Free Republic

The Republican-led Texas House has officially caved to the radical Left’s war on free speech—and shockingly, it’s being spearheaded by none other than the state’s own scandal-plagued former House Speaker Dade Phelan. On Tuesday, House Bill 366 passed with bipartisan support, making it a potential crime in the state of Texas to share or distribute AI-generated and “altered media”—including political memes—without a government-approved disclaimer on political ads. According to the bill: “A person may not, with the intent to influence an election, knowingly cause to be published, distributed, or broadcast political advertising that includes an image, audio recording, or video...

VIDEOAnd we have yet another liberal who has graciously offered up her bank account for draining by the inevitable Kyle Rittenhouse lawsuit. The name of the future bank account drainee is Tiffany Cross of MSNBC News who has provided ample evidence for her civil suit plaintiff.

Former President Obama's attorneys say they plan to file a cease-and-desist letter over a pro-Trump group's television ad in South Carolina that attacks former Vice President Joe Biden by using a portion of Obama's book Obama is also demanding that all South Carolina television stations immediately stop running the ad from the Committee to Defend the President, which is aimed at supporting President Trump's reelection bid. The ad uses excerpts from Obama's 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father," in an effort to get the attention of black voters in the state. "Joe Biden promised to help our community. It was...

The MTA's subway map can be intimidating. "It's quite complicated," said Sebastian Gutmann, a tourist. "Because you see so many street names, so many station names, and you have to figure out where you are. It wasn't much help to Jake Berman when he first moved to New York from San Francisco 12 years ago. So he decided to make his own version. Jake Berman's subway map. Courtesy Jake Berman "Frustration is a great source of creativity," Berman said. But when he began selling his creation, the MTA threatened legal action, and got the website Etsy to temporarily take it...

Video at link.

Video at link.

Yes, this can destroy the internet as we know it in Europe, and we have only 1 month to act on this and in the years, independent journalists and alternative media based companies have faced government regulation of the web, which has included stupid "hate speech" laws and clamp downs on social media platforms that are determined to be "fake news". Now this bill will make everything much more difficult when it comes to the issue of copyright. It is not about taking down screen recorded movies that someone posted on Youtube (That I do not have a huge problem...

Video at link.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFtm1MTBC3E Target: The Corrupters! aired on ABC from September 29, 1961 to June 8, 1962. The Target store brand was an early 1960s outgrowth of a parent company that owned both B. Dalton and Pickwick booksellers. There appears never to have been any legal dispute about the use of the program title "Target: The Corrupters!" or the logo of a dark bullseye on a white background.

A Supreme Court order issued today closes the book on (or perhaps merely ends this chapter of) more than a decade of legal warfare between Google and the Authors Guild over the legality of the former’s scanning without permission of millions of copyrighted books. And the final word is: it’s fair use. The order is just an item in a long list of other orders that appeared today, and adds nothing to the argument except the tacit approval of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals 2015 decision — itself approving an even earlier decision, that of the U.S. District Court...

So when I first made a video showing that CrazyRussianHackers idea about using dry ice for an air conditioner was basically suicidal, I really didnt think anything would come of it. Then recently he filed a DMCA takedown of my video. This resulted in a strike against my account and me losing access to certain features. Now thats a special brand of idiot who makes a video about a suicidal way to chill the air, then files a baseless copyright takedown of the only warning about how dumb that idea is. Especially against a guy like me who has a...

MADRID: News media companies in Spain will be able to charge search engines such as Google for displaying copyrighted content under a new law proposed by the Spanish government on Friday. The measure echoes similar drives around Europe. Publishers in Portugal, France, Belgium and Germany have pushed for compensation in some form or another for links, snippets, headlines and lead paragraphs that appear in news search engines and aggregators such as Google News and Yahoo! news. The search engines draw revenue from advertising placed near news content and media companies have fought for a share of it. The new rule...

Link only due to the subject of the article.

The Righthaven LLC copyright lawsuit saga will continue indefinitely after a judge on Wednesday blocked efforts to have Righthaven's CEO fired and its appeals canceled. Righthaven is known for filing 275 no-warning lawsuits in 2010 and 2011 in partnership with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. As a company, as opposed to being a law firm, Righthaven had acquired copyrights from the newspapers for lawsuit purposes. It sued individuals, companies and nonprofits it claimed infringed on the copyrights by posting content from the newspapers online without authorization. The company essentially shut down last year after judges in three...

Las Vegas copyright lawsuit company Righthaven LLC suffered another setback Wednesday when an appeals court dismissed one of its appeals. The dismissal was requested by the nonprofit Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO) in Portland, Ore., which won a key fair-use ruling last year against Righthaven. The dismissal was granted Wednesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which cited case law that appeared to back arguments by the CIO that Righthaven could no longer participate in the case since creditors had seized the copyrights it sues over. In layman’s terms, the CIO argued Righthaven no longer...

Herzfeld & Rubin has brought a lawsuit against a client's son whom the firm claims is attempting to defame the firm through online postings. Herzfeld & Rubin claims that Joel Leyden has "illegally appropriated" the law firm's name by registering a website with a domain name nearly identical to its own and posting fictitious news articles on other sites claiming the firm is accused of malpractice and has taken $80,000 in legal fees from a trust account. One of Joel's postings says the firm bullies and coerces like a mobster. "There is no malpractice and no case of malpractice," the...

Late Friday, the federal district court in Nevada issued a declaratory judgment that makes is harder for copyright holders to file lawsuits over excerpts of material and burden online forums and their users with nuisance lawsuits. The judgment – part of the nuisance lawsuit avalanche started by copyright troll Righthaven – found that Democratic Underground did not infringe the copyright in a Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper article when a user of the online political forum posted a five-sentence excerpt, with a link back to the newspaper's website. Judge Roger Hunt’s judgment confirms that an online forum is not liable for...

Newspaper copyright infringement lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas was hit Wednesday with an order to pay $119,488 in attorney's fees and costs in its failed lawsuit against former federal prosecutor Thomas DiBiase. This was by far the largest fee award against Righthaven, but likely will be dwarfed by an upcoming award in Righthaven's failed suit against the Democratic Underground. Before Wednesday the largest fee award against Righthaven was for $34,045 — an amount Righthaven says it's having trouble paying or even posting a bond to cover. DiBiase has a website covering no-body murder cases, or cases where a...

In what is becoming a well-settled pattern, Righthaven again finds itself on the losing end of a motion, with its case thrown out and owing the defendant – here, Leland Wolf, proprietor of the It Makes Sense Blog – costs and attorneys' fees for bringing a baseless copyright case. The lawsuit, Righthaven v. Wolf, is also notable for being the leading case among more than 50 that were filed in Colorado. Pending a motion to dismiss, the Colorado court stayed the remaining cases. With this ruling, the court has hopefully rung the death knell for the other remaining live cases...

Copyright troll Righthaven's flawed business model—suing hundreds of bloggers and small websites for dubious cases of alleged copyright infringement of newspaper articles—appears to be grinding to an inexorable finish. But even as the Righthaven cases prove that litigation isn't going to magically make print media profitable in the age of the Internet, a new generation of journalists and creators are adapting to the digital world—including one of Righthaven's former clients. Last week, reports were circulating that Righthaven was on "life support" after admitting that they aren't currently filing more lawsuits and are apparently teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Even...