Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Copyright Law And Pornography, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The government can and should stop providing financial incentives in the form of copyright protection for the production and distribution of pornographic works that cause direct harms, such as child pornography, revenge pornography, crush pornography and filmed sexual abuse. The Article proceeds in five parts. Part I provides an overview of the relationship of copyright law to pornography. Copyright law, viewed in a certain light, plays a structural role in the commoditization of sex and sexual images. In most jurisdictions in the United States, buying and selling sex is illegal, but when sex-for-hire is fixed in a tangible medium of …

Social Media And The Press, Lili Levi

Articles

The Internet and social media are transforming news as we knew it, yet the precise consequences of these changes are not yet clear. Journalists now rely on Twitter, crowdsourcing is available through social media, facts and stories are googled, traditional print newspapers have websites and reporter blogs, "open newsrooms" invite community participation in the editorial process itself, video from citizen journalists is commonly used in mainstream media storytelling, bloggers consider themselves journalists, and media consolidation marries entities like AOL and the Huffington Post. In turn, changes in the news-access practices of readers are increasingly influencing the length, breadth, and subjects …

What If The Big Bad Wolf In All Those Fairy Tales Was Just Misunderstood?: Techniques For Maintaining Narrative Rationality While Altering Stock Stories That Are Harmful To Your Client’S Case, Jennifer Sheppard

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Cognitive researches have established that humans think in terms of stories and, consequently, are persuaded by stories. That means that lawyers must be wary of stock stories that effect how an audience views a given set of circumstances. When a stock story is so pervasive that it will not allow a lawyer to ignore it or a more favorable alternative story does not exist, a lawyer can present the client's story from an alternative perspective that will not evoke the embedded knowledge structures triggered by the unfavorable stock story. The lawyer can accomplish this by tinkering with the different threads …

Drafting A Solution: Impact Of The New Salary System On The First-Year Major League Baseball Amateur Draft, Nicholas A. Deming

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Major League Baseball has evolved over the years. What was once a game played by residents of small towns across the country is now a multibillion dollar industry with international ties and ever-expanding exposure. With this transformation, the needs of the game have changed and its place in the judicial framework is unsettled. Currently, there is a growing discrepancy between small-market and large-market Major League Baseball teams. In part, the first-year amateur draft often fails to steer the most talented players to the worst teams because of financial concerns surrounding signing rookies. Major League Baseball had the opportunity to fix …

Libel Capital No More? Reforming British Defamation Law, Stephen Bates

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

London has long been known as the libel capital of the world. Through substantive law, expansive jurisdiction, and high litigation costs, the British courts strongly favor libel plaintiffs. Aspects of the system have come under increasing criticism from a variety of sources, including academics, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, the British Ministry of Justice, and a committee of the House of Commons. In March 2011, the British government proposed far-reaching reforms. Four months later, however, new revelations emerged about phone-hacking by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. As a consequence, the …

Parody Or Identity Theft: The High-Wire Act Of Digital Doppelgangers In California, Katharine Malone

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Several recent high-profile instances of cyberbullying and online impersonation have prompted state legislatures to take action against this real and growing problem. As part of this trend, California recently enacted Senate Bill 1411, which criminalizes "e-personation." At first glance, this statute looks perfectly reasonable: it is short, filled with good intentions, and merely applies existing harassment, intimidation and fraud laws to the relatively recent medium of the Internet. However, a thorough read reveals vague and overly broad language which could result in chilled political activism and free speech. This note analyzes the statute and attempts to provide some guidance on …

Privacy In Social Media: The Right Of Publicity, S. Michael Kernan

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The increasing ubiquity of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, has led to a growing concern regarding the right of privacy on the internet. The myriad of common law cases on the issue provide website operators (and their advertisers) with little or no clear direction as to what is and is not permitted. At the same time, as websites monetize using an advertising model, that monetization is colliding with privacy rights, specifically, the right of publicity. The right of publicity has been heavily litigated lately, in particular against Facebook as it attempts to monetize its massive user base. This …

Ambush Marketing: Dissecting The Discourse, Brian Lee Pelanda

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This article discusses the problematic discourse in which scholars and corporate complainants such as the International Olympic Committee have discussed the issue of ambush marketing. It argues that those who persistently complain about ambush marketing have wielded the term far too liberally, and thus a great deal of confusion exists between the generally accepted definition of ambush marketing and the reality of the circumstances surrounding the numerous marketing strategies that the term is commonly used to describe. While much of the current literature on the subject concludes that the existing state of the law in the United States is not …

“I Agreed To What?”: A Call For Enforcement Of Clarity In The Presentation Of Privacy Policies, David Thompson

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Though the federal government has enacted statutes regulating privacy policies in limited contexts, there is no generally applicable law governing the nature of privacy policies across all industries. In light of the ever-increasing prevalence of user data collection and the widespread failure of companies under the self-regulatory model to make their policies readable, of reasonable length, and placed in a noticeable location, I argue that such a regulation should be promulgated.

This note will address the difficulties of preserving one's privacy in the digital era, discuss common shortcomings of privacy policies, explore the negative consequences of these shortcomings, then analyze …

Dropped Calls: The Extent Of The Free Speech Guarantee To Wireless Communications Service, Candice Shin

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

From former President Hosni Mubarak's final days as ruler of Egypt to the Bay Area Rapid Transit's response to the protests on August 11, 2011, governmental entities have increasingly responded to civil unrest by restricting or shutting down wireless communication networks to thrwart further coordination among civilian agitators. Whether BART itself faces another occasion in which to consider disabling its wireless infrastructure, future protests and threats to public safety in the United States are inevitable. To that end, Congress has considered bills that would grant the President the ability to essentially shut down the Internet, including the Protecting Cyberspace as …

Home Field Advantage: Determining The Appropriate Turf For Williams V. National Football League And Clarifying Preemption Precedent, Dana A. Gittleman

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Moneyball's Impact On Business And Sports, Jeffrey S. Moorad, Billy Beane, Omar Minaya, Phil Griffin

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

The article presents a transcript of the "'Moneyball's' Impact on Business and Sports" panel discussion which was held as part of the annual Villanova Sports and Entertainment Law Journal Symposium in Villanova, Pennsylvania in February 2012. The panel, which featured former Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell and Oakland Athletics baseball team General Manager Billy Beane, discussed the impact of Michael Lewis' book "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" on the game of baseball.

Legal Writing, The Remix: Plagiarism And Hip Hop Ethics, 63 Mercer L. Rev. 597 (2012), Kim D. Chanbonpin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I focus on hip hop music and culture as an access point to teach first-year law students about the academic and professional pitfalls of plagiarism. Hip hop provides a good model for comparison because most entering students are immersed in a popular culture that is saturated with allusions to hip hop. As a point of reference for incoming law students, hip hop possesses a valuable currency as it represents something real, experienced, and relatable.

Significant parallels exist between the cultures of United States legal writing and hip hop, although attempting direct analogies would be absurd. Chief among …

Copyright's Creative Hierarchy In The Performing Arts, Michael W. Carroll

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Copyright law grants authors certain rights of creative control over their works. This Article argues that these rights of creative control are too strong when applied to the performing arts because they fail to take account of the mutual dependence between writers and performers to fully realize the work in performance. This failure is particularly problematic in cases in which the author of a source work, such as a play or a choreographic work, imposes content-based restrictions on how a third party may render the work in performance. This Article then explores how Congress might craft a statutory license to …

Wisconsin Legislature Employs Halftime Adjustment: How Wisconsin's "New" Indian Mascot Law Changes The Outlook For Future Challenges To The Use Of Discriminatory Nicknames, Mascots, And Logos In Wisconsin Schools, Jeremy Daniel Heacox

Marquette Sports Law Review

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The Wrath Of The Blizz King: How The Ninth Circuit’S Decision In Mdy Industries, Inc. V. Blizzard Entertainment May Slay The Game Genie, Alessandra Garbagnati

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Since its release in 2004, Blizzard Entertainment's ("Blizzard") World of Warcraft ("WoW") has become the world's most infamous and popular massively multiplayer online role playing game. The company's strong anticheating policy culminated in the Ninth Circuit's decision in MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment, where the court held that the rights holders could use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") to prevent circumvention even where there is no actual copyright infringement involved. Although cheaters are not a sympathetic group of people, the Ninth Circuit's decision strays from similar decisions by other circuit courts and potentially grants rights holders like Blizzard the …

Fighting The First Sale Doctrine: Strategies For A Struggling Film Industry, Sage Vanden Heuvel

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, grants the owners of a copy of a copyrighted work the right to sell, rent, or lease that copy without permission from the copyright owner. This doctrine, first endorsed by the Supreme Court in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, was established at a time when the owner of a good necessarily had to forego possession in order to sell or lease the item to another.[...] The changes in technology and industry over the past two decades threaten to upend this balance. In today's digital world, an owner of a copy of …

How The Traditional Property Rights Model Informs The Television Broadcasting Spectrum Rationalization Challenge, J. Armand Musey

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

This paper examines the role zoning rights and eminent domain may play in the Federal Communication Commission's ("FCC") challenge of reallocating underutilized television broadcast spectrum for use in significantly higher value mobile broadband applications. The government must find a way to reallocate the spectrum in an economically and legally efficient manner, balancing the interests of the politically powerful broadcasters and those of society as a whole. From a strictly legal perspective, the broadcasters have a relatively weak claim to property rights. However, the government has indicated it seeks an incentivized voluntary return of spectrum by the broadcasters, suggesting the government …

The Transformative Tribute: How Mash-Up Music Constitutes Fair Use Of Copyrights, Vera Golosker

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

The music industry faces copyright protection issues in light of the transformative digital sampling trend, which has carved out a new genre: mash-up. Without obtaining licensing agreements, creators of mash-up music use parts of copyrighted songs as the ingredients for a fusion of sounds that arguably amounts to more creative value than the sum of its parts. In confronting the legality of mash-up music, courts and legislators must strike a balance between securing original artists' interest and promoting new frontiers of expression. This article presents a background of digital sampling, applies the fair use defense to mash-up music, and proposes …

Online Business Reviews And The Public Figure Doctrine: An Advertising-Based Standard, Jenna Morton

UC Law SF Communications and Entertainment Journal

Online reviews exert a powerful influence of consumers, who rely on the reviews to choose restaurants, barbers, doctors, and many other businesses. Businesses also rely on the reviews as an important form of advertisement. False reviews thus harm both businesses and consumers. Businesses that are harmed by false online reviews can bring a defamation action against the reviewer. However, the current legal standard is unclear as applied to businesses, as it looks to whether an individual is a "public figure." This note weighs the costs and benefits of three possible legal standards for businesses bringing defamation actions: (1) a bright …