Murdoch & 'fair use'

For students, teachers, and parents interested in the ongoing conversation about the "fair use" of other people's content in the classroom, Web profiles, presentations, blogs, etc., this article in BNET.com is great: It's the view from two intellectual property lawyers of News Corp's Rupert Murdoch's threat to block Google from searching his news sites (you know, minor sites like the Wall Street Journal's and Times of London). He says that he's trying actually to monetize his content at the same time that Google's making it free. The thing is, Google allows anyone to block its Web crawlers (which index the Web for its search engine) by using the Robots Exclusion Protocol (simply adding that exclusion code into the software code of their sites). So the lawyers in the article think Murdoch "must have other reasons for these threats" (like somehow changing Fair Use law?). [Thanks to teacher and Flat Classroom Project founder Vicki Davis for point this piece out. See also "Remixes & mashups" and "EFF's copyright curriculum for students."]

Felony online harassment: TX teen charged

A 16-year-old girl has been charged under a new Texas law that criminalizes online harassment. The law, H.B. 2003, states that "a person commits a third-degree felony if the person posts one or more messages on a social networking site [or via instant messaging or text-messaging by phone] with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten another person," KHOU-TV in Houston reports. Not much detail was available on the case KHOU added, but police said that "the harassment went on for a few months and involved a dispute over a boy."

Overreaction to cyberbullying not good: L.A. Times

This is interesting, in light of the recent "skank blogger" story in New York: "Overreaction to online harassment," an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. It makes a similar argument about prosecutors' "remedies" for bad behavior online that I've made for bad online behavior in school communities: that the solution is not some sort of new add-on to the curriculum or school life (or students' "real lives") called "online safety instruction" any more than the problem is just technology or the online environment. The Times argues that "if something's a crime in the physical world, it should be in the virtual one too. The problem is with prosecutors who think that transgressions are automatically magnified if they occur in cyberspace." I think this is a misconception so many adults have – that the problem is technology (that they don't fully understand), not behavior, as abhorrent as the behavior sometimes is. Technology can affect the equation (see "The Net effect"), but it's not the whole issue. The Times also refers to bad federal legislation that members of Congress introduce "when state law doesn't produce the results they seek," such as some pretty extreme cyberbullying cases in Missouri (see my recent post on the latest).

IL bans sex offenders from social sites

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has signed into law a bill that bans registered sex offenders from social network sites, PC World reports. Sounds like a good idea, but the law is problematic for a number of reasons, analysts are saying: This is a state law concerning an international medium. It concerns registered sex offenders, the definition of which covers a vast array of offenses in Illinois. The law "does not distinguish between violent criminals who have served prison time for rape – and adults who are registered sex offenders because of youthful hijinks," reports CBS/CNET law writer Declan McCullagh. It creates a false sense of security, since the vast majority of child molesters are people kids know in real life, not much in social sites, research shows. It also raises questions such as: Does this require all sites with social-media features somehow to match all site visitors to a sex offender database, how will Illinois enforce it, and does this law really accomplish what it was written for? Here's the view from Larry Magid of ConnectSafely.org and SafeKids.com at CNET and a commentary in Salon.com. [Also related is my post earlier this week about US sex-offender registries.]

COPA laid to rest

Remember COPA, the Child Online Protection Act that was passed in 1998, a year after the Supreme Court struck down similar legislation concerning objectionable online content (the Communications Decency Act, or CDA)? COPA was blocked almost immediately on constitutional grounds by a federal court in Philadelphia, then bounced back and forth a couple of times between that court and the Supreme Court. The latter today rejected the Bush administration's appeal of the latest ruling in 2004, Yahoo News reports. "Five justices who ruled against the Internet blocking law in 2004 remain on the court. The case is Mukasey v. ACLU. 08-565," according to Yahoo News. Here's my earlier coverage on COPA.

Oz: Landmark child-porn ruling

In a landmark ruling, an Australian Supreme Court judge ruled that an online cartoon depicting The Simpsons engaging in sex acts constitutes child pornography, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. "Justice Michael Adams upheld a magistrate's decision convicting a man of possessing child pornography after the cartoons ... were found on his computer." The BBC reports that Justice Adams "said the purpose of anti-child pornography legislation was to stop sexual exploitation and child abuse where images of 'real' children were depicted. But in a landmark ruling he decided that the mere fact that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people." It added that the judge said the Simpsons cartoon could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children." and therefore upheld the conviction for child pornography.