This may be the year the long-debated and much-needed federal shield law passes. The so-called Free Flow of Information Act, HR 985, cleared the House Judiciary Committee March 25, and the committee’s chairman, Rep. John Conyers, committed to “swift action” on the bill this year. Last year the federal shield…
In a welcome shift from its predecessor, President Obama’s administration has issued new guidelines favoring disclosure and transparency in handling Freeom of Information Act guidelines. Obama first signaled a shift on his first day in office when he issued a presidential memorandum calling on agencies to “usher in a new…
What do Dustin Hoffman, Joe Montana and Vanna White have in common? All have been plaintiffs in high-profile cases testing whether a person’s right to profit from celebrity overcomes a First Amendment right to talk about them or do a parody about them. Joe Montana, the former San Francisco 49er…
A couple weeks ago I blogged about the lawsuit by supporters of Proposition 8, the California measure to ban gay marriage, seeking to withhold disclosure of the names of late campaign donors. I mentioned that there’s a right to anonymous speech in some contexts, but that given the public interest…
President Obama and Congress, after you’re done fixing the economy and dealing with the Middle East and global warming — or maybe if you get a spare moment before then — it’s time to pass a reporter’s privilege law. Nearly all states have one, and there was a bill to…
I recently blogged about a lawsuit involving a Yelp review. Now it seems like this is becoming a trend. The latest lawsuit was brought by a pediatric dentist in Foster City, California, who took umbrage at negative online comments on the Yelp website which said the dentist gave a boy…
OBAMA: RECORDS PRESUMED OPEN President Obama didn’t waste any time in breaking with the secrecy-first policies of his predecessor. On his first full day in office, Obama issued a memorandum reversing the policy of the Bush Administration toward Freedom of Information Act requests. The so-called “Ashcroft Memorandum” issued early in…
Two interests which both find some support in the First Amendment — the right to be anonymous and the public’s right to know — collide with each other in a new federal court lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed by supporters of Proposition 8, the California measure passed by voters in…
I’ve often said that one of the best ways to bring attention to something is to try and censor it. A San Francisco defamation suit reported today is a good example of this. A local chiropractor, it seems, was unhappy about a negative review of him posted on the website…
Secrecy in government is a bad thing. Secrecy in corporations getting huge government bailout checks is just as bad, if not worse. As we all know, Congress passed a $700 billion bailout bill this past fall, and the Treasury Department immediately doled out multi-billion-dollar “rescue” packages to huge banks and…