Popehat will be blacking out tomorrow, January 18, 2012, to protest SOPA and PIPA. Even though those measures appear to be on the ropes, vigorous resistance is essential.

If we had any doubt, the MPAA helped clear it up today with a press release that reveals it and its allies for what they are: rent-seeking thugs using their political influence to push through legislation beneficial to them and detrimental to everyone else.

In the MPAA's release, shill Chris Dodd comes out swinging:

Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

Only the MPAA and a used-up ex-Senator like Dodd could imbue "technology business interests" with a mock-populist sneer whilst lobbying for one of the titans of American business interests. Note also the sneer at internet users, who are mere "pawns" of sites participating in the blackout. Also note the ambiguity of the last phrase, "a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging." What problem is that? SOPA and PIPA's creation of dangerous avenues of censorship and MPAA-driven government control? Piracy? The MPAA's and RIAA's long-standing hostility to technological change?

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services.

As opposed to the actions of the MPAA and RIAAA, which propagandize to make fundamental changes to the way the internet works, increase government control of it, and rent-seek in order to protect their 1950s-era business model. That's perfectly responsible.

It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Nice freedom you've got there, Reddit and BoingBoing and Wikipedia. Shame if something happened to it. Shame, shame if influential lobbyists from the MPAA and its allies had to start thinking more about how it might be restricted. [Note to people who decry Citizens United and despise the idea that corporations have free speech rights: I think Dodd and the MPAA agree with you in this instance.]

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.

The "punishment," of course, comes in the form of lack of financial and electoral support, which the MPAA apparently views as inappropriate. It is "dangerous" to "punish" elected and appointed officials by organizing opposition to measures they support when you disagree with that message. That does not comport with the MPAA's view of what America is: a protected market. A feeding ground. The role of the citizenry is to pay for the MPAA's products through the venues the MPAA favors, and the role of the government is to protect the MPAA's market, using any means necessary.

It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”

It is my hope that everyone involved will invite the MPAA to snort their taint. But that's probably too much to ask for.

The MPAA is crossing into Westboro Baptist Church territory: it has the Constitutional right to do what it's doing, but decent people everywhere should regard it with contempt and rise up against it.

I hoped that President Obama would live up to campaign promises to protect civil liberties in post-9/11 America. So far, he's been a grave disappointment on that subject.

But let's give his administration some credit on the occasions it is due. Kudos are due to the Department of Justice for taking the right position on the right of citizens to record police in public:

The Obama administration has told a federal judge that Baltimore police officers violated the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments by seizing a man's cell phone and deleting its contents. The deletions were allegedly in retaliation for the man's use of the phone to record the officers' arrest of his friend. According to the Maryland ACLU, this is the first time the Obama Justice Department has weighed in on whether the Constitution protects citizens' right to record the actions of police with their cell phones.

. . . .

"Although defendants have taken some remedial actions, these measures do not adequately ensure that violation will not recur," the Obama Administration said in a Tuesday court filing. While the city's new training materials acknowledge that it's legal to record the actions of the police, they "do not explicitly acknowledge that private citizens' right to record the police derives from the First Amendment, nor do they provide clear and effective guidance to officers about the important First Amendment principle involved."

As readers know, citizens' right to record cops without abuse is a major issue for us, and I submit that it is a canary-in-the-coal-mine issue on limits on police power. Good for the Obama DoJ on this one issue.

Thanks to tipster Andrea on the link.

Edit: In the course of shaking his palsied fist and yelling at me to get off of his lawn, Scott Greenfield points out that he already wrote about this, as did Radley Balko. Perhaps. But Andrea was the one who used a shiny object to attract my attention at the price moment when I needed something to post about. So there.

Back in December I wrote about Rhys Morgan, the 17-year-old British skeptic-blogger who stood up to legal threats from the transcendentally nutty fake lawyer Marc Stephens. As I said then, the internet needs more people — whether 17 or 70 — like Rhys, who are willing to stand up against such censorious intimidation tactics.

But standing up is sometimes easier said than done. Legal threats — like physical threats — can have real-world consequences. Rhys is learning that this week, as online threats and complaints have led him to censor his Facebook page upon pain of suspension or expulsion from his school.

Rhys is in what we in America would call high school. In the U.K. I believe they call it Secondary School or Twentieth Form or the loo or lorry or Toad in the Hole or Spotted Dick or something. Recently Rhys saw fit to comment upon something that I discussed here — a controversy at University College of London regarding a cartoon of Mohammed and Jesus, which became embroiled in a discussion of the imagined right not to be offended. Rhys — both as a skeptic and as a supporter of free expression — changed his Facebook profile picture to the cartoon in solidarity with the UCL skeptics.

Then all hell broke loose. Rhys was deluged with demands to take the picture down, insults, and threats. His school got involved, and threatened him with expulsion or suspension — apparently upon the theory that his actions his expression may have brought the dispute into the school, and because his posting causes offense to some classmates. Rhys' critics are employing the classic categorical dodge I've written about, saying that his actions have "nothing to do with freedom of expression" — because, see, if we say it's offensive, if we say it's "hate speech," then it no longer belongs in the free speech box.

Rhys is experiencing harassment and suppression in the U.K., but his situation reflects a universal problem, and one that is at the cutting edge of First Amendment litigation in the United States. The extent to which American public schools can punish students for out-of-school speech — especially speech on the internet — is in flux. First, student free speech rights in general seem to be on the wane, declining from a high-water mark with Tinker as the Supreme Court has given school administrators more discretion to determine what speech is "disruptive" and to police "inappropriate" speech at school-related events. The Supreme Court has not yet applied this line of cases to student expression on social media or other internet venues; just today, in a move that may or may not be significant, the Court declined to review a number of Circuit cases involving off-campus internet speech, leaving the area in doubt.

Though it takes place in another country under notably different legal standards, Rhys' situation perfectly illustrates the dangers of giving schools an unrestricted and unprincipled license to police students' online speech based on their "disruptive" or "offensive" qualities. A compliant school gives Rhys' critics a perfect heckler's veto: merely by attacking, harassing, and threatening him online, even anonymously, they can convince the school that his expression is "disruptive," and therefore make his school feel justified in demanding that he change his Facebook profile to satisfy his censors. Similarly, an utterly subjective and unprincipled notion of "offense" — one that focuses on the feelings of people who voluntarily visit Rhys' Facebook page, and not on the question of whether Rhys is doing anything to interfere with students' day-to-day activities at school — allows anyone who disagrees with Rhys to demand that the school censor him by making the irrefutable claim "this offends me." Under this arrangement, students can only write online under the sufferance of their most censorious critics.

Yet as I suggested before, Rhys Morgan is precisely the sort of student that should thrill schools: engaged in important adult issues, curious, expressive, self-motivated, and involved in larger communities of ideas. Don't we want 17-year-olds thinking and writing about subjects that involve controversy? Don't we want them to engage the big ideas that historically have caused division? Or do we want them to proceed ploddingly from one standardized test to the next, concerned only with dining on the reheated and prefabricated meals that schools put before them, never dabbling in anything that might offend or cause controversy or headlines? Of course, young people who explore and learn and engage and write on their own are independent in ways that might not please people whose power depends upon them acting like junior stenographers. Could there be something about Rhys Morgan — something more than posting a cartoon depicting Mohammed — that threatens and offends modern "education professionals" even more than it angers and offends interest groups? Could part of the conflict between free speech and "disruption" be not so much about harmony on campus, but about "professionals" seeking control over the ways that students think, interact, and learn?

. . . and damn, are they ever right.

I mean, if you get involved with marijuana, and the cops catch you with a small amount, they may bully you into cooperating with one of their drug investigations — which can get you killed.

Or, if you use marijuana, and have a small amount of marijuana in your home, you may get shot to death by police during a raid. In fact, marijuana is so dangerous that police may shoot you when they raid your home if they just think you may have it. And it goes without saying that marijuana is dangerous to your dog, who may get shot during a raid.

And I need not remind you that if you have preexisting health condition, marijuana can kill you. For instance, if you are a paraplegic who requires adequate medical care to live, if you get caught with marijuana a sociopathically indifferent judge may condemn you to death by sending you to a jail that cannot care for you.

But that's not all. Marijuana encourages lawlessness — by encouraging law enforcement to disregard laws. It turns parents against children — through state-run programs encouraging children to inform on their parents. In fact, marijuana is so dangerous that merely speaking of it in less than condemning tones can lead to you losing your job . . . with the government.

If you were a hand-wringing soft-on-crime looney liberal, a damned dirty hippie, you might say that the thread running through all of this is that the War on Drugs is dangerous, not marijuana. If you were a wild-eyed Paulbot glibertarian, you might conclude the common thread is that government is dangerous.

But of course good Americans have listened to Nancy Reagan, listened to the nice DARE officers, listened to the decades of public officials exhorting us to win the War on Drugs, and they know the truth: it's marijuana that's dangerous.

Hat tip: Jacob Sullum.

You remember Froma Harrop. She presided over an organization advocating civility in public discourse, called Tea Party advocates terrorists, then said that wasn't uncivil because the essence of incivility is denying other people their say, then deleted critical comments on her blog about her views.

That's her.

So, if you are Froma Harrop, how might you recover some of your credibility? Gosh, maybe a friendly-but-substantial, serious, thoughtful media interview.

Say, how about one with John Oliver of The Daily Show?

There are different ways to interpret this. One is that Froma Harrop is so stupendously foolish that she thought this interview would make her look good, and would be a venue to vindicate her views.

I prefer to believe that this is Froma Harrop's penance for her silly behavior: that, as her blog post suggests, she know she would be the butt of a joke, and willingly participated in the joke (flawlessly executed by John Oliver) to acknowledge she'd acted like an ass.

That's kind of cool in my book. Not as cool as coming out and saying she was wrong, of course.

Could one of our readers — perhaps someone from the great state of Florida, from whence this regulatory situation hails — point me to some context or explanation that makes this less ridiculous than it seems?

Because it looks ppretty freaking ridiculous.

(Click to embiggen)

Remember: the regulatory state is its own justification and its own constituent.

Hat tip to reader Dustin.

MidClassMitt took the New Hampshire expansion easily.  It's looking like it's all down to the South Carolina expansion.

It's the last gasp for many players,  so expect a lot of aggression and a LOT of cheese.  I anticipate that only AtlasFan (resources), ZhouYu (possible map advantage), and TheGrinch (sheer spite) will remain as serious players after this. 

via Bruce Schneier, The TSA Proves its Own Irrelevance.

Listen to me: no sensible and well-ordered society can recognize a right to be free from offense. It's unprincipled and mercurial, a celebration of the rule of subjective reaction over the rule of law. It's an open invitation to censorship-by-heckler's-veto. It chills satire, parody, sharp retorts, hard truths, and uncomfortable revelations. George Bernard Shaw says "all great truths begin as blasphemies" — so where is the room for exploration of truth in a society that lets every entitled group define its own blasphemies and demand that everyone avoid uttering them? Going to courts complaining of fee-fees is no basis for a system of government.

Why the mini-rant? It's because today, courtesy of Ophelia Benson, I learned of a loathsome example of the assertion that we all have the right not to be offended, and an illustration of how it can be used as a weapon of suppression. The Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASHS) at University College London has a Facebook page, and on that page they posted a picture as part of an invitation to a party:

And you know what happened next:

Continue Reading »

I'll be the first to admit: sometimes we are more than a little mean to the United Kingdom here at Popehat. But we kid because we love. The language, the history, the culture, the television, the fond memories of student life spent shivering on cobbled streets after the bars closed ludicrously early, waiting for a kebab van so that we could eat some gray meat carved off of a questionable shapeless haunch — we love it all.

But we don't love the U.K.'s approach to libel, and we applaud the recent rumblings of reform there. Though the SPEECH Act helps to protect Americans from the worst excesses of the U.K.'s plaintiff-biased and libel-tourist-destination system, that's cold comfort to Brits who get sued.

Consider the case of Vaughan Jones, a young blogger sued for leaving negative reviews of a book. I learned of Mr. Jones when he made some kind comments in the course of discussing legal threats from bumptious fake lawyer Marc Stephens. From there, I found and read John's fascinating and chilling blog about being a libel defendant in the U.K.

U.K. law limits what Jones can say about his own case. But he has a good summary of links to media coverage, including this one. The case concerns reviews Mr. Jones left on Amazon — now deleted — regarding Chris McGrath's book The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need To Know. McGrath has also sued Amazon itself over these negative reviews, and has sued Richard Dawkins and the Dawkins Foundation for their commentary. As you know, we have a low opinion of people who sue over negative book reviews. They are loathsome.

Apparently a decision is expected soon based upon the initial hearings. I look forward to reading it. Meanwhile, consider Jones' discussion of proposed reforms to U.K. libel law. Also consider his description of proceedings, some of which seem very odd to our tastes.

Well, it's Primary Day in New Hampshire,
And the voters must finally decide.
In the Countertop State, it's for damned sure,
That no candidate gets a free ride.

Having put paid, Mitt Romney is cruising
By a margin of many a digit.
He likes firing his engine half-throttle,
While conservatives waver and fidget.

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Huntsman,
To put brakes on Mitt's juggernaut and park it,
Have tried all the political stunts. Man
Bites dog! They disdain the free market!

Poor Rick Perry had fire in the belly,
But in truth he's at home on the range.
Since his race is all "Oops!" and "Whoa, Nelly!"
His insistence on bucking seems strange.

By both flanks of the centrist investor
Drives a dark horse who might take it all,
But would settle for place, show, or jester:
It's irascible Ludwig von Paul.

So Republicans, Democrats, and even
Independents will vote all day long
To anoint a Republican leader.
What could possibly go wrong?

I'm kind of busy today. So it's reruns. Sorry!

If you're in a funny mood, you might enjoy my series about conversations with my kids.

If you're angry, or in a mood to get angry, you might want to look at Patrick's 2008 post about how the government killed Francisco Castaneda.

If you are in a Scooby-Doo let's-investigate mood, check out our Anatomy of a Scam Investigation series.

If you actually want to learn something and be entertained at the same time, you can't go wrong reading anything David has ever written about art, especially this epic series of posts.

Today I was resting my eyes on the couch when I got an email tip that someone was making frankly nutty legal threats against a science blogger. There's a blogger in trouble somewhere! I'm like the Wonder Pets, only with 1.375 times more sexual magnetism.

Time for the Popehat Signal.

I investigated, and found that the blogger had written a clear and really extraordinarily mild statement of opinion, and the subject of opinion had posted legal threats on the blog and sent profane, threatening, and frankly disturbing threats by email. The blogger's comment is indisputably protected by the First Amendment and the threat is freakishly frivolous.

I've agreed to help the blogger pro bono. The potential plaintiff has threatened a defamation suit in Texas. Given the communications, it's entirely possible that the threat represents bluster or delusion. But if they are malicious and unethical enough to pull the trigger, we'll need boots on the ground in the Great State of Texas. I'll still do most of the work. Maybe we can test the new Anti-SLAPP statute!

So. Can any Texas lawyers, or people who know Texas lawyers, help us out?

Update: Thanks to all of the lawyers who have responded in the comments or by email, and to those who have suggested leads. Texas attorney Gary Krupkin, an estimable and formidable defender of the First Amendment, has stepped in to act as Texas counsel. Please join me in thanking him: his willingness to help represents the best tradition of service to beleaguered clients and to the First Amendment, and shows how together we can help bloggers resist frivolous legal threats.

There will be an update with a description of the situation only if the best interests of the client warrant. Thanks for understanding.

Yesterday I was looking at our traffic on Woopra and noticed a huge surge of searches for Ashton Lundeby. Who, you may ask? You know, Ashton Lundeby, the kid who was arrested for interstate telephone threats and became the subject of an internet propaganda campaign suggesting that he was being detained without charges under the PATRIOT ACT, possibly in a FEMA dungeon someplace. They Greys may or may not have been involved.

In fact, Lundeby was not detained secretly under the PATRIOT Act; that was propaganda sourced to his mother. Rather, he was arrested and charged as a juvenile under pre-9/11 statutes, indicted and prosecuted as an adult once the relevant U.S. Attorney's Office secured a court order allowing them to do so under preexisting law governing federal juvenile defendants, and later entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 22 months time served. His mother later admitted she had made the PATRIOT ACT stuff up.

So why are people Googling him again?

Well, probably because another set of folks whose political agenda is served by the OMG BLACK HELICOPTERS routine — this time various folks who identify with the Occupy movement — have been pushing, uncritically and without even minimal due diligence, the bogus Lundeby-as-PATRIOT-ACT-victim story, two years after it was conclusively refuted, and even though the most minimal search reveals many sources showing it isn't true.

Now, you might criticize the Lundeby prosecution if you don't like seeing juvies prosecuted as adults, though quite frankly I think that as someone who staged multi-state bomb hoaxes he got off quite lightly. But making this about some sort of PATRIOT ACT abuse is willfully ignorant sloganeering. We criticize post-9/11 excesses and government abuse here all the time at Popehat, but we've also argued for years that badly-researched and credulous stories about government abuse are counter-productive and do not help the cause of vigilance against government excess.

Have I ever posted a story without doing my due diligence, or fallen for an exciting-sounding hook, or been credulous? Of course I have. But I am a blogger, and that gives me an unassailable right to pontificate about other people doing it without removing the mote from mine own eye. And therefore:

Since Rodney King, we've been told that citizens with video cameras will deter excessive force by law enforcement. As video cameras have miniaturized until they're just one app on a smartphone, we're told the same thing, only more emphatically. Patrick highlighted the possibilities here years ago, though sounding a note of caution that a mechanism for reporting what you've taped to a powerful entity is as important as the recording itself.

But you really didn't think that it was going to be that easy, did you?

A certain segment of law enforcement has always viewed the use of force against citizens not as an ugly necessity in extreme circumstances but as a perquisite of the job. Those cops are not going to change their spots just because everyone's got an iPhone. So now we have pushback. Radley Balko documented it at Reason, Carlos Miller documents it tirelessly at Photography Is Not A Crime, and Injustice Everywhere frequently has pertinent stories.

Sometimes the pushback is cloaked in shameless OMG-9/11-CHANGED-EVERYTHING rhetoric, and sometimes it's straight-up thuggery. Cops arrest people for filming police conduct — whether it's out in public or from the photographer's own lawn. Cops profess not to recognize cameras and pretend they are potential weapons, sending the not-too-subtle message that pointing a camera might get your ass shot. When they think they can get away with it, they destroy cameras wholesale. Prosecutors back the cops up: they prosecute citizens for things like "wiretapping" or "disorderly conduct" when they record encounters with cops (even — or perhaps especially — angry and abusive cops), and they abuse governmental power in an effort to keep government-created recordings secret.

So, how is this relevant today? Well, a link on Reddit led me to a disturbing but entirely consistent-with-this trend discovery: Google's Transparency Report, in which Google describes the number and type of take-down demands it receives. Did you think that the New Professionals would be content arresting photographers in the street? Hell, no. If we've gone digital, so have they. And they know how to work the system. Google reports:

We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.

Click that link and see the statistics for various six-month periods. Note that Google records not just take-down demands (including categories for executive and police demands premised on "national security" and "criticism," among others), but demands for user identifying information. Police would never abuse the system by demanding the identity of photographers who posted videos documenting their conduct, would they? Heaven forfend.

So: bear in mind, when you consider measures like SOPA, that giving the government increased power over internet posts and increased ability to seek out user information may not just impact talking about music and movies — it might impact our ability to talk about, and document, police misconduct. Think the police would never seek to abuse such power? Then you're a damned fool.