The National Portrait Gallery in London has threatened to take legal action against a U.S. citizen who posted images of the gallery's paintings of rich, white, and dead British people onto Wikimedia Commons.

There's an interesting debate afoot about TechCrunch's decision to publish selected documents it received from someone who hacked into the email accounts of Twitter CEO Evan Williams and other Twitter employees.

As if anyone needed more proof that shooting off an ill-conceived cease-and-desist letter is a bad PR move, Techdirt points us to a recent gem.  The hilarious FAIL Blog publishes user-submitted photos and videos documenting various mishaps, incongruous images, and other examples of human fa

One common criticism lodged by constructionist judges against some of their judicial brethren is that, in their quest for “fair” results, they often misinterpret or outright ignore the plain text of a statute.  The majority of a Tenth Circuit panel seems to have fallen into this trap in a recent case involving section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”), despite the admonit

In a June 30 decision, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Louis Locascio ruled that Shellee Hale, a blogger, private investigator, and "life coach," could not invoke New Jersey's journalist shield law to protect the identity of her sources in connection with postings she

I blogged several weeks ago about recent cases in which jurors have caused a stir by using social media such as Twitter to communicate about their jury service.  Taking the issue on proactively, the Michigan Supreme Court has adopted a new rule requiring judges to admonish jurors to not use electronic communication devices during trial, and not to use them during breaks to comment or conduct research on the c

A federal judge yesterday tentatively acquitted Lori Drew, the Missouri woman convicted for her involvement in a MySpace “cyberbullying” hoax that allegedly resulted in a young girl’s suicide.  If it sticks, the acquittal will help reverse the momentous change in online liability that Drew’s earlier guilty verdict threatened to set in motion.

This week brings word of two new cases testing whether state shield laws apply to user comments posted on news websites.  In Texas, a Taylor County District Court judge ruled that the Abilene Reporter-News may refrain from disclosing the identities of commenters who posted comments to articles about a murder victim and the teenager charged in connection with his death.

As part of today's launch of YouTube's Reporters' Center, which features how-to videos on news reporting, the Citizen Media Law Project created a short video addressing some of the newsgathering and privacy issues people are likely to face as they head out with camera in hand to cover the news.  The two-part series of newsgathering videos (the first video is