20/20 Financial Consulting, Inc. v. Does 1-5, 2010 WL 1904530 (D.Colo. May 11, 2010) [Opinion embedded below.] A financial consulting company has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Colorado alleging that certain anonymous web users have posted defamatory statements about the plaintiff on blogs and in message forums. The plaintiff asked the court for [...]
Archive for the ‘First Amendment’ Category
Ohio internet obscenity statute constitutional
April 20th, 2010
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American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression v. Strickland, — F.3d —, 2010 WL 1488123 (6th Cir. April 15, 2010) Court holds that statute prohibiting distribution of material harmful to minors directly via the internet is not overly broad and therefore not unconstitutional. Ohio has a statute that criminalizes sending juveniles material that is harmful to [...]
My Public Radio debut
May 8th, 2009
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Had a great time talking about anonymity and the First Amendment with Sheilah Kast of Baltimore’s 88.1 FM WYPR on today’s Maryland Morning. I talked about the court’s analysis in the recent case of Independent Newspapers, Inc. v. Brodie (which I wrote about here). Listen to the interview here: MP3
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Maryland Court of Appeals addresses important question of internet anonymity
March 8th, 2009
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Independent Newspapers, Inc. v. Brodie, — A.2d —, 2009 WL 484956 (Md. February 27, 2009) Maryland’s highest state court has issued a comprehensive opinion setting out the proper framework trial courts should use when evaluating whether a plaintiff should be permitted to learn the identity of an anonymous (or pseudonymous) internet speaker. After considering the [...]
Site operator successfully challenges subpoena which sought to unmask anonymous commenters
December 16th, 2008
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Enterline v. Pocono Medical Center, 2008 WL 5192386 (M.D. Pa. December 11, 2008) A federal court in Pennsylvania has denied a motion demanding that a website operator turn over the identity of persons who commented anonymously in response to an article posted on the website. The court held that the website had standing to assert [...]
Government spam blocking not a violation of First Amendment right to petition
November 6th, 2008
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Ferrone v. Onorato, No. 07-4299, 2008 WL 4763257 (3rd Cir. October 31, 2008) The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a county government did not violate a citizen’s First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of greivences when the county set its spam filters to block all email from the [...]
Kentucky settles banned blogger’s First Amendment challenge to Internet filtering policy
June 18th, 2008
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Ed. note: This is a guest post by Greg Beck, an attorney at Public Citizen in Washington, DC. Greg works on a variety of issues at Public Citizen, mostly involving Internet free speech, anonymity, and intellectual property. He was lead counsel for Mark Nickolas in his challenge to Kentucky’s ban on blogs. [More info...] Political [...]
Discipline of student for personal blog post did not violate First Amendment
June 17th, 2008
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Post on LiveJournal blog in which student referred to administrators by a derogatory name and was intended to incite anger in administration was justification for disqualifying student from participating in upcoming election of class officers. Doninger v. Niehoff, — F.3d —-, 2008 WL 2220680 (2nd Cir. May 29, 2008) Toward the end of Avery Doninger’s [...]
