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from the free-information-wants-to-be-free dept.
Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), has been blocked from reading printouts of EFF blog posts sent by a supporter, supposedly on "copyright" (among other) grounds:
EFF was dismayed to learn last week that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) at Fort Leavenworth has refused to provide inmate Chelsea Manning with printouts of EFF blog posts and other materials related to prisoner censorship. Worse yet, it appears that the reason is ostensibly to protect EFF's copyrights.
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for her role in the release of military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks. A volunteer from her support network attempted to send her a series of articles EFF wrote last year about our work defending the rights of inmates to maintain an online presence. This included articles about severe punishments leveled at inmates with Facebook profiles and our views on how prison telecommunications systems should be regulated. Also attached were relevant public records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, EFF's comments to the Federal Communications Commission, and articles from Buzzfeed and the Harvard Business Review.
Manning was only allowed to have the Bureau of Prisons documents—an agency handbook and slide show on Facebook takedowns—but everything else was withheld. Instead, Manning received a notification that said the mail was rejected because it contained "printed Internet materials, including email, of a volume exceeding five pages per day or the distribution of which may violate U.S. copyright laws."
[...] EFF quickly sent USDB a letter explaining that all EFF content is available for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution license[*] that allows for the material to be freely shared and remixed. The Creative Commons license is indicated, and the full policy linked, at the bottom of every page of our website. As the copyright holder, we asked the prison to provide Manning with the documents immediately and not to block any further EFF material from the facility. We further pointed out that our comments to the FCC were also public records, not simply information printed out from the Internet.
[*] Creative Commons Attribution license
(Score: 2, Touché) by dingus on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:02AM
Since when have laws been an impediment to the State? They made the laws, they can break them.