By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:51pm
While the Internet community came out in force to protest the free speech and privacy threats posed by the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an international trade agreement with the same stated goals—and potentially greater threats—was being negotiated behind closed doors. While the First Amendment can be served by intellectual property protections that incentivize content creation, IP laws can easily be misused. Like PIPA and SOPA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (“ACTA”) is another misguided and overbroad attempt to crack down on counterfeiting and piracy over the Internet. There has been excellent analysis of the issue by sources including EFF, Tech Dirt and Ars Technica, but we have also been watching this issue and wanted to summarize what’s at stake.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:23am
Professor Tim Wu at Columbia had an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday arguing against First Amendment protections for “automated” speech. Here’s the argument distilled:
As a matter of legal logic, there is some similarity among Google, Ann Landers, Socrates and other providers of answers. But if you look more closely, the comparison falters. Socrates was a man who died for his views; computer programs are utilitarian instruments meant to serve us. Protecting a computer’s “speech” is only indirectly related to the purposes of the First Amendment, which is intended to protect actual humans against the evil of state censorship. The First Amendment has wandered far from its purposes when it is recruited to protect commercial automatons from regulatory scrutiny.
Guest blogger Agatha M. Cole is a J.D. candidate, Cardozo Law School, Class of 2013
The ongoing controversy surrounding domain name seizures under "Operation In Our Sites" seems to be reaching new heights. DHS launched Operation In Our Sites in 2010 to combat online piracy and the proliferation of counterfeit goods on the Internet. Since then, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has shut down over 758 websites allegedly involved in the sale or distribution of counterfeit goods or illegal copyrighted works.
By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:55pm
One of the very few pleasant things about being an attorney is that even some of the most boring cases have wacky backstories. This post is about one of the wackiest--though the issues raised illustrate certain constitutional concerns with a very short section in the very long Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which just passed the House yesterday over ACLU opposition.
In February of last year, a federal judge in Maryland issued a criminal complaint against one William Lawrence Cassidy. Mr. Cassidy, it seems, had allegedly infiltrated a Maryland area Buddhist community by claiming to be a “tulku,” a high-ranking Buddhist religious figure who, unlike lay Buddhists and the lesser-ranked “lamas,” gets to choose the form of his reincarnation. Through this alleged ruse, Mr. Cassidy attempted to gain the trust of Jetsunna Ahkon Lhamo (born Alyce Louise Zeoli), the first Western woman to legitimately be enthroned as a tulku.
