Pirate Bay in Sweden

Dagens Nyheter's latest poll shows 5.1 percent of Swedish voters support the Pirate Party. The Pirate Party is a group of individuals who ran the file sharing site Pirate Bay and were recently convicted of copyright violations and sentence to one year in prison.

As a footnote, you only need for percent of the vote in order to gain a seat in the European Parliament.

Arrrh! Internet Privacy in France

France is considering legislation to punish internet privacy. The measure would create a new government agency to track pirates. First time offendors would receive an e-mail warning; for second offenses a certified letter, and for the third and subsequent downloads their internet connections severed for as long as one year.

Violations of Privacy

California just issued an interesting ruling in Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel over the question of privacy. At issue in this case was whether a psuedo-annonymous letter posted on myspace could be reprinted without the author's consent in a newspaper with her identity revealed. Here, Cynthia Moreno wrote a poem called "An ode to Coalinga" on her Myspace page. Her former high school principal somehow found it and had it published in the Letters to the Editor section, identifying Moreno's full name. The poem, which was less than flattering, caused residents to boycot Moreno's father's business which was forced to shut down. The court here ruled that her photo attached to the original posting prevented the posting from being anonymous. They also allowed the intentional inflection of emotional distress claim to proceed, stating that "a jury should determine whether the alleged conduct was outrageous."

Finally (maybe) . . . Fleeting Expletives

The Supreme Court today released their decision in FCC v. Fox holding that the FCC properly adopted the fleeting expletive rule. Noting that it is a court of final review and not of first impression, the Court remanded to the Second Circuit the question of whether it violated the First Amendment or not.