SDNY
COURTHOUSE, Oct 7 – A lawsuit
against selling early access to posts on Truth Social
was heard on October 7 by U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of New York Judge J. Paul Oetken.
Inner City Press, pushing for media access and freedom
in SDNY, EDNY and the Second Circuit, live tweeted here:
All
rise!
Judge Oekten: We are here on motion for a preliminary
injunction.
Plaintiffs' counsel: The President is charging $1.2
million a year. Plaintiffs are prejudiced by getting
info later than others-
Judge Oetken: Truth API is only 50 miliseconds faster,
no?
Plaintiffs'
lawyer:
You could use Google News Alerts, it might take 10 to 15
minutes or an hour. You could rely on a web scraper.
Judge Oetken: If I'm on X I can get the Truth Social
posts from one of these bots, right?
Plaintiffs' lawyer: The API pushes it out
Plaintiffs'
lawyer:
You can only get the push things if you register with
Truth Social. When they issued this API, they said they
are going to crack down on scraping and maintaining
archives violates their terms of service. That has an
adverse impact on reporters
Judge
Oetken:
In terms of standing, does it apply not only to the
delay, but also to the archive?
Plaintiffs' lawyer: Both. He will post things and take
them down, only the APIs will know.
Judge Oetken: Wouldn't a scraper catch that?
[Note:
There
are more than ten plaintiffs' lawyers here, some of whom
have been asked to help on appealing a September 3 order
maintaining total sealing of case(s) in EDNY: - so far,
no cigar. Inner City Press filed its own Notice
of Appeal.
Plaintiffs'
speaking
lawyer is David A. Schulz, Yale Law School, Media
Freedom & Info Access Clinic
In the docket, there are nine others...]
Judge
Oetken:
You're asking me to enjoin the President from posting on
Truth Social as long as it uses a API.
Plaintiffs' lawyer: We are asking the court to make him
follow the law.
Defense:
If the President gave an interview to the New York Times
and to read it I had to buy it, I couldn't sue saying he
made me support the Times. Here, the equities require
denial of this motion. A story coming out a bit later is
not irreparable harm
Yale's
Schulz:
There is state action. They keep saying, think about
where we are going if this is enjoined. But think about
this: the world is totally open to corruption. That
can't be the world we live in.
Judge: I reserve decision. You'll hear through ECF
The
case is The Intercept Media, Inc. et al v. Trump et al.,
1:26-cv-6867 (Oetken)
