Daily Archives: February 17, 2014

Business Workshop: Free speech, Facebook and protected clicks

Posted: February 17, 2014 at 8:40 pm

February 16, 2014 8:21 PM Share with others:

Is clicking the "like" button on Facebook a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment?

That was the issue at stake in Bland v. Roberts, in which six former employees of the Hampton, Va., sheriff's office sued the sheriff for wrongful discharge. The employees alleged that the sheriff fired them as retaliation for their support of his opponent's political campaign.

The support that one of the former employees gave was to click "like" on the opponent's Facebook page.

The lower court dismissed the lawsuit, saying that merely clicking a button was not the equivalent of expressing an opinion that would be considered protected free speech. The court felt that to constitute free speech, the employee would have had to take much more substantive actions. The employees appealed, backed by briefs from both Facebook and the American Civil Liberties Union.

And the appeals court ruled in favor of the employees and reinstated the lawsuit.

In making the decision, the appeals court applied the standards used for older forms of communications, noting that clicking the "like button" leads to a published statement that is "pure speech."

The appeals court argued that there was no constitutional difference between hitting the "like" button and typing a message of support on a computer keyboard, which would be protected speech.

The case continues the trend of courts determining that the free speech principles of old media apply to new media. And the ruling demonstrates once again that employers should tread lightly before taking punitive actions against employees based on their activities on social media sites.

-- Beth Slagle, Meyer, Unkovic & Scott, bas@muslaw.com

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Business Workshop: Free speech, Facebook and protected clicks

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Untold Stories

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It has not been a good week for free speech in India. First, there was Penguin Indias decision to withdraw Wendy Donigers The Hindus from circulation, under legal pressure from fringe right-wing groupsmuch criticized in the media. Fresh on its heels followed Reporters Without Borders annual report, which placed India at a damning 140th place out of 180 countries in terms of press freedoms. Yet even as free speech liberals attempt to regroup, and take stock of a deteriorating situation, there is yet another lawsuit winding its way through the Calcutta High Court, which could have devastating consequences for the independent press in India.

In December, Sahara India initiated a libel lawsuit against Mint Journalist Tamal Bandyopadhyay for his yet to be released book, Sahara: The Untold Story. On December 10, the Calcutta High Court judge stayed the release of the book. Initial indications do not look good for Bandyopadhyay and his publishing house, which has also been made a party to the suit. After reproducing one impugned paragraph, the Judge observed, Prima facie, the impugned materials do show the plaintiffs in poor light.

It is interesting that the impugned paragraph in question specifically states that the allegations it makes are unverified: More such incredible tales abound about Sahara, none that could be substantiated, is the precise wording of the sentence. How the case for libel can be made out even after that express disclaimer is unclear. But what is truly staggering is the amount Sahara is claiming in damages: Rs. 200 crore! It is an amount that no journalist can afford to pay, and one that would drive most publishing houses out of business. (Although the facts are different, the amount is reminiscent of the Rs 100 crore a Pune Court ordered Times Now to pay in damages, for a fifteen-second clip wrongly showing Justice P.B. Sawants photograph in a story about a scam, back in 2011).

It would be bad enough if this was a one-off case. It is particularly alarming, however, because it fits into a larger pattern: the blatant abuse of libel and defamation laws by corporations and individuals in positions of power, to silence critical voices. Hamish McDonalds The Polyester Prince, chronicling the rise of Dhirubhai Ambani, was not published by HarperCollins in India, after legal pressure. Just last month, Bloomsbury agreed to withdraw Jitender Bhargavas The Descent of Air India, a book highly critical of then-aviation minister Praful Patels role in the downfall of the airline, and apologized to Patelagain, under threat of a defamation suit. And now this.

The trend is obvious, and its implications can hardly be understated. Not only do Indians lose access to important books examining the workings of power and capital in India, the nexus between politics and industry, and other similar issues of vital public interestbut the inevitable effect, as incidents such as these pile upwill be pervasive self-censorship by journalists. Who would want to risk a 200-crore lawsuit, to be contested against a corporation with unlimited resources? And if public debate on these matters is killed, we will be much poorer for it.

Is there a solution? Yes, there is. It lies with the Courts, and it is called the rule in New York Times v. Sullivan.

It is a rule that has been favourably referred to by the Supreme Court in some of its free speech cases, and in the last decade, by the Delhi High Court. Yet if there was ever a time to end the ambiguity, and incorporate it directly into Indian law, the time is now, when press freedoms stand at a critical crossroads.

In many respects, New York Times v. Sullivan presented a similar fact situation: the use of libel law by a powerful actor, in an attempt to stifle reporting on a critical issue of national importancethe American Civil Rights movement. On March 29, 1960, the New York Times carried an advertisement that described some of the actions of the Montgomery Police force against civil rights protesters. The advertisement carried some factual inaccuracies. For instance, it stated that Martin Luther King had been arrested seven times, whereas he had actually been arrested only four times. It mentioned an incident in which students had been padlocked into a hall to starve them into submission, which actually hadnt happened. And so on. On the basis of these factual inaccuracies, Sullivan, Montgomery Public Safety Commissioner sued for libel. The Alabama Court awarded him damages of 50,000 dollars. New York Times appealed to the Supreme Court. The stakes could not have been higher, because a victory for Sullivan would have led to a slew of similar lawsuits against the New York Times, that would probably have driven it out of business, and made it extremely difficult for other newspapers to report freely on the widespread suppression of civil rights protesters in the American South. Indeed, the respected American free speech scholar, Anthony Lewis, observed that libel laws were the Souths tool of choice to ensure that public opinion would not be swayed by aggressive investigative reporting of police brutality.

The American Supreme Court, in one of its most famous decisions of all time, held in favour of the New York Times. In words that have echoed in the annals of free speech history, Justice Brennan noted:

We consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

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Untold Stories

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Latest UFO Sightings, Best UFO Sightings – Video

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Latest UFO Sightings, Best UFO Sightings
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Latest UFO Sightings, Best UFO Sightings - Video

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ScienceCasts: 10 More Years [HD] – Video

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ScienceCasts: 10 More Years [HD]
Science@NASA: With the space station no longer "under construction," the world #39;s most advanced orbital laboratory is open for business. The station has just ...

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MUST SEE VIDEOS Presents The Andy Griffith Show lost epsiode 3 by Brian Ladd of BriansDreams dot – Video

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MUST SEE VIDEOS Presents The Andy Griffith Show lost epsiode 3 by Brian Ladd of BriansDreams dot
N.A.S.A. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation #39;s civilian...

By: Brian Ladd

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MUST SEE VIDEOS Presents The Andy Griffith Show lost epsiode 3 by Brian Ladd of BriansDreams dot - Video

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Space Station Live: Destination Station: Los Angeles – Video

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Space Station Live: Destination Station: Los Angeles
NASA Public Affairs Officer Josh Byerly talks to Tammie Letroise-Brown, Campaign Strategist for Destination Station, to discuss the events taking place in Lo...

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Kerbal Space Program: KSO Shuttle Missions: STS 108 – Video

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Kerbal Space Program: KSO Shuttle Missions: STS 108
The Eighth of my STS KSO Shuttle Missions and Fourth Flight of the Tenacious! STS 108 #39;s objectives are to deploy the KSO Space Station Core and return to the...

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Minecraft: Deadly Orbit with IronStoneMine – 06 – Space Walk [F] – Video

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Minecraft: Deadly Orbit with IronStoneMine - 06 - Space Walk [F]
F tackle their first custom map together; Deadly Orbit! Fabe and I are stranded in the deserted space station and need to gather supplies to survive, and es...

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Space station SPHERES run circles around ordinary satellites

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These are, in fact, the droids that NASA and its research partners are looking for. Inspired by a floating droid battling Luke Skywalker in the film Star Wars, the free-flying satellites known as Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) have been flying aboard the International Space Station since Expedition 8 in 2003.

Although there have been numerous SPHERES investigations held on the orbiting laboratory, four current and upcoming SPHERES projects are of particular significance to robotics engineers, rocket launch companies, NASA exploration and anyone who uses communications systems on Earth.

The SPHERES-Vertigo, Department of Defense (DOD) SPHERES-Rings, SPHERES-Slosh and SPHERES-Inspire II investigations all use the existing SPHERES space station facility of these self-contained satellites. Powered not by an astronauts use of the Force, but by AA batteries, the satellites act as free-flying platforms that can accommodate various mounting features and mechanisms in order to test and examine the physical or mechanical properties of materials in microgravity. Each satellite is an 18-sided polyhedron and is roughly the size of a soccer ball. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., operates and maintains the SPHERES research facility aboard the space station, which is funded by the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

SPHERES provide a unique low risk, low-cost, long-term microgravity research facility that supports quick-reaction testing of technologies that can be repeated numerous times. Alvar Saenz Otero, Ph.D., associate director and SPHERES lead scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Space Systems Laboratory describes the reusability of SPHERES for multiple microgravity investigations by saying, if anything goes wrong, reset and try again!

Operating intermittently since February 2013, the SPHERES Visual Estimation and Relative Tracking for Inspection of Generic Objects (SPHERES-Vertigo) investigation uses what looks like eye goggles and other new hardware and software on multiple satellites during testing. The purpose of the study is to build 3-D models of a target using mapping algorithms and computer vision-based navigation. These additions to the satellites help researchers create 3-D maps of a previously unknown object for navigation by flying the SPHERES in a path around that object while taking photos.

Brent Tweddle, a postdoctoral associate with the MIT Space Systems Laboratory, said the SPHERES-Vertigo project differs from previous SPHERES experiments by adding a pair of stereo cameras, which see, perceive and understand their world visually and can communicate with satellites using Vertigo goggles. The goggles act like their own little intelligence block that sticks on the front end of the SPHERES and allows them to see the rest of the world that they want to navigate through, explained Tweddle.

First, the SPHERES use their updated hardware and software to construct a 3-D model of a target object. Then, the satellites test their skills to perform relative navigation using only sensory reference to the 3-D model.

Imaging from projects like Vertigo could help refurbish old satellites by determining and mapping the specifications of the old satellites and repairing them as they orbit Earth. Other applications include NASAs future mission of visiting an asteroid, where thorough understanding of the size, shape and motion of an asteroid is necessary to navigate around it as it travels through space. Further, as robots become more autonomous, they will need a pair of eyes, similar to Vertigo, to provide them with navigational capabilities.

The DOD SPHERES-Rings investigation is the first demonstration of electromagnetic formation flight in microgravity, as well as of wireless power transfer in space. The study installs highly advanced rings to existing SPHERES. The crew places the rings around an individual satellite, consisting of resonant coils, coil housing with fans, batteries and support structure hardware. The Rings project demonstrates the use of electromagnetic coils to maneuver individual SPHERES with respect to one another. The current running through the ring of coils controls the satellites, so that two ring-outfitted SPHERES are able to attract, repel and rotate.

Using electrically-generated forces and torques is preferable to using fuel, since electricity can be generated by solar panels, but once fuel is expended, the mission is generally over, explained Kathleen Riesing, a graduate student with the MIT Space Systems Laboratory. The software used to control the rings will also demonstrate wireless power transfer, where one satellite sends power to another.

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Cygnus launched from Wallops Island to return from International Space Station Tuesday

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(NASABill Ingalls, Daily Press / January 4, 2014)

After spending five weeks at the International Space Station, the Cygnus commercial space freighter that launched from Wallops Island last month is set to disembark Tuesday.

The unmanned Cygnus delivered abut 2,800 pounds of crew provisions, science experiments, hardware and spare parts after it launched Jan. 9 aboard an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the Eastern Shore. It docked with the station four days later.

On its return flight, the Cygnus will be packed with disposable cargo or space station trash and is slated to burn up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.

This is the maiden operational mission to the ISS for Orbital Sciences Corp., based in Dulles, under its $1.9 billion NASA contract to resupply the station through 2016.

NASA said the Cygnus will detach from the station's Harmony module at around 5:30 a.m., and be released at 6:40 a.m. It will record the undocking and replay it during live coverage of the release, set to begin on NASA Television at 6 a.m. To view, go to http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv.

The Cygnus will begin to maneuver a safe distance away, then on Wednesday will fire its engines twice so it can slip out of orbit for a "destructive entry" in Earth's atmosphere, NASA said. It won't provide television coverage of that event.

The next Orbital resupply launch is currently set for May 1 from MARS.

Dietrich can be reached by phone at 757-247-7892.

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Cygnus launched from Wallops Island to return from International Space Station Tuesday

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