Citizen Media Law Project

Use https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/ for hosting - they have great privacy and are frequently recommended as a host that won't cave to baseless legal demands. Take a look at the links here for info on anonymous publishing: http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/how-maintain-your-anonymity-onl… For accepting payments, a PayPal Business account will display a business name instead of your name on the payment confirmation page. For setting up an anonymous business, I've read that New Mexico has the most privacy-friendly LLC requirements, allowing you to use a registered agent as the only identifying information provided anywhere within your official documents, and requiring no annual report detailing membership within the LLC.

I used to be really into street photography[1] and this issue tends to creep up from time to time. If you're on public property of any sort, you don't really have any expectation of privacy outside of the bathrooms or such.[2] That shouldn't be the surprise and that shouldn't be the title of this link. Hell, you can take photographs of people and things on private property as long as it's readily visible from public property and you're not trespassing on the private property. But! Using said photographs commercially (generally, any use that brings in direct profit) can be a misappropriation of likeness and also a violation of one's right to publicity[3] -- the right to control and make money from the commercial use of his or her identity. Being an asshole about it and changing every photograph on the site to hers is an interesting move. I'd really love to see what would happen if she pressed charges in response to that. --- [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Street_photography [2] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Photography_and_the_law… [3] http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another

I don't think every opinion is an assertion of fact in that true opinion is by its nature unprovable: "I think Apple makes lousy products" may be what I think (which I don't, by the way) but no one would take it as anything beyond that. Opinion is basically non-actionable under libel laws as long as it falls in the unprovable category. You make an excellent point, though, in picking up on this issue. No less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court (in the 1990 Milkovich case) expressly rejected what it called "the creation of an artificial dichotomy" between fact and opinion and held that statements couched as opinions can be libelous if they imply false and defamatory facts. So, if you say, "In my opinion, politician x is a drug dealer," your statement could be found to be defamatory. For a good discussion on this, see http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/opinion-and-fair-comment-privil…

Taking video is not illegal in all states. http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/documenting-your-vote-2008#Stat…

FWIW: Using a cell phone to take video in polling places in most states is prohibited, and in general "frowned upon" in others. I would not be surprised if he simply took a video as quickly as he could and then left. I agree it would have been a more believable incident if there was more video. Based on the reddit story, I think this was Central PA, which definitely falls into the "not allowed to take video" category. http://www.citmedialaw.org/state-law-documenting-vote-2012#Pennsylvani…

In MA we recently had a suit (Click v Cunniffe) over whether it's legal to record police. We're a two party consent state, but the judge ruled: Simply put, a straightforward reading of the statute and case law cannot support the suggestion that a recording made with a device known to record audio and held in plain view is "secret." http://www.citmedialaw.org/sites/citmedialaw.org/files/10-1764P-01A.pd… (not a lawyer)

I think you could make a convincing argument that _why would fit the legal definition of a Limited-Purpose Public Figure. http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/proving-fault-actual-malice-and…

I had no idea that this existed and was about to ask whether you knew if there was a place online that consolidated the many legal considerations one must take to start an online business, but then I found this page on the Citizen Media Law Project ( http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/legal-issues-consider-when-gett… ), which covers both DMCA-related issues and how to pick hosting providers that will fight for your rights. The entire site seems to be a treasure trove of information about things like this. I'm posting this here in case it could help anyone else.

http://www.citmedialaw.org/sites/citmedialaw.org/files/2011-05-04-Cox%… reads as if they asked you to remove the article and apologize and you rejected the proposal.

Be careful with that. The exemptions do not absolve you from the "trafficking" provisions of the DMCA according to the Library of Congress. So you're allowed to do it, but not to "traffic" in the necessary tools (or software) to actually make it happen. Yes, that is really, really stupid. Don't just take my word for it: http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/circumventing-copyright-control…

Before you decide to copy these tactics, you might want to read up on the law regarding using the name or likeness of another without their permission (i.e., grabbing celebrity photos off the internet for your ad). http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another

Watch out for possible liability for defamatory content - the Communications Decency Act [1] may provide you with some immunity from liability, but there are cases suggesting otherwise in fact situations not dissimilar to yours. [2][3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act [2] http://www.citmedialaw.org/sites/citmedialaw.org/files/2004-04-19-Dist… [3] http://www.citmedialaw.org/sites/citmedialaw.org/files/2005-12-27-Hy%2…

It seems like the two-party rule applies to video only if audio is captured.[1] [1]http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/massachusetts-recording-law

You clearly have never seen the OTRS queue if you think Seigenthaler is the closest to a suit. There have been over a handful of cases (against the WMF or Wikipedia editors themselves) and some even received media coverage, though Bauer [1] is the one that comes to mind at the moment but it certainly isn't the only one. [2] [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/05/dumb-idea-suing-wikipe… [2] http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/american-academy-anti-aging-medicin…

Why are you looking at Montana law when this incident occurred in California? http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2010/lost-and-found-california-law-and… It's not a secret that when you find lost property you either leave it with the establishment in case the owner comes back looking for it, contact the owner directly or, failing that, take it to the police. Instead of doing that, he took it home, took it apart and sold it to gizmodo.

Compare to Eliott Madison's arrest for tweeting information about the police movements during the illegal police assault during the Pittsburgh G20 summit. His obviously unconstitutional charges were withdrawn. Conclusion: Twitter is good for protesting in Iran, bad for protesting in the USA. http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/united-states-v-madison

This sounds eerily familiar. Around a decade ago, a data analytics company called Pharmatrak was actually found guilty of breaking federal wiretapping statutes for doing something very similar. [1] In their case, they had built a network tracking HTTP GET requests to pharmaceuticals companies websites with a web bug [2] and attached cookie. But because some of the pharmaceuticals companies were using GETs as the method on HTML forms (remember, this was ten years ago), the users actually ended up making GET requests with personally identifying information in the URL encoded parameters. Since these GET requests were logged by Pharmatrak, and neither party (the users nor the pharmaceuticals companies) had consented to giving away personal information to them, Pharmatrak was found guilty of wiretapping. Pharmatrak eventually won on appeal though, arguing that they had no intention of collecting personal information, which exonerated them because only intentional eavesdropping is a crime. The company in the OP's article could make no such arguments though. I suspect that their main difference is that they make no assurances of confidentiality to the websites using their software the way Pharmatrak did. Which 1) is just really creepy, and 2) sets them up for trouble with users in California, because California's wiretapping statutes say that it's a crime unless both parties agree to it. [3] [1] http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/packets001737.shtml [2]…

U.S. bloggers: Note that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives protection from defamation claims associated with anonymous comments. Quoting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation website (1): ...Your readers' comments, entries written by guest bloggers, tips sent by email, and information provided to you through an RSS feed would all likely be considered information provided by another content provider. This would mean that you would not be held liable for defamatory statements contained in it... The EFF page adds, "[Section 230] does not apply to federal criminal law, intellectual property law, and electronic communications privacy law." The Citizen's Media Law project contains additional information about Section 230 and blogging (2): Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants interactive online services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided by a third party. Relatively few court decisions, however, have analyzed the scope of this immunity in the context of "mixed content" that is created jointly by the operator of the interactive service and a third party through significant editing of content or the shaping of content by submission forms and drop-downs. So what are the practical things you can take away from this guide? Here are five: 1) If you passively host third-party content, you will be fully protected under Section 230. 2) If you…

A successful defamation case in America requires proof that the offender had committed so called actual malice. Only a subset of plaintiffs in defamation cases are required to prove "actual malice" (a specialized legal term defined below). The general law in the United States is "Depending on the circumstances, the plaintiff will either need to prove that the defendant acted negligently, if the plaintiff is a private figure, or with actual malice, if the plaintiff is a public figure or official." http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/proving-fault-actual-malice-and… "The First Amendment requires that a defamation plaintiff prove actual malice or reckless disregard of the truth when the plaintiff is a public official or public figure. New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). This is a much higher burden of proof for a public figure plaintiff. Instead of showing objectively that a "reasonable person" knew or should have known the defamatory statement was false, a public figure plaintiff must prove the intent of the defendant was malicious, or that they acted with reckless disregard for the truth. This allows the defendant to prove its good faith intent and efforts as a defense." It's a debatable question in this case whether or not FunnyJunk's role in this litigation triggers the requirement to allege "actual malice" (it is certainly not a public official), so maybe FunnyJunk doesn't need to allege "actual malice." "Actual Malice "In a legal sense,…

Yes, in Portland this probably should be protected, see http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2008/nude-bike-riding-protected-first-… for instance. The relevant bit there: We read the challenged ordinance as focusing on the goal of regulating conduct which the city council has determined to be injurious to health, safety and morals, i.e., the prohibition of public nudity or indecent exposure not intended as a protected symbolic or communicative act. Id. at 82. In other words, the court specifically acknowledged an exception to the ordinance in order to protect symbolic or communicative acts (the other alternative would have been to declare the entire ordinance unconstitutional, as it's fairly well established that no-exception bans on public nudity violate the first amendment), which this clearly was, so he should be fine. Of course, all bets are off since this happened in an airport, because terrorism.