There has not been much activity on the blog because we have been engaged in a long copyright and misappropriation of trade secrets trial.  So, we share with you some of the articles we have been reading, but just haven’t had time to write about:

Bloggers entitled to same protections as journalists under the First Amendment.  The Ninth Circuit recently applied libel defense protections normally reserved to the “institutional press” to bloggers reasoning the First Amendment applies to all citizens and there has been a blurring of the lines between who and who is not a journalist.  You can read more about this important decision here.

We have our first Twibel verdict – no defamation in 140 characters.  In three hours, the jury returned a defense verdict saying Courtney Love did not libel her lawyers with a tweet that suggested her prior lawyers had been “bought off.”  The bad news is that during the trial Love stayed off of Twitter, and now, she is apparently back.  More here.

Yelp ordered to disclose identity of reviewers.  A court ordered Yelp to review the identify of seven “anonymous” reviewers who criticized a dry cleaning business in Virginia. The business claimed the reviews are fakes and do not match any of their records.  This is another example of how courts are trying to balance the interests of anonymous speech and a plaintiff’s right to combat defamatory speech.  More here.

Parents take to the court to combat cyberbullying.  Locally, there has been a lot of attention about a lawsuit filed by one set of parents against seven minors and their parents for libel and negligence.   More here.

Will there be more transparency regarding government requests for online data?   The Justice Department is relaxing the rules for technology companies like Google and Microsoft to disclose, in broad terms, the number of requests these companies receive from the government and the amount of data provided.  Tech companies have long reported the number or requests from state and non-national security related requests from the federal government, but this will be the first time they can release general information related to national security letters.  If the numbers are surprising, this could lead to even more push back against the government surveillance programs.  More here.

Supreme Court to consider online re-broadcasting case.  The U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the rights to re-transmit broadcast programs via the internet.  Aereo receives over the air broadcasts the old fashion way in a warehouse and then sends them to paid subscribers devices.  The broadcasters are arguing that Aereo is violating the “public performance” copyrights to the programming.   Aereo says what they are no different than the users receiving the digital signals on their own devices.  Both sides wanted guidance from the high court and this is one worth watching.  More here.