Courtroom bans on social media spreading across United States

The U.S. court system is rapidly adopting rules against the use of social media in the courtroom. Jurors are increasingly instructed to stay off Facebook and Twitter and refrain from using the Internet to research cases. -db
Online Media Daily
March 10, 2010
By Laurie Sullivan
No tweeting or status updates in court or deliberation rooms. Judges have been [...]

Facebook threatens to sue British newspaper over false claim about sex and teen-age girls

Facebook is concerned that its reputation was permanently damaged by a claim in the Daily Mail that seconds after 14-year-old girls posted a profile on Facebook that older men could approach them “who wanted to perform a sex act” in front of them. Daily Mail apologized for the error. -db
Guardian
March 11, 2010
By Charles Arthur
Facebook has [...]

International internet freedom gets boost in latest regulations proposed by Obama administration

The U.S. Treasury Department announced changes in its sanctions against Cuba, Iran and the Sudan which allows internet service to these countries even when they are under U.S. sanctions. -db
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Commentary
March 10, 2010
By Danny O’Brien
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Monday key amendments to the regulation of United States sanctions [...]

Bandwidth problems threaten to curtail military’s social networking

The Pentagon is allowing the troops to use such sites as Facebook and Twitter, but it may be difficult for them to actually sign on since, especially in places like Afghanistan, bandwidth is limited. -db
The Hill
March 1, 2010
By Tony Romm
Trouble with the Pentagon’s strapped Web network could threaten its new decision to permit service [...]

Italian court deals setback to Google and internet freedom

Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italy’s privacy laws and responsible for posts by third parties, a blow to world internet freedom and particularly destructive to Italy’s participation in e-commerce. -db
The New York Times
February 25, 2010
By Rachel Donadio
ROME — Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws on Wednesday, the first [...]

Judge allows suit to go forward on student Facebook posting

A Florida student is suing her principal for suspending her after she posted a Facebook page calling her Advanced Placement teacher “the worst teacher I’ve ever met.” -db

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
February 17, 2010
By Amanda Becker
A federal magistrate said this week that a former Florida high school student who was suspended for [...]

Olympic athletes in winter games confused by rules restricting social media

Olympic social media rules bar athletes from acting as reporters since they lack accreditation, but they can twitter in the first person and send reports from the sidelines. -db

Wired
February 5, 2010
By Mark McClusky

American skier Lindsey Vonn, one of the potential stars of the 2010 Winter Olympics, told her nearly 35,000 Twitter followers that she would [...]

Florida high school student booted from honor society for Facebook page criticizing school

First Amendment experts say a high school student may have been wrongly kicked out of the honor society since his comments on Facebook criticizing the school would normally be considered protected speech. -db
The Tampa Tribune
February 3, 2010
By Ronnie Blair

WESLEY CHAPEL, Flor. – Two Florida experts in First Amendment law say a Wesley Chapel High student’s [...]

Growing numbers scale China’s digital wall

Chinese citizens are finding ways to get around China’s firewalls after the government shut down pornography sites, blogs, online video sites, Facebook, and Twitter during the Beijing Olympics. -DB

The New York Times
January 16, 2010
By Brad Stone and David Barboza

The Great Firewall of China is hardly impregnable.
Just as Mongol invaders could not be stopped by the [...]

Bloggers replace mainstream media in covering local government

Bloggers using Twitter and Facebook are filling the void to cover local government meetings, taking the place of mainstream media suffering losses of revenue as the internet takes its share of ads. -DB
MediaShift
January 14, 201
By Steven Davy

Traditionally, newspaper reporters were dispatched to cover the mundane proceedings of a local government in action: the city council meeting. [...]

Written word alive and well

A study done by the University of San Diego and other universities revealed that Americans are reading far more words as the new technologies take hold. With the advent of TV, reading was in decline but has rebounded, tripling from 1980 to 2008. -DB

Wired
Commentary
December 29, 2009
By Eliot Van Buskirk

Conventional wisdom holds that YouTube, videogames, cable [...]

Film star brings suit on information on Wikipedia suggesting the actor is gay

Ron Livingston is suing an anonymous person who he says put up information on Wikipedia that claims Livingston has been dating a man. -DB

NBC Chicago
December 7, 2009

Actor Ron Livingston is suing an alleged Wikipedia hacker who reportedly posted information suggesting the actor was gay on his online bio page, according to TMZ.
Livingston, whose most notable [...]

EFF sues to force government to provide records of spying on social networks

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, working with the UC Berkeley law school, has filed suit against a number of federal agencies who have not responded to Freedom of Information Act requests for information about their surveillance of social networking sites. -DB

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Press Release
December 1, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), working with the [...]

First Amendment panel finds promise, pitfalls in social media

By Donal Brown
The panel on journalists and social media at the First Amendment Coatition Assembly offered wise advice and a few emphatic warnings, chief among them: everything a journalist puts up on Twitter or Facebook or other social media is public.
Speaking at the assembly October 24 in Los Angeles on the panel entitled “Twitter with [...]

State supreme court rejects ‘ownership’ argument in dismissing defamation claim against Facebook

The New York Supreme Court ruled for Facebook in a suit brought by a student against former high school classmates and their parents after the classmates  had posted on Facebook alleged false and defamatory statements about her. The court held that Facebook was protected under the Communications Decency Act, did not own the defamatory content [...]

FBI investigated programmer after he helped obtain federal court records

A 22-year-old programmer found out this week from a Freedom of Information Act request that the FBI investigated him for helping put public documents online. -DB
Privacy Digest
October 6, 2009
By Mac Ronin
When Aaron Swartz, a 22 year-old programmer, decided last fall to help an open government activist amass a public and free copy of millions of [...]

As newspapers decline, politicians use social media to connect with voters

In some communities, social media is the only way politicians can reach voters, at times receiving immediate responses that speed the political process. -DB

MediaShift
September 29, 2009
By Steven Davy

When television cameras panned across the room full of senators and representatives during the recent presidential address to a joint session of Congress, the audience at home [...]

New Defense Department policy may allow troops to tweet and blog

In the face of a raft of military prohibitions against social networks. a new draft policy recognizes the power of the networks and seeks to balance the risks with the gains. -DB
Wired
Commentary
September 29, 2009
By Noah Shachtman
The Defense Department may allow troops and military employees to freely access social networks — if a draft policy circulating around [...]

Social networking ban on convicted sex offenders deemed unconstitutional

A blogger for the Citizen Media Law Project says that the new Illinois law making it illegal for convicted six offenders to use social networking websites is probably unconstitutional and certainly unenforceable. -DB
Citizen Media Law Project
Commentary
August 20, 2009
By Andrew Moshirnia
The memory of pain can be one of the best painkillers. Anyone who has had the misfortune [...]

Security concerns may shut down military social networks for military personnel

Just as the U.S. military is beginning to embrace Twitter and Facebook, it may have to close these sites down to keep out hackers and cybercrooks. -DB
Wired
July 30, 2009
By Noah Shachtman
The U.S. military is strongly considering a near-total ban on Twitter, Facebook, and all other social networking sites throughout the Department of Defense, multiple sources within [...]