Free Talk Live

An American rights group is suing the police in Pennsylvania for issuing tickets, which carry a jail sentence, to people for swearing.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed the lawsuits earlier, argues that the right to use profanity is protected by the U.S. Constitution.
"Unfortunately, many police departments in the commonwealth do not seem to be getting the message that swearing is not a crime," said Marieke Tuthill of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "The courts have repeatedly found that profanity, unlike obscenity, is protected speech."

A copyright battle between the AP and an online news-clipping service is reaching a climax, and the case could have significant implications for fair use. AP sued Meltwater Group last year, arguing the "reputation management" company had a "parasitic business model" that violated copyright. Meltwater is arguing that it is merely a search engine. Last week, the nation's largest newspapers lined up to tell the New York federal judge considering the case that they support the AP.

I think that this story speaks for itself, but this is another story highlighting an attack against free speech at Universities. I recently graduated from Carleton University and I wish I could say that these kind of events were rare. This piece has many priceless quotes including “Only someone who had gone to university could write something so utterly stupid,” referring to the public explanation given by the individual who tore down the free speech wall.

Much more in the news article itself, but you have to read it to believe it.

A federal inmate who has filed more than 3,800 lawsuits and targeted the famous, the infamous and even the long-dead is now being sued by federal officials who want him to knock it off...
The inmate who dubbed himself "Lawsuit Zeus" in one of his thousands of court cases has filed up to four of his handwritten petitions a day in Kentucky courts alone.

As part of its ongoing punishment of any institute or company that defends copyright, Anonymous has now taken down the website of The United States Copyright Office. The group managed to take copyright.gov offline for half an hour. After that the website started to respond again slowly, with occasional outages.

A bill giving the government the power to shut down Web sites that host materials that infringe copyright is making its way quietly through the lame-duck session of Congress, raising the ire of free-speech groups and prompting a group of academics to lobby against the effort.

"The US government’s policy of leaving the Internet alone is over, according to Obama’s top official at the Department of Commerce."

In September, digital rights advocates and Internet engineers helped to delay the Combatting Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), a terrible bill that would have allowed the Attorney General to censor the Internet in the name of copyright enforcement. Now that the November elections are over, COICA is back on the Senate Judiciary Committee schedule for markup this Thursday and could pass out of committee during the "lame duck" session of Congress.

Oslo, Norway (CNN) -- Here's a quick way to get arrested in modern Russia: Walk into a cathedral wearing a neon mask and carrying a guitar, stand on the pulpit and scream punk songs with lyrics like "Virgin Mary drive Putin away!" Throw in a few more obscenities, and that's how three members of the punk band Pussy Riot ended up in Russian prison in early March, after criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin, who the group says is in bed with the Russian Orthodox Church and is unfairly cracking down on free speech.