free speech / news roundup

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The US Justice Department sent a subpoena to Indymedia.us ordering it to provide a list of all visitors to the website on a certain day; the Justice Department wanted information on all IP traffic to and from the site, including IP addresses and other identifying information including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and bank account/credit card numbers. The subpoena also contained a gag order. After the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in, the Justice Department announced the subpoena had been withdrawn. Read more… and more…

Worldwide negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement have been underway for some time now. Recently a secret copyright treaty was leaked, which has many crying foul. Among the proposals: ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material (say goodbye to YouTube); ISPs have to cut off Internet access of accused copyright infringers; the whole world must adopt US-style “notice and takedown” rules. Yikes. Read more… and more…

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two Indiana teenagers who were suspended from participating in extra-curricular activities and forced (by high school administrators) to attend counseling sessions because of “racy” photos they had posted on their MySpace pages. Read more…

Fox News is caught (again) deceptively using video to advance a false story line. Read more…

UK’s government was moving towards an “updating” of wiretap laws, which would include monitoring all Internet use, including the collection of communications such as email, text messages, social networks, chatrooms, and online games. For now, the scheme has been delayed, perhaps indefinitely. Read more… and more…