injunction

An Alabama blogger was released from jail after being held in contempt for five months for not taking down blog posts that a judge had ruled defamed the son of a former Alabama governor, AL.com reports.

The spouse of Roger Shuler, who blogs at Legal Schnauzer, removed most of the subject matter covered by the judge's permanent injunction, AL.com reported. That led to the judge ordering Shuler's release.

Attorney Robert Riley Jr. filed a defamation lawsuit against Shuler for five blog posts claiming Riley had an extramarital affair, including one that said he impregnated his lover and paid for an abortion.

According to a Committee to Protect Journalists tally, Shuler was only journalist imprisoned in North America.

The Associated Press reports on a new lawsuit in Texas federal court challenging that state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. They want a court-ordered injunction against the enforcement of state law. The plaintiffs argue that the ban on same-sex marriage cannot even survive the lowest level of constitutional scrutiny: whether the government has a rational basis for the ban.

Four same-sex couples are seeking a preliminary injunction against Tennessee's ban on same-sex marriage and recognizing same-sex unions from other states, according to the Associated Press. The couples argue the ban violates their constitutinal rights to due process and equal protection, the AP also reported.

The Wrap reports that--despite a national injunction barring FilmOn X from streaming free broadcast TV programming on its Internet service everywhere but in the Second Circuit--the company went ahead and started streaming in the Boston area.

FilmOn X was going to ask for a further carve-out from the injunction issued by a District of Columbia federal judge because a Boston-area federal judge ruled that broadcasters were not entitled to a temporary restraining order of FilmOn X's competitor, Aereo, in the New England area.

But FilmOn X didn't wait until the court ruled. The result? "A district court judge on Tuesday threatened to find FilmOn X in contempt of court for beginning to air network affiliates from Boston despite her injunction barring the company from airing network stations outside New York and Massachusetts," The Wrap reported.

UPDATE: The judge's order also rejected FilmOn X's request to modify her preliminary injunction.

Just this morning, Hearst, which has a TV station in the Boston area, lost its argument for a temporary injunction in the District of Massachusetts against Aereo, GigaOm reports. Hearst argues that the use of individual antennas by Aereo to rebroadcast its copyrighted television content violates its public performance rights. But the judge said a temporary injunction is unnecessary because '“it seems more likely that the harm will take several years to materialize,'" GigaOm reports.