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Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

“I’M A Politician, But I Don’T Play One On Tv”: Applying The “Equal Time” Rule (Equally) To Actors-Turned- Candidates, Kimberlianne Podlas Oct 2009

“I’M A Politician, But I Don’T Play One On Tv”: Applying The “Equal Time” Rule (Equally) To Actors-Turned- Candidates, Kimberlianne Podlas

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Case Studies In Abandoned Empiricism And The Lack Of Peer Review, Rob M. Frieden Aug 2009

Case Studies In Abandoned Empiricism And The Lack Of Peer Review, Rob M. Frieden

Rob Frieden

In far too many instances, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) engages in results-driven decision making that accrues political dividends at the expense of the public interest. Remarkably, the Commission has used questionable and unverifiable statistics to confirm both the need for greater regulation, but also its abandonment. In the former, a former Chairman of the FCC insisted that data, not even compiled by Commission staff, proved that the cable television market had become so concentrated as to meet a Congressionally legislated trigger for heightened regulatory scrutiny. But in the latter, the FCC has used its statistics to support the conclusion …


Pacifica Reconsidered: Implications For The Current Controversy Over Broadcast Indecency, Angela J. Campbell Aug 2009

Pacifica Reconsidered: Implications For The Current Controversy Over Broadcast Indecency, Angela J. Campbell

Angela J. Campbell

This article tells the story of how and why a single letter complaining about “dirty words” in a comedy routine broadcast by a radio station ended up in the Supreme Court and how a closely divided Court found that it was constitutional for the Federal Communications Commission to admonish the station for the broadcast even though the speech was protected by the First Amendment and its distribution by other means could not be could not be prohibited. This case, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, was controversial when it was decided in 1978, and it has become more controversial because of the …


Unlocking The Wireless Safe: Opening Up The Wireless World For Consumers, Adam Clay Jun 2009

Unlocking The Wireless Safe: Opening Up The Wireless World For Consumers, Adam Clay

Federal Communications Law Journal

Facing resistance to the use of its Voice-over-Internet Protocol application on mobile phones, in February 2007, Skype Communications filed a petition with the FCC asking for application of the Carterfone standards to the wireless phone industry. This Note discusses Carterfone and the merits of Skype's petition in light of the recent auction of the C Block, which carries open network requirements, and developments in wireless technology. This Note argues that the FCC should require carriers to provide technical standards for access to their networks, whereby individuals will be able to connect any approved device and application of their choosing.


Political Advertisements In The Era Of Fleeting Indecent Images And Utterances, Lavonda N. Reed-Huff Mar 2009

Political Advertisements In The Era Of Fleeting Indecent Images And Utterances, Lavonda N. Reed-Huff

LaVonda N Reed-Huff

Political Advertisements in the Era of Fleeting Indecent Images and Utterances by LaVonda N. Reed-Huff This article is both timely and beneficial to the legal profession in its analysis of the Federal Communications Commission’s (the “FCC”) efforts to craft regulations regarding broadcast indecency and to address the prevalence of increasingly sexually suggestive material in political broadcast advertisements. This five-part article explores the statutory dilemma facing broadcasters who are presented political broadcast advertisements that contain indecent material. This dilemma is presented by the intersection of three federal statutes. One federal statute, 47 U.S.C. § 312, grants candidates for federal elective office …


An Evaluation Of The Proposals In The Fcc's Intercarrier Compensation Reform Docket Related To Tandem Transit Services, John R. Harrington, Ronald W. Gavillet, Matt D. Basil, Melissa L. Dickey Mar 2009

An Evaluation Of The Proposals In The Fcc's Intercarrier Compensation Reform Docket Related To Tandem Transit Services, John R. Harrington, Ronald W. Gavillet, Matt D. Basil, Melissa L. Dickey

Federal Communications Law Journal

As part of its Intercarrier Compensation Reform Docket, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has received many proposals advocating for the adoption of regulations relating to tandem transit services. As transiting affects virtually every carrier in the telecommunications industry, including traditional CLECs, cable telephony providers, wireless carriers, and even traditional ILECs, the industry is sharply divided over which, if any, of those proposals should be adopted. This Article provides an in-depth look at the issues dividing the industry, and the various proposals before the FCC. The Authors then hypothesize that the FCC should follow the lead of several state commissions who …


Paying The Price For Sports Tv: Preventing The Strategic Misuse Of The Fcc's Carriage Regulations, David Hutson Mar 2009

Paying The Price For Sports Tv: Preventing The Strategic Misuse Of The Fcc's Carriage Regulations, David Hutson

Federal Communications Law Journal

Cable companies and sports leagues have embarked upon parallel courses of vertical integration by creating and acquiring interests in cable sports networks. Cable companies carry regional sports networks (RSNs) on basic cable tiers. Some league-owned networks have sought high prices for carriage on basic tiers, causing some cable companies to balk because of the price increase they would have to pass on to consumers. The 1992 Cable Act prohibits cable companies from discriminating in carriage terms between affiliated and nonaffiliated networks. Cable companies that own RSNs are, therefore, left vulnerable to discrimination complaints by league-owned networks. This Note argues that …


Viewpoint Diversity And Media Consolidation: An Empirical Study, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn Jan 2009

Viewpoint Diversity And Media Consolidation: An Empirical Study, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

One of the central predicates of legal regulation of media ownership is that ownership consolidation reduces substantive viewpoint diversity. Appellate courts and, in turn, the Federal Communications Commission have increasingly demanded evidence for this convergence hypothesis, but extant empirical measures of viewpoint diversity sidestep the problem, ignoring diversity, viewpoints, or both. Our Article develops and offers a finely tuned, time-varying statistical measure of editorial viewpoint diversity, based on a new database of over 1600 editorial positions in twenty-five top newspapers from 1988-2004. Using this new measure, we assess the validity of the convergence hypothesis by examining the evolution of editorial …


Fcc Jurisdiction Over Isps In Protocol-Specific Bandwidth Throttling, Andrew Gioia Jan 2009

Fcc Jurisdiction Over Isps In Protocol-Specific Bandwidth Throttling, Andrew Gioia

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Over the past decade, the Internet has matured from its dial-up infancy into the nation's dominant communications infrastructure. Such rapid growth and accessibility--while fostering free speech and innovation like nothing before--has nonetheless created complex regulatory and policy questions for both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the cable companies providing the nation's broadband Internet access. For instance, Comcast, one such Internet provider, has recently brought to the fore the question of how, and to what extent, the FCC can ensure an open and accessible Internet through the company's recent actions in selectively targeting and interfering with the connections of certain …