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Ships Passing In The Night: The Communications Act And The Convergence On Broadband, Stuart Minor Benjamin
Ships Passing In The Night: The Communications Act And The Convergence On Broadband, Stuart Minor Benjamin
Faculty Scholarship
The Communications Act of 1934 and its amendments (the “Act”), and the regulations implementing them, have been enormously important to traditional telephony, broadcasting, and multichannel video. Meanwhile, the internet is barely mentioned in the Act. It thus might seem reasonable to conclude that the Act stands as a colossus and that the argument for overhauling it has grown much stronger as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the “1996 Act”) becomes ever more outdated. In this Article I suggest otherwise. Specifically, I make three claims—one descriptive, one a bit speculative, and one normative. The descriptive claim is that significant portions of …
Aiming At The Wrong Target: The "Audience Targeting" Test For Personal Jurisdiction In Internet Defamation Cases, Sarah H. Ludington
Aiming At The Wrong Target: The "Audience Targeting" Test For Personal Jurisdiction In Internet Defamation Cases, Sarah H. Ludington
Faculty Scholarship
In Young v. New Haven Advocate, 315 F.3d 256 (4th Cir. 2002), the Fourth Circuit crafted a jurisdictional test for Internet defamation that requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant specifically targeted an audience in the forum state for the state to exercise jurisdiction. This test relies on the presumption that the Internet — which is accessible everywhere — is targeted nowhere; it strongly protects foreign libel defendants who have published on the Internet from being sued outside of their home states. Other courts, including the North Carolina Court of Appeals, have since adopted or applied the test. The …