Bill Sheehan has filed suit in federal court to overturn a law designed to outlaw his justicefiles.org website. You may remember that Bill is one of the people who runs justicefiles.org, which compiles and republishes publicly-available information on law enforcement officers in Washington state. It is a core principle of the First Amendment, even as interpreted by courts nowadays, that truthful information obtained legally is presumptively legal to republish. But Bill got sued anyway by the city of Kirkland, Washington: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sheehan Kirkland then threatened me with a lawsuit for quoting from the justicefiles.org site in a Politech article. The fine folks at Davis Wright Tremaine sent Kirkland a stiff have-you-heard-of-free-speech letter: http://www.politechbot.com/kirkland/ Then Washington state enacted a law aimed at outlawing future justicefiles.org-like sites: http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/2001-02/Senate/6700-6724/6700-s_sbr.pdf Here's Bill's complaint: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/sheehan.lawsuit.052202.html http://www.politechbot.com/docs/sheehan.lawsuit.052202.doc -Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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