Law Commons^™

Media Policy Out Of The Box: Content Abundance, Attention Scarcity, And The Failures Of Digital Markets, Ellen P. Goodman

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No abstract provided.

Essay, Digital Bowdlerizing: Removing The Naughty Bytes, Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons

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Unlike Dr. Bowdler, who republished the works of Shakespeare with the naughty bits removed, the modern digital Bowdlerizer deletes offensive content from digital works in a variety of ways. This Essay will analyze the technologies used by the modern Bowdlerizer to determine when, if, and which technologies make copies in violation of the copyright owner’s § 106(1) right to control reproduction or make derivative copies of a preexisting work that may infringe the copyright owner’s 17 U.S.C. § 106(2) right to authorize the creation of derivative works. These technologies not only support militant prudery, but they also may add new …

Institutional Reckless Disregard For Truth In Public Defamation Actions Against The Press, Randall P. Bezanson

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Since its beginning, the actual malice test first announced in 1964 in New York Times v. Sullivan, has suffered from problems that are increasingly traceable to the changing face of journalism. Its demand that the mind of the reporter be proved "with convincing clarity" has adverse consequences for plaintiffs and news organizations alike. End runs around the subjective state of mind inquiry by plaintiffs have become more common. And the actual malice test's predictability, its capacity as a standard of liability to yield consistent and coherent results across a body of cases, remains a hollow promise. As Robert Sack famously …

Who Owns The 'First Rough Draft Of History'? Reconsidering Copyright In News, Eric B. Easton

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Who Owns the ‘First Rough Draft of History’? suggests the withdrawal of copyright protection from hard-news journalism as a mechanism for “rescuing” the news from the inexorable downward spiral in quality and diversity caused by excessive media concentration. Although copyright represents just one of the factors contributing to the “commodification” of news today, it is a significant factor, and one with a long, unsavory relationship with censorship and monopoly.

The article asserts that newspapers’ quest for copyright protection was an early step onto a slippery slope toward a property-based, rather than service-based ethos, and that removing protection may mark a …