“Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited,”

Well, after Fox and Cablevision couldn’t agree and blackouts during the playoffs ensued, the FCC stepped in with Twitter updates of the games in progress. Its not particularly interesting that someone would tweet about baseball games. I’ve checked the #twins hashtag on Twitter during a Twins just to see what other people think of the game. That the FCC would do it, more interesting. I’m fairly certain that MLB won’t sue the FCC, partly because facts, such as what’s the score aren’t copyrightable (not withstanding the “account of this game” language).

H/T to Consumerist

Is Libel really going away? The next post made me think not. This one is a story of police officer is suing YouTube over parody videos of him. Apparently he was caught on video being particularly aggressive with a protester armed with bubbles. Yes, bubbles. He isn’t a public figure, but I don’t think any of the videos were doing anything beyond commenting on the reasonableness of his behavior.

I won’t comment on the merits of the case but I think its probably more representative of a growing type of libel case and why the lack of libel suits against the NYT probably doesn’t mean that libel is going away. With more people publishing there is more nasty stuff published, and probably more lawsuits. Professor Solove’s broader point was that we still should have access to justice for libel. I think we will, but the nature of the likely defendant is probably changing.

“Mark Twain famously said that a lie can go around the world while truth is still putting on its boots.”

MinnPost has a great article with lessons businesses can learn from the Shirley Sherrod story. Cooler heads and actual evidence should have prevailed in the first place.

One problem with employing this strategy on the scale that the USCG is doing is that it will almost certainly result in a large number wrongly identified people who feel compelled to pay up because its cheaper than fighting. It undermines rights to privacy and anonymity. Furthermore, it doesn’t get to the real issue of how to compensate artists for their work. Lawsuits can’t possibly be a realistic long-term business model.

As far as I know, the USCG only has a large list of suspect IP addresses and is currently attempting to obtain the identities of people so they can give them the pay up or go to court offer. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a resource for people who are faced with responding to a subpoena and would like advice with responding. I have volunteered to work with people in Minnesota who are faced with this situation. There are other attorneys in other states who have volunteered as well.

The EFF Subpoena Defense Attorney List
The EFF’s press release about the case.

The fictional high school chorus at the center of Fox’s Glee has a huge problem — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. For a show that regularly tackles thorny issues like teen pregnancy and alcohol abuse, it’s surprising that a million dollars worth of lawbreaking would go unmentioned. But it does, and week after week, those zany Glee kids rack up the potential to pay higher and higher fines.

Check out the rest of Christina Mulligan’s post at Balkanization.