Supreme Court Declares Animal Cruelty Statute Violates First Amendment By Debbie Rosenbaum – Edited by Chinh Vo United States v. Stevens, No. 08–769 (U.S., April 20, 2010) Slip Opinion The Supreme Court affirmed the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which had held that 18 U.S.C. § 48, a federal statute criminalizing the commercial production, sale, or possession of depictions of cruelty to animals, was an unconstitutional abridgment of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and did not serve a compelling governmental interest. In an 8-1 ruling, ... Read More...
By Chinh Vo Moviemakers Sue Tens of Thousands of BitTorrent Users A coalition of independent filmmakers has sued more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders for copyright infringement in federal court in Washington D.C., the Hollywood Reporter, Esq. blog reports. The series of lawsuits marks the first major move in the U.S. by the movie industry to target individual torrent downloaders, rather than the torrent sites themselves, and is preceded by similar actions in Germany and the U.K. According to ... Read More...
