Tag: LAW

Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could determine whether or not Congress can remove works from the public domain and place them under copyright. At issue is a ruling from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in July against a group of orchestra conductors, educators, publishers, and film archivists, whose professional lives rely on public domain works. The ...

Last year, U.S.-born college student Yasir Afifi found an FBI tracking device stashed under his car. Now Afifi is suing the agency, claiming his civil rights were violated when law enforcement begain tracking him without a warrant. Judges have gone back and forth over whether or not GPS tracking ought to require a search warrant, and Afifi hopes his case will settle the debate once and for all. ...

Over the past two years, police in Rio de Janeiro have been cracking down on drunk drivers as part of a strict city-wide campaign. Many motorists, however, have found a way to avoid the watchful eye of Rio's law enforcers: Twitter. Under Operation Lei Seca ("dry law"), Rio police have been setting up checkpoints at accident hotspots across the city, where they administer breathalyzer tests to ...

House Republicans are pushing the Obama administration to move forward with a controversial law that, if enacted, would require every state to issue nationally standardized identification cards to its citizens. As it stands right now, states have until May 11th to comply with the 2005 Real ID Act, signed by President Bush. Enacted as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, the ...

A British judge has ruled that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange must be extradited to Sweden to be questioned on accusations of sexual abuse. The decision, which was issued this morning in London, means that the Australian national will be sent to Sweden in ten days, although his lawyers have already indicated that they plan to file an appeal. In the ruling, Judge Howard Riddle determined that ...

The Internet streaming video service ivi just received a vicious rebuke from U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Buchwald of the Southern District of New York. Since its inception, the service has offered live TV streams from major broadcasters like Fox, NBC and PBS by simply snatching broadcasts out of the air and retransmitting them over the Web to paying customers. The problem is that the company ...

We're comforted to know that we're not the only ones who get severely weirded out by overzealous P.R. people. Dell employees in Round Rock, Texas were so freaked out, in fact, that they recently wound up calling the cops on their own coworkers. Of course, they didn't realize at the time that the black-clad, mask-wearing men clutching "metallic objects" and barking orders at them were doing so as ...

A Pennsylvania teenager has admitted to raping an intoxicated woman, and to soliciting the services of a hitman on Facebook. Corey Christian Adams, a 19-year old from West Chester, was arrested last July after a woman accused him of raping her following a party. The victim, whose name has not been released, reportedly got a ride home with Adams after the party, but passed out on the way. When ...

South Carolina Democrat Wendell Gilliard has introduced a bill that, if passed, would bar the state's prisoners from using Facebook, or any other social networking site. The bill would penalize offenders with a $500 fine, and an extra 30 days in jail. According to GIlliard, social media allow some prisoners to continue criminal operations from behind bars, thereby putting others at risk. "The ...

The Obama administration has put together a new set of digital copyright laws aimed at cracking down on illegal downloads and other forms of online piracy. Yesterday, intellectual property enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel released a 92-page report (PDF), outlining the White House's copyright proposals, which will be submitted to Congress "in the very near future." Although the report ...

Share 4Chan has landed itself in the middle of yet another FBI investigation. This time, though, the site is cooperating with authorities after a Michigan-based member named Ali Saad posted threats to go on a shooting rampage at his community college. Saad insists that his postings were in jest, but his claims that he could top the "high score" of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho set off ...

Share A Maryland man accused of pulling off ten burglaries is sitting in jail right now, thanks to a single cell phone and a well-timed power outage. On Friday evening, 25-year-old Cody Wilkins broke into a home in Silver Spring, Maryland, in search of jewelry. His operation was interrupted, however, when the family's son walked into the house. Panicking, Wilkins jumped out of a window, and ...

North Carolina state law prohibits registered sex offenders from using social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, but two lawyers believe that the restriction is unconstitutional. Attorney Glenn Gerding, who is representing convicted sex offender Christian Martin Johnson, argues that the law is too broad, and would prevent his client from using sites like Google or Amazon, since both ...

On the very day that the Egyptian government shut down an overwhelming majority of the country's Internet servers, Republican Senator Susan Collins began floating a piece of legislation which, if passed, would grant the President the power to do essentially the same thing in the U.S. The so-called 'kill switch' bill was approved by the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ...

Share Last night, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sat down for a rare, extended interview with Steve Kroft of '60 Minutes.' In what CBS has called Assange's "most extensive television interview to date," the Australian national defended his organization's mission, discussed the roots of his own anti-authoritarian philosophy, and compared WikiLeaks' core principles to "those of the U.S. ...