License Plates: Government or Private Speech?

"The next great First Amendment battleground, it turns out, is on the back of your car..." according to an article in today's New York Times.

In Memoriam: Free Speech Champion Judith Krug

A real hero for our times, Judith Krug died on Saturday.

CopyLeft

Mystified by copyright? Who isn't!? The web has changed intellectual property in unforeseen ways. I just saw a link today to an article in the New York Times Magazine from 5 years ago (!) -- it's lengthy, but well-researched and very interesting. The illustration is from the New York Times Magazine article and is by Christoph Niemann.

The Ten Commandments in Pleasant Grove

You may have been keeping track of this story since the controversy arose several years ago. On the surface the question seems to be about religion and government, but according to today's New York Times the Supreme Court ruled that it is really a matter of free speech.

Information STILL wants to be free....

Boston University has taken a giant step in information access. Check out this article courtesy of Library Link of the Day.

Copyright and User Generated Content

A Pennsylvania mother set a legal precedent when a huge recording company came after her for a You Tube video, discussed in a lengthy but interesting article from the ABA Journal, courtesy of Library Link of the Day.

Shouting Fire

Going to Sundance? Don't miss "Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech." Here is part of the description from the festival website:

"Liz Garbus’s Shouting Fire, a riveting exploration of the current state of free speech in America, is crucially relevant.Interweaving historical cases—The New York Times’s fight to publish the Pentagon Papers and the Nazis' insistence on marching in Skokie, among them—with contemporary free-speech infringements, the film documents the way both the Right and the Left have lashed out in fear. In the stories of a left-wing professor fired for provocative remarks about 9/11, an Arab American principal made to resign after discussing the word ""intifada,"" and Christian schoolkids suspended for wearing Bible-quoting T-shirts, there’s an ironic pattern. When threatened by an outside enemy, perceived or real, we often demonize each other, undermining the very freedom we seek to protect. We think of First Amendment rights as inviolable; in fact, they're profoundly vulnerable. Mixing vibrant pacing with an elegant journalistic style, Garbus orchestrates this urgent matter like a rallying cry for action. As her father, legendary attorney Martin Garbus, wisely warns, if we don’t fight for our freedoms every day, we will lose them."