Nota Bene

The AP reports:

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down a California law that sought to ban the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2005 law violates minors’ rights under the Constitution’s First and 14th amendments. The three-judge panel’s unanimous ruling upholds an earlier ruling in U.S. District Court.

The law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18. It also would have created strict labeling requirements for video game manufacturers.

In a written opinion, Judge Consuelo Callahan said there were less restrictive ways to protect children from “unquestionably violent” video games. For example, the justices said the industry has a voluntary rating system and that parents can block certain games on video consoles.

The law’s author, state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said he wanted Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

You can read the opinion here.

The LA Times reports:

Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court justices talked about indecency and foul language today, but they did so without using any of the actual words that federal regulators hope to ban from television and radio broadcasts.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia made clear that they strongly support the drive to keep the F-word and the S-word off broadcasts during the hours when children and families are likely to be watching.

But they may not speak for the majority.

The EFF reports:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday signed Assembly Bill 2433 and filled a significant gap in protection for anonymous speech online. Authored by Assemblymember Paul Krekorian and co-sponsored by EFF, the California Anti-SLAPP Project and the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the new law allows speakers who successfully oppose the use of bogus out-of-state litigation to obtain their identities to recover attorneys’ fees. Assemblymembers Sally Lieber and Anthony Portantino co-authored the bill.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reports:

The California Court of Appeal yesterday ordered a lower court to vacate an unprecedented order that prevented The Orange County Register from reporting on testimony in a lawsuit involving its parent company, Freedom Communications, Inc.

The unanimous panel said the gag order must immediately be vacated because Freedom’s right to publish was “so obvious that no purpose could be served” by lengthier consideration of the issue.

A trial court judge presiding over the case, Gonzalez v. Freedom Communications, Inc., issued the gag order on September 19 to prevent potential witnesses from reading about the suit. The order prohibited all parties, including The Register and other Freedom properties, from discussing any non-expert testimony given at the trial. It included “all means and manner of communication whether in person, electronic, through audio or video recording, or print medium.”

You can read the opinion here.

The Las Vegas Sun reports:

Without comment, the justices declined to hear the case involving a segment of the $1.5 billion fantasy sports industry in the United States, in which participants manage imaginary teams based on the real-life performances of professional players.The lawsuit involves C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing Inc., a Missouri company unable to obtain a license from a subsidiary of Major League Baseball to use players’ names in C.B.C.’s fantasy baseball games.

The Missouri company sued, saying it did not need a license to continue to sell its fantasy baseball games on its Web site.

The baseball players’ union jumped into the case on the league’s side, alleging a state law violation of the players’ publicity rights _ the ability to profit from the commercial use of a person’s name.

A federal court and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled in favor of the fantasy baseball business, saying that enforcing state law rights would violate C.B.C.’s right of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

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The Associated Press reports:

A former USA Today reporter facing fines for failing to reveal her sources for stories about the 2001 anthrax attacks said Saturday that news organizations need to go on the offensive in the fight to protect the First Amendment.

“As we all know, the news business is on a collective nervous breakdown,” Toni Locy told a coalition of open-government and press groups. “It’s time to stop running. It’s time to turn and fight. If we don’t fight for the First Amendment, who will?”

Locy, who now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, spoke at the annual convention of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

She said the country needs a shield law that would protect reporters from having to reveal their sources.

“The First Amendment needs some help,” she said. “In this environment that we’re in now, it needs some help.”

Locy is appealing an order from U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton that requires her to pay as much as $5,000 a day until she gives up her sources for stories about the government’s investigation of the anthrax attacks.

MarketWatch.com reports:

Cisco Systems Inc. and one of its employees are being sued by Texas attorneys claiming the employee anonymously defamed them on a Web site critical of so-called “patent trolls” that sue technology companies over intellectual property rights.

The Cisco employee, attorney Richard Frenkel, had been writing anonymously on the “Patent Troll Tracker” Web site. According to court documents, in October, Frenkel wrote that Texas attorney Eric Albritton “conspired” with the clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas to alter official documents in a proceeding involving Cisco.

In a civil suit filed in a Texas court Friday, Albritton claims that by doing so, Frenkel “acted with specific intent to injure” Albritton’s reputation and professional standing. Albritton is seeking unspecified damages.

The North County Times reports:

Saying that comments posted on a local blog have defamed him, a Murrieta man filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in what his attorney calls “a novel legal issue.”

Roy Holmgren claims in his lawsuit that statements made about him on murrietaopinion.blogspot.com have exposed him to “hatred, ridicule, contempt and disgrace.”

Holmgren is suing the operator of the blog as well as those who have posted the comments about him.

But, so far, neither he nor his attorney, Richard Ackerman, know who specifically they are suing.

“… the defendants hide behind the veil of the Internet to cover up their nefarious and tortious activities,” the lawsuit states.

Ackerman said Thursday that he has tried to find out who runs the blog from the host of the site, blogspot.com, but they have yet to cooperate.

“Whoever they are, they don’t have the right to publish defamatory material,” Ackerman said.

The lawsuit lists what it calls “false statements or general assertions” about Holmgren made on the blog.

According to the suit, bloggers said he was a stalker, that he is married to an illegal alien, that he has committed crimes that destroyed property, illegally gained credit report information, vandalized a blogger’s sport utility vehicle, and that he begs for money on the side of the road.

One blogger called Holmgren “a danger to this community” and wrote that he has mental and emotional problems he can’t control, according to the lawsuit.

Yahoo! News reports:

A federal judge who shuttered the renegade Web site Wikileaks.org reversed the decision Friday and allowed the site to re-open in the United States.

In mid-February, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White issued an injunction against Wikileaks after the Zurich-based Bank Julius Baer accused the site of posting sensitive account information stolen by a disgruntled former employee.

I guess someone showed Judge White a copy of the First Amendment.