Group items tagged

Some of the ins and outs of copyright law and DMCA.

The Montana Blogger who was sued because she was apparently not covered by the shield laws that covers mainstream journalists.

I wanted to add this link to the famous court case of Miller v California that helped define pornography and its protection (or lack thereof) under the first amendment. There is a lot to discuss here regarding offensiveness and "social value" especially in regard to the fact that the case dates back to the 70's. Perhaps the same case would be tried differently today.

This article (which mentions the Manning situation that is the focus of the video I posted earlier today) outlines the pros and cons of prosecuting Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks, for publishing and disseminating thousands of classified State Department cables on his site. The First Amendment is at the crux of this debate: "How do you draft a law that targets WikiLeaks but leaves intact our system of press freedoms?"

This blurb is from the BBC: The new privacy policy is rolling out around the world on 1 March Changes made by Google to its privacy policy are in breach of European law, the EU's justice commissioner has said. Viviane Reding told the BBC that authorities found that "transparency rules have not been applied".

Lawmakers are finally putting a stop to this practice. Since we broached the topic of rhetorical strategies in making arguments in class, the argument one law expert makes is interesting: ""It lays down boundaries on what you can and can't do. It takes a gray area and makes a bright line ... The bill is a win for employees who want to protect their data security and their personal content passwords. But it's also a win for employers. ... Employers don't want to have access to this content. With access comes responsibility."

This article talks about an alternative to SOPA and PIPA written by Reddit users. There's a link to the Reddit community and Google document they're working on. Although it's difficult for me to see how this document could impact/influence any actual legislation, redditors have had some success making waves in the past. After GoDaddy announced its support for SOPA, Reddit users staged a boycott. GoDaddy ultimately changed its position.

These are the kinds of risks today's digital users face without even realizing it. How many of us actually sit down with a site before registering for an account and read through the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy? Or if you do, how far do you get before you're bored to death or completely confused? This kind of stuff terrifies me. But why are we at fault? Does this mean I have to delete my Pinterest account?