It is a chronically repeated theme—and therefore a widely held misconception—that the DMCA is solely a mechanism for rights holders to unilaterally and unequivocally remove content from the Web “without due process.” In fact, this belief is so deeply ingrained that just citing the acronym by some journalists and bloggers is sufficient to denote censorship for many readers. We encounter ...
About two weeks ago, some disgruntled friends shared a story about Urban Outfitters apparently marketing a faded and blood-stained-looking Kent State college sweatshirt. Then, in a follow-up story reported by Jordan Sargent in Gawker, an email sent by the retailer’s CEO Dick Haynes explains that the sweatshirt shown in their marketing materials was not representative of a new, purposely designed ...
In response to the tragedy in Newtown, CT the idea was raised by news commentators and in the blogosphere that the names of people who commit heinous crimes should be de-publicized in order to deny them even a posthumous fame we believe to be a constituent of their twisted motives. It is hard to imagine, though, that even if we ...
One of the things I truly love about the Internet’s influence on human psychology is that there seems to be something about the act of typing publicly in real-time that makes so many of us into armchair experts on just about any subject we choose. This is particularly striking when it comes to complex legal matters, and if you are ...
During the squabble over SOPA and PIPA, one of the underlying (and possibly just lying) PR bullets coming out of Silicon Valley was that the actions called for in the bills would “break the Internet.” And when that wasn’t the claim, the most consistent complaint was that the bills would chill free speech. But in the wake of violent protests ...
