After a month of snarky letter and email exchanges, Republican U.S. Congressional candidate Joe Walsh recently removed a campaign video from his website that used a song by the Eagles band member also named Joe Walsh.

Congressman Steve Cohen, D-TN is our First Amendment Bad Ass of the week.

Mr. Cohen introduced The Citizen Participation Act, a federal anti-slapp bill. The bill describes its purpose as follows:

To protect first amendment rights of petition and free speech by preventing States and the United States from allowing meritless lawsuits arising from acts in furtherance of those rights, commonly called ‘‘SLAPPs’’, and for other purposes.

It is about time.

SLAPP suits are all-too common and are a scourge on our legal landscape. Personally, they have been good for me, as I earn a significant income by defending these kinds of suits, but as much as I love money, I love free speech more (and I'm sure that I could sell that time elsewhere). A SLAPP suit is a "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation." In other words, it is a lawsuit that some hosebag files against a critic -- not because he hopes to win anything, but because the mere filing of the suit is punishment enough for the critic. Lawsuits are expensive, and when a rich douchebag has plenty of money to spend on attorneys's fees, he can afford to sue a couple of critics, thus scaring the bejesus out of anyone else who might criticize him.

The Public Participation Project had this to say about SLAPPS:

Regardless of who is speaking and who is suing, everyone is losing when SLAPPs are allowed to continue. These meritless lawsuits clog the courts, waste resources and contribute to a general culture of litigousness. Instead of answering speech with speech, SLAPP filers answer speech with subpoenas and spurious claims.

As state and federal courts continue to struggle with the use of social media in co

Jurisdiction: 

• Ohio
• Colorado

Last week, federal district judge Jeremy Fogel issued a technical but important decision in Stephanie Lenz's lawsuit against Universal Music over the "Let's Go Crazy" dancing baby takedown.  As

Jurisdiction: 

• California

I understand you're upset, Philadelphia.  Plans for a "flash mob" snowball fight last week got out of control.  Scores of teenagers stormed a local mall and nearby streets

"If we walk without rhythm, we won't attract the worm.” – Dune; see also Weapon of Choice, Fat Boy Slim

Corporations are resurrecting a blast from the past in order to identify online users. And unlike earlier attempts to trace users, this method is behavioral. Get ready to go back to finger-pecking.

Click here for an update to this post.

Today, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative ("IMMI") will file a final proposal to the Icelandic parliament to update that nation's journalism laws into a reporter's dream.  But frankly, I'm pretty sure it won't be much help to journalists around the world.

So here is a nice and scary development. It appears that the FBI wants Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep a log of the url's visited by consumers. Wait it gets better.

Following the approach taken by several state courts, in late January the U.S.