Last Thursday, a federal court in Georgia handed down a big win for free speech when it ruled that Wal-Mart could not use trademark law to stop a critic from disseminating his virulently anti-Wal-Mart views over the Internet. From Public Citizen's press release:

A Vermont judge has dismissed the libel lawsuit filed against Chris Grotke and Lise LePage, co-founders and owners of iBrattleboro.com, a widely acclaimed community journalism site based in Brattleboro, Vermont, ruling that Grotke and LePage are immune from liability under sec

The preemptive legal threat, while not as worrisome as preemptive war, is a pretty unsavory tactic. Don't know what I mean by "preemptive legal threat?" Not to worry, here is an example. The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog reports that a lawyer for Denver Nuggets coach George Karl has threatened blogger Andrew Feinstein with legal action (well, sort of).

Earlier this month, some of the most creative and entertaining parody videos on the Web were pulled from YouTube over dubious copyright claims. The disputed works, known as the “shred” videos, are a series of parodies in which Finnish media artist Santeri Ojala overdubs performances of legendary guitarists such as Steve Vai, Carlos Santana, and Eric Clapton. Ojala replaces the audio tracks of the guitarists' performances with his own (intentionally) bad guitar playing.