Support WFMU Right Now!

Last week, WFMU‘s ever-amazing “Beware of the Blog” announced that they would be holding the first-ever 24-hour fund-raising drive to cover their operating costs between their annual, excellent Marathons in the spring.

From the Blog:

WFMU prides itself on holding only one on-air fundraiser per year: our annual Marathon, which is a 2-week-long frenzy of great prize giveaways, hilarious co-host banter, surprise guests, and more caffeine than a case of Sparks (RIP). The listener support we bring in during the Marathon is normally enough to fuel our fire for a full year. While WFMU came very close to making our goal during the Marathon this March, we still fell short (I smell recession).

Because it’s tough to operate with an empty bank account and there’s an entire winter to get through until our next Marathon, WFMU needs to break with tradition by holding a brief on-air fundraiser next week.

Truly independent free-form radio is crucially important for music, the arts, and culture, and WFMU is (in this author’s humble opinion) the cream of the crop. I know times are tough all over, but any money you can give to these guys will help tremendously.

In this age of institutional corruption where money buys programming on the overwhelming majority of commercial radio, this station remains one of the few detached from this corporate influence and wholly dedicated to taste. The station has launched thousands of bands and tastemakers (Jeff Magnum was a DJ at WFMU, for goodness sake!) and are tremendously important in shaping modern culture. It’s your social obligation – like PBS or NPR, but for young people.

The 24-hour marathon just started about half an hour ago, and runs through tomorrow. You can donate on the phone at 800-989-9368 or online here. And while you do so you can listen to the station online.

NH Supreme Court hears online journalism case

Back in June, as an intern at the Berkman Center’s Cyberlaw Clinic, I worked with members of the Citizen Media Law Project and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in drafting an amicus curiae brief (PDF) in the case of The Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc. In this case, a mortgage industry news website obtained documents from New Hampshire and Massachusetts Banking Departments, providing details the ongoing investigation of a New Hampshire mortgage company (an investigation which ended in over $700,000 in fines). Upon publishing those documents the company in question sued the website in New Hampshire state court, ordering that the documents be removed and the source of the documents be revealed. The Rockingham County Superior Court granted these requests, and the case was appealed to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.

We focused on the First Amendment issues at stake case, and there were many: the lower court’s injunction worked a prior restraint on speech, it punished the disclosure of information that did not violate New Hampshire law – and even if it had, federal precedent would prohibit applying that punishment to these facts –  and it ordered the disclosure of the identity of an anonymous source, in violation of both U.S. and New Hampshire laws and case precedents. (Our press release following our filing is here.)

Last Wednesday the New Hampshire Supreme Court heard arguments from the parties in the case. Being in DC, I could not make it up to see the argument, but reports from the hearing are coming from Poynter Online, New Hampshire Public Radio, and /.. These reports suggest a great deal of the oral argument was spent discussing whether the rights recognized as awarded to “journalists” should apply to an online website of this nature, particularly the rights which protect disclosure of sources.

I find it interesting that, from what I’ve seen, there’s no record of the court discussing the issue most often advanced in a website publication case: “this isn’t a prior restraint as the material was published before it was removed.” The respondent lead with this in their brief (PDF), but no sources note this as being in the discussion. Instead, it seems as if the reporters’ privilege against revealing anonymous sources was the main tack of the respondent’s oral argument. This is a major hurdle for the respondent, but certainly not the only hurdle: even if they were to persuade the Court that the privilege should not apply to this website, they still would have to deal with the prior restraint and unconstitutional punishment issues raised by the petitioners, and the fact that the statute under which they brought this claim does not appear to create a private right of action. The absence of these arguments from the reported discussion during arguments could suggest that Court has already made up their mind on those issues.

Naturally, when the Court rules I’ll be sure to pass along that information.

Shepard Fairey recruits Fisher, Palfrey and Stewart

Sorry I’ve been away. With a law journal article in the works and exams coming up I expect things will be quiet here for a while.

I wanted to break my silence to let you all know that Shepard Fairey – plaintiff and cross-claim defendant in the highly-public Fairey v. Associated Press (the Obama “Hope” poster case) – has just found new attorneys and a new firm to replace the departing Durie Tangri LLP and Stanford Center for Internet and Society. The details of the events leading to their departure are rather depressing for those of us who wanted a clean fair use case; I’ll leave it to Wired and BoingBoing if you aren’t familiar.

After losing one of the best cyberlaw thinktanks and an excellent boutique law firm to Fairey’s totally inexcusable shenanigans, a lot of us out here  (“us” being those hoping that this case comes down on the side of fair use or non-infringement) were worried that he wouldn’t find reputation of the caliber that Durie Tangri and Stanford provided in this all important fair use case. Lucky for us, he found the two professors that wrote the book on modern copyright policy.

Specifically, the books Promises to Keep and Born Digital. Professors Terry Fisher and John Palfrey, along with litigation giant Geoffrey Stewart from the firm Jones Day, have been identified in a court filing last week as the counsel selected to replace the departing attorneys.  From Fairey’s perspective he could not have found brighter minds to take on this case. Here’s hoping they can keep this case away from this past month’s distractions and back on to the all-important issues.

Their arrival on the case is pending Judge Hellerstein’s approval of Fairey’s motion. For more, check out Justia.

Update (12 Nov): The New York Times reports that Judge Hellerstein approved the motion.