![Joi Ito [logo]](/_site/img/joi-ito-logo-300.png){kind=logo}
The Stanford Center for Internet and Society filed an amicus brief today which I signed together with a number of others. Go CIS!
Amicus Brief Asks for Legal Rights for Internet JournalistsCIS filed an amicus brief today on behalf of The First Amendment Project, Internet journalists and bloggers and others asking the court in the Apple v. Does case to treat online publishers the same rights as their colleagues who publish in more traditional formats. Download file
Great initiative! We need to see more like this...
Did any of the amici read the ruling?
Apple decision (PDF)
The amicus brief talks about treating webloggers like journalists. However, the judge addressed that directly by stating that he was applying the same standard to webloggers and traditional publishers, alike.
I'm all for correcting his opinion of "standard", but to ignore that he addressed the issue directly is, well, embarassing.
Well, I did the same mistake in my blog. And I must say that bogging is again demonstrating its quality: it is a selfcorrecting information system...
I think the point was that the appellate court is not bound by what either the trial court did or the parties argued. I think the idea was to point out the importance of Internet journalism and push towards a functional test rather than whether it looks like traditional journalism. It is clearly less important for this particular case now that the judge stated that he would treat the bloggers as journalists. I don't think that we ignored the judge, but wanted to stress this point.