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Communications Law Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Communications Law

Unplanned Obsolescence: Interpreting The Automatic Telephone Dialing System After The Smartphone Epoch, Walter Allison Oct 2020

Unplanned Obsolescence: Interpreting The Automatic Telephone Dialing System After The Smartphone Epoch, Walter Allison

Michigan Law Review

Technology regulations succeed or fail based upon their ability to regulate an idea. Constant innovation forces legislators to draft statutes aimed at prohibiting the idea of a device, rather than a specific device itself, because new devices with new capacities emerge every day. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) is a federal statute that imposes liability based on the idea of an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS). But the statute’s definition of the device is ambiguous. The FCC struggles to coherently apply the definition to new technologies, and courts interpret the definition inconsistently. Federal circuit courts have split over these …


Limits Of The Federal Wiretap Act's Ability To Protect Against Wi-Fi Sniffing, Mani Potnuru Oct 2012

Limits Of The Federal Wiretap Act's Ability To Protect Against Wi-Fi Sniffing, Mani Potnuru

Michigan Law Review

Adoption of Wi-Fi wireless technology continues to see explosive growth. However many users still operate their home Wi-Fi networks in unsecured mode or use publicly available unsecured Wi-Fi networks, thus exposing their communications to the dangers of "packet sniffing," a technique used for eavesdropping on a network. Some have argued that communications over unsecured Wi-Fi networks are "readily accessible to the general public" and that such communications are therefore excluded from the broad protections of the Federal Wiretap Act against intentional interception of electronic communications. This Note examines the Federal Wiretap Act and argues that the current Act's treatment of …


Choosing Between The Necessity And Public Interest Standards In Fcc Review Of Media Ownership Rules, Peter Dicola Oct 2007

Choosing Between The Necessity And Public Interest Standards In Fcc Review Of Media Ownership Rules, Peter Dicola

Michigan Law Review

Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as amended, directs the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") to review its media ownership rules every four years. But the statute contains an ambiguity regarding the standard of review that the FCC must apply during such proceedings. To retain a particular media ownership regulation, must the FCC merely show that the regulation advances one of the FCC's three public-interest goals for media: competition, diversity, and localism-applying a "public interest" standard? Or must the FCC meet the higher burden of demonstrating that the regulation is also indispensable for maintaining competition, diversity, or localism at …


Proactive Legislation And The First Amendment, Stuart Minor Benjamin Nov 2000

Proactive Legislation And The First Amendment, Stuart Minor Benjamin

Michigan Law Review

It is a commonplace that the world is changing rapidly, with whole sectors of the economy being transformed. New forms of communication, like the World Wide Web, e-mail, and satellite television, have risen from obscurity to ubiquity in less than a decade. The speed of these changes has led some to express concern about the ability of governments to respond. The fear is that governments cannot keep up with developments as they occur and thus get hopelessly behind. The solution, according to some, is for the government to act proactively - before a harm has arisen, so that the government …


The First Amendment Status Of Commercial Speech: Why The Fcc Regulations Implementing The Telephone Consumer Protection Act Of 1991 Are Unconstitutional, Deborah L. Hamilton Jun 1996

The First Amendment Status Of Commercial Speech: Why The Fcc Regulations Implementing The Telephone Consumer Protection Act Of 1991 Are Unconstitutional, Deborah L. Hamilton

Michigan Law Review

This Note considers the constitutionality of the FCC's regulations implementing the no-recorded-message provision of the 1991 TCPA and concludes that they violate the First Amendment because they impermissibly distinguish between commercial and noncommercial speech. Part I explains the structure of the FCC's recorded-message regulations and demonstrates that the regulations explicitly distinguish commercial recorded messages from other recorded messages. Part II examines First Amendment protection for commercial speech in light of three 1993 Supreme Court decisions that restructured commercial speech doctrine by holding that the government can single out commercial speech for regulation only in response to a distinct harm arising …


Labor Law-Applicability Of The Lea Act To Activities Of The American Federation Of Musicians, W. J. Schrenk, Jr. Jun 1948

Labor Law-Applicability Of The Lea Act To Activities Of The American Federation Of Musicians, W. J. Schrenk, Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Defendant, acting as president of a local union of the American Federation of Musicians, requested a new contract with a broadcasting station licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, including a provision that the licensee hire three extra musicians, raising to six the total number of musicians employed. When negotiations regarding this provision failed, defendant withdrew from the licensee's services the three musicians (members of the A.F. of M.) already employed by it. An action was, then brought to prosecute defendant under the amendment to the Federal Communications Act, popularly known as the Lea Act, which prohibits the use of threats …


Note And Comment, Michigan Law Review Dec 1904

Note And Comment, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The Law School; The New Schools of Healing; When the Exercise of Judicial Discretion is not Due Process of Law; Mandamus to Compel the Installation of a Telephone in a Bawdy House Denied; The Division in the Republican Party in Wisconsin; A Novel Extension of Federal Jurisdiction; The Session Laws of Porto Rico