1st Amendment

Prizefight: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 vs. Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS

It's a Prizefight throwdown showdown! We're throwing two of the best point-and-shoot cameras that were made to outlast the elements. It's the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS4 versus the Olympus Tough TG-1 iHS!

Panasonic's TS4 brings a sleeker design that's still rugged with better image quality results. Olympus' TG-1 is chunkier, but it brings a larger feature set and is even crushproof.

Both of these bad boys are waterproof, shockproof, and freezeproof; which do you think deserves to be crowned the Prizefight King of the Ring?

Cast your vote!

wikileaks.org shut down by Federal Judge

The First Amendment of the US Constitution has protected the rights of the press in many legal battles throughout history, but last week, when US District Judge Jeffrey White signed a permanent injunction (PDF) ordering wikileaks.org shut down, it was a disturbing indicator of the uncertain status of press freedoms in the United States.

Wikileaks describes itself as "developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis," and indeed, although the wikileaks.org domain is no longer active, the site continues to be mirrored at various domains around the world. As Bob Egelko at the San Francisco Chronicle points out, the "site was the first to post the confidential Defense Department manual about operations of the U.S. detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, and has also posted rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Iraq."

But it wasn't the publication of subterranean government documents that eventually triggered the federal government's wrath (though it's possible that may have played a motivating factor). According to the Chronicle, the judge ordered the site to be shut down, "after it posted documents purporting to describe offshore activities of a Swiss bank."… Read more

A license to blog?

On Thursday, David Hazinski posted a column on the Web site of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggesting that "unfettered 'citizen journalism' (is) too risky." He points out that the online medium creates an opportunity for anyone to provide informational content, but that this new venue is prone to inaccuracies and hearsay. He argues that so-called citizen journalism "isn't journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse."

In his article, Hazinski suggests that unless the news industry acts now to regulate amateur-professional journalism, it will be "just a matter of time before something like a faked Rodney King beating video appears on the air somewhere." In his defense, a similar scenario did play out over three years ago when Benjamin Vanderford, a San Francisco resident, produced a fake video depicting his own beheading at the hands of Islamist extremists; then again, it was a publisher from the establishment press, William Randolph Hearst, who is credited with helping catalyze the Spanish American War through manufactured news. Hearst told a reporter, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war," and history indicates that he may have done just that.

… Read more

What does Bonds indictment mean for reporters Fainaru-Wada and Williams?

The news that home run record holder Barry Bonds had been indicted came as a shock to much of the bay area yesterday. For several years, Bonds' legal struggle has made headlines and helped shed a light on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports, but after such a prolonged saga, it seemed unlikely that the Giants star would go down. His personal trainer Greg Anderson (whom I met while at the Federal Detention Center in Dublin, CA), spent over a year in custody for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury and many believed that Bonds' indictment hinged on the testimony Anderson had refused to provide.

Anderson is out today, but there is no reason that he caved and testified. The grand jury was due to expire next month and its extraordinarily unlikely that he would give up now. Former US Attorney Kevin Ryan confirmed on a radio news program this morning. Anderson's attorney Peter Garagos stated, Law.com, "Frankly I'm aghast. It looks like the government misled me and Greg as well, saying this case couldn't go forward without him."

There are many unanswered questions about why the government brought the indictment when they did, but what's just barely been mentioned is how this turn-of-events will affect Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, whose coverage of the story for the San Francisco Chronicle and their book, Game of Shadows, led to the reporters being subpoenaed and later found in contempt for not revealing their anonymous sources.

… Read more

Judge orders reporter to produce public interest story or go to jail

We've all heard the story of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who was recently convicted of two counts of rape and is facing life in prison, but there is another legal saga that originated in that same case which hasn't garnered much national attention.

Katie Baker was covering Jeffs case for the Salt Lake City television station KUTV. She interviewed a number of individuals involved in the case, including Mo Webb, a potential juror. Unfortunately for Baker, her interview with Webb violated a decorum order issued by Judge … Read more

From driving to file-sharing, the Brits do it backwards

Ever since Napster found its way into every college dorm room in 1999, the defenders of intellectual property have been perplexed at how to best deal with peer-to-peer file transfer. Last week's news that Comcast's servers were interfering with BitTorrent traffic may have come as a surprise to some, but given that few companies have been willing to acknowledge the legal uses for P2P, it shouldn't be too much of a shock.

What strikes me is the fact that in the United Kingdom, it is actually the ISPs who are opposed to banning file-sharing and the lawmakers who have been pushing it. According to Broadband Reports, a representative from the service providers union suggested that, "ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope." While this argument seems somewhat weak given Comcast's ability to infiltrate BitTorrent, it is true that file-sharers will always be one step ahead of the regulators, and I support their commitment toward an open internet.

… Read more

Court attempts to hide FBI threats to innocent man's family

An open government is central to democracy; most people would argue that certain information must be kept secret to protect national security and to preserve privacy rights, but the government should not be able to remove important details simply because they might make them look bad. In Higazy v. Templeton, a recent case before the U.S. Court of Appeals 2nd circuit, the decision was posted on the web last Thursday, but removed almost immediately.

During the brief time the opinion was online, Howard Bashman from How Appealing managed to save a copy that he has posted online.

After being … Read more

Update on Phoenix New Times jailings

It isn't often legal nightmares are resolved quickly. In fact, anything pertaining to the law tends to drag on tirelessly.

But for the two executives at Village Voice Media who spent a night in jail last week, their legal woes were abated before the weekend arrived. On Friday afternoon, I wrote about how Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin were incarcerated after they published details in the Phoenix New Times about a subpoena they received. Hours later, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, dropped all the charges against Lacey, Larkin and the paper.

Dennis Wilenchik, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, was removed from the investigation by Thomas the same day. Wilenchick has denied any wrongdoing, stating that "his investigation was not 'grossly mishandled or mismanaged,'" and he will not stand to have his reputation tarnished.

While it's not entirely clear what prompted the county attorney to drop the charges and remove Wilenchick, The Arizona Republic points out, that "Thomas' announcement came just hours after the State Bar Association confirmed that it had received multiple complaints and had launched an internal investigation into Thomas and special prosecutor Dennis Wilenchik for their actions in the New Times case and an unrelated one."

… Read more

Village Voice executives jailed in Phoenix

Just days after the House of Representatives passed the Free Flow of Information Act, The New York Times reports that two executives from Village Voice Media were arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, for revealing "grand jury secrets". Michael Lacey, the executive editor, and Jim Larkin, chief executive, were arrested at their homes after they wrote a story that revealed that the Village Voice Media company, its executives, its reporters and even the names of the readers of its website had been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor. The special prosecutor had been appointed to look into allegations that the newspaper had violated the law in publishing the home address of Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio on its website more than three years ago. The two have since been released, but the reverberations of this blatant assault on the press and of Arpaio's retaliatory behavior will likely resonate for some time. Although the original investigation stems from a column written by John Dougherty about Arpaio's real estate investments, the impetus for yesterday's arrest appears to be this week's Phoenix New Times cover story, " Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution". In the article, Lacey and Larkin acknowledge the fact that the story may generate a legal backlash, and imply that civil disobedience had become their last option.… Read more