Website Covered By State Reporter's Privilege

New Hampshire Supreme Court Rules Website Covered By State Reporter's Privilege
Posted May 6th, 2010

This morning, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire handed down an important decision holding that a mortgage industry website, The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter, is entitled to protection under the state's reporter's privilege.

The case is Mortgage Specialists, Inc. v. Implode-Explode Heavy Industries, Inc., which was argued before the New Hampshire Supreme Court last fall. The dispute centers on an article that Impode-O-Meter published in August 2008, which detailed administrative actions taken by the New Hampshire Banking Department against The Mortgage Specialists, a mortgage lender. The article included a link to a financial document that The Mortgage Specialists allegedly submitted to the state banking authorities, which Implode-O-Meter had obtained from an anonymous source. After the mortgage company discovered the disclosure, it sued the website, demanding that the document be removed from the Internet and that the anonymous source be identified. A Rockingham County Superior Court judge granted these requests.

In the part of the decision dealing with the reporter's privilege, the state high court ruled that New Hampshire's qualified reporter's privilege applied to Implode-O-Meter and could protect the identity of the source who provided the loan document. The court flatly rejected The Mortgage Specialists' argument that "the newsgathering privilege is inapplicable here because Implode is neither an established media entity nor engaged in investigative reporting." ...

Will Italy's Conviction of Google Execs Stick?

Will Italy's Conviction of Google Execs Stick?
Citizen Media Legal Project
March 2nd, 2010 by Arthur Bright

I've no doubt that CMLP blog readers, fellow netizens that you are, are well aware of an Italian court's conviction last week of three Google executives for invasion of privacy of an Italian teenager.

(In case you missed the story, here it is in short: the teenager (who either suffered from Down's syndrome or autism; reports differ) was filmed by four other teens who were bullying him, and the bullies posted the video on YouTube. Google promptly removed the video after receiving a formal complaint. Italian authorities then criminally prosecuted four Google execs for defamation and invasion of privacy. Last week, the Italian court found three of the execs guilty of invasion of privacy; the defamation charges were dropped against all four. More back-story can be found in my 2008 post when the possibility of charges was first announced.)

Of course, Google is apoplectic. Much of the rest of the media world is too: Mathew Ingram of gigaom.com rounds up:

The Wall Street Journal called it “madness,” and suggested it was “crazy, even for Italy,” while the Inquirer called it “a blow against common sense and Internet freedom.” Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation called it “a threat to the Internet,” and the National Post said it suggested that “Fascism is alive and well.”

And that doesn't include Anna Masera's commentary on The Guardian's website, where she warns that "today Italy is a little bit more Chinese"—in the online oppression sense, of course.

So the vast majority of the responses have been damning of the Italian judge's verdict, and Google has said they're going to appeal. John Naughton writes for The Observer that:

[I]t's likely that they will be vindicated because even if the Italian appeal fails, there is always the possibility of recourse to the European Court in Strasbourg, which will take the view that European Union law, as currently drafted, appears to give hosting providers a safe harbour from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence...

Citizen Media Legal Project website--Will Judge Judith Hayes be able to shut it down?

Someone sent me a link today to Harvard University's website about threats to citizens who try to exercise their freedom of speech.

The website is here.

It's amazing how many powerful people think that the First Amendment doesn't apply to people who criticize them.