US:In July 2005, a video blogger named Josh Wolf filmed an anti-G8 summit in San Francisco during which someone allegedly tried to set fire to a police car.
Wolf, who also sold some clips of the demonstration to a local TV station, refused to hand over his footage to the FBI and posted all of it on his website to show that he knew nothing of the alleged arson.
He was jailed for contempt of court, eventually spending 226 days in a federal prison, the longest a journalist has ever served for protecting source material.
Since his release, Wolf has been lobbying for the passing of the Free Flow of Information Bill 2007, which promises federal protection to journalists being forced to identify their sources.
The Bill is primarily a response to the Judith Miller case, in which a New York Timesreporter was jailed for refusing to divulge the source of a White House leak.
It is also a reaction to the indictment of two Californian journalists who refused to explain how they obtained a grand jury transcript of testimony by baseball star Barry Bonds.
However, Wolf's hopes of having federal protection hit a serious problem when the House Judiciary Committee voted for an amendment that would afford protection only to journalists who make a profit from their work. The amendment has opened a gap between independent, militantly anti-commercial journalists like Wolf and more traditional media protection groups such as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which backs the compromise Bill.
"This law was initially designed to protect the free flow of information to the public; as it turns out, it's designed to protect the commercial interests of media organisations," says Wolf.
But he believes he has found a way around the problem - by allowing a minuscule amount of paid advertising on his blog site.Google's internet advertising business allows websites to earn two to three cents per click on adverts posted on their site, which amounts to about $2 to $3 a month for many blog sites.
Anarchist and far-left journalists have found unlikely allies among conservative Republicans, who are driving the law through Congress. The Bill is sponsored in the House of Representatives by Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Rick Boucher, and by senators Richard Lugar (Republican) and Democrat Chris Dodd.
According to Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, Republican support comes from two ideological wings of the party. The first is the Mike Pence wing, which believes in small government and wishes to expose government to press scrutiny. This wing includes some of the Bill's most ardent supporters, such as Arlen Specter and Chuck Grassley. The other Republican camp is made up of internationalists like Senator Lugar, who want to spread democracy around the world and are embarrassed that US journalists are being jailed at home.
On the Democrat side, objections are mostly on national security grounds, as the party is fearful of looking weak on terrorism if a government employee leaks classified material on a domestic terrorist cell.
Free speech lawyer Lee Levine notes the intense battle put up by the justice department, which has been frightening Democrats into making changes. The original wording of the law would have required journalists to reveal their sources if there was an "imminent threat" to national security. Now it says they can be compelled to reveal their sources if there is a "significant specified harm".
The new wording, Levine says, is likely to see officials presenting classified material to federal judges behind closed doors in an attempt to compel journalists to reveal their sources. "If this legislation is introduced, you are likely to see some pretty significant skirmishes early on," he says. "Defining who comes under the legislation and whether the threat is 'significant' is going to take some time to sort out."
But national security is not the only exception, much to the annoyance of Josh Wolf and fellow activists. After intense lobbying by the American Chamber of Commerce, the Bill would not protect sources who reveal commercial information, such as a patent claim.
"All throughout this Bill, you are seeing efforts to protect commercial interests, which is a real pity," Wolf says.