Censorship

Congress is about to approve the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. This is not necessarily a good thing for Internet users.

I say that because VRAHTPA establishes a new federal commission tasked with investigating Americans with "extremist belief systems" and those who may engage in "ideologically based violence." This effort is expected to cost $22 million.

It's possible, of course, that nothing will come of VRAHTPA. Technically no new laws are being proposed except those creating the so-called National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism.

But creating … Read more

Amazon.com won an important legal fight to preserve its customers' privacy by persuading a court to reject requests for 24,000 customer records made by federal prosecutors in Madison, Wis.

Documents in that case, in which the FBI and IRS are accusing an independent Amazon seller of skirting tax laws, came to light in the last week. But it's not the first time that police on a fishing expedition have demanded customer records from the Web's largest bookstore.

Read on for our excerpts from our conversation on Wednesday with David Zapolsky, Amazon.com's vice president for … Read more

Google is taking issue with reports saying that it "voluntarily" turned over information about a Blogger.com user to someone who filed a libel lawsuit in Israel.

An article published Tuesday on an Israeli news site said that the search company had "agreed to supply the IP address" of a blogger sued for alleged defamation, marking "the first time that Google forewent legal action in such a case." That was quickly echoed in headlines saying Google "voluntarily" divulged user data and "Google dishes out IP address of anonymous blogger."

Google … Read more

Federal prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to force Amazon.com to identify thousands of innocent customers who bought books online, then abandoned the idea after a judge rebuked them.

In an order that was sealed but has now become public, U.S. District Judge Stephen Crocker rejected the Justice Department's subpoena for details on Amazon's customers and their purchasing habits. Prosecutors had claimed the details would help them prove their case against a former Madison, Wisc., city official charged with tax evasion related to selling used books through Amazon.

"The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to … Read more

The U.S. House of Representatives is holding a hearing titled "Yahoo! Inc.'s Provision of False Information to Congress." With a title like that, you can be sure this particular event will be be fair, neutral, and objective.

What led to Tuesday morning's hearing are two events. The first: information Yahoo provided to Communist authorities was allegedly used to convict Shi Tao, a 37-year-old journalist, of leaking "state secrets." The second: Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan may have given not-entirely-accurate information to the House when testifying during the last time Yahoo was dragged onto … Read more

A federal appeals court has struck down, on First Amendment grounds, a long-standing requirement forcing people who produce "sexually explicit" images to keep detailed records about their operations.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday (click for PDF) that the "2257" record-keeping requirements--which bedeviled the adult industry because they apply even to Web sites that "reproduce" sexually explicit material--are overly broad and violate Americans' free-speech rights.

Tuesday's ruling is a remarkable win for adult publishers, not just because of the weighty nature of the regulations but also because the lawsuit has … Read more

A Minnesota university has suspended one of its graduate students who sent two e-mail messages to school officials supporting gun rights.

Hamline University also said that master's student Troy Scheffler, who owns a firearm, would be barred from campus and must receive a mandatory "mental health evaluation" after he sent an e-mail message arguing that law-abiding students should be able to carry firearms on campus for self-defense.

Hamline spokesman Jacqueline Getty declined on Wednesday to answer questions about the suspension, saying that federal privacy laws prohibited the school from commenting. Scheffler had previously waived his privacy rights … Read more

It's no surprise that politicians are rarely conversant with the limits on their legislating found in the U.S. Constitution. But it is worth noting when federal judges have actually read the First Amendment and strike down a law accordingly.

That brings us to Ohio's constitutionally impaired legislature, which enacted two laws that were touted as ways to protect children on the Internet but in reality would become a new censorship regime.

An Ohio federal judge on Monday struck down (see PDF) the state's combined "harmful to minors" law on the grounds that it ran … Read more

Until a few hours ago, the Web site of National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell had been invisible in Google, MSN and Yahoo searches. That's because dni.gov's robots.txt file told search engines to stay away.

Now it's been fixed. DNI spokesman Ross Feinstein told me, apologetically, a moment ago: "When we saw your story posted, I asked our developers to look into it...We certainly appreciate you bringing it to our attention. It's a public Web site. We want it to be indexed. We're not even sure how (the robots.txt file) got … Read more