Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Cyberlaw Clinic client John Doe and his anonymous speech rights have prevailed in the fight against Global Adhesives company H.B. Fuller. Fuller has withdrawn its subpoena to Yahoo seeking Doe's identity and has requested that the court dismiss Doe's appeal as moot. This is a great victory for our client and for free speech rights online.

EFF has posted a video of a debate between EFF's Fred von Lohmann and billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban over Viacom v. YouTube and the question of whether the DMCA safeharbors should protect GooTube from being held liable.

The RIAA once infamously likened it's campaign of lawsuits against individual filesharers, which has included suits against clearly innocent grandparents, parents, non-computer owners, and even dead people, to driftnet fishing. "When you fish with a net, you sometimes are going to catch a few dolphin." Luckily, these dolphins are fighting back. Not only are they fighting, they are winning.

It's finally happened. Viacom has sued Google for $1 billion in damages for copyright infringement over videos posted on YouTube. This case will be a great test for exactly how powerful the DMCA Safeharbor protections actually are.

The Washington Post ran a story yesterday about postings on the website AutoAdmit, which calls itself "the most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world." These postings included personal attacks and demeaning messages about women at the "top 14" law schools, with pictures and links to a contest where people were invited to vote on the "hottest" female law students at the "Top 14" law schools (Stanford students, happily, stayed out of the fray).

Certainly, those who have legitimately been libeled or whose right to privacy have been violated have recourse through the law. But what about those who simply said offensive things? In a world of Web 2.0, when so much of society's communication and attention span has moved online, do unpopular minority viewpoints still have a voice? Or can they be silenced at the whim of private companies and individuals? AutoAdmit has taken a stand that it will "almost never censor content, no matter how abhorrent it may be," but other sites may not be so speech-friendly.