Communications Law Commons^™

Cutting Cupid Out Of The Workplace: The Capacity Of Employees' Constitutional Privacy Rights To Constrain Employers' Attempts To Limit Off-Duty Intimate Associations, Anna C. Camp

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Romantic relationships among co-workers: should employers have the right to suppress such activity? Employers often view the widespread practice of dating among co-workers as highly problematic. In light of increased sexual harassment suits, many employers attempt to limit or eliminate intimate relationships among employees through the institution of "no-fraternization" policies. The strictest of these policies allow for legal termination of employees that violate the policy's terms, and can include total prohibition of intimate relationships among co-workers. Employees argue that such bans, which also affect employees' off-duty intimate association, should be held unconstitutionally invasive of employees' privacy rights or invalid on …

Technology And Copyright Law - Illuminating The Nfl's Blackout Rule In Game Broadcasting, Sonali Chitre

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Copyright is critical to protecting sports broadcasts, and new technology has evolved to disseminate these broadcasts to the many people that enjoy professional sports. Because of new digital rights in the copyright statute, the NFL has very strong copyright protections that cover Internet, satellite, television, and radio licensing of its broadcasts. A "blackout" blocks certain programs from being broadcast in a particular market. Attempting to incentivize fans to come to football games, the NFL "blacks out" games that are not sold out within seventytwo hours of game time within a seventy-five-mile radius of the stadium. The "blackout rule" has been …

Free Speech Or Trademark Protections: Do Advocacy Groups And Government Agencies Deserve Extra Protection, Max Landaw

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Since October 2009, the American judicial system has been posed with yet another lawsuit in the oft recurring battle between trademark protections and right to freedom of expression, specifically the right to parody. The Yes Men, a parody troop, in a stunt which confused numerous news outlets, held a press conference as "members" of the United States Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber responded by suing the Yes Men for, amongst other causes of action, trademark infringement pursuant to the Lanham Act. This note will first analyze the history of the debate between the conflicting right of free expression and consumer …

Will Twitter Be Following You In The Courtroom: Why Reporters Should Be Allowed To Broadcast During Courtroom Proceedings, Adriana C. Cervantes

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Thanks to micro-blogging and social networking tools, we no longer have to pick up a phone to call our friends and ask them what they are doing. Instead we turn to our laptop, BlackBerry, or iPhone to get instant information available to us through the Internet. Twitter is a key player in the Internet information exchange line-up and has made its way into one of the oldest and most archaic forums: the courtroom. The current law does not properly address whether reporters should be allowed to tweet, but this trend is becoming more prevalent. Twitter needs to be addressed with …

Sovereignty In The Age Of Twitter, Donald L. Doernberg

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

To a degree unimaginable even as recently as twenty-five years ago, people all over the world can communicate with each other easily, cheaply, and frequently, with the concomitant result that people learn more about what is happening elsewhere in the world and even in their own countries. Governments can no longer control information flow nearly to the extent that was once possible, and that has enabled people outside of government to know much more about what government is doing and to know it considerably sooner than might otherwise have been the case. That availability of information is changing the nature …

Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed an Internet nondiscrimination rule: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." Among other requests, the FCC sought comment on whether the proposed nondiscrimination rule would "promote free speech, civic participation, and democratic engagement," and whether it would "impose any burdens on access providers' speech that would be cognizable for purposes of the First Amendment." The purpose of this Article is to suggest that a wide range of responses to these First Amendment questions, offered by telecommunications providers …

In God We Trust: The Judicial Establishment Of American Civil Religion, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 869 (2010), James J. Knicely, John W. Whitehead

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Governance, Technology, And The Search For Modernity In Kenya, Warigia M. Bowman

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

An ICT policy that produces broad access quickly is better than one that does not. Accordingly, success in ICT policymaking can be measured by three empirical measures: speed of passage, scope of implementation, and distribution, as well as one normative measure, process. "Process" represents an important normative dimension of ICT policymaking. Process measures the extent to which the ICT policymaking involves the citizenry, as represented by individuals, civil society groups, local private sector groups, and ideally, urban and rural residents ("wananchi "). Kenya is a case of slow speed of passage, low scope of implementation, low distribution, but high process. …

The Prop 8 Decision And Courtroom Drama In The Youtube Age: Why Camera Use Should Be Permitted In Courtrooms During High Profile Civil Cases, Matthew E. Feinberg

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

(M)Ad Men: Using Persuasion Factors In Media Advertisements To Prevent A Tyranny Of The Majority On Ballot Propositions, Chris Chambers Goodman

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Mobile e-discovery spans the globe and creates a multitude of issues for litigants and the courts. The issue of privacy, jurisdiction, privilege, and consent intersect in the mobile space with users sending text messages, twittering, posting notes and videos on-line, and sharing pictures all in the span of a work day. Of course this is further complicated by the integration of the 24/7 workplace and the electronic discovery issues of retention, preservation, and production of the data that mobile devices create. This article examines these issues and provides an overview of some of the more common underlying mobile telecommunication technologies.

Applying The Rationales Of Patent Claim Construction Doctrines To Interpretation Of Patent Statutes, Grace Pak

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Statutory construction is often determinative in lawsuits. In that vein, which theory of statutory construction a court chooses to employ-whether textualism, intentionalism, or purposivism-is decidedly influential. This note argues that strict adherence to textualism in interpreting patent statutes leads to unsound results, while applying purposivism leads to sound results. To demonstrate, this note walks through the Supreme Court's textual approach in interpreting 35 U.S.C. § 271(0 in Microsoft v. AT&T, and contrasts that with the Federal Circuit's purposivist approach in interpreting the same statute. This note argues that the Federal Circuit's purposivist approach is more appropriate because it more closely …

More Than A Minor Inconvenience: The Case For Heightened Protection For Children Appearing On Reality Television, Katherine Neifeld

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Reality television is a genre that is both innovative in its use of traditional theatrical convention to display true life and paradoxical in its often perplexing definition of what is real. For minor children, however, the effects of participation in reality television production are heightened due to the unique nature of the genre. While protections for traditional child performers exist, the risks the minor participant on reality television faces are unique. The minor on reality television lacks formal recognition as a working child actor by the entertainment industry. Additionally, instead of playing a fictional character, the minor portrays his true …

Regulating Relationships Between Competing Broadcasters, Christopher S. Reed

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

In response to mounting economic challenges in the media industry, some broadcasters have started entering into agreements whereby one station agrees to sell advertising, produce programming, or take over certain other functions of another station in the same market. Though such arrangements, often called local marketing or time brokerage agreements, are not particularly new in the broadcasting field, they have been used with increasing frequency in recent years.

This article examines the form and function of cooperative agreements among broadcasters and explores the reasons why such agreements are attractive business propositions for those who enter into them. It then describes …

Citizens United And The Future Of Fcc Content Regulation, Elizabeth Elices

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This paper examines the potential impact of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission upon content-based Federal Communications Commission regulations. Although Citizens United focused on Federal Election Commission regulations, the case reflects the various First Amendment doctrines favored by the current Court, and its reasoning may extend to other areas of regulated speech.

Part I of the paper will discuss several prominent areas of First Amendment doctrine as well as the roles of the FCC and the FEC. Part II will briefly desccribe the background and outcome of Citizens United. Finally, Part III will analyze several FCC regulations, primarily regarding content …

The New Digital Dating Behavior - Sexting: Teens' Explicit Love Letters: Criminal Justice Or Civil Liability, Terri Day

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This paper proposes a unique response to the explosive combination of teens, sex and technology. It discusses why most teen sexting does not meet the Ferber definition of child pornography; therefore, a civil remedy for the dignitary and emotional harm caused by the public dissemination of private sexual pictures is far superior to imposing criminal sanctions. The proposed statutory civil cause of action would hold parents vicariously liable for the harms caused by their children's sexting when done with actual malice. Recognizing that common law tort liability is legally unsustainable, this approach strikes a balance between protecting First Amendment rights …

Good But Not Great: Improving Access To Public Records Under The D.C. Freedom Of Information Act, 13 D.C. L. Rev. 359 (2010), Margaret B. Kwoka, Melissa Davenport

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Internet Governance And Democratic Legitimacy, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Even as the Internet goes pop, federal policymakers continue to surrender their statutory obligation to regulate communications in the first instance to extralegal nongovernmental organizations comprised of technical experts. The Federal Communications Commission’s conclusion that a major broadband service provider's network management practices were unreasonable is a case in point. There, in the absence of any decisive legislative or even regulatory guidance, the FCC turned principally to the engineering principles on which the Internet Engineering Task Force bases transmission standards: to wit, (1) decentralization, (2) interoperability, and (3) user empowerment. This impulse to defer as a matter of course to …

Plurality Of Political Opinion And The Concentration Of Media In The United States, William B. Fisch

Faculty Publications

This paper reviews regulatory efforts of the U.S. federal govern- ment to promote viewpoint diversity in broadcast media (radio, television, cable, and satellite) in the face of increasing concentration of ownership of such media, and the impact on such efforts of the free- doms of speech and press embodied in the First Amendment to the federal constitution. With respect to this issue, the regulatory work has been done overwhelmingly by the Federal Communications Commis- sion, operating under an act of Congress which has been amended from time to time to push the FCC in particular directions. The anti- trust laws …

Near Impossible To Enforce At Best, Unconstitutional At Worst: The Consequences Of Maryland’S Text Messaging Ban On Drivers, Alan Lazerow

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

A local newspaper reports that your state recently passed a law prohibiting citizens from “writ[ing] or send[ing] a text message while operating a motor vehicle.” Armed with the knowledge of the texting ban, you, being a reasonable citizen, are likely to proceed in one of at least three ways, each of which exposes the statute’s fundamental flaws.

Editor's Note, Jeffrey A. Lawson

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.