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Don't Mess With Texas When It Comes To Protecting Free Speech

from the everything's-bigger-in-texas dept

Mon, Apr 25th 2011 10:03pm — Mike Masnick

Paul Alan Levy has nicely summarized two stories about Texas moving to better protect free speech. The first involves the Texas Supreme Court overturning a lower court's ruling to deny a motion from a couple of anonymous bloggers whose identity was being sought in a lawsuit. There's a bit of confusion concerning Google's role in this, but the company seeking the identity of the bloggers claimed that Google had agreed to cough up their names (Google suggests a slightly different story), and the court said that since the discovery was between Google and this other company (PRK Enterprises), the motion to quash from the bloggers could be denied. Thankfully, the Texas Supreme Court felt otherwise.

The second story may be even bigger news. We've covered anti-SLAPP laws many times, including the effort for a federal law, somewhat modeled on California's anti-SLAPP law, which is considered one of the most comprehensive. However, it appears that a bill is moving forward with plenty of support in Texas to create an anti-SLAPP law there that isn't just modeled on California's law, but may go even further in protecting speech. I guess it's true that they really do everything bigger in Texas...

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Filed Under: anonymity, slapp, speech, texas

12 Comments

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Pixelation, 25 Apr 2011 @ 10:49pm

Go ahead Texas, pass this law. I have a patent on it and will be seeing you in East Texas court. Your screwed.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Apr 2011 @ 11:36pm

It's nice being able to be proud of something dealing with the government here. Mostly it's just judicial crap with patent disputes....
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Rose M. Welch (profile), 26 Apr 2011 @ 1:06am

Re:
Also, human rights violations. Can't forget those.
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Adrian in Dallas, 26 Apr 2011 @ 4:00am

Pending (?)Texas Anti-SLAPP legislation...
Well, our legislature made it near impossible for gay citizens to marry each other here in Texas, so it's good that we second-class citizens may get to complain about it openly and legally...
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Bryan, 26 Apr 2011 @ 4:38am

Re:
"It's nice being able to be proud of something dealing with the government here. Mostly it's just judicial crap with patent disputes...."

Could not agree more.
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Greg G (profile), 26 Apr 2011 @ 6:23am

HB2793
I think I need to find my state rep and tell him or her (yes, sadly I don't know who it is at the time of this comment) and ask.. nay, tell.. them to support this bill.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Apr 2011 @ 7:01am

Re:
It's *you're* How hard is this to understand?
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Brian Schroth (profile), 26 Apr 2011 @ 7:16am

Re: Re:
Apparently as hard as it is for you to understand the use of periods.
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Pixelation, 26 Apr 2011 @ 7:55am

Re: Re:
Your mean.
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slander (profile), 26 Apr 2011 @ 6:12pm

... I've always found it rather amusing (and a bit pathetic) that whenever a Texan wants to claim how big and bad he is, he always resorts to a 1986 anti-littering slogan.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Apr 2011 @ 2:13pm

Re: Re:
Humans have rights? When did this crap happen?
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Tex, 27 Apr 2011 @ 10:08pm

Another SLAPP Lawsuit
Here's another SLAPP lawsuit, too bad the law isn't already on the books: http://texsquixtarblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/amway-lawsuit-update-dont-mess-with.html
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