Support LLRX!
I'm hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Click the Donate button and support.
Thank you!
Beth Wellington discusses the divergent positions of key organizations and groups on the regulatory and legislative controversy over Internet free speech, campaign finance reform, and blogging. She provides links to legislation, news releases, government documents and blog postings on the issue.
Jordi Calvet-Bademunt and Jacob Mchangama are policy researchers who study free speech, as well as executive director and a research fellow at The Future of Free Speech, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt University. In a recent report, they found that generative AI has important shortcomings regarding freedom of expression and access to information.
Beth Wellington’s commentary takes an in-depth look at the divergent positions and issues associated with FOIA and biodefense related appropriations and legislation, from the perspective of legislators, public interest groups and journalists.
Free Speech Click on the title to order through Amazon.com. |
Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment by Floyd Abrams |
Freedom of Information Click on the title to order through Amazon.com. |
The Scientific Community
Scientists are concerned that the new guidelines will allow the public access to everything from handwritten lab notes to specimens and that it will also jeopardize the
This paper by Thais Sardá, Simone Natale and John Downey examines how the deep Web, i.e., Web sites that are not indexed and thus are not accessible through Web search engines, was described and represented in British newspapers. Through an extensive content analysis conducted on 833 articles about the deep Web published between 2001 and 2017 by six British newspapers, the authors demonstrate that these technologies were predominantly associated with crime, crypto markets and immoral content, while positive uses of this technology, such as protecting privacy and freedom of speech, were largely disregarded. The consistent association by the British press between the deep Web and criminal and antisocial behaviors is exemplary of a recent “apocalyptic turn” in the imaginary of the Web, whereby Web-related technologies are perceived and portrayed in more negative ways within the public sphere. The authors argue that the use of such negative concepts, definitions and associations engender distrust about uses of the deep Web, propagating user stereotypes that reflect what the authors argue to be an overall criminalization of privacy.
Articles and Columns for December 2022 Inventing the Dark Web – This paper by Thais Sardá, Simone Natale, and John Downey examines how the deep Web, i.e., Web sites that are not indexed and thus are not accessible through Web search engines, was described and represented in British newspapers. Through an extensive content analysis conducted …
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Google Rolls out ‘Results About You’ for Personal Info Removal; I Said No to Online Cookies. Websites Tracked Me Anyway; Bosses spying on you? Here’s the most disastrous truth about surveillance software; How does identity crime affect victims?; and Say Goodbye to VPNs.
Liza Vertinsky and Yaniv Heled are law professors who study how emerging technologies like genetic sequencing are regulated. They believe that growing public interest in genetics has increased the likelihood that genetic paparazzi with DNA collection kits may soon become as ubiquitous as ones with cameras. While courts have for the most part managed to evade dealing with the complexities of surreptitious DNA collection and testing of public figures, they won’t be able to avoid dealing with it for much longer. And when they do, they are going to run squarely into the limitations of existing legal frameworks when it comes to genetics.
Criminal law expert Ken Strutin’s new article is yet another research tour de force – a collection of recent and notable developments concerning DNA as forensic science, metric of guilt, herald of innocence, and its emerging place in the debate over privacy and surveillance. The increasing use of DNA evidence to support assumptions of an individual’s guilt and less frequently as a tool to prove the innocence of prisoners wrongly convicted, reflects many facets of the changing fabric of the American criminal justice, the role of the Fourth Amendment and the increasing collection of a wide range of biological evidence from crime scenes whose metadata then is searchable within the national DNA database.
Ken Strutin writes in his latest article as follows -“science has much to say about how individual behavior and group wide phenomena influence the core issues of criminal justice. From self-incrimination to self-representation, from prosecuting to judging, from trial to punishment the law recognizes that there are subtle psychologics at work. Indeed, there is one long continuum of cognitive realities that pervade every precinct of criminal justice. And now, scientific study and legal scholarship has uncovered hidden biases in the deliberations of justice as well as overt barriers to cognitive functioning associated with confinement. This article is a collection of research into the cognitive nature of criminal justice participants, the constraints of confinement, and the administration of justice.”
Ken Strutin’s article discusses an increasingly visible issue, suicide, here in the specific context of criminal law. He reviews how the stress of prosecution or litigation, whether it means risking a prison term, unemployment, bankruptcy, eviction, broken family relations, isolation, or other serious consequences can create or exacerbate a vulnerable and dangerous state of mind in a client. Client suicidal thoughts, attempts or actions expose the intimacies of human autonomy and test the limits of the attorney-client relationship. They cross a range of legal, moral and medical contexts: professional responsibility, client confidentiality, effective assistance of counsel, legal malpractice, criminal liability, and end of life issues. So it is that attorneys confronted with signs of suicidal intentions in their clients need to be conscious of their legal and ethical responsibilities. Strutin’s article is a significant guide for researchers, as it collects notable materials on this complex and sensitive topic, including ethics opinions, law reviews, bibliographies and other resources.
This is the second installment of an examination of notable and new developments in social media and legal practice. Part One highlighted important statutes, case law, ethics opinions, along with extensive news media coverage of law-related social media issues. Part Two focuses on recent items that have appeared in professional journals and blogs, 1 law reviews, reports, books and secondary resources, along with references to current awareness sources. 2
Julian Zegelman’s research guide is intended to assist its users with research of Russian intellectual property law by a) describing the primary sources of intellectual property law in the Russian Federation; and b) listing a number of secondary sources that interpret and comment on intellectual property law in the Russian Federation.