Communications Law Commons^™

Litigating The Youth Mental Health Crisis: Mechanisms To Regulate Addictive Social Media Design, Talia Elliott

Washington and Lee Law Review

While social media offers real benefits to users, such as providing access to information and facilitating the free exchange of ideas, excessive social media use is associated with increases in anxiety, depression, and other serious mental-health harms. Social media platforms are designed to maximize profit by capturing user attention, resulting in interfaces that are dangerously addictive and prone to exposing users to harmful content. Currently, social media users alone bear the burden of navigating the dangers of social media. This is untenable. Young users, whose less developed brains leave them more vulnerable to addictive design features, find self-regulation especially challenging. …

Wiretapping The Internet: Analyzing The Application Of The Federal Wiretap Act’S Party Exception Online, Hayden Driscoll

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The federal Wiretap Act—originally enacted to curtail the government’s unbridled use of wiretaps to monitor telephonic communications—was amended in 1986 to provide a private right of action, extending the Act’s Fourth Amendment-like protections to private intrusions. Since the advent of the internet, plaintiffs have attempted to predicate claims of unauthorized online privacy intrusions on the Wiretap Act. In response, defendants claim they are parties to the communications at issue and should be absolved of liability under the Act’s party exception. The federal circuit courts of appeal disagree on how the party exception applies in the internet context. This Note evaluates …

The Three Laws: The Chinese Communist Party Throws Down The Data Regulation Gauntlet, William Chaskes

Washington and Lee Law Review

Criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) runs a wide gamut. Accusations of human rights abuses, intellectual property theft, authoritarian domestic policies, disrespecting sovereign borders, and propaganda campaigns all have one common factor: the CCP’s desire to control information. Controlling information means controlling data. Lurking beneath the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) tumultuous relationship with the rest of the world is the fight between nations to control their citizens’ data while also keeping it out of the hands of adversaries. The CCP’s Three Laws are its newest weapon in this data war.

One byproduct of the CCP’s emphasis on controlling …

Weapons Of Mass Distortion: Applying The Principles Of The Fcc’S News Distortion Doctrine To Undisclosed Financial Conflicts Of Interest In Corporate News Media’S Military Coverage, Charles L. Bonani

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note offers a new conception of news distortion in mass media. It explores the intentions behind the FCC’s News Distortion Doctrine and analyzes its primarily dormant status throughout its existence. This Note then examines televised media coverage of U.S. military actions and identifies undisclosed financial conflicts of interests throughout this coverage. In examining these undisclosed conflicts and the reasons behind them, this Note explains why they constitute news distortion under the FCC’s definition, and why the principles behind the Doctrine are implicated. This Note then proposes the FCC promulgate a disclosure rule to remedy the undisclosed financial conflicts of …

“Opening The Door” To Presidential Press Conferences: A Framework For The Right Of Press Access, Alexandria R. Taylor

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Since President Donald Trump took office in 2017, there has been tension between the White House and the press. While this tension has been present in prior presidencies, its current manifestation raises important First Amendment issues. This Note discusses the limitations of the President to restrict the press’s right of First Amendment access to presidential press conferences. After delving into the Supreme Court’s development and recognition of the press’s right of access and how the lower courts have interpreted this right, this Note proposes a framework to analyze the press’s right of access and addresses the question of when and …

Limited Privacy In “Pings:” Why Law Enforcement’S Use Of Cell-Site Simulators Does Not Categorically Violate The Fourth Amendment, Lara M. Mcmahon

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Note proposes four factors courts should consider when asked to determine whether law enforcement’s use of a cell-site simulator constituted a Fourth Amendment search. The first asks courts to consider whether the cell-site simulator surveillance infringed on a constitutionally protected area, such as the home. The second asks courts to consider the duration of the cell-site simulator surveillance. The third asks courts to consider whether the cell-site simulator surveillance was conducted actively or passively. The fourth asks courts to focus on the nature and depth of the information obtained as a result of the cell-site simulator surveillance. If, after …

Facebook's Alternative Facts, Sarah C. Haan

Scholarly Articles

In this short essay, I argue that Facebook’s adoption of the alternative-facts frame potentially contributes to the divisiveness that has made social media misinformation a powerful digital tool. Facebook’s choice to present information as “facts” and “alternative facts” endorses a binary system in which all information can be divided between moral or tribal categories—“bad” versus “good” speech, as Sandberg put it in her testimony to Congress. As we will see, Facebook’s related-articles strategy adopts this binary construction, offering a both-sides News Feed that encourages users to view information as cleaving along natural moral or political divisions.

Anonymous Speech On The Internet, In Amateur Media: Social, Cultural And Legal Perspectives (Dan Hunter Et Al. Eds., 2013), Brian C. Murchison

Books and Chapters

The U.S. legal community is engaged in a serious but inconclusive dialogue on issues relating to anonymous speech on the Internet. To be sure, several basic questions relevant to Internet speech have been settled: in a 1997 case; the Supreme Court determined that strict scrutiny applies to Internet content regulation, and in a 1995 case, the Court recognized a First Amendment right of anonymous speech. Yet the 1995 case did not arise in an Internet setting, and the scope of expressive freedom in certain Internet scenarios remains disputed. Over the past ten years, courts and commentators have grappled with anonymous …

Csli Disclosure: Why Probable Cause Is Necessary To Protect What’S Left Of The Fourth Amendment, Steven M. Harkins

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lord Of The Files: International Secondary Liability For Internet Service Providers, Emerald Smith

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tucker Lecture, Law And Media Symposium, Erwin Chemerinsky

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Press Rights Of Equal Access, Luke M. Milligan

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Radio Regulation: The Effect Of A Pro-Localism Agenda On Black Radio, Lavonda N. Reed-Huff

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Deregulating Telecommunications In Internet Time, James B. Speta

Washington and Lee Law Review

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has yielded more litigation and less local competition than its supporters expected or intended. Calls for its reform are multiplying. In this Article, Professor Septa diagnoses the 1996 Act's failings and prescribes a framework for reform. The successful deregulations of the transportation industries and of long-distance telecommunications (precedents the 1996 Act sought to follow) demonstrate that the Act should have taken additional steps to promote intermodal telecommunications competition. Transportation deregulation successfully prompted competition where (as in the case of airlines and trucking) multiple firms could compete on an intramodal basis or where (as in the …

Leathers V. Medlock: The Supreme Court Changes Course On Taxing The Press, Robert M. Howie

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment Fights Back: A Proposal For The Media To Reclaim The Battlefield After The Persian Gulf War, Michelle Tulane Mensore

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gentile V. State Bar Of Nevada: Implications For The Media, Gregory A. Garbacz

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

I. Communications Law

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fairness Regulation: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone, Donald E. Lively

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blanket Music Licensing And Local Television: An Historical Accident In Need Of Reform, Frederick C. Boucher

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Misrepresentation And The Fcc, Brian C. Murchison

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Pay Television And Section 605 Of The Communications Act Of 1934: A Need For Congressional Action

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federal Communications Commission V. Wncn Listeners Guild, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Federal Communications Commission V. Midwest Video Corporation, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Home Box Office And The Fcc's Reasonably Ancillary Jurisdiction

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

United States V. New York Telephone Company, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

California V. Southland Royalty Co., Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Federal Communications Commission V. Pacifica Foundation, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Zacchini V. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

United States Civil Service Commission V. National Association Of Letter Carriers, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.