Section 14

18-year old Chicago high school student Allan Lee was arrested last week and charged with disorderly behaviour for writing a violent essay for his creative writing class. Lee has since had his enlistment contract with the Marines revoked because of the charges.

The essay mimicked the content of a violent video game but contained no threats against anyone.

Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho wrote a series of violent plays that came to light after his massacre. The Cary-Grove school board has now massively overreacted, crushing rights as it goes, and criminalised this form of expression. Trying to deal with some of the actual violence that goes on in American schools would be a better idea that making handing in homework a criminal offence.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

America’s Child Online Protection Act was struck down as unconstitutional by Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr. yesterday.

The law put the onus on web site operators rather than parents to keep minors from viewing “harmful” material.
What’s really noteworthy is this part of Judge Reed’s summation:

Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if (free speech) protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection.

Absolutely right. Too many people are willing to throw away free speech to chase some less important, but seemingly more pressing, short-term goal.

If those who would discard free speech to pursue some triviality don’t realise the harm they’re causing then they’re not fit to hold power. If they do realise the harm they’re doing, they’re doubly unfit to hold power and should be disposed of double-quick.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

As I said last week, copyrights and trademarks are legitimate restrictions on speech because they protect the intellectual property of an idea’s originators without preventing the expression of any point of view.

Organisations need to vigorously protect their trademarks or else risk them falling into general use and becoming unprotectable. “Petrol” was once a trade name, “Coke” has come to mean any sweet, brown, fizzy drink - although their lawyers will still come after you, and we are seeing the verb “to google” coming into common use.

The U.S. National Pork Board did not see the funny side when breastfeeding advocate The Lactivist started selling a t-shirt with the slogan “Breastmilk: The Other White Milk”. The Cafe Press site that sells the t-shirts also features other items that play on trademarks - how about “Nip/Suck” or “It’s Nipple Lickin’ Good”.

Whilst passing off your product as another brand is forbidden, parody is protected as a fair use. It’s extremely unlikely that even the slowest of people would think that the Pork Board was endorsing the product, or that the product would damage the Pork Board’s brand. Some companies actually go to great lengths to make a gratuitous link between their products and the female form.

When the lawyer’s letter came, the Lactivist blog didn’t give in but rallied its readership to harass the Pork Board into taking back its threat to sue. (Cafe Press had already removed the offending t-shirt however.)

Once again, slowly: Just because someone says something you don’t like, or you’ve a had a humour bypass, don’t have a hissy fit and start throwing lawyers around. You will look like an idiot and generate publicity for the very thing you don’t want anyone to see.

Hat tip: EFF, via Boing Boing.

Yesterday’s Dominion Post front page was dominated by a photograph of astronauts working on the International Space Station with Canterbury, Marlborough and Wellington gliding past below them.

Understandably, the newspaper was “swamped” with requests to buy the photograph and you can do so by calling the Dom Post on (04) 474 0204.

What’s also worth knowing is that all photographs taken by NASA (and many other US government agencies) are placed in the public domain. No copyright applies so you can reproduce the photograph for yourself at no cost. Download from the STS-116 flight day 4 photo archive - in low res or high res - and print at will.

Trey Park and Matt Stone feature in this month’s Reason magazine talking about South Park with a big emphasis on religion, free speech and censorship.

The interview was held as part of a conference Reason held in Amsterdam to explore the future of free expression and free markets in Europe. Amsterdam was specifically chosen because it was “the site of one of the most brutal crimes related to free speech in recent memory: the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.”

On religion:

Reason: What’s more terrifying, crossing Islam or crossing Scientology?

Trey Parker: They’re really the same people. This is what happened. I was on my honeymoon in Disney World. I turned on the television, and there were thousands of rioting Muslims, and the caption said, “Muslims enraged over cartoon.” And I said, “Oh, shit. What did we do?”

On free expression:

Reason: This is a bizarre time to be alive. You have places like YouTube, where you can createwhatever you want and disseminate it. At the same time you have lawsuits, and you have people literally being killed. So what’s the state of free expression?

Matt Stone: Basically all we’ve ever done is said what we wanted to say, and people have thrown money at us. […] It’s pretty good, you know? We can say whatever we want. […] It doesn’t mean that we don’t have battles like we did this year, where you get really frustrated with the fact that Mission Impossible: 3’s bigger than South Park and they can shut you down.

Stuff is reporting that the US Supreme Court has consented to hear the ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ case.

The US Supreme Court is to decide whether a high school principal violated a student’s free-speech rights by suspending him for unfurling a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”.

Student Joseph Frederick says the banner’s language was designed to be meaningless and funny in an effort to get on television as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by the school in Juneau, Alaska, in January 2002.

The case is reminiscent of Tinker v. Des Moines in which the Court upheld the right of John and Mary Beth Tinker, high school students in Des Moines, to wear black armbands to school in protest at the Vietnam War, regarding the act as constitutionally protected speech.

Juneau School Board v. Frederick will determine whether the protection extends from symbolic political speech to pointless juvenile comedy (which of course it should).