Today, the CBLDF unveiled its 2012 Membership Drive, featuring the best incentives and benefits in the free speech community, starting off with a stunning membership card by superstar creator Cliff Chiang! Channeling the classic depiction of Liberty through the influence of WPA art and comic book iconography, Chiang has created a powerful membership card that you’ll be proud to keep in your wallet. CBLDF offers membership plans for donors in every budget, each with its own premiums and benefits, and all of them are tax-deductible!

Joining the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund puts you on the front line of the fight against censorship! Your membership dollars provide the tools to fight back when comic book readers, retailers and artists are muzzled, censored, or attacked! When you become a CBLDF member, you are proclaiming that comics are important and that you are a protector of their First Amendment rights! Join now!

Membership starts at $25 per year, and every membership includes Chiang’s amazing membership card. At the $50 Supporter level, members receive a membership card, a car window decal, and a button set that includes a badge that proudly proclaims membership in the CBLDF.

The $100 Advocate members receive all of the Supporter premiums and also their choice of a CBLDF Tote Bag, featuring art by the great Sergio Aragonés; our popular “I READ BANNED COMICS” t-shirt; or a CBLDF branded water bottle, featuring the gone-but-not-forgotten Comics Code Authority emblem.

With a $250 Defender membership, donors receive the Supporter package, and their choice of TWO of the Advocate premiums. With the $500 Protector membership, members receive the entire Supporter and Advocate packages. At the Protector level, members will also have their name listed in a special “Thank You” section of the LIBERTY ANNUAL 2012, and they will receive a limited edition, full-color print of the membership card artwork, numbered and signed by artist Cliff Chiang!

The $1000 Champion membership includes everything in the other membership premium packages, plus the member’s choice of an autographed hardcover, signed on an exclusive “CBLDF Champion” bookplate, from one of the following creators:

• WATCHMEN, signed by Dave Gibbons
• MAUS, signed by art spiegelman
• PREACHER Deluxe Edition vol. 1, signed by Garth Ennis
• Y THE LAST MAN Deluxe Edition vol. 1, signed by Brian K. Vaughan
• THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, signed by Neil Gaiman

Of course, the number one benefit of membership is peace of mind. You’ll know that there’s someone at the other end of the phone when a retailer gets busted or an artist is brought up on charges for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Become a member of the CBLDF today, and help protect comics in 2012 and beyond!

About CBLDF
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment rights of the comics art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers. The CBLDF provides legal referrals, representation, advice, assistance, and education in furtherance of these goals.

The trial of Nabil Karoui, the director of Tunisia’s Nessma television channel, has been delayed until April. Karoui is on trial because he approved the airing of Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s film adaptation of her critically acclaimed graphic novel. The movie has a scene that depicts God, a portrayal that is not permitted in many Islamic areas. Karoui is accused of “insulting sacred values, offending decent morals and causing public unrest.” The airing of Persepolis has divided people in Tunisia, with defenders arguing for the right to free expression and some extremists resorting to violence to try to shut down Nessma. For more on the trial, visit Al Arabiya News.

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and reporting on issues such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!

Betsy Gomez is the Web Editor for CBLDF.

Last year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Golan v. Holder, a case that pitted copyright law against the First Amendment. This week, the Supreme Court passed down their decision on the case, a 6-2 vote that upheld the Uruguay Round Agreements Act that extended copyright protection to creative foreign works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States.

The decision is considered a blow to free speech because Golan and fellow petitioners argued that the removal of works from the public domain — works by Igor Stravinsky, Virginia Woolf, Alfred Hitchcock, and more — violates their First Amendment right to use the works to express themselves. Golan further argued that Congress overreached when they passed a law that removed the works from the public domain. Because the Supreme Court upheld the law, works that were once free to use now require payment to do so. As an example, an orchestra that plays a Stravinsky symphony may now have to pay for that right.

Ken Paulson, the President of the First Amendment Center, took a look at the decision. In his analysis, he writes:

Let’s be clear about what free speech is. In addition to being an individual’s personal expression, it includes the performance of a work that someone else has created. It is an exercise of free speech to stage a play or conduct a symphony. It’s also free speech when you mash up multiple songs into a new work.

With its ruling in Golan v. Holder, the Supreme Court has now upheld a law that in effect takes millions of works out of the public domain. If Americans choose to use, present or republish some of these works to express themselves, they may well have to pay a licensing fee. This includes books by Virginia Woolf, symphonies by Igor Stravinsky and movies by Alfred Hitchcock.

The odd thing — and justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito noted this in dissent — is that the Court’s ruling upholding copyright for foreign works doesn’t encourage creativity, which is the reason copyright was established more than two centuries ago.

“The statute before us, however, does not encourage anyone to produce a single new work. By definition, it bestows monetary rewards only on owners of old works,” Breyer wrote.

The Supreme Court has extended copyright protection in the past, but never to works that were already in the public domain. The upshot is that the public loses, free speech suffers and Stravinsky doesn’t need the money.

You can read all of Paulson’s analysis here.

What impact does the Golan v. Holder decision have for comic books? It remains to be seen, but it could have implications for the translation and reprinting of foreign comics, could influence the ability of scholars to review such works, and could impact the incorporation of some foreign works into new creative work. Regardless, the decision is a blow to the creative free expression of many people.

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and reporting on issues such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!

Betsy Gomez is the Web Editor for CBLDF.

Today Bleeding Cool ran a piece linking to a local news promo promising a titillating exposé on modern comics that will offer tips on “HOW TO K.O. THESE COMICS BEFORE THEY CORRUPT YOUR KIDS!” These media scare stories are nothing new. They’ve been plaguing comics since the very beginning, whether it was massive public comic book burnings in the 1940s, Frederic Wertham’s attacks in the 1950s, or the retailer stings of the 1980s that led to the CBLDF being formed. While we’ve seen this type of story arise time and again, it should never be taken lightly. Below we offer some tips on how to deal with hostile cameras if they come to your store.

• Know Your Rights. You control the media’s access to your store, not them. While media people can shoot common spaces not maintained by your store, such as public parking lots and walkways, they cannot enter your store and shoot without permission, and they cannot block access to your store.

 

• Develop and Maintain a Media Communications Policy. Whether you’re a sole proprietor with occasional fill-in help, or a full-service chain, every comic book, manga and graphic novel retailer should develop and maintain a media communications policy. This policy should be part of the employee handbook and should be revisited at regular meetings. Your media policy should provide employees with a brief company overview; explain a chain of command for who in your organization is authorized to speak with the media; explain circumstances where cameras may want to enter your store and who is authorized to let them in; and provide general guidelines for how to respond to media inquiries and camera crews. This PDF from theheights-planning.com is a good starting place if you need to develop a new policy.

 

• Designate a Spokesperson. Each organization should designate a spokesperson to be the authorized contact point for all media inquiries. This can be the owner, manager, or a well-spoken staffer. This person’s job will be to put your company’s best face forward. She or he should possess a strong understanding of your company and its mission and be able to present a positive public image about the work you do and the products you sell. All media inquiries should be directed to this person, whether those come in via social media, email, telephone, or in person.

 

• Know Your Community & Product Mix. It’s critical that your spokesperson possesses a strong working knowledge of your community, customers, and product mix so that he or she is able to anticipate and adequately address concerns brought up in the course of any interview. As seen in the story from Bleeding Cool, a common angle the media will exploit when covering comic books is that they’re placing kids in danger. Being able to speak intelligently about the breadth of customers who use your store and the diversity of material you offer for each type of customer is helpful in shutting down these stories. In this case, your store should be your best asset. If a reporter takes issue with the content of a particular comic that you sell, this is your opportunity to explain that like movies or TV or any other entertainment medium, there are comics for all sorts of audiences and this is just one of the many comic books that you sell to its appropriate audience. By knowing your community, showcasing the breadth of comics that you sell, and highlighting the diversity of customers you serve, you can anticipate and defuse common attack stories.

 

• Be Courteous, Be Professional, and Stick to Your Policies. Staff and spokespeople alike should always maintain a high level of professional decorum, and this is especially true with media. Always extend the same courtesy to media as you would to your best customers and vendors. It’s important for all staff members to understand that being courteous and professional doesn’t mean being unnecessarily permissive. A reporter’s job is to get the story, and they may provide you with positive or negative feedback to get you to respond to them more immediately. Your job is to promote a positive image of your organization and its customers. Always be courteous and always stick to your policies when dealing with media people.

 

• Take Control of the Situation. You’re under no obligation to drop everything the moment a reporter or camera person arrives at your store. If you’re an employee, you should refer them to your store spokesperson or manager. If you’re an authorized spokesperson for your company, it’s your right to decide whether or not you want to speak to the media and when and how you want to do so. If a camera crew or a reporter shows up unannounced, politely asking them to set up an appointment to come back and speak with your spokesperson is a request they have to respect. If the news outlet is being difficult or unreasonable about your desire to schedule an interview, don’t be afraid to decline to participate. Declining to comment should be your last resort, because it doesn’t allow you to provide your message, but it is a sensible option in instances where the news organization is behaving unreasonably. Don’t be intimidated by the cameras. It’s your store that comes first, not their story.

 

• Put Your Best Face Forward. Once your spokesperson decides to grant an interview with the news media, be sure to be at your best. Be personable, be presentable, and ensure that your store conveys the same qualities. Always speak clearly, speak softly, speak on point, and be aware. Whether speaking for print or radio, and especially when speaking on video, always take the time you need to craft your best answer. If you need to start over, start over. It’s important to always ensure that anything you say on camera reflects the message you want to communicate. So, take the time you need to convey the message you want to send, be calm, and speak to that message. While you can’t control what media crews will do with the footage they take, you can can control your own presentation, so be sure to put your best face forward.

 

• If You Carry Adult Content, Have A Policy. If you’re carrying adult material, you should already have a policy for its sale and display that is informed by a thorough understanding of your community’s standards. This policy should be spelled out in your employee manual and reinforced with training and periodic meetings with your staff. Your store spokesperson should be able to articulate this policy to the media and public and explain how it is consistent with the standards of your community.

 

• Don’t Take The Bait. Hostile interviewers will sometimes try to elicit negative reactions or get you to repeat phrases that can be taken out of context and used to support a message separate from the one you would convey for your store. Other common tactics include asking you to respond to yes or no questions that they can use in the edit suite or to ask ambush questions about a statement that’s indefensible, hostile or untrue. If you need to pause to recover from the ambush, then take the time, but not awkwardly. Try to avoid getting flustered or giving a negative reaction shot. Stay polite, but take control of the situation. When faced with an indefensible statement, don’t engage in a way that can be taken out of context. Instead, return to the facts about your business and the points you want to convey. Always be aware that anything you say can be taken out of context, so remain calm, never lose your cool, and don’t take the bait.

• Accentuate the Positive. One of the best ways to spin away from a negative story is to emphasize the positive things that your store does for the community. An effective spokesperson will always be talking about community involvement, such as working with your chamber of commerce or participating in local charity efforts, team athletics, library programs, or reading groups. Community involvement, beyond being a positive point to talk about when the press is around, is also a way to build strong roots and support in the community so if a problem does occur, there are friends that will speak up for you.
• What To Do If You’ve Been Treated Unfairly. If you have an issue with how an outlet has conducted itself, do some basic research on that outlet online. Most major newspapers and news outlets have ‘Contact Us’ channels that will put you in touch with the right people to complain or comment on their outlet’s behavior.  Some media organizations will also have formal complaint procedures.

In the case of a hostile camera crew, your best defense is a good, proactive offense. Schedule an interview when you’re comfortable doing it, don’t let crews come into your store without proper clearance, and don’t comment on a story until you’re comfortable speaking on the subject (as a cleared spokesperson). By following these tips and maintaining an up-to-date knowledge of your product mix, an understanding of your community’s values, a responsible operating philosophy, and a calm, intelligent demeanor, you’ll be better able to weather whatever storm the cameras whip up.

And if the situation should become a First Amendment emergency in which the authorities get involved, never hesitate to contact the CBLDF by calling 1-800-99-CBLDF.

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and reporting on issues such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!  More articles like this one are available in our Retailer Resource Guide, which is a benefit of becoming a retailer member of the CBLDF.

The New York Times analyzed the findings of the study, including opinions from various sources about the Supreme Court’s record:

The studies acknowledge that the Roberts court has ruled for free speech rights in a handful of cases that have captured the public imagination, including ones protecting funeral protesters, the makers of violent video games and the distributors of materials showing the torture of animals.

“These free speech slam-dunks, with their colorful facts, were among the Roberts court’s cases that have attracted the most press attention, but they are hardly indicative of a conservative majority with an expansive view of First Amendment freedoms,” Monica Youn, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, wrote in a report titled “The Roberts Court’s Free Speech Double Standard.”

Floyd Abrams, the prominent First Amendment lawyer, said he was unimpressed by the new findings. “Statistics cannot tell the story of the willingness of a court to defend free expression,” he said. “Cases do. It is unpopular speech, distasteful speech, that most requires First Amendment protection, and on that score, no prior Supreme Court has been as protective as this.”

Ms. Youn’s study was posted on the blog of the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal group. At the request of The New York Times, two scholars — Lee Epstein, who teaches law and political science at the University of Southern California, and Jeffrey A. Segal, a political scientist at Stony Brook University — examined the data Ms. Youn relied on and confirmed the essence of her empirical conclusions.

The Free Expression Policy Project also analyzed the report, discussing the political implications of the decisions the Supreme Court made under Roberts’ leadership:

It is the political context that is crucial in understanding when the Court upholds First Amendment claims and when it rejects them. As law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky, quoted by Liptak, points out, the Roberts Court has a “dismal record of protecting free speech in cases involving challenges to the institutional authority of the government,” particularly when the speech in question is by public employees, students, prisoners, or advocates of politically controversial ideas.

You can read the entire New York Times article here. Youn’s original article questioning the Supreme Court’s record can be found here. Read the analysis from the Free Expression Project here.

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and reporting on issues such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!

In their press release, the ACLU justifies their action:

“The library has no business blocking these websites as “occult’ or ‘criminal” in the first place and certainly shouldn’t be making arbitrary follow-up decisions based on the personal predilections of library staff,” said Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “Public libraries should be facilitating access to educational information, not blocking it.”

Such censorship by libraries has chilling implications, as the blocking of material could be extended to impact other legitimate educational material, including comics. You can find ACLU’s official press release here.

Earlier this year the Comics Code Authority closed its doors and the CBLDF acquired the intellectual property rights to the Code’s Seal of Approval. Thus ended an era of censorship that sanitized the medium’s output, and established a stigma against comics that would endure until recent years. Dr. Amy Nyberg created a short history of the Seal of Approval for the CBLDF.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is proud to release The Comic Book Fan’s Worst NIGHTMARE!, our 2011 year-end comic showcasing our current casework. Boasting new work by Jeffrey Brown, Ming Doyle, J. Gonzo, Michael Kupperman, Tony Shasteen, and more the comic is available for free on Comixology and at CBLDF.org!

The CBLDF’s new comic recounts our work defending Brandon X, an American citizen facing a minimum sentence of one year in prison for possessing horror and fantasy manga on his laptop computer. His case is expected to go to trial in 2012, and legal expenses are estimated to run $150,000. Please make a tax-deductible contribution to CBLDF today to help us defend this case, and to create tools for retailers, librarians, and readers to help protect against cases like this happening in the future!

The CBLDF exists because of the grass-roots support of individuals like you! Please support our work by making a tax-deductible donation, signing up or renewing your membership, or signing up a friend for a gift membership. Contributions and membership donations are tax-deductible in the year they’re given. In addition, the Will & Ann Eisner Family Foundation will make a $5 donation to the CBLDF for every new or renewing membership contribution made by 12/31.

Please help the CBLDF continue our important work — donate today!

In a recent article for Media Law Monitor — Moral Panics, the First Amendment, and the Limits of Social Science — CBLDF General Counsel Robert Corn-Revere analyzed the Brown v. EMA decision, discussing the lack of scientific evidence that proponents for the regulation of violent speech claimed to have.

Corn-Revere addresses the lack of scientific evidence provided by the State of California in defending the law:

Noting that similar state video game laws had been rejected unanimously by federal courts, California argued not just that social science justified its regulations, but that it did not need to cite studies at all. Rather, the state claimed that it should be able to regulate games whenever the legislature rationally concluded that video games might be detrimental to the moral and ethical development of youth.

Such an approach may be fine when parents are choosing games for their children. And it is perfectly appropriate to use such value-based judgments when a pediatrician makes similar recommendations to patients. But it cuts against the grain of the First Amendment when such mandates are enforced by government decree. The Supreme Court reaffirmed in Brown that when Mom or Dad chooses which games are appropriate for the kids, it is called parenting; but when the government does so, it is called censorship.

Corn-Revere provides an in-depth analysis of the history of media censorship, discussing comic book censorship at length. He writes about the lack of scientific evidence against violent speech in various media, including the “evidence” found in Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent:

Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent has been classified as “the archetypal reaction to a new mass medium,” with its denunciation of comics as “morally contagious and sexually dangerous.”[54] Yet, despite its Comstockian prose and its unabashed purpose to further the author’s anti-comic book crusade, the book was touted as a work of “science.”[55] Due to its purportedly authoritative nature, Wertham’s book was tremendously influential, not just in the United States, but in Canada and Europe as well.[56]But Seduction of the Innocent was anything but scientific, and its findings have been thoroughly discredited. It consisted of random, undocumented, and unverifiable case studies of children who supposedly had been harmed by reading comic books.[57] The examples were “carefully selected to support Wertham’s conclusions about comic books,” which were presented through the dramatic reconstruction of contrived dialogue.[58] Scholarly critiques noted that the book lacked any scientifically gathered research data or systematic inventory of comic book content and concluded that, “[w]ithout such an inventory, the conjectures are biased, unreliable, and useless.”[59]

Such evident weaknesses did not prevent Wertham from presenting his conclusions as if they represented a scientific consensus, despite the fact that “most professional social workers, psychologists, sociologists, and criminologists denied any direct link between mass media and delinquency.”[60] He confidently testified before Congress that his book provided “incontrovertible evidence of the pernicious influences on youth of crime comic books” and that “on this subject there is practically no controversy.”[61] He made such claims despite data that had been presented to the Senate subcommittee showing that juvenile delinquency actually declined during the years that “crime comics” increased in popularity.[62]

After further discussion of pseudoscience-fueled moral panic, Corn-Revere concludes:

All told, the arguments California made to support its video game restrictions threatened to undo more basic First Amendment law than any single case in living memory. The state argued that new interactive technologies should get less constitutional protection, that the Court can create new categories of unprotected speech, that children lack constitutional rights, and that legislatures can justify censorship based on a “rational basis” whim (otherwise known as legislative “findings”). But the Supreme Court held firm, issuing an opinion that, as former Justice David Souter once put it, keeps the “starch in the standards.”[80]

You can read all of Corn-Revere’s analysis here.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom sent a letter of support for the anthology, which was edited by Ariel Schrag and includes contributions from award winning graphic novelists Daniel Clowes, Dash Shaw, Gabrielle Bell, Lauren Weinstein, and others.  The book received praise from professional review sources such as Booklist, New York Times, and Publishers Weekly, and it was selected for New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age” list in 2008.

A PDF of the letter is available here: cbldf stuck in the middle letter

Dr. Thomas Ward, Superintendent
Western Foothills Regional School Unit #10
33 Nash Street
Dixfield, ME 04224

December 9, 2011

Dear Superintendent Ward:

We are writing to you and to the school board members of RSU #10, on behalf of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, to express concern about an effort to remove Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an Unpleasant Age from the Buckfield Junior-Senior High School Library.  We understand that the book has been challenged due to objections to its language as well as references to drugs, alcohol, and sex.  In your evaluation of this request, we strongly urge you to uphold the freedom to read for all students in the district by retaining this book in the school library.

Stuck in the Middle presents seventeen stories by a variety of award-winning graphic novelists that address many of the issues and choices faced by teenagers today.  The book received praise from professional review sources such as Booklist, New York Times, and Publishers Weekly, and it was selected for New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age” list in 2008.  The book’s editor Ariel Schrag, defending an earlier challenge, wrote:

In terms of foul language, sexual content, and teen smoking in this book, all the authors strove to present the teens and pre-teens in a realistic light. We may not like all of the decisions teenagers make, but if we sanitize their speech and behavior in our stories, our characters won’t be authentic. Real teens and pre-teens sometimes use these words and say and do these things. A book like this can present a good opportunity for dialogue between children and parents. Banning the book isn’t going to change children’s behavior or somehow save them from the hard truths of teenage life – I find it very hard to believe that a child would hear a swear word for the very first time in the book, or that he or she would be made aware that teenagers sometimes have sexual relationships or smoke cigarettes. The only thing that can make an impact in the way children act is communication, and this book provides a platform for that.

Like any book in the school library, Stuck in the Middle may not be right for every student at Buckfield Junior-Senior High School.  But the library has a responsibility to represent a broad range of views in its collection and to meet the needs of everyone in the community – not just the most vocal, the most powerful, or even the majority.  While parents and community members may – and should – voice their concerns and select different materials for themselves and their children, those objecting to particular books should not be given the power to restrict the rights of other students and families to access the material.

Reading is a safe way for young people to learn about the world in which they are growing up and to help them anticipate real-life problems.  Stuck in the Middle: Seventeen Comics from an Unpleasant Age provides perspective on those problems in a highly accessible form to help teens confront the often challenging and confusing issues that they face as part of their everyday life.  We strongly urge the RSU School Board to retain this valuable book in the library collection.  By doing so, the school will not only affirm the importance and value of the freedom to read, but will send a powerful message to its students – that, in this country, they have the right to read what they choose and the responsibility to think critically about what they read, rather than allowing others to think for them.

Sincerely,

Charles Brownstein
Executive Director, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

Barbara Jones
Director, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom

CC:      Jerry Wiley, RSU #10 School Board Chair

RSU #10 School Board members: Bertha Barrett, Cynthia Bissell, Judith Boucher, Denise Carrier, Marcia Chaisson, Barbara Chow, Maida Demers-Dobson, Dan Force, Tracey Higley, Jessica Hines, Ronnie Hutchinson, John Phillips, Bruce Ross, Armand Rowe, Linda Westleigh, and Peter Zanoni