Amnesty International USA has supported intellectual freedom for 52 years.
“Of special recognition is Amnesty International’s approach to Banned Books Week, said Immroth Award Chair Charles Kratz. Rather than focusing on book censorship, per se, Amnesty International’s approach focused on the logical consequences that would follow when governments are allowed to censor. Beyond the removal or burning of books comes the removal and physical harm to authors, journalists and others.
This year’s award will be presented at the 40th anniversary celebration of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table. In celebrating the 40th anniversary, IFRT will also celebrate our first chair of the Round Table, John Phillip Immroth (1973–1974). Come join the IFRT from 7:30 p.m. – 10 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2013 at the magnificent Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St. at Michigan Ave., Chicago) for the celebration. Refreshments, including signature cocktails, will be served.
The John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award honors intellectual freedom fighters in and outside the library profession who have demonstrated remarkable personal courage in resisting censorship. ...
Women who blew the whistle on abuses and torture at a labor camp in northeastern China have been targeted by police as the authorities probe reports of abuses of women inmates, many of them pregnant.
Li Wenjuan, who has spent time inside the Masanjia Women's Re-eduction Through Labor facility in Liaoning province, said more than 10 police officers had bashed down her door and tried to take her away following a recent expose by the magazine Lens of alleged torture and abuse at the camp.
She said the police action came after they continued to bang on the door from Friday evening right until 3.00 a.m. on Saturday.
"At around 8.00 p.m. on Friday, they came banging on my door, and I asked them which department they were from, and what they were doing," Li said in an interview on Monday. "They said they were police officers, and they'd come to detain Li Wenjuan."
Then, around three hours after the knocking stopped, they made a concerted attempt to force their way into her apartment.
"This time, they weren't just knocking on the door, they were trying to break it down," Li said.
Sometimes an illustration of "unlearning liberty" comes in the form of an open-and-shut case, a clear violation of the First Amendment that is quickly followed by victory in the court of public opinion or justice in a court of law. Other times, students and professors simply bear witness to the slow death of what could have been a significant forum for information and opinions.
Jeff Pearlman, columnist for Sports Illustrated and author of two New York Times best-sellers writes in his blog about his all-too-brief experience as the faculty advisor to The Touchstone, Manhattanville College's student newspaper. Starting in the fall of 2011, Pearlman shared his passion for journalism with students at the Purchase, NY school. He turned an almost-dead publication into a biweekly labor of love that earned its editors internships with The Rachel Maddow Show and Sports Illustrated.
The next fall, Pearlman learned he had been replaced as the newspaper's advisor—a position for which he had been volunteering. The new advisor had experience with public relations, and the paper would from that point forward promote the "right" image of the school. Pearlman protested, but explains that his concerns fell upon deaf ears:
Today, thirty-four civil liberties organizations sent a joint letter to Congressional Representatives urging them to continue to oppose the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). CISPA is a misguided "cybersecurity" bill that would provide a gaping new exception to privacy law. The House of Representatives is likely to vote on it on Wednesday or Thursday of this week. This means that there's little time remaining to speak out against this bill.
Earlier this year, many of our organizations wrote to state our opposition to H.R. 624, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2013 (CISPA). We write today to express our continued opposition to this bill following its markup by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Although some amendments were adopted in markup to improve the bill’s privacy safeguards, these amendments were woefully inadequate to cure the civil liberties threats posed by this bill. In ...
Tomorrow, FIRE Director of Legal and Public Advocacy Will Creeley travels to the University of Maryland (UMD) at College Park to speak about student rights on campus.
The speech will begin at 3:30 p.m. in LeFrak Hall, room 2205. The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the UMD Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the UMD chapters of Students For Liberty, the College Democrats, the College Republicans, and Young Americans for Liberty.
Creeley will examine the state of the law on freedom of speech on today's college campuses, discussing the decades of legal precedent upholding First Amendment protections on college campuses, common restrictions on student and faculty speech, and shocking instances of censorship on campus. Creeley will also answer questions about how students can best protect their rights and the limited exceptions to freedom of expression.
UMD is currently a "yellow light" school, according to FIRE's Spotlight rating system. This means that UMD has some policies on its books that could restrict a significant amount of protected expression. Creeley will discuss the changes that are necessary to make UMD a "green light" school and how those changes would encourage an environment conducive ...
In case you missed it, last week FIRE released a new video documenting the case of Isaac Rosenbloom, a student at Hinds Community College in Mississippi who was effectively expelled in 2010 for complaining to a fellow student after his Oral Communications class that a grade was "going to fuck up [his] entire GPA." In the five days since our video was released, it has drawn 27,000 viewers and coverage on the popular group blog Boing Boing. If you haven't watched the video yet, head over to Boing Boing, where you can watch the video and join in the active conversation about Rosenbloom's case, which now has nearly 200 comments.
Since January 2001, EFF has defended digital rights from a Spartan converted warehouse in the Mission District of San Francisco. It was a red-brick bunker, brimming with memories and cardboard boxes of legal briefs, where a former AT&T technician once walked in off the street with documents revealing secret government eavesdropping operations. With ratty couches and walls covered in press clippings and tongue-in-cheek hacker propaganda, it's where we've made our stand, working sometimes from dawn until long after closing time at our favorite neighborhood bars.
Today, we start a new chapter in a new building in a new neighborhood. You might be wondering, why would EFF leave what Forbes described as America's second greatest hipster 'hood, with all its cultural charm and incredible take-out? To explain, let us invite you back in time to our last weekly staff meeting.
Be prepared to scroll.
These are the lucky people, or at least the smart ones who staked out their seats early:
The space formerly known as the "Tech Grotto."
Global Policy Analyst Maira Sutton is smiling because at least she scored a chair.
There isn't a fish-eye lens in the world that can capture the entire scene.
The Annville-Cleona, Pensylvania, school board, for removing the picture book The Dirty Cowboy from an elementary school library based on one parent’s contention that it was inappropriate for children.
The Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education, for a policy barring students from wearing clothing promoting any non-Oklahoma sports teams. The policy was supposedly designed to stymie gang activity, but instead snared 5-year-old kindergartner and avid University of Michigan fan Cooper Barton.
The North Carolina General Assembly, for an unclear amendment to an existing anti-bullying law which could make students who criticize teachers online subject to fines or imprisonment.
The Idaho State Liquor Division, for refusing to allow the sale of Five Wives Vodka in the state on the grounds that it might offend Mormons ...
More than 400 ethnic refugees in Burma’s northern Shan state are reluctant to leave the temporary camp where they have stayed for nearly two weeks for fear of clashes between rebels and government troops that broke out in late March, a relief worker said Friday.
The refugees also fear that they would be forced to work for government soldiers or the ethnic Shan militia.
Sai Kham Late, director of the refugee camp in Tangyan township’s Lwese village told RFA’s Burmese Service that 432 people from eight villages were staying at the camp to avoid what is believed to be the first major clashes since the government signed a ceasefire agreement in January 2012 with Shan State Army North (SSA-N).
The refugees had fled their homes after the Burmese military ordered the SSA-N out of the west bank of the Salween River near the construction of a Chinese-backed megadam project, leading to intensified fighting.
The SSA-N had been allowed to operate in the area under the ceasefire agreement.
“They want to go back, but they fear that there will be more fighting after they return home,” Sai Kham Late said.
“This season is farming season, so they want to raise crops. ...
Last week, I told you about the kerfuffle happening at the University of Rochester, where a professor, Steven Landsburg, has come under fire for hypothetical situations involving rape that he presented in a personal blog post. I praised university administrators for resisting the all-too-common urge to censor or punish the professor's controversial expression, particularly since it has received such negative attention from the public.
However, it seems the drama isn't over. According to The Huffington Post, more than 30 students protested outside Professor Landsburg's class on Monday. While FIRE certainly recognizes the students' right to protest ideas that they don't agree with and even to demand that Landsburg be sanctioned, we are concerned by the students' demands. From The Huffington Post:
"All we're asking is the university take disciplinary action of some form," Daniel Nelson, a UR graduate student who launched the petition, told YNN. "We're even thinking a written warning, something official to send the message to the university community that the university won't tolerate justifications of rape of any kind."
Let's set aside for the moment that the university has already released a statement disassociating itself from the content of Landsburg's personal blog. (This ...
Wednesday, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence marked up the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), the misguided “cybersecurity” bill that would create a gaping exception to existing privacy law while doing little to address palpable and pressing online security issues. The markup was held entirely behind closed doors—even though the issues being considered will have serious effects on the liberty of Internet users—and was passed out of the committee.
This means the bill can go to the floor and be voted on at anytime. Please tell your Representative now to vote no on CISPA. We probably have only a few days left before the floor vote.
Here’s our analysis of the amendments and why they don’t go nearly far enough in fixing the serious problems with the bill.
Amendments That Helped—Barely.
The amendments that passed only chipped away at the edges of CISPA, without addressing the core civil liberties concerns. Here’s an overview of some of the most important changes in the bill:
Using Information for "National Security" Purposes
This amendment (PDF) would narrow how information can be used by the government after it is shared by companies. Before, the government could use information collected under CISPA ...
We have great news on the last day of our week-of-action aimed at Congress over the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the draconian computer hacking law. Huffington Post is reporting that House Republicans “put the brakes" on an awful expansion to the CFAA that threatened Internet rights. Even better, Huffington Post is crediting pressure from “Internet activists” for this “major victory.”
A House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the law, chaired by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), had planned to vote on a reform of the bill next week as part of a House Republican legislative flurry they dubbed "Cyber Week," according to both Republican and Democratic aides on the panel. However, the bill was pulled back because of pressure from the Internet community.
All week, EFF and a host of other groups have been engaged in a week-of-action aimed at stopping this bill in its tracks. We started the week with a letter signed by EFF and organizations from across the political spectrum, but it’s you, the Internet users, who have emailed, tweeted, and called Congress to make sure your voices have been heard.
On March 26, Utah became the fifth state—joining Delaware, California, Michigan, and New Jersey—to adopt an Internet privacy bill (sometimes referred to as a password protection act) prohibiting colleges and universities from demanding access to students' or prospective students' private email or social media accounts.
The bill, H.B. 100, signed by Governor Gary Herbert, reads in relevant part:
A postsecondary institution may not do any of the following:
(1) request a student or prospective student to disclose a username and password, or a password that allows access to the student's or prospective student's personal Internet account; or
(2) expel, discipline, fail to admit, or otherwise penalize a student or prospective student for failure to disclose information specified in Subsection (1).
[...]
(1) A person aggrieved by a violation of this chapter may bring a civil cause of action against a postsecondary institution in a court of competent jurisdiction.
(2) In an action brought under Subsection (1), if the court finds a violation of this chapter, the court shall award the aggrieved person not more than $500.
The new Utah law also has sections protecting employees and prospective employees ...
If ever a major public university needed campus activism to prod along improvement of its policies regulating student speech, Florida State University does. Despite being legally bound by the First Amendment as a public institution of higher education, FSU has a whopping 11 speech codes, including two "red light" policies and nine "yellow light" policies.
One of these yellow light speech codes is a free speech zone policy (PDF) limiting student speech and expressive activity to three areas on campus. On a large public campus with a sizeable student body, this is simply insufficient. These types of policies are particularly harmful because they restrict and discourage spontaneous expressive activity such as rallies, demonstrations, and even leafleting.
Thankfully, some students at FSU have taken it upon themselves to advocate for greater free speech protections and to attempt to gain the ear of the university administration. Among these students are David Brunal, a member of the FSU College Libertarians, and Michael Sampson, a member of the civil rights student group Dream Defenders, who shared their thoughts with the campus newspaper FSView & Florida Flambeau:
"The number of open platform areas is shrinking and I think the University recognizes the need ...
The best gift book in the galaxy is now personalized for you! When you donate $25 to CBLDF by April 25, Jeffrey Brown will PERSONALIZE a copy of Vader’s Little Princess to you or the person of your choice! Get yours!
In this irresistibly funny follow-up to the breakout bestseller Darth Vader and Son, Vader – Sith Lord and leader of the Galactic Empire – now faces the trials, joys, and mood swings of raising his rebellious teenage daughter, Princess Leia. Smart and sweetly funny illustrations by artist Jeffrey Brown give classic Star Wars moments a twist by bringing these two galactic adversaries together under one roof. From teaching Leia how to fly a TIE fighter, to regulating the time she spends talking with friends via R2-D2′s hologram, to making sure Leia doesn’t leave the house wearing only a metal bra and slinky skirt, Vader’s parenting skills are put hilariously to the test.
Now you, the CBLDF Donor, have a chance to get a copy of VADER’S LITTLE PRINCESS personalized by artist and author Jeffrey Brown himself!
Here’s How The Personalization Works:
When you place your order with the CBLDF for this premium, you can have the book personalized ...
If there's something that drives us crazy, it's when patents get in the way of innovation. Unfortunately, we often don't find out about the most dangerous patents until it's too late—once they've been used to assert infringement. That's why we were encouraged by the new provision of the patent law that allows third parties to easily challenge patent applications while those applications are still pending.
But, here's the rub: it's hard to identify those dangerous applications. And, once you do, it's even harder to find the right information to challenge those applications during the window that the law allows. So we partnered with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Ask Patents and—most importantly—you.
As of today, we've now challenged six pending patent applications that you helped us identify as applications that, if granted, would particularly threaten the growing field of 3D printing technology. Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic hand delivered the first two submissions to the Patent Office earlier this year, and we've since sent in four more.
On Saturday, April 20, Salt Lake City will play host to a community festival for all things nerdy, from science to science fiction during SLC Nerd! Amidst music, gaming, cosplay, and more, SLC Nerd will hold the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Charity auction, featuring signed comics courtesy of Night Flight Comics!
The all-day event takes place at The Complex in downtown Salt Lake City (536 West 100 South). For only $10, attendees will enjoy live music, gaming, a costume contest, panels, and presentations on everything from comic books to raising geeky children. The CBLDF Charity Auction is a silent auction featuring signed books and other items gathered by the amazing folks at Night Flight Comics during store signings.
Here’s just a taste of some of the signed books up for auction:
Many thanks to the kind folks at Night Flight Comics for their work on behalf of the Fund! You can view more auction items here. For more information on SLC Nerd, visit the website.
Join CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16, at the North York Central Library in Toronto (5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario M2N 5N9) for Keep Toronto Reading: Graphically Speaking — Dirty Comics, a spirited discussion and Q&A about comics censorship.
Once again, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival is proud to partner with the Toronto Public Library on Keep Toronto Reading to present lively and informative graphic novel programming.
This year’s program will feature Charles Brownstein, head of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, to discusses censorship in comics. His presentation will be Followed by a Q&A moderated by Christopher Butcher; manager, The Beguiling, and festival director of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.
Charles Brownstein has served as the executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund since 2002. During his years at the helm of the organization, the CBLDF has successfully managed several First Amendment cases, including a notable win in Georgia v. Gordon Lee. Brownstein has also written extensively about comics for more than fifteen years for a variety of publications including “The Comics Journal”, “Publisher’s Weekly”, and “Wizard”. His books “Eisner/Miller” and “The Oddly Compelling Art ...
In the last three months alone, the House has released three different cybersecurity bills and has held over seven hearings on the issue. In addition, the House Judiciary Committee floated changes to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)—the draconian anti-hacking statute that came to public prominence after the death of activist and Internet pioneer Aaron Swartz. Politicians tout this legislation as necessary to protect against foreign threats every single time they introduce a bill with “cyber” somewhere in the text. And it comes as no surprise that everyhearing has opened up with a recap of computer security attacks faced by the US from China, Iran, and other foreign countries.
For many politicians "cybersecurity" is also synonymous with increasing penalties for computer crimes. The CFAA proposal floated last week expands the already broad scope of the CFAA, increases the prison time for violations, and criminalizes new actions. Politicians from both parties believe—despite research saying otherwise—that increasing penalties will serve as a deterrent to foreign crimes. Just last year, President Obama, Senator Leahy, and House Republicans all proposed expanding the reach of the CFAA by increasing its penalties. With your help these attempts were defeated when we killed the cybersecurity ...
Who would have thought a major oil corporation would have such thin skin?
In the wake of a major pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, Exxon has launched a dirty tricks campaign to prevent Little Rock television stations from running a political ad titled, “Exxon Hates Your Children.” The ad, which can be viewed at exxonhatesyourchildren.com, makes an obviously over-the-top assertion about the company’s views about children, in order to call attention to the creators' serious concerns about the company’s policies. To try to keep it off the air, Exxon is circulating a memo to television stations claiming that the commercial is “defamatory toward each of ExxonMobil’s 80,000 employees and their families.” Exxon goes on to describe good things the company does for children and the environment.
The ads, which were paid for through crowdfunding, were scheduled to run on local ABC, NBC, and Fox stations this week, but were taken off the schedule when the stations got the memo. In February, Exxon pulled the same stunt when Comcast was set to air the ad during the president's State of the Union address.
CBLDF is back from the first round of spring conventions, and we’re proud to bring our supporters some spectacular signed comics from the creators who appeared at our tables to aid our efforts protecting the freedom to read! Check out amazing offerings from Matt Wagner, Brian Wood, Bob Fingerman, Joe Keatinge, and Sam Humphries, kicking off the first round of our new spring donation rewards. These items are all signed, and all proceeds benefit CBLDF!
Feinstein said that video games play, “a very negative role for young people, and the industry ought to take note of that”
According to ANN and the Associated Press, Feinstein implied that Congressional action would be likely if the industry did not take steps to self-regulate.
“If Sandy Hook doesn’t do it, if the knowledge of these video games this young man played doesn’t, then maybe we have to proceed, but that is in the future.”
In fact, some legislation is already being attempted, such as House Resolution 287, which would make age restrictions suggested by the ESRB ratings system legally binding for retailers.
Not all members of Congress are so intent on finding an obvious scapegoat. Feinstein’s fellow Californian, Nancy Pelosi, has spoken out against these assumptions, pointing to the numerous pre-existing studies that deny ...
In the last edition of the Obscenity Case Files series, we discussed the Pope v. Illinois decision and how it impacted the Miller Test for identifying obscene material, which is not protected by the First Amendment. In this edition, we’ll take a look at Jacobellis v. Ohio, a decision that pre-dates Miller v. California, to shed some light on the infamous “I know it when I see it” language.
Knowing It When You See It
In his concurring opinion in the 1964 Jacobellis v. Ohio case, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart delivered what has become the most well-known line related to the detection of “hard-core” pornography: the infamous “I know it when I see it.” statement.
“I have reached the conclusion . . . that under the First and Fourteenth Amendments criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography.I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
We can help with that! NCAC is concerned with censorship in all its forms, even those instances where private enterprises are within their legal rights to marginalize or ban content based on a point of view.
Users engage with the Internet as a democratizing public square but, in reality, most of the online channels we rely on are controlled by private enterprises who must reconcile their own usually benign intentions with user demands, fiduciary interests, governmental enforcement agencies and, on top of all of that, partner companies who are dealing with a similar tangle of responsibilities.
So in the case of Saga #12, it’s tough to know at this point whether the incident was purely a matter of miscommunication, but NCAC’s “iCensor” series (Part 1, Part 2) in Censorship News offers a background on how online payment processors, social networks and streaming media services have at times put a chill on free expression.
The most important thing about yesterday is that fans and creators made their support for diverse and mature themes in digitally distributed comics resoundingly clear on Twitter and elsewhere. No one knows how the private/public sphere of the Internet will shake out, but ...
UPDATE 2013-04-12: Apparently as a result of this blog post, social media attention, and questions from the Australian Greens to the Australian Federal Attorney General's Department, the block has been lifted. But there has not yet been any explanation of why these 1,200 sites were blocked in the first place.
EFF has long opposed Australia's Internet censorship schemes, warning that even the voluntary filtering that has been implemented by Australia's largest ISPs, Telstra and Optus, lacks transparency and accountability, and could lead to collateral damage—accidental censorship of websites that are not violating the law in any way. A dramatic example of such collateral damage appears to be occuring at the moment.
EFF was recently contacted by the organisers of a community group called the Melbourne Free University (MFU) because their site appears to have been blocked or censored by Australian network operators, possibly at the request of the Australian government. Users from some (but not all) Australian ISPs have been unable to reach the Melbourne Free University site since Thursday the 4th of April. An employee of one of the affected ISPs told MFU by email that the site was blocked as a result of an order ...
On April 3, the Texas A&M University Student Senate approved a measure that would allow students to choose not to fund specific student groups. Specifically, the bill allowed "students who object, for religious and moral purposes, to the use of their student fees and tuition to fund various services to opt out of paying an amount equal to their share of the service funding from their fee and tuition money." The bill was originally titled the "GLBT Funding Opt-Out Bill" because its initial version only provided a choice not to fund the school's GLBT Resource Center. That language was cut after criticism that the bill was discriminatory on the basis of viewpoint. However, recognizing that the revised bill was still problematic, Student Body President John Claybrook vetoed it on April 4.
Supporters of the bill argued that students should not be required to fund organizations to which they object on religious grounds. But there are several reasons why this particular bill is not the appropriate answer to that concern.
First, the bill's origin as a measure that specifically targeted the GLBT Center presented a clear viewpoint neutrality problem. Allowing students to choose to avoid ...
To date, thousands of people have sent messages to Congress demanding reform of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act through EFF alone, not counting the ones sent through our friends at Demand Progress and elsewhere. But the citizens of the Internet will need to shout even louder if we’re going to drown out the corporate interests that have already dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars to influence lawmakers to change the CFAA for the worst.
Take, for example, the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), which describes itself as “the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry.” The group’s board of directors is made up of the captains of the computing industry, including executives from Oracle, Adobe, IBM, Red Hat and Intuit, each of which pay up to $125,000 a year in dues to the SIIA. In 2012 alone, the SIIA dropped a whopping $880,000 to lobby Congress and federal agencies on digital issues.
In August 2012, before Aaron Swartz’s death, SIAA provided the federal government’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator with 19 pages of formal comments on the national policy on cyber affairs. One section is titled, “Preserving and Improving the Computer Fraud and Abuse ...
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Charlottesville, Virginia dedicated to protecting free speech, has just announced its 2013 "Jefferson Muzzle" award winners. Each year, the Muzzles highlight especially egregious examples of government censorship.
In 2008, for example, a Muzzle was awarded to Valdosta State University’s then-President, Ronald Zaccari, for retaliating against student Hayden Barnes for his protected speech. Torch readers may remember that FIRE helped Barnes throughout the battle that eventually ended with a jury finding Zaccari personally liable for violating Barnes' due process rights.
This year's winners include the North Carolina General Assembly, for expanding a state anti-bullying statute to prohibit a range of speech about teachers, including criticisms of teachers that are rooted in facts. As the TJ Center points out, "the law discourages respect for free speech by teaching young people that government officials are above criticism." This is exactly the kind of unlearning liberty that FIRE works to prevent in the higher education context.
Read the full list of winners on the TJ Center’s website!
In 2010, Isaac Rosenbloom complained to a fellow student after his Oral Communications class that a grade he received on an assignment was "going to fuck up [his] entire GPA." Rosenbloom's professor at Hinds Community College in Mississippi overheard the comment, threatened him with "detention" (which Hinds, like most colleges, did not have), and submitted a disciplinary complaint to the school. Rosenbloom—a husband and father of two children—was found guilty of "flagrant disrespect" and involuntarily withdrawn from the class, causing him to lose his financial aid eligibility and threatening his paramedic training. With FIRE's help, Rosenbloom was able to obtain assistance from attorneys Robert B. McDuff and Sibyl Byrd, who helped secure a settlement in his favor.
"If it wasn't for FIRE," says Rosenbloom in our latest video, "I wouldn't have a career. I would be delivering pizzas instead of saving lives."
As recounted in today's press release, the Johns Hopkins University student government's judiciary committee has unanimously reversed the decision of the university's student senate to deny recognition to the prospective student group Voice for Life (VFL) on the basis of the group's expression. FIRE has previously covered this case on The Torch, and wrote to the Student Government Association (SGA) Judiciary Committee on Monday urging this outcome in advance of VFL's Tuesday afternoon hearing.
As we summarized in the letter (links below have been added), the SGA denied VFL recognition based on two improper factors related to VFL's expression:
The SGA denied VFL re-recognition, however, based on its pro-life message and activities, specifically because 1) the club's website contained a link to the website of an outside organization known for displaying large, graphic abortion-related images, and 2) the group's proposed "sidewalk counseling" allegedly conflicted with Johns Hopkins' policies on harassment. The SGA has been explicit about its viewpoint-based reasons for rejecting VFL. The minutes from the March 12 meeting at which VFL was denied recognition refer to concerns about "making people feel uncomfortable," and later emails from unidentified SGA officials released by the national organization Students for Life ...
Chicago Public Schools may think their letter regarding the attempted ban of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis provides an adequate defense for their actions, but today’s letter from the Kids Right to Read Project unquestionably eviscerates CPS’s argument. CBLDF is a sponsor of KRRP and a signatory in this latest volley protesting the removal of the book.
The entirety of the letter is embedded below. NCAC sent the following press release regarding this latest move to protect Persepolis:
NCAC To Chicago Officials: Stop Stonewalling on Constitutionally Suspect PERSEPOLIS Removal
PERSEPOLIS, oncefeatured in CPS-endorsed “Speak Truth to Power” Human Rights Curriculum, now facing domestic censorship
NEW YORK — The Chicago Public Schools may be hoping their sudden removal of Marjane Satrapi’s PERSEPOLIS (Pantheon) last month will be soon forgotten, but the Kids’ Right to Read Project, an initiative of the National Coalition Against Censorship, continues to seek answers. In a response letter sent to CPS counsel, administrators, board members, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, NCAC further questioned the district on its motives and procedures, or lack thereof, surrounding the removal.
After a day of controversy about Saga #12 being banned in the Apple iOS environment, word comes from comiXology CEO David Steinberger that the issue is now available and that Apple did not in fact ban the comic, but that comiXology did not make the issue available due to a misunderstanding of Apple’s policies.
Steinberger writes:
To our customers -
In the last 24 hours there has been a lot of chatter about Apple banning Saga #12 from our Comics App on the Apple App Store due to depictions of gay sex. This is simply not true, and we’d like to clarify.
As a partner of Apple, we have an obligation to respect its policies for apps and the books offered in apps. Based on our understanding of those policies, we believed that Saga #12 could not be made available in our app, and so we did not release it today.
We did not interpret the content in question as involving any particular sexual orientation, and frankly that would have been a completely irrelevant consideration under any circumstance.
Given this, it should be clear that Apple did not reject Saga #12.
After hearing from Apple this morning, we can say ...
Once again, European attitudes towards nudity and sex have clashed with an American business behemoth. Last time, it was Facebook and Paris’ Jeu de Paume museum; this time, it’s Apple and a French distributor of e-comics.
Izneo is a digital platform for comics from several French and Belgian publishers. In addition to hosting comics on its own website, Izneo also offers apps for Android, Windows, and Apple’s iOS. But last week, an anonymous source from Izneo told ebook news site IDBOOX that someone from Apple contacted Izneo to say that they had 30 hours to remove undefined objectionable material from the app or it would be banned from the AppStore. Izneo asked for clarification as to which of its more than 4,000 comics posed a problem, but Apple refused to elaborate. Seeing little alternative, Izneo removed from the app every single comic that included “a breast, provocative cleavage, a curve, or a suggestive gesture.” This was likely overkill, but seeing as Apple refused to define what it considered objectionable, Izneo decided to operate on the assumption of maximum prudishness. In the end, only about 1,200 of the original 4,000 comics remained. Since the original purge, Izneo has begun to test ...
Yesterday, students and faculty gathered on the campus of Florida Atlantic University (FAU) to demonstrate in support of academic freedom and Professor Deandre Poole, who has been placed on a highly suspect "administrative leave" after conducting an in-class exercise where he asked students to write "Jesus" on a piece of paper and then step on the paper. According to an email received by FIRE, a major purpose of the demonstration, which was organized by a group calling itself "Academic Freedom at FAU," was to convey the message that for many students and faculty on campus, the "FAU Administration does not speak for us!"
There are many different angles to this complicated case, in which the FAU administration seems to have taken hasty and ill-advised actions against both a student and a professor out of a desire to avoid public opprobrium. But whatever your views on the student's and the professor's actions, it is nice to see someone on campus acknowledging that the administration has made a total hash of the controversy, and doing so in a way that honors the tradition of free speech and open debate on campus.
Yesterday, word quickly spread about Apple banning the sale of Saga #12 on iOS apps such as comiXology because of two small depictions of gay sexual content within the context of a larger sequence of images. The images in question appear on the faceplate of the character Prince Robot IV, who possesses a television monitor for a head, while he lies wounded on a battleground. The two images are reproduced below, and both feature NSFW content.
As I wrote yesterday in our story covering Apple’s ban, it is within Apple’s rights as a private company to refuse to carry the comic. The same is true of any brick and mortar retailer who refuses to carry the book — it’s their business prerogative to determine what they choose to offer.
That said, it’s important to note that while the images are sexually explicit, they and the issue that contains them are protected by the First Amendment. Retailers have a right to sell Saga #12, readers have a right to possess it, and the creators and publisher had the right to create it.
For Saga #12 to be unprotected by the First Amendment, it would need to be found legally obscene ...
In the wake of social justice activist Aaron Swartz's tragic death, EFF and Internet users around the country are in the middle of a week-of-action, asking Congress to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the federal anti-hacking law. The CFAA has many problems and users can contact their representative to demand reform. In this two-part series, we'll explore the specific problems with federal sentencing under the CFAA. Part 1 explains why maximums matter.
Much of the recent discussion about the problems with the CFAA's tough penalty scheme has revolved around its draconian maximum punishments. While maximums play an important role in criminal sentencing, the actual sentence a defendant will receive depends mostly on the sentencing range recommended in the United States Sentencing Guidelines ("USSG"). The Guidelines are written and updated by the United States Sentencing Commission ("USSC"), an independent agency of the judicial branch created by Congress in 1984, to help judges determine where in the spectrum from no jail time to the maximum a sentence should fall. Once binding on sentencing courts, in 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that were only a recommendation the court was free to disregard. Nonetheless, the vast majority of federal ...
Earlier today word spread that Apple is refusing to offer the most recent issue of SAGA by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples within iOS Apps. Vaughan issued the following statement regarding the ban:
As has hopefully been clear from the first page of our first issue, SAGA is a series for the proverbial “mature reader.” Unfortunately, because of two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex, Apple is banning tomorrow’s SAGA #12 from being sold through any iOS apps. This is a drag, especially because our book has featured what I would consider much more graphic imagery in the past, but there you go. Fiona and I could always edit the images in question, but everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not (just) to shock or titillate, so we’re not changing shit.
Apologies to everyone who reads our series on iPads or iPhones, but here are your alternatives for Wednesday:
1) Head over to you friendly neighborhood comics shop and pick up a physical copy of our issue that you can have and hold forever.
2) While you’re at it, don’t forget to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which helps protect retailers ...
“Ethics Matters: Ethical Decision-Making for Librarians and Information Professionals” will provide attendees with practical tools for resolving the daily ethical issues librarians face. Dr. Nancy Zimmerman will lead this highly interactive event that will challenge librarians to develop ethical awareness, identify the global common ground of values underlying ethics, analyze ethical issues using real-life dilemmas and resolve dilemmas using practical resolution principles.
This preconference will take place from 8:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on Friday, June 28, 2013. Continental breakfast, coffee and other refreshments will be served. Advance registration is required. Tickets cost $80 and are available via ALA’s Annual Conference registration system. Tickets may be purchased as part of Annual Conference registration or separately (note: you do not have to register for the entire Annual Conference to attend). The Event Code for “Ethics Matters” is OIF1.
“Ethics Matters” will introduce attendees to the Ethical Fitness® process, a conceptual framework for decision-making developed by the Institute for Global Ethics (IGE). Founded in 1990 by the late Dr. Rushworth Kidder, IGE is an independent, nonsectarian, nonpartisan, ...
Newark's The Star-Ledger is really shining today by running two op-eds on student rights. The first piece, covered earlier today on The Torchby Will, was my op-ed explaining why Senator Frank Lautenberg's and Congressman Rush Holt's calls for federal higher-ed anti-bullying legislation in the wake of the Rutgers University basketball scandal were misplaced.
The second piece, by the Student Press Law Center's Executive Director Frank LoMonte, is titled "Learning From Rutgers' Scandal and Protecting Student Whistleblowers," and also tackles the issue of legislative fixes in light of the controversy. LoMonte highlights two ways in which new laws could be adopted to help stop similar abuses much more quickly in the future (and neither of them are anti-bullying laws!).
First, LoMonte urges state legislatures to pass whistleblower protections for students, so they can shed light on issues of public concern (like student abuse) without fear of reprisal. He writes:
California and Oregon have comprehensive anti-retaliation statutes that assure students they can speak out about the inadequacies of their schools and colleges without reprisal. Every state should enact similar common-sense safeguards, so that it doesn't take a fired employee's leaked video to fix the next Mike Rice ...
The CFAA broadly criminalizes accessing a computer without or in excess of "authorization"— a vague term that is followed up by extremely harsh penalties. The law threatens technologists, developers, researchers, and others who tinker with software, conduct security research, or engage in many other kinds of innovation. Companies have used the CFAA to seek criminal charges against employees for violating employee contracts. In fact, the Justice Department has argued that anyone who violates a term of service could be committing a crime that can potentially carry many years of prison time.
After the tragic death of Aaron, who was aggressively prosecuted under the law, EFF and a number of organizations put together some proposed fixes to the CFAA that would bring a measure of sanity to computer crime law. But meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee has floated a backwards proposal that would actually make the law worse.
EFF Fights for Cell Phone Privacy in Washington State
San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged the Washington State Supreme Court Monday to recognize that text messages are "the 21st Century phone call" and require that law enforcement officers obtain a warrant before reading texts on someone's phone.
"Text messages are a ubiquitous form of communication, and their context can be as private as any telephone conversation," said EFF Staff Attorney Hanni Fakhoury. "We use texts to talk to our wives and husbands, our kids, our co-workers, and more. Police should not be able to sift through these personal exchanges on a whim – they must show probable cause and get a warrant before accessing this information."
In this case, police seized a cell phone during a drug investigation and monitored incoming messages. Officers responded to several texts, setting up meetings that resulted in two arrests, without first getting a warrant. Prosecutors have argued that no warrant was required because there should be no expectation of privacy in text messages, as anyone can pick up someone else's phone and read what's stored there. But in two related amicus briefs filed Monday, EFF argues that searching the phone for ...
Khury Petersen-Smith of SocialistWorker.org caught up with Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi to talk about the shady restrictions being placed on the teaching of her book in Chicago. Again, Satrapi showed her insight and savvy and aptly expressed the utter confusion and dismay we are all feeling:
What is so horrible in my book that you need guidance? Am I inviting people to go find a shotgun and kill each other? Am I teaching the kids to hate the other ones? Am I teaching them to be violent?
No. What I’m telling them is that the world can be like that, but in the middle of this bad world, we can always choose another way. We can always not hate. I think this is good for kids to learn, and the earlier they learn these things, the better. So this is extremely shocking.
You imagine it must take a lot for Satrapi to be shocked by the forces of government, even its petty iterations like school boards and administrators, considering everything she has witnessed.
The interview’s final question asks what she would like to say to students, teachers and administrators. Her response is fantastic:
FIRE Legislative & Policy Director Joe Cohn takes to the pages of Newark's TheStar-Ledger this morning to rebut calls from New Jersey elected officials to pass new federal anti-bullying legislation in the wake of the Rutgers basketball scandal. Pointing out that former basketball coach Mike Rice's behavior was already prohibited by Rutgers policy and existing laws, Joe argues that broad federal anti-bullying legislation would only serve to threaten protected speech on campus.
Joe writes:
People nationwide are understandably shocked by Rice's behavior, and criticism of Rutgers' handling of the situation rightfully continues. However, the controversy has also led to renewed calls from Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.) for federal legislation addressing "bullying" — such as the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act, recently reintroduced in Congress.
[...]
[T]his kind of misconduct is already prohibited by law. We don't need new legislation to prevent coaches from hitting players. Could anyone watching the video of Rice berating and shoving his players possibly have doubted that Rutgers had the authority to fire him? Rice's conduct violated both Rutgers' policy against workplace violence and clauses in his contract.
Criminal statutes outlaw physical assault, and federal ...
Ever since reintroducing CISPA, the so-called "cybersecurity bill," its supporters promote the bill with craftily worded or just plain misleading claims. Such claims have been lobbed over and over again in op-eds, at hearings, and in press materials. One "fact sheet" by Rep. Rogers and Ruppersberger titled "Myth v. Fact" is so dubious that we felt we had to comment. To stop this type of misinformation—and to stop CISPA—we urge you to tell your members of Congress to stand up for privacy.
Here are some of the statements supporters of CISPA are pushing and why they're false:
Supporters of CISPA say, "There are no broad definitions"
Supporters are keen to note that the bill doesn't have broad definitions. In the "Myth v. Fact" sheet, the authors of CISPA specifically point to the definition of "cyber threat information." Cyber threat information is information about an online threat that companies can share with each other and with any government agency—including the NSA. In hearings, experts have said that they don't need to share personally identifiable information to combat threats. But the definition in the bill allows for any information related to a perceived threat ...
In the article, Andrew argues that when student and faculty rights are endangered as a result of third-party action—for example, the mandates announced in the April 4, 2011, "Dear Colleague" letter issued by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights—new means of redress should be explored beyond traditional contract law. Andrew writes:
This Article makes three assertions. First, while courts have increasingly looked to contract law to vindicate the rights of students against universities and colleges, traditional contract law sometimes provides inadequate protections in situations where rights are adversely affected by third-party action. Second, the rise of administrative oversight by the Department of Education and by other third party governmental actors limits the universe of contracts that can be formed and is constantly changing the student-university relationship. This oversight is so pervasive that adverse administrative decisions of even private universities could possibly be characterized as "state action" ...
This week, EFF and a bipartisan coalition of organizations are calling for a Week of Action to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—the law used in the aggressive prosecution of Aaron Swartz and that could potentially be used to turn every Internet user into a criminal.
Since Aaron's death, EFF has proposed changes that would reform the CFAA and bring it into the 21st Century. Unfortunately, the House Justiciary committee has proposed radical changes to the CFAA that would seek to increase penalties, expand the law, and criminalize new actions.
This week, we have a Twitter tool which you can use to express your support for reform and an action center which allows you to easily find your representative and email them. But if you live in one of the following districts, you can have even more impact by calling your representative on the phone.
We've heard from multiple sources in Congress that the most effective action taken during the SOPA protest in January 2012 was the massive numbers of people who called into Congress to express their concern. During that week of action, the phone lines in Congress were temporarily overwhelmed from call volume and had to ...
Today, EFF and a host of organizations across the political spectrum are launching a week-of-action imploring Congress to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)—the expansive law used to prosecute the late activist and Internet pioneer Aaron Swartz.
The CFAA has been expanded and morphed since it originally passed in 1984 so that it now threatens draconian and out-of-proportion punishments for acts that cause little or no economic harm. It has also been used to threaten innovators and security researchers. Worse, since the Justice Department's expansive interpretation would criminalize website terms of service violations, the CFAA threatens to turn virtually everyone online into a criminal.
We're asking Congress for three specific, common-sense fixes to the CFAA, which will bring the outdated law into the 21st Century:
No more criminal penalties for violating a website's fine print or an employee manual
No criminal penalties for circumvention techniques that protect privacy and promote security
Make penalties proportionate to offenses and stop punishing virtual crimes more harshly than physical world crimes
Unfortunately some members of the House Judiciary committee have floated a change to the CFAA that goes in the opposite direction, expanding penalties under the CFAA and largely codifying the ...
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff will be on the campus of Purdue University this Tuesday, April 9, to discuss free speech on campus and his book Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate. Greg's speech will take place at 7 p.m. in Stewart Center, room 218 A-B, and is free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by the Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Office of the President. Following his talk, Greg will be available to sign books, which will be available for purchase on-site.
Greg Lukianoff 'Unlearning Liberty' Talk at Purdue University
When: Tuesday, April 9 at 7 p.m.
Where: Purdue University, West Lafayette campus, Stewart Center, room 218 A-B
Who: Sponsored by the Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Office of the President.
FIRE President Greg Lukianoff is featured today on CNET commenting on a French lawsuit filed against the social media giant Twitter. Student groups in France upset over recent anti-Semitic tweets are seeking to punish Twitter under French hate speech laws. However, as Greg argues, this action is dangerous and ultimately counterproductive:
In order to be an effective mirror to global society, Twitter thinks of itself primarily as a platform and does its best to get out of the way. Therefore, we know things we simply would not know otherwise-from the trivial to the serious. The people who want to scour mass media and cleanse it of all hateful or hurtful opinions miss that their purge would deny us important knowledge. Simply put, it is far better to know that there are bigots amongst us than to pretend all is well.
Greg explains how First Amendment principles dismantle common arguments against free speech from academics who "paint themselves as a beleaguered, enlightened minority struggling against the unquestioned dogma of free speech." Greg demonstrates how allowing individuals to freely express their views-even when distasteful or offensive-is a far healthier way to address social division than suppressing people's speech. He concludes, "Forcing hate ...
Did you know that in some states, localities have health and safety ordinances prohibiting tattoos and tattooing? You may be surprised to know that even New York City, birthplace of the modern tattoo — had a ban for 36 years.
Now that practically anyone–from our own mothers to elementary school teachers–is likely to have one, bans like these seem like remnants of a bygone era.
In some sense, they are. In the past decade, as tattoos became increasingly mainstream, the courts overturned a number of these ordinances, upholding First Amendment arguments that tattoos and their creation are expressions of “pure speech.” Today, one in five adults has a tattoo in the U.S.
In place of prohibitions, we now have health and safety regulations to ensure the clean and safe practice of tattooing and the prevention of the spread of diseases like hepatitis.
In Temple, Texas, however, the law against tattoo parlors remains alive and well, much to the dismay of tattoo artist Christopher Simmons. Simmons has been fighting to get the ordinance overturned. A Temple native, Simmons moved back recently and wants to be given the opportunity to support his family with his trade and express himself through his art.
The space formerly known as the "Tech Grotto." 
Global Policy Analyst Maira Sutton is smiling because at least she scored a chair.
There isn't a fish-eye lens in the world that can capture the entire scene.
The spillover seats in ...
The annual 
Last week, I told you about the 
Who would have thought a major oil corporation would have such thin skin? 
CBLDF is back from the first round of spring conventions, and we’re proud to bring our supporters some spectacular signed comics from the creators who appeared at our tables to aid our efforts protecting the freedom to read! Check out amazing offerings from Matt Wagner, Brian Wood, Bob Fingerman, Joe Keatinge, and Sam Humphries, kicking off the first round of our new spring donation rewards. These items are all signed, and all proceeds benefit CBLDF!
Once again, European attitudes towards nudity and sex have clashed with an American business behemoth. 
Earlier today word spread that Apple is refusing to offer the most recent issue of SAGA by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples within iOS Apps. Vaughan issued the following statement regarding the ban:
