In November, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [official profile] urged Hezbollah not to resort to violence [text, JURIST report] in an attempt to impede the investigation of the STL. In an interview published by the Lebanese Newspaper An-Nahar [official website], Clinton reiterated US support for Lebanon and noted that the work of the STL is "legitimate and necessary." She also stressed the independence of the tribunal and that "no one knows what the Special Tribunal is going to do, who it might indict, or when it might choose to move forward." Clinton's interview followed remarks made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah [BBC profile], who said he would "cut off the hands" of any person attempting to arrest a Hezbollah member in connection with the murder. Nasrallah has previously called for all Lebanese to boycott the STL [JURIST report] after information surfaced suggesting that the tribunal is set to implicate members of Hezbollah as participants in the assassination of Hariri.

The Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] ruled in Brown v. Plata [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] to uphold an order [JURIST report] requiring California to release up to 46,000 prisoners to remedy the state's overcrowded prisons [JURIST news archive]. Counsel for the state of California argued that the "extraordinary and unprecedented order ... requiring the release of between 36,000 and 45,000 inmates ... is extraordinarily premature." Counsel for the prisoners argued that the court must allow the lower court to provide a remedy for 20 years of overcrowding that has violated inmates' constitutional rights. The California prison system was operating at nearly 200 percent capacity. The three-judge panel, whose decision was upheld by the Supreme Court, ordered California to reduce the population by 46,000 inmates to be under 137.5 percent institutional capacity within two years. California Governor Jerry Brown [official website] submitted a plan [JURIST report] to comply with the court order and relieve prison overcrowding in June. As of January, California has reduced its prison population by 11,000 prisoners [report to court, PDF] and is now operating at 167 percent capacity.

We will continue to look for ways to ensure that foreign websites cannot sell and distribute illegal content to U.S. consumers. Current law protects the rights of American innovators by prohibiting the illegal sale and distribution of their products by domestic websites. But there is no equivalent protection for American companies from foreign online criminals who steal and sell American goods to consumers around the world. Congress must address the widespread problem of online theft of America's technology and products from foreign thieves.

Recently, there has been a surge in government attention to copyright issues. Earlier this month, the Spanish government approved a new law [JURIST report] that creates a government agency with the authority to force Internet service providers to block certain websites that are involved in pirating copyrighted material. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in November that ISPs cannot be required by law to monitor [JURIST report] their customers' activities as an attempt to combat illegal sharing of copyrighted material. In October, the US Supreme Court considered the issue of foreign copyrights in the case of Golan v. Holder when it considered arguments to determine the copyright status of foreign works [JURIST report] that used to be in the public domain. A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that a music file-sharing site could be held liable for contributory copyright infringement [JURIST report] in August.