Communications Law Commons^™

Eyes Everywhere: Unpacking The Digital Surveillance State In Mexico And The Legal Blind Spots, Danielle Mena

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article examines the rise of digital surveillance in Mexico and its implications for privacy, human rights, and democratic governance. Despite constitutional and legislative protections guaranteeing personal privacy and freedom of expression, Mexico has developed one of the most extensive surveillance systems in the Americas. Through tools such as Pegasus spyware and the C5 urban surveillance network, government agencies have expanded their monitoring capabilities, often under the guise of national security. However, the misuse of these technologies against journalists, activists, and political dissidents reveals legal and institutional deficiencies. The article analyzes the evolution of Mexico’s digital surveillance infrastructure, identifies the …

The Fox Effect? Implications Of Recruiting Corporate Law To Combat Misinformation, Lili Levi

Articles

In 2023, Fox Corporation settled U.S. Dominion’s defamation action over Fox News’ broadcast of false election fraud claims after the 2020 presidential election for the staggering sum of $787.5 million. Now, a shareholder derivative action is pending in Delaware against the company’s board of directors for breach of state corporate law fiduciary oversight duties for their failure to prevent such defamatory programming. Beyond the specifics of the case, this development portends the emergence of a new politico-legal strategy—using corporate governance requirements as a weapon to promote press accountability and combat misinformation in public discourse. The question addressed in this Essay …

Truth Bounties: A Market Solution To Fake News, Yonathan A. Arbel, Michael D. Gilbert

Articles

False information poses a threat to individuals, groups, and society. Many people struggle to judge the veracity of the information around them, whether that information travels through newspapers, talk radio, TV, or social media. Concerned with the spread of misinformation and harmful falsehoods, much of the policy, popular, and scholarly conversation today revolves around proposals to expand the regulation of individuals, platforms, and the media. While more regulation may seem inevitable, it faces constitutional and political hurdles. Furthermore, regulation can have undesirable side effects and be ripe for abuse by powerful actors, public and private.

This Article presents an alternative …

Defamation With Bayesian Audiences, Yonathan Arbel, Murat C. Mungan

Articles

How strictly should the law regulate false defamatory statements? We first show that the presence of judicial errors often puts defamation law on a Laffer curve: regulation that is too lax or too strict is inferior to moderate regulation. While moderate regulation is ideal, it is not always attainable because of practical and legal constraints. With these constraints, we consider a Bayesian audience that takes the strictness of defamation law into account when evaluating statements. The optimal standard is then taxer than is prescribed by standard models with naive audiences. These findings underscore the importance of accounting for audience effects …

Juridical Discourse For Platforms, Thomas E. Kadri

Articles

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has created a private "Supreme Court," or so he says. Since 2021, his company's Oversight Board has issued verdicts on a smattering of Facebook's decisions about online speech. Cynics frame the Board as a Potemkin village, but defenders invoke analogies to separation of powers to claim that this new body empowers the public and restrains the company. Some are even calling for a single "platform supreme court" to rule over the entire industry.

Juridical discourse for platforms is powerful, but it can also be deceptive. This Response explores how juridical discourse has legitimized and empowered Facebook's …

Freedom From Speech, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

The importance of freedom of speech in a democratic society is usually taken as a given, but freedom from speech is no less important in safeguarding the values of truth, autonomy, and democracy. Freedom from speech includes both the right of the individual to not be forced to speak and the freedom to avoid the speech of others. This essay attempts to highlight the significance of freedom from speech in order to clarify the importance of the First Amendment right against compelled speech; provide an explanation for when the right of free speech yields to other rights; and offer a …

Investing In Human Futures: How Big Tech And Social Media Giants Abuse Privacy And Manipulate Consumerism, Brett Dembrow

University of Miami Business Law Review

Social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram originated with one seemingly innocent goal: “to bring the world closer together.”1 Now, these Big Tech giants own and operate some of the most powerful platforms in the world simply because of their unethical yet effective strategies to maintain their users’ attention. Social media companies have monetized the amount of time their users spend on their platforms by honing in on the individual preferences of each user and selling that access to advertisers. This heightened access to potential consumers and their preferences has become the most valuable marketing tool for digital …

Racialized, Judaized, Feminized: Identity-Based Attacks On The Press, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

Digital Gatekeepers, Thomas E. Kadri

Articles

If in William Blackstone's time we might have thought of a person's home as their castle, in Mark Zuckerberg's time we might say that their website is too.  Under cyber-trespass laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, courts have treated online platforms as digital gatekeepers--as property owners that may permit and restrict access to websites much like landowners may do with private land in the real world. If platforms withhold their consent through words or inference, cyber-trespass laws let them enforce their preferences about who may access their services and gather information from the internet. Concerned about reputations and …

The Second Amendment's Safe Space, Or The Constitutionlization Of Fragility, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

No abstract provided.

How The Internet Unmakes Law, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

No abstract provided.

Failure To Capture: Why Business Does Not Control The Rulemaking Process, Gabriel Scheffler

Articles

Leading figures on both the political right and the political left have concluded that the agency rulemaking process is captured: that it serves to benefit businesses, at the expense of the general public. This perception appears to be supported by recent theoretical and empirical scholarship and has prompted lawmakers to introduce various proposals to reform the federal rulemaking process.

Yet as I will demonstrate in this Article, the view of the rulemaking process as captured is unwarranted. I will show that the academic literature actually provides little guidance as to the magnitude of business influence that is, the extent to …

The Internet As A Speech Machine And Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform, Mary Anne Franks, Danielle Citron

Articles

No abstract provided.

Networks Of Empathy, Thomas E. Kadri

Articles

Digital abuse is on the rise. People increasingly use technology to perpetrate and exacerbate abusive conduct like stalking and harassment, manipulating digital tools to control and harm their victims. By some accounts, 95% of domestic-abuse cases involve technology, while a sizeable chunk of the U.S. population now admits to having suffered or perpetrated serious abuse online. To make matters worse, people often trivialize digital abuse or underestimate its prevalence. Even among those who do appreciate its severity, there remains ample disagreement about how to address it.

Although law can be a powerful tool to regulate digital abuse, legal responses are …

Facebook V. Sullivan: Public Figures And Newsworthiness In Online Speech, Thomas E. Kadri, Kate Klonick

Articles

In the United States, there are now two systems to adjudicate disputes about harmful speech. The first is older and more established: the legal system in which judges apply constitutional law to limit tort claims alleging injuries caused by speech. The second is newer and less familiar: the content-moderation system in which platforms like Facebook implement the rules that govern online speech. These platforms are not bound by the First Amendment. But, as it turns out, they rely on many of the tools used by courts to resolve tensions between regulating harmful speech and preserving free expression-particularly the entangled concepts …

The Legacy Of Slavery, Cognitive Shortcuts, And Biased News: The Mass Media’S Vilification Of Black Males And The Resulting “Reasonableness” Of Excessive Force By Law Enforcement, Janyl Relling Smith

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

No abstract provided.

Real "Fake News" And Fake "Fake News", Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

Lessons Learned Too Well: Anonymity In A Time Of Surveillance, A. Michael Froomkin

Articles

It is no longer reasonable to assume that electronic communications can be kept private from governments or private-sector actors. In theory, encryption can protect the content of such communications, and anonymity can protect the communicator's identity. But online anonymity-one of the two most important tools that protect online communicative freedom-is under practical and legal attack all over the world. Choke-point regulation, online identification requirements, and data-retention regulations combine to make anonymity very difficult as a practical matter and, in many countries, illegal. Moreover, key internet intermediaries further stifle anonymity by requiring users to disclose their real names.

This Article traces …

Digital Self-Ownership: A Publicity-Rights Framework For Determining Employee Social Media Rights, Susan Park, Patricia S. Abril

Articles

No abstract provided.

Taming The "Feral Beast": Cautionary Lessons From British Press Reform, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Right To Be Forgotten: Who Decides What The World Forgets, Patricia S. Abril, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

In May 2014, the Court of Justice for the European Union ("CJEU") surprised the global cyberlaw community by holding that search engines like Google are "controllers" of the processing of personal data under the European Union Data Protection Directive. This means that they are obliged in some circumstances to remove links from search results that pertain to information that infringes on an individual's rights under the Directive. This obligation has come to be referred to as an aspect of a digital right to be forgotten." The search results in question related to a mortgage sale of property in a bankruptcy …

Fumbling The First Amendment: The Right Of Publicity Goes 2-0 Against Freedom Of Expression, Thomas E. Kadri

Articles

Two circuits in one summer found in favor of college athletes in right-of-publicity suits filed against the makers of the NCAA Football videogame. Both panels split 2-1; both applied the transformative use test; both dissenters predicted chilling consequences. By insisting that the likeness of each player be "transformed," the Third and Ninth Circuits employed a test that imperils the use of realistic depictions of public figures in expressive works. This standard could have frosty implications for artists in a range of media: docudramas, biographies, and works of historical fiction may be at risk. This Comment examines the tension between the …

Journalism Standards And "The Dark Arts": The U.K.'S Leveson Inquiry And The U.S. Media In The Age Of Surveillance, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

"A Simple, Human Measure Of Privacy": Public Disclosure Of Private Facts In The World Of Tiger Woods, Patricia S. Abril

Articles

No abstract provided.

Plan B For Campaign-Finance Reform: Can The Fcc Help Save American Politics After Citizens United?, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

A "Pay Or Play" Experiment To Improve Children's Educational Television, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Fcc's Affirmative Speech Obligations Promoting Child Welfare, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

Toward A Broadband Public Interest Standard, Anthony E. Varona

Articles

No abstract provided.

Chairman Kevin Martin On Indecency: Enhancing Agency Power, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Four Eras Of Fcc Public Interest Regulation, Lili Levi

Articles

No abstract provided.