FC: Appeals court says mall critic may keep his site online -- for now

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Politech archive in this case:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=taubman

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Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 16:42:17 -0500
From: "Paul Levy" <PLEVY () citizen org>
To: <declan () well com>
Subject: More in the litigation against the critic of abusive litigation by 
Taubman Company

For Immediate Release:                  Contact: Paul Alan Levy (202) 588-1000
March 11, 2002                                        Shannon Little (202) 588-7742

Court Cannot Prevent Texan from Criticizing
Shopping Mall Developer

Critical Web Site Can Stay Online While Court Considers Appeals

	WASHINGTON, D.C. ¯ The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth 
Circuit today suspended an order issued last fall by a district court that 
had shut down a Web site while appeals on the First Amendment status of the 
site were considered.

	Computer consultant Henry Mishkoff has been involved in a dispute with the 
nationwide shopping mall developer Taubman Company, which is building a 
mall in Plano, Texas, near his Dallas home. Mishkoff originally built a 
"fan site" praising the mall, but after Taubman claimed his site violated 
its trademark and demanded it be taken down, he developed a site 
criticizing the company.

	Last fall, the Michigan district court ordered Mishkoff to remove both of 
his sites from the Web, taking a dangerous step toward restricting 
non-commercial speech on the Internet.

	"I was stunned and dismayed when the District Court ordered me to remove 
my 'complaint' site from the Web," Mishkoff said. "That decision seemed to 
fly in the face of everything I've learned about our First Amendment rights 
since my high-school civics class. Although this experience has left me 
feeling a little uneasy about the process, Public Citizen's help and the 
Appeals Court decision have gone a long way toward restoring my faith in 
the American legal system."

	Following the district court's injunctions, Mishkoff took both sites down, 
although he has created a third site explaining the case in detail, 
http://www.giffordkrassgrohsprinklesucks.com/. Mishkoff is in the process 
of restoring the Taubmansucks site to the Web; however, it may take one or 
two days for the site to be fully available to the public.

	Mishkoff was represented by Paul Alan Levy of the Public Citizen 
Litigation Group. To learn more about this and other free speech cases, go 
to http://www.citizen.org/litigation/briefs/IntFreeSpch/index.cfm.
###
Public Citizen is a nonprofit public interest organization based in 
Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org


,,,




Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation/litigation.html




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