Law Commons^™

The Perils Of Telemarketing Under The Telephone Consumer Protection Act Sending Unsolicited Faxes Costs Dallas Cowboys $1.73 Million, Leaves Dallas Mavericks Under Full Court Pressure, Paul J. Batista

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

In 1991, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to "protect the privacy interests" of outraged constituents who received annoying phone calls from telemarketers. The Act prohibits sending unsolicited faxes to unwilling recipients, and creates fines up to $1,500 for each individual fax. The Dallas Mavericks have been sued under the Act, creating potential liability of $135 million. Fax broadcasters have unsuccessfully challenged the Act under the First and Fifth Amendments. The Act grants jurisdiction to individual state courts, and a Georgia case has resulted in a final judgment of $11,899,000.

Jazz Photo And The Doctrine Of Patent Exhaustion: Implications To Trips And International Harmonization Of Patent Protection, Daniel Erlikman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The doctrine of patent exhaustion prevents the patent owner from controlling the further destiny of the patented invention once the owner authorized the first sale or use of the product in the marketplace. In recent years, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit advanced a modified rule of exhaustion, which permits the U.S. patent holder to contractually restrict the first purchaser's subsequent re-use or re-sale of the product. The recent Jazz Photo decision is a controversial and unjustified switch from existing U.S. jurisprudence in the field of patent exhaustion and parallel imports. By applying a territorial rule …

How To Constitutionally Protect Against Virtual Child Pornography, Emanuel Shiarzi

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The improvement of computer graphics and its resulting burden on prosecuting real child pornography led Congress to pass the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) of 1996. However, in addition to prohibiting virtual child pornography the CPPA banned many other areas of protected speech and was held unconstitutional in 2002. This article gives an overview of the First Amendment concerns of future virtual child pornography laws, the laws currently being proposed in Congress, and then proposes its own constitutional virtual child pornography law.

China And The Prior Consent Requirement: A Decade Of Invasion And Counter-Invasion By Transfrontier Satellite Television, Mei Ning Yan

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This paper examines and analyzes why the majority of television viewers in China can only have access to domestic television at the beginning of the 21st century, despite direct broadcasting by satellite, which respects no national borders being widely employed in Asia for a decade. By applying national broadcasting rules, this paper argues, the Chinese authorities have successfully given effect to the "prior consent requirement," a concept which was fiercely debated in the international arena and has supposedly long been discarded because of disagreement among nations and technological advances.

Fcc Authority To Regulate The Internet: Creating It And Limiting It, James B. Speta

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Covering Women And Violence: Media Treatment Of Vawa's Civil Rights Remedy, Sarah F. Russell

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article analyzes how newspapers described and characterized the civil rights provision over the past decade and shaped the public discourse about the law. The author examines how lower federal courts, and eventually the Supreme Court, categorized the VAWA remedy when deciding whether Congress had acted within its commerce powers. After considering why there may have been resistance in the press and in the courts to VAWA's categorization of violence against women as a civil rights issue, the author concludes by examining the remedies that have been introduced at the state and local level for victims of gender-motivated violence, and …

An Argument From Democracy Against School Choice: A Critique Of Zelman V. Simmons-Harris, Moshe Cohen-Eliya, Yoav Hammer

Yoav Hammer

No abstract provided.

Fcc's Media Ownership Plan Axed: Deregulation And The Debate Over Democracy, Alice Nam

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Biology Of The Broadcast Flag, Susan P. Crawford

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and its content affiliates would like all consumer electronics and information technology companies to innovate "according to the rules." The arguments made by the MPAA and its content colleagues in support of national (and, eventually, global) control over the functionality of the devices that manipulate content are fundamentally troubling for the future of innovation and the future of law itself. But the content industry has hit on a very important way of thinking about law. We should pay attention to the evolutionary ecosystem of the law as the background medium in which innovation …

Racial Minorities And The Quest To Narrow The Digital Divide: Redefining The Concept Of “Universal Service”, Patricia M. Worthy

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The future of the United States as a nation depends, in large measure, on its ability to achieve equality for each member of its society. Historically there has been a national policy, known as universal service, of requiring that everyone should be provided the opportunity to receive basic telephone service at an affordable rate, regardless of geographic location or economic status. As computer technology developed, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission appropriately recognized its value. They have, through statutory mandates and regulatory policies, implemented various initiatives to achieve a universally level "playing field" to prevent a gap between information "haves" …

Reflections On The Myth Of Icarus In The Age Of Information, Allen S. Hammond Iv

Faculty Publications

It is economics, policy, law, and indeed, for some, religion that advanced information technology should be eventually accessible to the masses. To this end, the federal and state governments are establishing goals and guidelines for advanced information technology's equitable deployment. Chief among the governments' intended beneficiaries are our children, Generations X,Y, Z, and beyond. The explicit expectation, however, is that every individual and group in our society would benefit from such deployment.

Efficiencies in the computer augmented generation, embedded in the processing and storing of information are expected to enhance education, commerce, the economy, political discourse, individual self actualization, and …

“Do-Not-Call-List” Testimony: Before The Senate Committee On Commerce, Science, And Transportation, James Guest

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. My name is Jim Guest, and I am President of Consumers Union, the independent, non- profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, with over ve million subscribers.

Copyright And Computer Programs: A Failed Experiment And A Solution To A Dilemma, William F. Patry

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

New Media, New Rules: The Digital Performance Right And Streaming Media Over The Internet, Joseph E. Magri

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Streaming music over the Internet, or what otherwise is known as webcasting or Internet radio, has the potential to become the single most revolutionary means of music transmission ever developed.' In order to appreciate the potential impact of Internet radio, it is helpful to understand that Internet radio has the ability to venture far beyond the at-home personal computer that is tethered to a wall and logged-on to the Internet. With advances in wireless broadband technologies, such as wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi, and the growing availability of Internet content via mobile devices,' Internet radio will soon become widely available on …

The Rise And Demise Of The Technology-Specific Approach To The First Amendment, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines how analytical, technological, and doctrinal developments are forcing the courts to reconsider their media-specific approach to assessing the constitutionality of media regulation. In particular, it offers a comprehensive reevaluation of the continuing validity of the Broadcast Model of regulation, which contains features, such as licensing and direct content regulation, that normally would be considered paradigmatic violations of the First Amendment. Specifically, the analysis assesses the theoretical coherence of the traditional justification for extending a lesser degree of First Amendment protection to broadcasting than to other media (i.e., the physical scarcity of the electromagnetic spectrum) as well as …

An Economic Analysis Of Domain Name Policy, Karl M. Manheim, Lawrence B. Solum

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

One of the most important features of the architecture of the Internet is the Domain Name System (DNS), which is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The DNS is organized into a hierarchy of domains. The physical infrastructure of the DNS consists of name servers, which provides the information that directs name queries to the appropriate server. These facilities and devices are scarce resources in the economic sense, since they have a finite capacity and expansion is costly. The name space is scarce because each address (or set of characters) can only be allocated to …

Examining The Evidence: Post-Verdict Interviews And The Jury System, Nicole B. Casarez

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Although jury deliberations are kept secret, jurors sometimes speak out to the press after the conclusion of a trial about the rationale for their verdict, what pieces of evidence were important to their decision, and similar issues. Some argue that post-verdict juror interviews are harmful to the very foundation of the jury system, because they endanger defendants' fair trial rights, invade jurors' privacy, and distort public perception of jury verdicts. However, others, such as the author, consider these post-verdict interviews important, because they permit the public to gain a better understanding of the verdicts as well as the nature of …

Considerations On The Emerging Implementation Of Biometric Technology, Robin Feldman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The United States is embarking on widespread implementation of biometric technology, which uses automated methods to identify people based on their physiological and behavioral characteristics. Regardless of how much we invest in establishing standards for reliability of the technology and protections of the data, no system will be foolproof. Biometric determinations will be subject to mistakes, fraud, and abuse through human and technological error, both intentional and inadvertent. We should, therefore, take this opportunity to develop methods for individuals to review and challenge biometric determinations. In particular, this article suggests a doctrinal framework for challenging biometric determinations made by administrative …

File-Sharing Copyright, And Privacy, Stephen Keating

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Lawsuits brought by the recording industry against Internet users accused of illegal file sharing raise provocative questions about legal tactics, the piracy of copyrighted material, the openness of the Internet, and the future of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. The history of satellite TV piracy may provide a key to understanding what comes next.

Newton V. Diamond: Measuring The Legitimacy Of Unauthorized Compositional Sampling— A Clue Illuminated And Obscured, Susan J. Latham

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This article discusses how the district court in Newton v. Diamond could have provided the music industry with a path of reasonable determination via which the risk of infringement due to unauthorized digital sampling of a musical composition could be reasonably estimated and prudent licensing decisions made. At the very least, it illuminated a clue through its threshold determination of protectability. However, as the author explains, the court of appeals obscured that clue beneath a conundrum of de minimis use analysis, highlighting the need for courts to settle upon a clear and consistent standard for de minimis use analysis.

Building Rome In A Day: What Should We Expect From The Riaa?, Valerie Alter

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

When a new technology enters the entertainment market, incumbents may look backwards rather than forwards. Today, peer-to-peer file sharing services enable users to get the weekly chart-toppers for free by downloading desired songs, depriving the record companies of their rightful royalties. The record companies fear that this free online peer-topeer systems will mean the end of the recording industry. In response, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has begun to prosecute individual users, including a 12-year-old girl. However, this approach is problematic, and there are two other potential solutions that may be preferable. First, the recording industry could abandon …

Publishing Privacy: Intellectual Property, Self-Expression, And The Victorian Novel, Jessica Bulman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Though typically invoked in legal writing for their portrayals of criminal trials and judicial failings, Victorian authors also probed a more subtle aspect of the law: the interrelationship of privacy and intellectual property. In their novels, this paper argues, these authors treated literary creations as uniquely private expression and used copyright-and the formal control it furnishes over publication-as a model for understanding privacy.

Modularity, Vertical Integration, And Open Access Policies: Towards A Convergence Of Antitrust And Regulation In The Internet Age, Joseph Farrell, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

Antitrust law and telecommunications regulation have long adopted different stances on whether to mandate open access to information platforms. This article aims to help regulators and commentators incorporate both Chicago School and post-Chicago School arguments in evaluating this basic policy choice, suggesting how they can be integrated in an effective manner. In particular, the authors outline three alternative models that the FCC could adopt to guide its regulation of information platforms and facilitate a true convergence between antitrust and regulatory policy.

The Entertainment Value Of A Trial: How Media Access To The Courtroom Is Changing The American Judicial Process, Jeffrey S. Johnson

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Privacy To Be Patched In Later - An Examination Of The Decline Of Privacy Rights, 36 J. Marshall L. Rev. 985 (2003), Matthew Hector

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Applying Pen Register And Trap And Trace Devices To Internet Communications, Rich Haglund

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This note will explain how the different surveillance methods work: wire taps, pen register and trap and trace devices. It will outline the development of case law and legislation defining what constitutes unlawful searches and seizures involving electronic communications. After explaining how email and internet addresses are collected (and whether the FBI's tool for collection works within the bounds set by the law), this note will discuss the provisions of the Patriot Act that regulate collection of that information. This note will show, using the application of pen register and trap and trace devices to the Internet as an example, …

New Models Of Regulation And Interagency Governance, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Access To Networks: Economic And Constitutional Connections, Daniel F. Spulber, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

A fundamental transformation is taking place in the basic approach to regulating network industries. Policy makers are in the process of abandoning their century-old commitment to rate regulation in favor of a new regulatory approach known as access regulation. Rather than controlling the price of outputs, the new approach focuses on compelling access to and mandating the price of inputs. Unfortunately, this shift in regulatory policy has not been met with an accompanying shift in the manner in which regulatory authorities regulate prices. Specifically, policy makers have continued to base rates on either historical or replacement cost. We argue that …

The Classified Information Protection Act: Killing The Messenger Or Killing The Message, Mitchell J. Michalec

Cleveland State Law Review

The purpose of this Note is to discuss the adequacy of existing statutory and administrative protections for classified information, examine how the agencies responsible for protecting this information implemented controls, and how the courts interpreted these existing protections. This Note argues that the failure of the government to prevent "leaks" is not necessarily a failure of the existing scheme, but rather a failure of the government to apply current controls. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the Classified Information Protection Act is an unnecessary, overbroad, and in some cases, ineffective alternative to the existing protections, with a great potential for abuse. If …

How Can They Keep Calling Me - Exemptions And Loopholes In The Telephone Consumer Protection Act And The Need For Further Regulation , Brian W. Stano

Cleveland State Law Review

The first section of this Note examines the relevant federal laws that are already in place to assist the frustrated public in avoiding these unwanted calls. The second section discusses the constitutionality of such legislation and why it is considered to improperly limit the freedom of commercial speech. The third section focuses upon what the states have done to supplement the federal law and increase regulation as well as the proposed changes in the federal law itself. The fourth section analyzes the ineffectiveness of the federal and state regulations in place and specifically argues against the allowance of exceptions in …