Steven Tyler- you know the guy who is like an ancient plesiosaur but has like a whole bunch of kids with groupies and has spent the last four decades wearing obscenely tight pants?

That guy is complaining about indecency. Like, not that people are calling his music indecent, or criticizing the shenanigans on the show he hosts, American Idol- like rockstar Steven Tyler would like it if people on the tee vee would comport themselves in a more dignified fashion, thank you very much. Oh, and his remarks are addressed to the Supreme Court, who are about to review a case about decency standards and broadcast TV.

It’s an interesting perspective because when I was a kid, Frank Zappa was leading a charge against censorship and all the big alt-rock bands of the day spoke out about it, so supporting censorship seems to me to be a very un-rock-n-roll thing to do. But Tyler says he is sick and tired of scantily clad women dancing across his television screen, and doesn’t wish to see people using coarse language to one another. He explains:

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith Says Supreme Court Should Be Stricter About TV Swears, Nudity is a post from: The Inquisitr

What could possibly go wrong here? So, about those civil liberties you appeared to be enjoying…

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed a law into effect last week that makes it illegal to “transmit or display an image” on the internet that is likely to “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to any individual who might be exposed to said image. As Ars Technica points out, Tennessee is becoming a pretty sucktastic place to use the internet- it was also recently decided in the state that misappropriation of your Netflix login constitutes “theft of services.”

The frightening thing about the harassing images legislation is that it does not matter with whom the image was shared- if it is exposed to the wrong set of eyes, you could wind up in jail for a year and incur fines:

The ban on distressing images, which was signed by Gov. Bill Haslam last week, is also an update to existing law. Tennessee law already made it a crime to make phone calls, send emails, or otherwise communicate directly with someone in a manner the sender “reasonably should know” would “cause emotional distress” to the recipient. If the communciation lacked a “legitimate purpose,” the sender faced jail time… for image postings, the “emotionally distressed” individual need not be the intended recipient. Anyone who sees the image is a potential victim. If a court decides you “should have known” that an image you posted would be upsetting to someone who sees it, you could face months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

Aside from significant First Amendment concerns inherent in legislation such as this, Ars also goes into how, scarily, the law reaches its tentacles into the realm of private communications made across social networks. Although certain protections are in place for emails, one-on-one messages via services like Facebook are being treated differently.

“‘Images or communications’ posted to a social networking site by offering ‘specific and articulable facts,’suggesting that the information sought is ‘relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation’” could be accessible by law enforcement- seemingly in direct conflict with constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure in the absence of a warrant.

Does this freak you out at all? Is it possible to retain privacy rights in the digital age, or are proponents fighting a losing battle?

[WTF?] Tennessee Bans Posting Offensive Images Online is a post from: The Inquisitr

Rosemary Port, 29, is the party-girl behind the curtain of now-defunct, legally plagued blog Skanks in NYC.

Port, an unemployed nightclub promoter, is none too pleased with the forcible unmasking and is said to be exploring legal action against Google. (Poor Google, they can’t seem to please anyone in this whole kerfuffle.) Port has retained the services of a lawyer, who spoke to the NY Post about his client’s reaction to the surprising verdict:

Port countered yesterday by hiring hotshot Manhattan lawyer Sal Strazzullo, who said his client doesn’t regret the blog — “she regrets the court’s decision” that her identity should be revealed.

“I’m shocked that my right to privacy has been tampered with,” Port said in a statement.

Strazzullo said Port is “very scared” her name is now public, and “confused” about how a judge could let that happen. “This doesn’t happen to people every day.”

The post couldn’t wrangle a comment out of Port, although her boyfriend charmingly told a reporter “you wish you had my life” as the couple hopped into a car on the Lower East Side. The boyfriend, Daniel Dimin, is apparently the inspiration for the whole Skanks in NYC debacle. Port is said to have begun the blog after target Liskula Cohen trash-talked Port to Dimin.

Cohen also had another round of attention from the Post- she was interviewed after opting to drop the $3m defamation suit against Port. And in the article, she seems to be just as nutty as her litigious ways might suggest. When the reporter appears to be noting Cohen’s smoking habit, Cohen flies off the handle:

“My grandmother wouldn’t like it,” she said cutely. I wrote it down. A throwaway line.

Oh. My. God.

In an instant, lovely Liskula turned on me in a sputtering, cursing fury. It was not pretty.

“What are you doing?” she snarled. “Leave my family out of this!

“What do you think — I’m a f- – -ing asshole?” she said, staring straight into my eyes while unleashing a torrent of curses that nearly made me lose my pen.

“That isn’t nice, is it? IS IT?!!” she demanded.

Poison pen wielder of Skanks in NYC revealed as… Rosemary Port? is a post from: The Inquisitr

And she’s not gonna take that lying down.

Liskula Cohen, a  NYC party girl who dabbled in modeling before her face was disfigured in a 2007 attack with a broken bottle, won a ruling to reveal the identity of the writer of a blog calling Cohen a skank. Yes. She went to court and sued Google because someone called her a skank. But as the above picture illustrates, isn’t truth and absolute defense against libel?

The blog has since been pulled down, but Gawker gacked the text that sent Cohen sobbing to the courts about her reputation and the mean mean words on teh internets:

I would have to say that the first place award for “Skankiest in NYC” would have to go to Liskula Gentile Cohen. How old is this skank? 40 something? She’s a psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank.

Yeah she may have been hot 10 years ago, but is it really attractive to watch this old hag straddle dudes in a nightclub or lounge? Desperation seeps from her soul, if she even has one.

Enjoy the pic.

Bloggers have long endured attacks on free speech and attempts by those who wish to silence them, but this is the first ruling of its sort. From PC World:

…The Delaware Supreme Court overturned a decision to reveal a blogger’s identity, after the person accused a local politician of having “an obvious mental deterioration.” A second posting said the politician “is as paranoid as everyone in the town thinks he is.”

The court favored the blogger, fearing that unmasking him or her would have a chilling effect on anonymous speech. Furthermore, the court said that blogs often provide an open forum for the offended party to respond directly to the original posts.

More recently, a Maryland court protected anonymous posters on a newspaper’s Internet forum, after a local Dunkin’ Donuts store manager claimed they were defaming him by calling the restaurant dirty. The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed an earlier decision to reveal the posters’ identity, but laid out a five-step process for judges to follow in future defamation cases, including alerting anonymous posters of a subpoena by a message on the site in question, and offering a clear statement of how the inflammatory comments caused damage.

Thanks to Cohen’s sad inability to tolerate unkind assessments, bloggers have a whole new set of legal concerns. While libel and slander are one thing, this blogger was taken to court for her opinion. That’s a frightening thing, even scarier because a judge sided with Cohen on the matter. The blogger’s attorney insists it’s a First Amendment issue:

“These words are not actionable,” Salisbury said. “They were not nice, they were insulting, offensive to some. That does not mean that the law provides redress for these insults. So the defense is really, this is free speech.”

So, what do you think? Is calling someone a skank protected free speech, or defamation?

Waah: Liskula Cohen goes after blogging because someone called her a skank is a post from: The Inquisitr

The mayor of Sheboygan, Wisconsin demanded Jennifer Reisinger take down links on her site that pointed to his city’s police department site, the suit (filed by Reisinger) claims. The suit says the city actually threatened a cease-and-desist order and even began a full criminal investigation into Reisinger’s links. Reisinger claims the actions violated her First Amendment rights and hurt her Web design business (which appears to now be closed).

So what’s the problem with linking, you might ask, other than the fact that it helps drive visitors and increase search engine rank? The city hasn’t publicly stated its side yet, but lawyers who have seen the lawsuit say it appears officials felt the linking was a violation of protected speech and was something they had to grant permission to do.

Incidentally, Reisinger happened to have run several Web sites in support of a push to get the city’s mayor recalled — an effort that did not succeed. We’re sure that’s a pure coincidence and has nothing to do with the city’s otherwise inexplicable stance.

Lawyers say the case, if it makes it to court, could end up setting a new precedent as far as Web linking. Such a case, they say, has never been tried.

File this one under “reasons not to live in a place called Sheboygan, Wisconsin.”

Could Linking to a Web Site Be a Bad Thing? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Site execs agreed to the change following an ongoing effort from Senator Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman had pointed out the high number of terrorist-affiliated videos on the site, many of which even had Al Qaeda logos stamped in the corners, and demanded the clips be removed.

Initially, YouTube shot the senator’s request down, as the videos didn’t technically violate the site’s terms of use. (They didn’t show graphic violence, even if they suggested it.) Representatives said they didn’t prescreen videos, instead banking on the site’s user flagging system to mark out any inappropriate submissions. A statement also raised the issue of free speech:

“While we respect and understand [Lieberman's] views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view.”

Now, though, YouTube has revisited its terms of use and left open the door to subjective decisions on what content might be considered “inciting others to violence.” A spokesperson told the Washington Post the site will follow the “common sense rule” when deciding whether or not to remove a video.

It’s that ever-fine line between free speech and national security, and it’s never an easy answer. In agreeing to remove the Al Qaeda content, YouTube may have also opened the door to subjectively censoring other content that may or may not pose any real danger. Did they make the right decision?

Should YouTube Ban Violent Videos? is a post from: The Inquisitr

The Memphis Police Department has filed a subpoena asking AOL to provide them the identity of the person or people behind the MPD Enforcer 2.0 blog, which is apparently hosted on AOL’s servers. The blog takes a critical look at the police department, in particular its leaders.

“It has been a common practice for the administration to cover up political incidents in an attempt to climb the ladder of power within the department,” the latest post, written Wednesday, reads.

The blog has evidently become quite popular with police and the general public alike. Though the police department has not given a specific reason for why it wants the bloggers’ identities — currently known only as the alias “Dirk Diggler” — its request has gotten both the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center fired up.

“We are quite interested in preserving the anonymity of the bloggers,” ACLU Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg told the Memphis Commercial Appeal. “Anonymous speech has long been protected speech under the First Amendment.”

The bloggers say they’ve hired the Public Citizen Litigation Group to represent them in the case. AOL, however, has lost a similar battle to protect users’ identities before: In 2001, a Japanese electronics company demanded the name of a user it said had posted “false, defamatory and otherwise unlawful messages” on a message board. Despite AOL’s efforts to keep the information private, a Virginia Supreme Court ruled in the other company’s favor.

Bloggers’ Protection Being Put to the Test is a post from: The Inquisitr