firstamendment

Nicole Wong, Deputy General Counsel of Google, has joined the Board of Directors of the California First Amendment Coalition, the free speech and open-government advocacy group. An expert on legal issues concerning technology and the internet, Ms. Wong has responsibility at Google for litigation and legal strategies for all Google products. Before joining Google, she was a partner at Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm, where she represented both traditional media companies–including Hearst Corporation, McClatchy

No more slaps on the wrist: Public Spankings for violators of open-government laws by Peter Scheer Assemblywoman Sally Lieber achieved her 15 minutes of fame (or was it infamy?) by proposing that California criminalize the spanking of children. While few legislators seem to want to follow the San Jose Democrat off this particular cliff, Lieber’s idea does suggest another possible connection between government and spanking. A source of great frustration to advocates of government openness

Government leaks in Apple investigation underscore hypocrisy of BALCO press subpoenas by Peter Scheer Yet another reason the Justice Department should abandon its misguided effort to throw San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams into jail for refusing to name their confidential source in the BALCO case: Hypocrisy has its limits, even for the federal government. I’m referring to recent stories in the Wall Street Journal and other media detailing the feds’ investigation

Sacramento Bee’s new online pub experiments with time-shifting to boost value of the paper’s political reporting by Peter Scheer A few weeks ago I wrote in this space that newspapers, in their rush to generate ad revenues on the internet, had made a strategic mistake in giving away their news content, free, online. I suggested that, to reestablish the value of their content, metro papers should consider embargoing their news articles from the free Internet

PRESS RELEASE For Immediate Release Neil Budde, the head of news operations for internet portal Yahoo!, is the latest addition to the board of directors of the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), the nonprofit, public interest organization announced today. Budde, who joined Yahoo! In 2004, is Vice President, Editor in Chief for Yahoo! News, Finance and Sports. He works in Yahoo!’s Santa Monica offices, where the company’s news operations are based. “Neil brings to CFAC