Nota Bene

The ACLU has issued this press release:

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last night filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit that led a federal district judge to order the domain name Wikileaks.org shut down. The motion is on behalf of organizations and individuals that have accessed and used documents on the Wikileaks.org website in their work and want to continue to be able to do so.

“The court’s order shuts down and locks up the domain name Wikileaks.org permanently, effectively interfering with the public’s ability to access the materials on the website as easily as possible,” said Aden Fine, senior staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The public has a right to receive information and ideas, especially ones concerning the public interest. This injunction ignores that vital First Amendment principle.”

The OC Register reports:

A judge Monday allowed a lawsuit to proceed against a California Highway Patrol dispatcher in a high-profile case about graphic accident photos leaked onto the Internet.

A second dispatcher, however, was removed as a defendant in the complaint.

In separate rulings that keep alive the possibility of a jury trial against the CHP, Judge Steven L. Perk ruled that the alleged conduct of dispatch supervisor Thomas ODonnell was not protected by his constitutional right of free speech – as his attorneys argued.

Relatives of Nicole “Nikki” Catsouras sued the CHP, ODonnell and another dispatcher, Aaron Reich, after the agency took responsibility for improperly releasing the grisly images to the public. Accident-scene photos are supposed to be used only for investigative purposes.

The First Amendment Center reports:

A federal judge in Missouri has rejected the First Amendment claims of a man removed from Kirkwood City Council meetings for “repetitive, personal, virulent attacks” against council members.

Charles Lee Thornton had sued the city of Kirkwood after he was arrested twice and later convicted for disorderly conduct at two council meetings in 2006.

In May 2006, Thornton had the opportunity to speak during the public-comment portion of a council meeting that addressed the expansion of two businesses — a funeral home and a senior living facility. During the time reserved to discuss the funeral home, Thornton rose to speak about what he alleged was personal harassment of him by city officials, not the expansion of the business. He displayed a large poster with a picture of a donkey and made intemperate remarks about the mayor. Thornton then warned the funeral home owner that the city had a “plantation-mentality” and “jackass-like qualities.”

AP News reports:

The National Association of Manufacturers is suing the government over the new federal lobbying and ethics law, contending it jeopardizes its members’ First Amendment rights.

The trade group, which filed the suit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is also seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of a provision in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007.

“This pernicious law should be seen as a potentially lethal threat to trade associations,” the trade group’s president John Engler, a former Michigan governor, said in a press release.

The law requires trade associations to release the names of members, who contribute more than $5,000 in a quarterly period for lobbying activities, which the group said violates their members’ privacy. Congress tightened the lobbying-disclosure requirements to target “stealth coalitions” or groups that use nondescript names to lobby for industries. The Coalition of Fair Lumber and International Interactive Alliance are among examples the Center for Responsive Politics names as under-the-radar groups.

You can access the complaint here.

Reuters reports:

A California appeals court on Wednesday said an anonymous Internet poster does not have to reveal his identity after being sued for making “scathing verbal attacks” against executives at a Florida company on a Yahoo! Inc message board.

The Sixth Appellate District in Santa Clara County reversed a trial court ruling that would have allowed a former executive at SFBC International Inc to subpoena Yahoo! for the names of her critics.

You can read the entire opinion in Krinsky v. Doe 6 (Feb. 6, 2008 H030767) here.

The Associated Press reports:

A computer science student who unwittingly created an airport bomb scare by wearing a blinking circuit board attached to her shirt had a First Amendment right to express herself in that manner, her lawyer argued Friday.

Attorney Thomas Dwyer Jr. asked a judge to throw out the charge against Star Simpson, 19, who is accused of possessing a hoax device. East Boston District Court Judge Paul Mahoney took the motion to dismiss under advisement and said he would issue a ruling March 21.

Simpson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student from Lahaina, Hawaii, had gone to Logan International Airport last September to pick up her boyfriend.

She was held at gunpoint and arrested by state troopers after an alarm was raised over the battery-powered device on her shirt, which had flashing lights and the words “Socket to me” and “Course VI” (a major at MIT) written on the back.

The First Amendment Center reports:

A former Chandler, Ariz., police officer’s First Amendment rights were not violated when he was fired for running a sexually explicit Web site with his wife, a federal appeals court panel ruled in Dible v. City of Chandler in an amended opinion.

“It would not seem to require an astute moral philosopher or a brilliant social scientist to discern that … [such] activities, when known to the public, would be ‘detrimental to the mission and functions of the employer,’” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals wrote.

Ronald and Megan Dible began operating the Web site in September 2000. It featured teaser pictures of Megan Dible and offered more-explicit photographs and other material once customers paid money. The police chief had learned of the site by January 2002 and the story made the local press. Dible’s supervisor recommended his dismissal, contending that Dible allegedly provided false or misleading answers to investigators looking into the situation.

You can access the entire opinion denying Dible’s request for re-hearing by the Ninth Circuit here .

CNET news reports:

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but try telling that to The Romantics.

The new-wave rock band has filed a lawsuit against Guitar Hero game publisher Activision for its use of a sound-alike recording of What I Like About You in Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press. The band is also seeking an injunction against the game, which could result in the game being pulled from store shelves.

BetaNews.com reports:

Bringing his claims to Capitol Hill for the first time, former AT&T network technician Mark Klein appeared yesterday at a press conference to reiterate his astonishing claim: AT&T operated a 24 x 48-foot room in one of its network operations centers in San Francisco, where Klein discovered his employer was cooperating with the National Security Agency in the monitoring of all Internet traffic over a major backbone line.

“I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the National Security Agency to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history,” Klein remarked in his press conference yesterday.

Klein’s allegations have been part of an ongoing class-action suit against AT&T since January 2006, funded by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. While he was not able to witness everyday goings-on in the “Secure Room,” as an engineer, Klein was privy to how the room was wired. In a June 8 sworn deposition entered into evidence in this case, he described what he saw.

MediaInfo.com reports:

In a victory for high school journalists, the California Supreme Court let stand an appeals court ruling that schools cannot censor controversial speech in student media.

The high court Thursday declined to review the appellate court ruling in a lawsuit that former Novato High School student journalist Andrew Smith filed against the Novato Unified School District after administrators publicly condemned two columns he wrote for the school paper, and tried to confiscate all copies of the offending pieces.

The decision is important because it upholds the state’s so-called “anti-Hazelwood” law that was intended to restore student free-expression rights in the wake of the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In that case, the high court ruled essentially that school administrators are publishers of student media with the same power to direct or spike material that any publisher of a non-government newspaper has.