First Amendment News

Former pro-Israel lobbyists saw the U.S. government drop espionage charges against them for conspiring to pass classified information to journalists and Israeli officials. First Amendment advocates feared that the case might chill normal exchange of information between journalists, lobbyists and think-tank analysts. -DB The Washington Post May 1, 2009 By Jerry Markon The U.S. government is abandoning espionage-law charges against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, federal officials announced this morning. Prosecutors said

Information provided to consumers online by commercial ventures is protected speech according to a judge in a federal district court. -DB PRWeb Press Release April 30, 2009 A federal judge has ruled the internet fax website FaxCompare.com is protected by the First Amendment. In the ongoing litigation between J2 Global Communication and co-defendants ChooseWhat.com, LLC and Zilker Ventures, LLC, Judge Otero of the Federal District Court in the Central District of California, case # CV08-07470

A prominent blogger sees a future for print newspapers especially if they forgo breaking news to report nuanced stories of high interest. -DB MediaShift April 27, 2009 By Michael Josefowicz Common sense tells us that print is not going away. If print is no longer an important part of your life, that is undeniable. But to extrapolate from personal experience to a statement about what is going to happen in the world doesn’t work. But

In assessing Obama’s first 100 days in office, Wired rated him low in privacy and copyright, high in science and net neutrality and gave him a B- for transparency. -DB Wired April 29, 2009 By David Kravets As President Barack Obama marks his 100th day in office today, we’ve set out to grade the 44th president’s performance on the bread-and-butter issues near and dear to Wired.com: copyright, cyber security, science, net neutrality, transparency and privacy.

An San Francisco Examiner writer says that BART has reversed its practice of keeping committee meetings out of the public eye and is actively soliciting public input on a police oversight committee after a BART police officer shot and killed an unarmed man in January. -DB San Francisco Examiner April 30, 2009 By Melissa Griffin A few weeks ago, I wrote that the dates, times and locations of the BART Police Department Review Committee meetings