For example, if the Executive- in the form of the Secretary of State -decides that, say, WikiLeaks or Amnesty International is a terrorist organization, well then by golly, it is a terrorist organization. It no longer has any right to free speech — nor can anyone else speak to them or associate with them, for risk of being charged with providing "material support" to this heinous terrorist organization known as Amnesty International. But furthermore, as per Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, anyone associating with WikiLeaks — including, presumably, those who read it, and most certainly those who give it information about government abuses-- would be guilty of aiding and abetting terrorism.

The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full, careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for people from all points of view to learn from each other about the settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate.

In one of the most significant sequels to the Supreme Court's ruling last June on the rights of terrorism suspects held by the U.S. military, a federal judge decided Thursday that the ruling protects the rights of at least some of the detainees the U.S. is holding at Bagram air base outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. . . . The decision is the most important setback in detainee matters so far for the new Obama Administration ...

Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. cannot charge three teenage girls who appeared in photographs seminude traded by classmates last year, a judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge James M. Munley granted a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to temporarily stop Mr. Skumanick from filing felony charges against the Tunkhannock Area School District students.

For Apple, coming late to the phone business has actually been a huge advantage. The success of the iPhone is down not just to great engineering, but profiting from several years of desperate and outright stupid behaviour by the mobile phone networks, who set the terms for the manufacturers. The received wisdom of the industry — that you had to know the wiles of the mobile networks to succeed — turned out to be completely mistaken.

The most recent development in the battle over web neutrality has appeared in an unlikely place, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan of 2009, also known as "the stimulus package". Buried within the bill, on pages 399-402, are provisions for grants to build out internet and wireless service in "unserved" areas of the country. Tied into these provisions are requirements that any newly developed networks operate on an "open access" basis. Coincidentally, "open access" is not defined in the bill, and since the role of the courts is to interpret legislation, any FCC definition of "open access" will be subject to the scrutiny of the courts. Although net neutrality proponents were hoping for more, they should not be disappointed in this development. It may seem like a small step, but it is some of the first language in passed legislation directly referring to net neutrality.

The court [...] applied the test from Bilski: that a method or process has to be tied to a machine or transform an article to be patentable. The idea for a marketing company does neither, wrote Judge Arthur Gajarsa. "Although Applicants argue that the method claims are tied to the use of a shared marketing force, a marketing force is not a machine or apparatus,"

Child pornography convicts are widely considered the lowliest offenders [...] But what if the victim is the same person as the photographer? A recent Pennsylvania case is turning heads for that very reason. Six teenagers at a Greensburg, Pa., high school were facing felony charges pertaining to manufacturing, disseminating, or possessing child pornography. Three of the defendants are girls, aged 14 to 15, who took semi-nude pictures of themselves and sent via cell phone them to their male classmates.

The alert issued by FBI agents in Seattle on Monday called for the public's help in identifying photographs of two Middle Eastern-looking men who had been reported travelling on ferries exhibiting "unusual behavior."

"We have no confirmation that these men's behavior was anything but innocuous, and to forever taint them by associating them with terrorism under these circumstances is not consistent with our policy," the paper said.