Sauce for the Gander

John Jenkins wants to know whether I believe that a trademark suit by CNN against Ann Coulter claiming that Coulter's new book "Treason" infringed or diluted a CNN trademarked slogan would raise the same first amendment issues and whether I would also criticize CNN for suing Coulter to suppress her book. Well, of course it would raise the same issues, John, and of course I would also criticize CNN, who, like Fox News, should know better. I don't much like prior restraints against books, period, whether they are conservative books or liberal books. My point has been that mass media corportations, whether tilting to the left or to the right, simply have taken intellectual property rights much too far, and in the process, they have infringed on basic liberties of freedom of expression. The growing conflict between intellectual property and free speech is not (as far as I am aware) a left/right issue, and it is an issue about which many liberals and libertarian conservatives alike are quite concerned.