campus. She added that the school had hosted literally dozens of speakers from both conservative and libertarian movements without incident. The key is for the hosting organization to work collaboratively with the campus.

Indeed, the recent crop of speakers and their supporters have at times seemed more eager to be refused than to be accommodated and to therefore have the opportunity to accuse UC Berkeley of being a liberal echo chamber that has drifted a long way from the days when the Free Speech Movement began there. The Berkeley Republicans habit of demanding a particular date, time and venue without consulting the administration makes the universitys job more difficult. So do left-wing protesters threatening and carrying out violence, necessitating heightened security measures.

For those and other reasons, scheduled campus speeches by professional provocateurs Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter were ultimately called off this year. UC Berkeley appears to be striving to avoid a similar outcome in the case of Shapiro, whose books and commentary have targeted Palestinians, Hollywood and universities.

If all the student group and its guests are looking for is a cancellation and a headline, maintaining an open campus will only serve to call their bluff.

UC Berkeleys efforts to welcome the next controversial speaker recognizes that the public university has a special obligation to facilitate the free exchange of ideas even when the ideas are questionable and the interest in exchanging them is in doubt.

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Editorial: UC makes right call on free speech - San Francisco ... - San Francisco Chronicle

A very interesting post from Paul Alan Levy (Public Citizens Consumer Law & Policy Blog); here are the opening paragraphs:

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued an order signed only by the Clerk declaring that a significant free speech issue bearing on the rights of anonymous Internet users will be decided in a totally secret proceeding, involving sealed briefs, a sealed record, and without any help from would-be amici (including Public Citizen) seeking to explain the dangers posed by the proceeding.

The case arises from a subpoena served by the United States on the employer-rating site Glassdoor, originally demanding identifying information about the owners of more than one hundred pseudonymous accounts that had, it appears, been used to post reviews of a particular employer whose contracting practices were subject to a federal criminal investigation. Glassdoor refused to produce the information demanded by the grand jury subpoena, citing the First Amendment right of its users to speak anonymously.

In an effort to compromise, the government limited its production demand to eight specified reviewers. Glassdoor responded to that offer by proposing that it notify the users of the subpoena and provide identifying information for such of its users who were willing to be identified to the prosecutors. After the government rejected this offer, Glassdoor moved to quash the subpoena, invoking its users First Amendment right to speak anonymously which, Glassdoor contended, created a privilege against production of the information. At the same time, it notified its users of the subpoena, thus meeting one of the conditions of the Dendrite line of cases that it cited in its motion. Those cases rely on the First Amendment right to speak anonymously as a basis for posing procedural and substantive obstacles to civil subpoenas seeking to identify online speakers so that they can be served with process and sued for wrongful speech. Eventually, Glassdoor also invoked Bursey v. United States, a decision in which the Ninth Circuit quashed in part a grand jury subpoena directed at the process of publishing the newspaper of the Black Panther Party.

The entire subpoena litigation was conducted under seal, but we know some of the details because, having taken a contempt citation to secure its ability to appeal, Glassdoor next obtained the governments stipulation for the partial unsealing of the briefs exchanges by the two sides on Glassdoors motion to quash. Glassdoor had appealed, and raised the possibility that parties beside itself might wish to provide the Court of Appeals with the benefit of their views of the applicable law. The trial judge granted that request; as a result the briefs supporting and opposing the Glassdoor motion to quash, as well as reply briefs both from Glassdoor and from the government, are available in the public record, as is the judges ruling on the motion. The finer details from the papers were redacted, including for example the name of the company under investigation and some of the detail about the content of the employee reviews whose authors.

We know from Judge Humetawas opinion that she refused to apply the Bursey line of cases because she considered that it only protected against grand jury subpoenas directed at dissent against the government, and she refused to take seriously the First Amendment rights of Glassdoors users because well, for reasons that showed a misunderstanding of the First Amendment rights at issue. On the one hand, the judge thought that the First Amendment privilege being asserted could extend only to political speech, and on the other hand she seems to have suggested that no First Amendment obstacles could be posed to a grand jury subpoena because newspapers do not generally have any First Amendment rights to stop grand jury intrusion into their sources absent a showing of bad faith on the part of the government; the judge deemed Glassdoor indistinguishable from a journalistic enterprise.

Grand jury proceedings have historically been secret, and there are good reasons for such secrecy; but its indeed dangerous to have significant legal issues resolved in secret proceedings. Im not sure quite what should be done in cases like this, but I agree that this is an important issue, and Levys post is much worth reading.

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'Ninth Circuit poised to resolve major free speech issue in secret proceeding' - Washington Post

Sometimes in the course of our political life, someone proposes something so mind-bogglingly stupid that its hard to know exactly what to say about it. Senate Bill 720 is one of those things.

Over the past few years, a small but prominent movement has cropped up, using the age-old tactic of boycott to protest what it sees as Israels unjust occupation of territories that are assumed to belong rightfully to the Palestinians. Called BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) after the strategy it employs against the state of Israel and goods produced therein, it has acquired a certain notoriety on college campuses, not least for its uncomfortable associations with veritable anti-Semites.

Israels supporters in the Senate, justifiably seeing this as a problem, have come up with an innovative solution: Make participation in BDS or other boycotts of Israel a felony, punishable by enormous fines and up to two decades in prison. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act enjoys remarkable bipartisan support: Its not often you can get Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse to sign onto a measure alongside Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Its proponents number 43 in the Senate and 234 in the House.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposes it. This bill would impose civil and criminal punishment on individuals solely because of their political beliefs about Israel and its polices, the organization writes in a letter to senators. The thrust of itscriticism is simple. Many companies and individuals conduct no transactions with Israel, for lack of a need to; the bill would make illegal such an action only if it bears a political motivation. The bill therefore penalizes political beliefs and so is both unconstitutional and unconscionable.

This is correct, and we should be pleased that the ACLU has taken a break from mind-numbing Resistance-focused anti-Trump litigation and has rediscovered the meaning of the civil liberties so prominent in its name. This proposed legislation is indeed unconstitutional and unconscionable, an abridgment of the right to free speech, which is quasi-sacred in American life and enshrined in the founding document of our government. The senators who currently support it should be, quite frankly, ashamed of themselves; they have lost sight of one of the founding principles of American government, allowing it to be overshadowed by the spectral world of the IsraeliPalestinian dispute.

This condemnation will, I would hope, suffice for those on the Left whose first instinct, on hearing the news of the bills consideration, was to ask somewhat sardonically when the ostensible right-wing defenders of free speech would profess their opposition to the bill. Sean McElwee wrote on Twitter: I expect our valiant campus speech warriors will stay silent. From The New Republics Jeet Heer: Its interesting how silent free speech absolutists are when attack is not on campus but from Senate.

This point, now made rotelyon the left, is meant to insinuate that those on the center and Right who care deeply about the state of free speech on campus Conor Friedersdorf, Nicholas Christakis, Jonathan Chait, even some at National Review are in fact nothing but reactionaries dishonestly appropriating the free speech argument to keep the boots of the rich, white, and powerful stamped down upon the backs of leftist agitators.

This is, of course, total bunk. A significant number of prominent supporters of campus free speech have also expressed opposition to the Senate bill. Nicholas Christakis has; Jonathan Chait has; Yair Rosenberg has; Walter Olson has. The hypocrites whom those on the left desperately wish their opponents to be have not materialized; they are, by and large, a highly principled bunch.

Such is exactly how most debates over free speech have played out recently. Consider the case of Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at Essex County College who was fired after making controversial comments on Fox News. Leftists jumped on the apparent lack of outcry as prima facie proof of conservative hypocrisy on the subject: Conservatives care only when its one of their own facing opprobrium. One commentator wrote:

In contrast to other free speech-related controversies on college campuses, there has been almost no media coverage of Durdens ouster. That omission is part of a pattern: When wealthy, right-wing speakers encounter protest, the tendency among both right-wing and centrist writers is to scold snowflake students while dutifully preaching the virtues of diverse ideas in a college education, no matter how outr or dangerous those ideas may be. When marginalized faculty, often women of color, encounter professional censure, the same centrist writers say nothing. Once could almost conclude that the PC-run-amok and trigger warning controversies exist solely to reaffirm existing power dynamics. Its not really about free speech on campus at all.

And, yes, when it comes to Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos or Tomi Lahren, thats more or less correct; they really are distasteful hypocrites who care not one bit about free speech and who use the principle instead to advance their particular cause. They are of the new breed of conservatism that views its primary goal as melting special snowflakes and doesnt give much of a damn about anything beyond that. But we knew that already; weve always known theyre unprincipled actors seeking only to aggrandize themselves. Their silence on Lisa Durden tells us nothing new or interesting about their character. Their place in the intellectual debate over free speech is marginal in any case, and what really matters is not what they think but what the more rational, principled minds of the Right and center say. From them we might be able to glean whether the defense of free speech is something truly principled or is just a veil for contemptible beliefs.

From them we hear a near-universal condemnation of Durdens firing. Jonathan Haidt of Heterodox Academy, a centrist talisman for the free-speech cause, wrote that in 2017, its clear that the threat profile is now bipartisan. Jonathan Marks, a conservative, said, I am no fan of Lisa Durden....Yet it is precisely as an academic conservative that I must say, to coin a phrase, Im with her. Similar reactions could be found across the span, from right to center, of defenders of free speech. Again, the supposed hypocrites were not what they were presumed to be.

As goes the debate over free speech, so drifts the broader current in our public sphere. Over and over again, it seems, we care more about scoring partisan points in the eternal shouting chamber of Twitter than we do about achieving concrete change in the tangible conditions of everyday life. Rank partisanship has allowed us to rest quite content with having uncovered hypocrisy on the other side. This tactic is nothing but a cheap cop-out. We blissfully avoid all the difficulties of a serious debate that challenges our intellectual precepts. It is possibly the least edifying, most counterproductive way to run a civil society. It only heightens the tensions already latent in our partisan system. It distracts us from the content and merits of the issue at hand.

Ive focused on the Left so far, but I dont mean to suggest that this phenomenon occurs only there. Its prominent enough on the right as well publications like The Federalist specialize in a sort of Obama did it too! smarminess, always allowing them to the elide the actual issue at hand. Through this strategy, they decline to express an opinion on the content of the actual matter, instead directing their ire at the Left. This is a convenient way to avoid being trapped in the contradictions and convulsions of the Trump administration, but its a terrible way to run a public sphere in a democratic society.

What, then, is a reasonable path forward? Besides taking a Luddite approach to Twitter a remarkably poor platform for any sort of reasoned and constructive discussion, prone more to aggravation than to conciliation the world might be a substantially better place if we simply decided to step away from the partisan register in which we conduct our debates. Stop thinking about what the other side thinks, at least for a while. Start looking more critically, with a more penetrating eye, at what you and your side think. Otherwise the cycle of finger-pointing will do little but deepen, and our public sphere become all the more barren.

Noah Daponte-Smith is a student of modern history and politics at Yale University and an editorial intern at National Review.

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BDS: Free-Speech Conservatives Oppose Senate Bill That Would ... - National Review

Do you think the creators of Pokemon Go should have to fill out a 10-page event-permit application each time you want to play the augmented reality game in a public park?

Neither does a Wisconsin district judge, who just pressed pause on a local ordinance that singled out AR games for particularly tough treatment.

Some three months after Candy Lab, the creator of a Pokemon Go-like game sued Milwaukee County over the local law, US district Judge J.P. Stadtmueller gave the company, and by extension the makers of other AR games, a temporary win.

In an order Thursday, Stadtmueller ruled AR games constitute free speech and thus any law affecting them would have to be narrowly tailored so as not to unreasonably harm companies or citizens and avoid falling afoul of the First Amendment. The county had been trying to control the games after parks were allegedly trampled by Pokemon Go players last year.

Here's the ordinance:

Permits required for location-based augmented reality games. Virtual and location-based augmented reality games are not permitted in Milwaukee County parks except in those areas designated with a permit for such use by the director of the department of parks, recreation, and culture (DPRC). Permits shall be required before any company may introduce a location-based augmented reality game into the parks, effective January 1, 2017. The permitting application process is further described on DPRC's website for companies that create and promote such games. That process shall include an internal review by the DPRC to determine the appropriateness of the application based on site selection, protection of rare flora and fauna, personal safety, and the intensity of game activities on park lands. Game activity shall only occur during standard park hours, unless otherwise authorized by the DPRC director, who has the authority to designate special events and activities within the parks outside of the standard operational hours.

The permit application also requires a $250 deposit and for the event sponsor to have $1 million worth of general liability insurance.

As it stands, the judge believes the law may be unconstitutional. So Milwaukee is now unable to enforce it, at least until the relevant lawsuit -- again, by Candy Lab, not Pokemon Go creator Niantic -- reaches its conclusion.

Representatives for Milwaukee County, Candy Lab and Niantic didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

You can read the judge's order below.

Candy Lab Wisconsin Preliminary Injunction Order Augmented Reality Games by CNET News on Scribd

via The Associated Press

Read the original:
Take that Milwaukee. Pokemon Go is protected free speech - CNET

The University of California, Berkeley's decision to block another conservative lecture, this time featuring popular author Ben Shapiro, rightfully sparked a fresh round of disgust among free speech advocates on Wednesday.

The school is under heavy fire from conservatives for a series of First Amendment controversies that unfolded over the course of the last school year, even facing a lawsuit from Young America's Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans over Ann Coulter's canceled lecture in April. Between the riots that blocked Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking and the university's decision to cancel Coulter's lecture, Berkeley has become a high-profile battleground of the contemporary campus speech movement.

During a Senate hearing last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, criticized the school in his remarks decrying the state of free speech in higher education. In response, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ardently defended her state's flagship university.

"I know of no effort at Berkeley, at the University of California, to stifle student efforts to speech," she said at the time, continuing, "And if there is a specific effort, I would certainly appreciate it if people brought that to my attention."

Ben Shapiro is happy to help.

"If there is no effort to stifle free speech at Berkeley," Shapiro responded in an email to the Washington Examiner, "why has Berkeley failed to protect Milo Yiannopoulos' event, cancelled Ann Coulter's event, and now makes excuses about lack of availability for a speech already cleared by the College Republicans?"

"If Feinstein is so unconcerned about this, she should push her fellow Democrats in California to sponsor legislation requiring the suspension or expulsion of students who utilize violence to prevent others' free speech," he concluded.

Easy enough. But will the senator agree?

In a statement to Young America's Foundation (my previous employer), the organization set to sponsor his lecture, Shapiro indicated he won't accept the university's excuses. "Using ridiculous pretexts to keep conservatives from speaking is unsurprising but disappointing. We'll find a way to get this event done, and UC Berkeley has a moral and legal obligation to ensure we do so," he declared.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt from:
Thanks to blocked lecture, Ben Shapiro has a message about free speech for Berkeley defender Dianne Feinstein - Washington Examiner

DENVER | Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered a reminder Thursday to state legislators frustrated by protests shutting down free speech at public universities: You control the purse strings.

Ms. DeVos, who delivered her remarks at the American Legislative Exchange Council annual meeting, said that we all have a role to play in reversing the trend toward campus intolerance, which has been manifested in recent years with the muzzling of conservative speakers and viewpoints.

For state legislators, you have the power of the purse, she said. And I wouldnt hope to suggest how you might approach that, but I think that really bringing some of the most egregious examples to the forefront we all have the opportunity to use our bully pulpits to talk about these things and bring light to places of darkness where speech is not being allowed to be free and open and heard.

Her comments came with state lawmakers increasingly exasperated by campus melees, including last semesters University of California, Berkeley rioting and the student takeover at Evergreen State College, driven by students unwilling to brook dissenting opinions.

Let me say I think this is a really, really important issue, one that has become even more important in the last couple of years, said Ms. DeVos. We have seen in far too many cases an intolerance toward listening to and at least hearing from others that have different perspectives than ours.

State lawmakers have begun to react. In Washington, a pair of Republican legislators introduced bills in June to defund Evergreen State and transform it into a private college.

For those who might find such a solution extreme, ALEC unveiled last month the Forming Open and Robust University Minds Act (FORUM), a piece of model legislation aimed at reopening debate on increasingly close-minded campuses.

The model policy eliminates campus free-speech zones, reaffirms First Amendment rights, allows those whose free speech rights may have been violated to bring causes of action and requires free speech education for students as well as administrators and campus police.

The measure also empowers legislators to hold universities accountable by requiring each institution to report on free speech issues prior to the legislatures appropriations process.

Shelby Emmett, director of ALECs Center to Protect Free Speech, said the proposed policy differs from others that require free speech education only for incoming freshmen.

Obviously, theres a problem with free speech on campus well before freshmen arrive if you have administrators or campus police officers who think you can detain or arrest or suspend a student because they passed out a Constitution, said Ms. Emmett. I think its easy to go after the students, but this is a cultural problem.

The focus today lies with progressive students suppressing conservatives, but this is not at all a political issue, said Ms. Emmett.

This happens on both sides, she said. It goes back and forth. Free speech is one of those things where people say they love it until they dont love it.

Universities have seen their reputations take a hit as a result of their apparent opposition to conservative views.

A survey released last week by the Pew Research Center found 58 percent of Republicans believe higher education has a negative effect on the nation, compared with just 36 percent who say the effect is positive.

The reverse was true two years ago, when 54 percent of Republicans found higher education positive and 37 percent said it was negative.

In between those two surveys, there have been massive student demonstrations, notably the campus shutdown in 2015 at the University of Missouri, as well as incidents at private institutions such as Yale University and Claremont McKenna College.

Ms. DeVos can speak from personal experience: In May students booed and interrupted her graduation address at Bethune-Cookman University in Orlando, Florida.

The education secretary typically draws a protest crowd driven by teachers unions wherever she speaks, but there were no demonstrators Thursday outside the Hyatt Regency Denver for her ALEC address.

The day before she arrived, however, several hundred foes of her school choice agenda held a rally at the state capitol and then marched to the Hyatt Regency, chanting resist and holding signs with messages like ALEC Leave Our Kids Alone!

The marchers were greeted by ALEC staffers who passed out water bottles in the nearly 100-degree heat. The message on the water bottles: Quenching your thirst for free speech.

Thats perfect, said Ms. DeVos.

Free speech is a very important issue, and one which I plan to continue to talk and speak out about, and I hope all of you who have opportunities to do that in your states will do the same, she said. Because the value of hearing and learning from others is an invaluable, invaluable thing.

Link:
DeVos urges state legislators to take on foes of campus free speech - Washington Times

There is a cartoon making the rounds on Facebook accompanied by comments announcing that Rick Friday, the cartoonist who drew the panel, had been fired by The Farm News, a Fort Dodge, Iowa, publication, after 21 years on the job.

The cartoon depicts two guys in bib overalls standing at a fence row. One of them says, I wish there was more profit in farming and the second guy says, There is. In the year 2015, the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers.

Not exactly knee-slappingly funny, but apparently the companies named in the cartoon are also big advertisers with The Farm News.

The posting quotes the fired cartoonist as saying, When it comes to altering someones opinion or someones voice for the purpose of wealth, I have a problem with that. Its our constitutional right to free speech and our constitutional right to free press.

Although I can understand Fridays frustration at being let go, his objection that being fired is a violation of his constitutional rights of free speech and a free press shows a remarkable ignorance about those rights.

The First Amendment to the Constitution states: 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.

The First Amendment says that the government cannot pass laws prohibiting cartoonists from making fun of companies, but with respect to its employees, The Farm News can and is completely within its rights to fire the cartoonist.

The First Amendment outlines a relationship between the government and the people, not between a publishing enterprise and its employees. The management of The Farm News has an obligation to its owners and employees to maintain the financial integrity of the company. When one employees behavior threatens the finances of the company, management may discipline or even terminate the employee without violating his freedom of speech and press rights.

The constitutional protections of speech and press freedom do not guarantee that people may express themselves any way they want. You cannot post on the company bulletin board a notice declaring that the boss is an imbecile and then expect to be protected from being disciplined or fired because of your First Amendment rights. There is nothing in the Constitution compelling companies to spend advertising money in a particular publication, nor is there any provision in the First Amendment that requires a particular company to employ someone.

The government may not constrain Friday from drawing and having his cartoons published, but his employers are within their rights to fire him without violating his First Amendment rights.

Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who refused to stand for the National Anthem last year, was completely within his rights not to stand. However, just like Kaepernicks relation with the NFL, Fridays dismissal from The Farm News is not a violation of his First Amendment rights.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from silencing individuals and the press in most cases, but it is silent on work arrangements voluntarily entered into between both employees and management.

The Farm News has since rehired Rick Friday.

http://www.myjournalcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/web1_web-freespeech.jpg

Jacksonville resident Jay Jamison writes each Friday for this page.

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Read the original post:
Commentary: Free speech far from free - Jacksonville Journal Courier