Law Commons^™

Keeping It Off The Record: Student Social Media Monitoring And The Need For Updated Student Records Laws, Alice Haston

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

An increasing number of school districts work with private companies to monitor public social media and to notify administrators of alarming student information. Although these services help address challenging school safety issues, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and state law offer little guidance on how districts should store student social media data. This Note encourages states to pass student records laws similar to recent California legislation and urges the Department of Education to clarify the relationship between student social media and education records under FERPA. New state and federal initiatives would help ensure that third parties may …

Putting The Shock Value In First Amendment Jurisprudence: When Freedom For The Citizen-Journalist Watchdog Trumps The Right Of Informational Privacy On The Internet, Clay Calvert, Mirelis Torres

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article, which takes the July 2010 ruling by the Fourth Circuit in Ostergren v. Cuccinelli as a point of departure, explores the growing tension between the First Amendment right of Free Speech and the nascent right to online informational privacy. The Article addresses the "shock value" in First Amendment jurisprudence, stretching from Cohen v. California and Texas v. Johnson through the recent ruling in Ostergren. The Article also examines the traditional watchdog function of the press increasingly performed on the Internet by so-called citizen-journalists akin to Betty Ostergren. The Article concludes that while the Fourth Circuit's decision in Ostergren …

Equal Protection In The World Of Art And Obscenity: The Art Photographer's Latent Struggle With Obscenity Standards In Contemporary America, Elaine Wang

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Part I of this article describes the initial hurdles that all visual art forms, including photography, face with respect to First Amendment protection given the power of visual imagery and the three-pronged test for obscenity set forth in Miller v. California. Of particular relevance is the "serious artistic value" prong of the Miller test and the problems inherent in determining who is to judge as well as how one might judge whether a work, particularly a photograph that may be construed to have a non-artistic function, possesses "serious artistic value."

Part II addresses the overall approach to photography in three …