First Amendment News

U.S. copyright law is being exploited to take down articles critical of oil lobbyists. “Unknown parties” are creating phony articles with content similar to the real news reports. The U.S. law allows an online poster to claim his content has been stolen and demand that the stolen content be taken down. There has been a number of these incidents in Africa over recent months. (BBC News, March 2, 2023)

The Biden administration and Congress members are considering a ban on TikTok, owned by ByteDance, based in Beijjing and subject to Chinese laws including one requiring businesses to help the Chinese government whenever asked. China could ask TikTok to provide it with user data or to upload propaganda or false information on its platform fueling risks to national security. (Vox, March 2, 2023, by Sara Morrison, Christian Paz, and Rebecca Jennings) TikTok says it is

The Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to provide Fox election denier Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to video tapes of the January 6 insurrection may be a violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has ruled that there is no First Amendment right to government information, and the courts have also ruled that discriminatory access is unconstitutional. (The Seattle Times, March 1, 2023, by Michael I. Meyerson from The Baltimore Sun) McCarthy slowed

Mama Bears, a group of parents seeking to ban books in Georgia, won a settlement in federal court against a school district for restricting their participation in school board meetings in violation of their First Amendment rights. (Forsyth News, February 2, 2023, by Sabrina Kerns) The school board tried to prevent the mothers from reading sexually explicit passages from books. The Forsyth County School is on the hook for $107,500 in legal fees. (ProPublica, February

The distributor of the Dilbert comic strip announced it has dropped the strip after the creator Scott Adams’ racist tirade on YouTube last week. Newspapers across the country cancelled his comic strip citing his racism as abhorrent. (NPR, February 27, 2023, by Mandalit Del Barco) Adams’ distributor said “…we will never support any commentary rooted in discrimination or hate.” In his tirade Adams used the statement “It’s OK to be white,” a phrase widely used