Communications Law Commons^™

Beyond Napster, Beyond The United States: The Technological And International Legal Barriers To On-Line Copyright Enforcement, Jeffrey L. Dodes

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Common Carrier Approach To Internet Interconnection, James B. Speta

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article argues that some generalized interconnection rules are broadly appropriate. Specifically, some lessons learned from the ancient regime of common carrier regulation provide the appropriate regulatory foundation for the modern Internet. Since at least the middle ages, most significant carriers of communications and commerce have been regulated as common carriers. Common carrier rules have resolved the disputed issues of duty to serve, nondiscrimination, and interconnection. These were the problems of seventeenth-century ferry owners and innkeepers, eighteenth-century steamships, nineteenth-century railroads, and twentieth-century telephone networks. They are similar to the problems of the twenty-first-century Internet, and similar rules can govern its …

The Fcc’S Implementation Of The 1996 Act: Agency Litigation Strategies And Delay, Rebecca Beynon

Federal Communications Law Journal

Since it began promulgating rules to implement the local competition provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC has been under attack in the courts. The road has been a rough one, and the Commission has lost on a good many issues. The Commission has regularly accused its opponents in these legal battles-chiefly the incumbent local exchange carriers-of using litigation to impede the implementation of the 1996 Act’s local competition provisions. As discussed in this Article, if litigation has in fact slowed the introduction of competition in the local exchange markets, the Commission itself must share some of the …

Legal Opinions In Corporate Transactions Affected By Fcc Regulation: An Economic Approach, John C. Quale, Brian D. Weimer

Federal Communications Law Journal

In 1996, a subcommittee of the Federal Communications Bar Association published a report on legal opinion practice in corporate transactions involving FCC licensees (the FCBA Report). The FCBA Report, although inspired by the American Bar Association’s Legal Opinion Accord and Guidelines (the Accord), deviated from the Accord in many important respects. The FCBA Report likewise is at variance with the recent report of the TriBar Opinion Committee (the TriBar Report), which presents a comprehensive treatment of customary legal opinion practice. Given recent developments in case law expanding the liability of lawyers to third parties for their …

Property Rights, Reliance, And Retroactivity Under The Communications Act Of 1934, William L. Fishman

Federal Communications Law Journal

Although the FCC and courts have concluded that licensees have certain property interests in their licenses, they do not acquire any ownership interests even when, via a spectrum auction, they pay for their licenses. What narrow property interests licensees maintain are limited, and the FCC has broad power to modify existing licenses if doing so is in the public interest. License owners have sought to limit or defeat otherwise lawful FCC actions to alter their licenses by asserting a reliance interest on prior agency action or policy. Licensees may find comfort in the fact that some courts have acknowledged these …

Do You Feel The Sunshine? Government In The Sunshine Act: Its Objectives, Goals, And Effect On The Fcc And You, Kathy Bradley

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note posits that the Sunshine Act should be narrowed to allow the FCC to operate in the same way as Congress and the Federal courts. The FCC should be allowed to engage in open and frank discussion of issues facing the Commission without rigid restrictions on collegial conversation between Commission members.

Report Of The Subcommittee On Legal Opinions Of The Transactional Practice Committee Of The Federal Communications Bar Association, Federal Communications Bar Association

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Federal Communications Bar Association created an Ad Hoc Committee on Opinion Letters to create and develop materials to assist practitioners in drafting and negotiating opinion letters for FCC-related transactions. This Committee Report is intended to facilitate negotiations between opinion givers and recipients, whose respective business operations are at least in part regulated by the FCC. However, the Report is drafted with the assumption that practitioners utilizing it understand the basis for certain opinions are counsel(s examination of records which may be incomplete in the public reference room.

The Report is divided into four parts: (1) the general status of …

Reinventing Fcc Adjudication, Sidney White Rhyne

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Suing The Press: Libel, The Media, And Power, Michael L. Chidester

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Suing the Press: Libel, the Media, and Power by Rodney A. Smolla

Injury To Reputation And The Constitution: Confusion Amid Conflicting Approaches, George C. Christie

Michigan Law Review

It is the thesis of this article that the long-run implications of Firestone and Paul v. Davis will force a radical reformulation of the circumstances under which an individual may obtain legal redress for injury to his reputation brought about by falsehoods. The Court will eventually be obliged to abandon its fragmented treatment of the subject: At present, some injured persons have no chance of recovery; others are faced with requirements of proof that make recovery very difficult; still others can recover under significantly more relaxed standards of proof. The nature of the Court's likely reformulation will be developed later …

Jurisdiction--Libel--First Amendment's Role In Determining Place Of Trial In Libel Actions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The seeming unfairness of basing jurisdiction solely on such ordinarily inconsequential acts as mailing a newspaper into another state has troubled some courts. Traditionally, the validity of such a jurisdictional basis would be judged against the fourteenth amendment standard of "fair play." In several recent cases, however, courts have brought to bear constitutional standards of free speech as well as of fairness in dealing with the problem of jurisdiction over the out-of- state defendant in a libel action. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in deciding New York Times Co. v. Connor, ruled that "First Amendment considerations …

Libel And Slander - Implied Representation That Plaintiff Consented To Write Her Love Story As Libel Per Se, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Plaintiff brought an action for libel against defendant for publishing in its magazine a story, which it represented as being written by plaintiff, purporting to relate indiscreet intimacies between plaintiff and a certain man. Defendant admitted the false representation of authorship, but requested a directed verdict after submitting in evidence testimony given by plaintiff in a prior law suit, in which she was said to have admitted intimacies fully as capable of bringing her into disrepute as were those published by defendant. On refusal by the court to direct a verdict, defendant excepted and appealed on the ground that the …

Libel - Plaintlff's Portrait-Story Concerning Another

Michigan Law Review

Defendant published in a newspaper the picture of the plaintiff, Alta Woolf, under the headline, "Sued for Balm," and above a caption to the effect that "Mrs. Ruth Felgenauer (above) 11002 Nelson Ave." had been made defendant in an alienation suit. To the plaintiff's libel action, defendant demurred. Held, the trial court was correct in sustaining the demurrer because, in its entirety, the publication was not calculated to lead third persons to believe that it referred to plaintiff. Woolf v. Scripps Pub. Co. (Ohio, Ct. App. 1930) 172 N.E. 389.

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Acknowledgment--Who may Take--Stockholder; Action for Death of a Child-- Contributory Negligence; Adverse Possession--Computation of Time--Litigation in Land Office; Bankruptcy--Homestead--Jurisdiction of bankruptcy Court; Chattel Mortgages--Unidentified Number Among a Greater Number of Like Articles--Validity; Constitutional Law--Possession of Game fish in Closed Season; Constitutional Law--Special Act--Sunday Law; Contracts--Impossibility of Performance--Implied Condition; Contracts--Violation of Penal Statute--Transaction Void; corporations--Dissolution--Rights of Minority Stockholders; Corporations--Insolvency--Preferences to Officers; Equity--Jurisdiction--Partition--Oil Leases; Judgments--Absence of Jurisdiction--Injunction--Restraining Execution; Master and Servant--False Imprisonment--Duty of Merchant to Customers; Master and Servant--Fellow Servants--Assumed risks--Injuries to Servant While off Duty; Minor's enlistment in the Navy--Validity--Desertion--Arrest--habeas Corpus; Real Property--Rule in Shelley's Case--Wills; Specific Performance--Parol Contract--Part Performance; Suretyship--county …

Recent Important Decisions, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Administrators--Right to Convey Inchoate Homestead; Agency--Scope of Authority--Sunday Contract; Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors--Action to set Aside; Bankruptcy--Discharge--Debt Created in Fiduciary Relation--Laundry Agent; Bills and Notes--Banks--Payment of Draft to Impost--Liability to Drawer; Chattel Mortgages-Validity--Mortgagor's Possession and Power of Sale in Ordinary Course of Business; Constitutional Law--Due Process at Law--Forfeiture of Lands for Failure to Pay Taxes; Constitutional Law--Local Option Law--Use of Liquors in Religious Worship--Discrimination; Contract for the Benefit of Third Persons--Enforcement by Beneficiary--Assignment; Corporations--Oral Subscription to Stock--Statute of Frauds; Corporations--Promissory Notes--Proof of Execution; Courts--Jurisdiction of State Court to Enjoin a Receiver Appointed by Federal Court; Damages--Automobiles--Frightening Horses--Excessive Speed; …