Communications Law Commons^™

Internet File-Sharing: Swedish Pirates Challenge The U.S., Ulric M. Lewen

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

The note examines the challenges of enforcing copyright laws in the digital age, focusing on the contrasting approaches of the U.S. and Sweden in addressing peer-to-peer file sharing. It critiques the U.S. for its aggressive legal strategy, which may prove counterproductive, while highlighting Sweden's potential as a model for alternative solutions. The analysis underscores the need for a balanced approach that protects copyright holders without stifling innovation.

Myspace In A Post-Grokster World: Digital Finger Pointing For Offenses Perpetrated Through Use Of Social Networking Sites After Mgm V. Grokster, Cheryl J. Eisner

Cardozo Public Law, Policy & Ethics Journal

The note examines the dismissal of a negligence lawsuit against MySpace, arguing that interactive computer services should not be held liable for offline harms committed by users. It emphasizes the importance of protecting such platforms under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and highlights the need to balance free speech and technological development against concerns for user safety.

Editor's Note, Matthew D. Lawless

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Direct Marketing, Mobile Phones, And Consumer Privacy: Ensuring Adequate Disclosure And Consent Mechanisms For Emerging Mobile Advertising Practices, Nancy J. King

Federal Communications Law Journal

Advertisers are poised to deliver advertising to cell phones in the U.S. This emerging advertising context is called mobile advertising. It will generate a host of privacy and personal data issues for consumers and for mobile advertisers, mobile phone manufacturers, and mobile carriers. This Article focuses on the existing federal regulatory environment applicable to mobile advertising and consumer privacy, the role of federal administrative agencies that enforce consumer privacy regulation, and the potential for industry selfregulation, particularly privacy policies, to enhance consumer privacy. It assesses the adequacy of the existing federal consumer privacy regulation as well as potential consumer remedies …

Internet Search And Seizure In United States V. Forrester: New Problems In The New Age Of Pen Registers, Deborah Buckner

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

The Two-Step Evidentiary And Causation Quandary For Medium- Specific Laws Targeting Sexual And Violent Content: First Proving Harm And Injury To Silence Speech, Then Proving Redress And Rehabilitation Through Censorship, Clay Calvert

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article argues that legislators today that want to suppress First Amendment-protected images of sexual and violent conduct conveyed on a specific medium face a steep two-step evidentiary burden. First, they must prove actual harm caused by the speech in question as it is conveyed on a specific medium--not the aggregate injury from viewing all media generallythat is sufficient to overcome free-speech rights. Second, even if sufficient harm from viewing violent or sexual content on a particular medium is proven by social science research, the government then must prove that its legislative remedy-its censorship of the harmful expression conveyed via …

The Colonel's Finest Campaign: Robert R. Mccormick And Near V. Minnesota, Eric B. Easton

Federal Communications Law Journal

Media corporations and their professional and trade associations, as well as organizations such as Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the American Civil Liberties Union, regularly monitor litigation that implicates First Amendment values and decide whether, when, and how to intervene. But that was not always the case. While media companies have always lobbied and litigated in support of their business interests-antitrust, copyright, postal rates, taxes-litigation by the institutional press to create or avoid doctrinal precedent under the First Amendment began only in the late 1920s. Once the United States Supreme Court recognized the incorporation of the First …

Reassessing Turner And Litigating The Must-Carry Law Beyond A Facial Challenge, R. Matthew Warner

Federal Communications Law Journal

In recent decades, the must-carry rules have had a troubled constitutional history. After two sets of rules were struck down by the D.C. Circuit for violating the First Amendment rights of both cable programmers and operators, Congress revised the must-carry rules in the 1992 Cable Act. In 1997, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, determined that the congressional must-carry law was facially constitutional. However, does the Turner II decision preclude further First Amendment challenges to the must-carry law? This Note argues that the answer is no and that the time is drawing near for new challenges.

Carl Ramey's Mass Media Unleashed, Henry Geller

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Carl R. Ramey, Mass Media Unleashed: How Washington Policy Makers Shortchanged the American Public (2007).

This superb book treats an important issue: the proper regulatory policy for broadcasting in the twenty-first century. In it, Carl Ramey critiques the Federal Communications Commission's public trustee and deregulatory market policies and suggests that to meet the dynamic market and technological changes of this new century we should, among other things, free commercial broadcasters completely from public trustee requirements and eliminate FCC enforcement of its ownership and related rules. Based on the long experience of a communications lawyer who knows so well …

Masthead Vol.60 No.2 (2008)

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Skating Toward Deregulation: Canadian Developments, Timothy J. Brennan

Federal Communications Law Journal

Canada had recently undertaken significant steps to forbear from regulating the last regulated offering in the telecommunications sector, local exchange service. Tests that Canada's telecommunications regulatory agency had imposed were overturned by order from the Canadian Cabinet Ministers. Notably, competitors to the incumbent local exchange carriers ("ILECs"), primary cable systems offering voice over Internet protocol ("VoW"') service, argued for the retention of regulation to prevent the ILECs from cutting price to customers who had switched to cable VoIP or were most likely to do so. We review here both the institutional developments leading to the forbearance decision and a number …

The First Amendment, Journalists, And Sources: A Curious Study In "Reverse Federalism", Rodney A. Smolla

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Journalists Privileged?: Panel Discussion, Anthony Lewis, Max Frankel, Victor Kovner

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Source Of The Problem Of Sources: The First Amendment Fails The Fourth Estate, Joel M. Gora

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Journalists' Privilege, Eric M. Freedman

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Reporter Keeping Confidences: More Important Than Ever, David Rudenstine

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Press Rights Of Equal Access, Luke M. Milligan

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Is A Rate - The Distinction Between Descriptions And Charges, And This Distinction's Impact On Federal Preemption For Wireless Truth In Billing, R. Matthew Warner

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

In 1993 Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which placed a limitation on state power to regulate rates of wireless carriers. This legislation explicitly reserved to the states the power to adjust the "terms and conditions" of a wireless provider's service. The FCC, however, interpreted the act as preempting states from requiring or prohibiting explicit line items. While many of the theoretical grounds for the FCC's 2005 Truthin- Billing Declaratory Ruling are correct, the empirical examples cited seem to conflict with its theoretical rulings, causing some of the Ruling to violate 5 U.S.C. § 706. Moreover, the two courts …

The Dmca And The Privatization Of Copyright, Dave Hauser

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

With the support of recent case law, statistics, and legal analysis, this note defends the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its copyright protection mechanisms. The DMCA should be readily acknowledged as a push toward the privatization of copyright. Furthermore, the vast amount of criticism surrounding the DMCA wrongly shifts the focus away from what its provisions have accomplished.

This note addresses three main challenges to the DMCA's constitutionality: (1) that it exceeds the scope of Congressional authority as restrained by the Intellectual Property Clause, (2) that it oversteps the boundaries of First Amendment protection, and (3) that the doctrine …

Money Ruins Everything, John Quiggin, Dan Hunter

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The statement, "it's hard to compete with free," encapsulates the most important recent developments in intellectual property policy and some of the most significant social trends of our time. Because amateur creators produce content for the love it and are prepared to work for free-or even to lose money to feed their desire to create-their existence threatens the economic assumptions of commercial providers of content. As a result, the rise of amateurism calls into question some fundamental assumptions we have about the public policy of innovation, the way that innovation occurs within society, and the incentives necessary to produce valuable …

The Antithesis Of Originality: Bridgeman, Image Licensors, And The Public Domain, Mary Campbell Wojcik

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Under the explicit terms of both the Copyright Act and the Constitution, everyone-scholars and laypeople alike-should be free to "reproduce, prepare derivative works from, [or] distribute" copies of Eakins paintings. But, contrary to the Copyright Act, some art institutions are legally requiring its image users to agree that, "any reproduction or use of the Photographs or Reproductions" contrary to the terms of its licensing agreements, "will be an infringement of copyright." Beginning with an analysis of the Southern District's holding in the two Bridgeman opinions, this article examines the reaction that the decisions have incited among various art image licensors, …

Piggy Backing On The Web 2.0 Internet: Copyright Liability And Web 2.0 Mashups, Lisa Veasman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Today's Web allows anyone to "influence the duplication and dissemination of information around the world." User-generated content and applications, where users can combine web applications and synchronize one website's information with another's, comprise much of Web 2.0's Internet. This note investigates whether generative web applications can "piggy back" on the initial websites' safe harbor protections, provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or whether such applications are liable for primary infringement themselves. Such web applications, like the Web 2.0 mashup ("mashup"), face potential liability because they display user-generated, infringing material, which users originally uploaded onto one of the previously existing …

Accepting Droit De Site As An Equal And Fair Measure Under Intellectual Property Law And Contemplation Of Its Implementation In The United States Post Passage Of The Eu Directive, Mara Grumbo

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This note will argue that while many criticisms against droit de suite legislation are based on economic grounds, these grounds are not those on which the royalty is and should be based. These arguments miss the mark by focusing on the inadequacy of the economic value of the royalty rather than viewing droit de suite as a "moral rights" based measure, providing visual artists fair and equal protection under intellectual property law. Once one accepts the latter view and understands the royalty as a measure necessary to remedy the unjust treatment of visual artists under copyright law, the inadequate state …

Broadcast Profanity And The Right To Be Let Alone: Can The Fcc Regulate Non-Indecent Fleeting Expletives Under A Privacy Model, Edward L. Carter, R. Trevor Hall, James C. Phillips

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This manuscript examines the issue of broadcast profanity regulation in light of the Supreme Court's March 2008 decision to grant certiorari in an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The Second Circuit in 2007 held that the FCC was arbitrary and capricious in its decision to begin prohibiting single profanities, or fleeting expletives, on broadcast television. However, the common law of nuisance and the law of privacy may provide justification for the FCC to regulate broadcast profanity under 18 U.S.C. § 1464. Although some argue that regulating broadcast profanity would induce a chilling effect on …

Can Intellectual Property Laws Stem The Rising Tide Of Art Forgeries, Joseph C. Gioconda

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Forged works of art have infiltrated the global marketplace at unprecedented levels during the past decade. Artists, museums, dealers, brokers and law enforcement have struggled to stop forgeries using traditional legal theories such as contract breach and fraud. These legal theories, however, have not been entirely successful at stopping the widespread global and online sale and distribution of art forgeries. Likewise, the prevalence of counterfeit merchandise has surged, undermining consumer confidence in the authenticity of luxury goods, pharmaceuticals and other consumer products. While those industries have lobbied successfully for stricter penalties against counterfeiting and have invested substantial resources in enforcement, …

Developing A National Wireless Regulatory Framework: A Law And Economics Approach, T. Randolph Beard, George S. Ford, Thomas M. Koutsky, Lawrence J. Spiwak

CommLaw Conspectus: Journal of Communications Law and Technology Policy (1993-2015)

No abstract provided.

Pathways To Patents: Applying The Written Description Requirement Doctrine To Patents On Biological Pathways, Shengfeng Chen

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Research tool and "research-through" patents have become increasing concerns in recent years, particularly in pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields. In response to the impacts of these patents, courts have responded with a series of judicial decisions, and attempted to regulate these patents using the written description doctrine. However, these decisions have been confusing and inconsistent. After an examination of the Federal Circuit's written description jurisprudence and scholastic responses to these decisions, this article proposes a new standard of meeting the written description requirement to provide a workable solution for regulating research tool and "research-through" patents.

Signaling New Barriers: Implications Of The Wipo Broadcasting Treaty For Public Use Of Information, Lisa Mak

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Since November 1998, the Standing Committee on Copyright Related Rights of the World Intellectual Property Organization has been drafting a new Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations that would provide copyright-like protection to broadcasting entities in signatory countries. As currently drafted, it would introduce a new layer of intellectual property rights that would be separate from, and in addition to, the rights of copyright holders. If implemented in the United States, the Treaty would represent a substantial shift from the norms and traditions of U.S. copyright law. This note will analyze how the Treaty might negatively impact the public's …

First Amendment Showdown: Intellectual Diversity Mandates And The Academic Marketplace, Nancy Whitmore

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

Once described as a quintessential marketplace of ideas by the Supreme Court of the United States, the academic marketplace has been criticized recently for institutionalizing a left-leaning ideology within its curriculum and academic discourse. As a result, national activists and organizations have been calling on state legislatures and university administrators to adopt policies and report on steps taken to encourage intellectual diversity and protect political and cultural minorities from faculty bias and academic retribution in the classroom and other university settings. But who would win a constitutional showdown between the academy and those seeking to infuse academic discourse with alternative …

Live Alienation: One Super-Promoter Eliminates Competition, Concert Fans Pay The Price, And The Sherman Act Waits In The Wings, 41 J. Marshall L. Rev. 527 (2008), Laura C. Howard

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.