media law

Five Rhode Island lawmakers had introduced drone legislation that would make it illegal for drones to take pictures or videos of private buildings without permission, Media General's WPRI 12's Allison Gallo reports. Other legislators have introduced legislation to create a panel to study how other states are regulating drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration has just released long-awaited rules to integrate drones into the American airspace, but those rules aren't expected to become final for two years or more.

After a Georgia state-court judge ruled that the state's law protecting speech related to government proceedings doesn't protect a TV station from a defamation lawsuit, many in the media bar are concerned that his ruling, if upheld, could threaten the freedom of press, The Daily Report's Kathleen Baydala Joyner reports. The TV station reported that the plaintiff faked having a Purple Heart to get a free military award license plate. A petition for certiorari is pending with the Georgia Supreme Court on whether the anti-SLAPP statute applies to the case.

Foreign Policy's Phelim Kine reports on the many, many threats that Afghanistan journalists face: The Taliban said last year that it would specifically target journalists and NGOs as part of its insurgency, and there were eight journalists killed in 2014. A Human Rights Watch report documented how media outlets are increasingly subject to harassment, threats and violence from security forces and pro-government warlords. And the official Media Violations Investigation Commission, rather than examining if complaints about the accuracy of reporting have merit, directly forward complaints to the Attorney General's office to intiate legal action against journalists. The result? Afghani journalists self-censor in order to protect themselves (this reminds me of how some Mexican news outlets stopped reporting on drug trafficking because of the murders and kidnappings they faced from drug cartels): "A Kabul-based senior newspaper editor told Human Rights Watch that reporting on certain politically connected mujahidin warlords — veterans of the conflicts against both the Soviet occupation and the Taliban — were effectively off limits for his reporters," Kine reports. 

Jesse Eisinger, writing in a column for ProPublica and the New York Times, argues that sunshine is not actually the best mechanism to ensure government accountability. Even though disclosure and transparency has become the answer to every problem in modern society, requiring "corporations and government to release reams of information on food, medicine, household products, consumer financial tools, campaign finance and crime statistics,"  dicslosure doesn't work when transactions become complex, he writes. The answer? "Hard and fast rules. If lawmakers want to end a bad practice, ban it. Having them admit it is not enough."

The Seventh Circuit ruled that the Chicag0 Sun-Times broke the law when it published the heights and weights of Chicago cops who acted as fillers in a police lineup, Kim Janssen reported for that newspaper. The cops' height, weight, eye color, hair color and months and years of their birthdates were private information that was improperly obtained from the officers' drivers licenses in violation of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, the court ruled.

The lineup involved former Mayor Richard M. Daley's nephew, who threw a deadly punch that killed a man, and who was investigated by the newspaper for allegedly getting preferential treatment from the police.

Barrett Brown, a hacktivist, journalist and writer, was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison, less 28 months for time served, for threatening an FBI agent, for being an accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to protected computers owned by securities firms and interfering with a serach warrant, The Dallas Morning News' Tasha Tsiaperas reports.

At issue was whether Brown was aware that a link he shared online contained credit card information that had been hacked by others. Brown and his supporters argued that heightening his sentence for sharing the link would chill journalism and the First Amendnment. But U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay said Brown's involvement with the Anonymous hack was "'more than a mere posting of that link.”'

Brown said in a satirical statement that '“I’ll be provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by Bureau of Prisons officials and staff and otherwise report on news and culture in the world’s greatest prison system.'"

The Connecticut Supreme Court has rejected a prior restraint case involving legal newspaper Connecticut Law Tribune, CLT's Thomas B. Scheffey reports. The court said the case had become legally moot because the trial judge retracted his order barring the Law Tribune from publishing a story with details from a juvenile court record. However, the newspaper appealed seeking "a ruling that this prior restraint violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and its counterparts in the Connecticut Constitution. The mother [of two children placed in foster care because of a rancorous divorce] sought a ruling that the confidentiality interests of the children trumped the constitutional free speech provisions," Scheffey reports.

New York Times' James Risen won't be called to testify about his confidential sources after all, his colleague Matt Apuzzo reports. As Jeffrey Sterling goes on trial for allegedly leaking classified information about a CIA operation in Iran, federal prosecutors have dropped their efforts to have Risen testify in the trial on the theory that Sterling was Risen's source. However,  Joel Kurtzberg, a lawyer with Cahill Gordon & Reindel, told Apuzzo, "while Mr. Risen ultimately may not have to testify, the Justice Department used the case to create court precedent that could be used to force journalists to testify in the future."

Judy Dempsey, writing for Carnegie Europe, argues that, in the wake of a dozen people being killed at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, European governments should be encouraged "to protect press freedom and other civil liberties, not restrict them.": "Freedom of the press is inextricably tied to universal values and is not an exclusively Western liberty. To curb that freedom now, and for anti-Islam movements at the same time to use the attacks on Charlie Hebdo to incite hatred against Muslims, would undermine the civil liberties and tolerance espoused by the West."