Perhaps there is a police officer somewhere who would interpret an automobile passenger's giving him the finger as a signal of distress, creating a suspicion that something occurring in the automobile warranted investigation. And perhaps that interpretation is what prompted Insogna to act, as he claims. But the nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult deprives such an interpretation of reasonableness. This ancient gesture of insult is not the basis for a reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation or impending criminal activity. Surely no passenger planning some wrongful conduct toward another occupant of an automobile would call attention to himself by giving the finger to a police officer.

As Techdirt has discussed before, the famous "Mickey Mouse Curve" shows how copyright extensions always seem to come through just as Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain. So it's not entirely impossible that Disney will be pushing for yet another extension fairly soon, and for more after that.

What that means in practice is that creators of works like the Philip Glass opera presenting Walt Disney in a less than totally flattering light are likely to find themselves unable to use any of the iconic Disney images beyond what is permitted by fair use. And so a crucial facet of modern culture will not be available for artists to build upon as they wish for the foreseeable future -- hardly how the copyright bargain of a time-limited government-enforced monopoly in exchange for releasing works into the public domain is supposed to work.

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On 20 October, he (Ravi Srinivasan) posted a tweet to his 16 followers saying that Karti Chidambaram, a politician belonging to India's ruling Congress party and son of Finance Minister P Chidambaram, had "amassed more wealth than Vadra".

He was alluding to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, who was at the centre of a political row after allegations over his links with a top Indian property firm.

Karti Chidambaram (@KartiPC) did not take the tweet in good humour and filed a police complaint on 29 October.

They arrested Mr Srinivasan early next morning, charged him under Section 66A of India's Information Technology [IT] Act, and demanded 15 days of police custody.

[Section 66A] can send you to jail for three years for sending an email or other electronic message that "causes annoyance or inconvenience".

On the face of it, this protects citizens against online harassment.

In reality, the law is more often used by the state as a weapon against dissent. In each such case, police action has been swift and harsh.

In April, the West Bengal government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee used Section 66A against a teacher who had emailed to friends a cartoon that was mildly critical of her.

And, interestingly, Section 66A has never been used against politicians.

"Free speech is subject to reasonable restrictions. I have a right to seek constitutional/legal remedies over defamatory/scurrilous tweets."

To help stop this form of harassment, a guy called Alexander Klöpping has registered a URL called sterftelefoongidssterf.nl(diephonebookdie) which redirects to the phone book cancellation form. In other words, if you want the phone book to be eliminated (‘die’) from your life, follow that link.

Klöpping replied that he will take the URL offline as soon as the dead tree merchant stops shoving the equivalent of “months of advertising leaflets”, and “half a percent of all paper used in the Netherlands” through everybody’s mailboxes, including those of people that have indicated they want to receive no advertisements through the legally binding “ja-nee” and “nee-nee” stickers (yes-no and no-no).

The court rejected a constitutional challenge to the HRO, basically treating harassing speech as a class of content categorically excluded from First Amendment protection. I'm not sure about this approach. It seems like this was more appropriately treated as a situation where speech is also conduct, and the HRO (harassment restraining order) regulated his conduct. I believe treating harassing speech as outside the First Amendment invites more mischief than playing with the speech/conduct divide.

This ruling leaves open a key question. Even under the prior HRO, could Arlotta have blogged about his dealings with Johnson if he did not try to bring it to the attention of others? After all, if his statements are true and not based on restricted information, Arlotta should be able to tell his story. Then again, a blog will show up in the search results, so a blog could be a passive-aggressive way of getting back to Johnson, and just as (if not more) effective as affirmatively reaching out to call attention to the blog. So try a different hypothetical: could Arlotta write and publish a book telling his story? I think the answer should be yes, so long as he lacked malicious intent (recall the initial HRO restricted him from intending to hurt Johnson's privacy).

"The examples are already part of pop culture mythology: We can post a harmless video of a child's birthday party and be treated to profoundly racist non-sequiturs in the comments. We can read about a minor local traffic accident on a newspaper's website and see vicious personal attacks on the parties involved. A popular blog can write about harmless topics like real estate, restaurants or sports and see dozens of vitriolic, hate-filled spewings within just a few hours."

"You should have real humans dedicated to monitoring and responding to your community."

"You should have community policies about what is and isn't acceptable behavior."

"Your site should have accountable identities."

"You should have the technology to easily identify and stop bad behaviors."

"You should make a budget that supports having a good community, or you should find another line of work."

As Niklas Dougherty writes, the key problem with Mr. Bildt's reasoning is that he is unable (or unwilling) to distinguish freedom of expression from freedom of information. Freedom of expression can indeed have some limits, though always post facto. The most famous example is that you can't shout Fire! in a crowded theater, but there are plenty of other examples: you can't distribute military secrets, people's medical records, et cetera.

However, the freedom of information is a different beast. This is the freedom to seek, fetch and research information and the expressions of other human beings unfettered, and has nothing to do with sending a message to any other human being. The freedom of information must be absolutely unhindered, with no exceptions. None. Not one. If you are cracking down on this, you are interfering with private correspondence and the right to partake of the ideas of others. Such behavior would also in sharp violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (article 8).

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This article argues that copyright law, at least as it is applied in many cases, is unconstitutional. When there is no harm to the copyright holder's incentives, copyright law burdens speech without serving any countervailing governmental interest. Thus, the First Amendment requires proof of harm in copyright infringement cases. Consistent with the government interest in encouraging innovation, the harm requirement would allow a finding of infringement only where the copyright holder can show that the defendant's use is likely to cause real harm to the copyright holder's incentives to create or distribute copyrighted works. As such, the harm requirement would allow restrictions on speech only when necessary to keep the "engine of free expression" running. Although the harm requirement is no panacea for all speech issues in copyright law, it would help courts to identify and eliminate cases involving false conflicts between the First Amendment and copyright -- that is, cases in which there is arguably a speech interest in allowing the defendant's use and no speech interest in prohibiting it.