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Media Law Prof Blog 

Media law resources, information, and news for the academic community.
Post Frequency: 34.8/day Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 12:48:00 Recent Entries: 2853
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"Hillary: The Lawsuit"
Posted on March 24, 2009NPR's Nina Totenberg covers the hotly contested lawsuit over "Hillary: The Movie" at the Supreme Court today here. Notes Ms. Totenberg, During the 2008 presidential primary campaign, a conservative advocacy group called Citizens United produced Hillary: The Movie, a 90-minute...
Department of Justice Makes Position Known In Sony/Tenenbaum Case
Posted on March 24, 2009Here's a piece from the Wired Campus Blog (Chronicle of Higher Education) on the Sony/Tenenbaum lawsuit, discussing the position taken by the Department of Justice.
Supreme Court Denies Cert In Berkeley Evolution Website Case
Posted on March 24, 2009The Supreme Court has denied cert (2009 U.S. LEXIS 1996) in the University of California, Berkeley evolution website case. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the plaintiff's failure to establish standing. In a published opinion, the district...
Boxing Films and Censorship
Posted on March 23, 2009Barak Y. Orbach, University of Arizona, has published, "Prizefighting and the Birth of Movie Censorship," as Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper 09-08. Here is the abstract. This Article offers an important historical corrective to the history of movie censorship in...
Sixth Circuit Certifies Questions Concerning Electronic Communications To Ohio Supreme Court
Posted on March 23, 2009In American Booksellers Foundation v. Strickland, the Sixth Circuit certified the following questions to the Ohio Supreme Court. We certify the following questions of state law to the Supreme Court of Ohio pursuant to Rule XVIII of the Rules of...
Caught In the Middle
Posted on March 23, 2009Tim Arango reports on the fallout from the dispute between YouTube and rights holders as other parties discover that the popular video sharing site is removing their flicks. Read more here.
More British Reporters May Strike Over Job Layoffs
Posted on March 23, 2009Journalists from the Manchester Evening News may be the next to strike over job cuts. The National Union of Journalists has scheduled a vote later this week. Read more here.
New Jersey State Senator Files Lawsuit Over Sports Betting
Posted on March 23, 2009A New Jersey State Senator has filed a lawsuit to force sports betting in the 46 states that currently cannot offer it, including his own. State Senator Raymond Lesniak says the federal prohibition treats the four states allowed to offer...
Judge Orders British Newspaper Not To Publish Leaked Documents; Docs Already Publicly Available
Posted on March 20, 2009The Guardian reports that a judge has upheld a request from Barclays' bank to prohibit the paper from publishing tax documents relevant to a current Barclays' lawsuit, even though the documents are available elsewhere. The Guardian obtained the documents from...
Lawyer Says Blogger Client Has Died in Iranian Prison
Posted on March 20, 2009Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, an Iranian lawyer, says he believes that his client, blogger Omid Mir Sayafi, has died in prison. Mr. Sayafi was jailed for insulting the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an Internet post. Another inmate, a physician, got the...
First Circuit Allows Defamation Case To Proceed; Massachusetts Law Allows Plaintiff To Try To Show Defendant Acted With "Actual Malice" Even If Statement Is True
Posted on March 19, 2009The First Circuit has reversed itself in the Noonan case, ruling that the plaintiff presented sufficient grounds on which to proceed on a defamation claim. Noonan claims first that Staples committed actionable libel against him through the sending of the...
ASA Tells Universal Studios "Wanted" Television Commercial Unsuitable For Younger Viewers
Posted on March 18, 2009An ad for Angelina Jolie's new film Wanted is unsuitable for children of all ages, according to the Advertising Standards Authority, which has told Universal Studios that it can no longer show the ad when youngsters are likely to be...
BBC Journalists Will Strike In April
Posted on March 18, 2009BBC journalists are planning to strike in April over planned job reductions. A local of the National Union of Journalists okayed the action in a vote today.
Indian Courts and Wikipedia
Posted on March 17, 2009Raghav Sharma, National Law University, Jodhpur, has published "Wikipedian Justice." Here is the abstract. This short article highlights the increasing reliance by Indian courts on Wikipedia. The Supreme Court seems to have accepted Wikipedia as a reliable source of information...
Sheet Music Websites and Copyright Infringement
Posted on March 17, 2009James T. Tsai, George Mason University School of Public Policy and Case Western Reserve University School of Law, has published "The Unlitigated Case: A Study of the Legality of Guitar Tablatures," forthcoming in Boston College Intellectual Property and Technology Forum...
Call For Papers
Posted on March 17, 2009From Nick Federico, Deans Fellow to Professor Anthony Varona, Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law CALL FOR PAPERS & PANELS OUTSIDERS INSIDE: CRITICAL OUTSIDER THEORY AND PRAXIS IN THE POLICYMAKING OF THE NEW AMERICAN REGIME...
America's Next Top Brawl
Posted on March 16, 2009Pandemonium broke out at the auditions for America's Next Top Model Saturday. It's not clear what set off the crowd of folks competing for spots on Tyra Banks's show, but several people were injured and three were arrested. Read more...
Student Blogging In the Courtroom
Posted on March 16, 2009Journalism and law students are blogging in the public interest at the W. R. Grace trial. Read more here.
Hilden On Anonymous Speech In Defamation Cases
Posted on March 16, 2009Julie Hilden discusses a Maryland ruling that sets forth rules for the unmasking of anonymous online posters in defamation cases and calls for Congress to settle the debate.
BBC Uses Botnet For Demo In TV Program
Posted on March 16, 2009An upcoming episode of the BBC's program BBC Click TV will demonstrate how botnets send spam. But the network used its own botnet to show how easy it is to do so, and might have broken British law when it...
From the Guardian: The Guardian Student Media Awards
Posted on March 16, 2009From the Guardian The Guardian Student Media Awards 2009 have now launched! Now in their 31st year, the Guardian Student Media Awards have made 100s of media moguls out of mere mortals including some of the country's most successful journalists,...
Jon Stewart, Jim Cramer Have Verbal Slugfest On "The Daily Show"
Posted on March 13, 2009Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer had it out last night on Mr. Stewart's "The Daily Show" over Mr. Cramer's financial predictions and Mr. Stewart's disapproval thereof. Is it safe for the rest of us to watch tv now?
Buffalo TV Exec Pleads Not Guilty in Death of Wife
Posted on March 13, 2009Muzzammil Hassan, the Bridges TV exec accused of killing his wife days after she filed for divorce, has pled not guilty. Officers found his wife beheaded at the television station after he turned up at a local police station telling...
The First Amendment and Hate Speech
Posted on March 13, 2009Steven J. Heyman, Chicago-Kent College of Law, has published "Hate Speech, Public Discourse, and the First Amendment," forthcoming in Extreme Speech and Democracy (Ivan Hare and James Weinstein eds.; Oxford University Press). Here is the abstract. In recent decades, American...
The Aesthetics of Pornography
Posted on March 13, 2009Fernando Munoz Leon, Yale Law School, has published "Political Pornography." Here is the abstract. Isn't it nonsensical to suggest, as Susan Sontag does, that "the pornographic imagination says something worth listening to?" The relationship between constitutional law and pornography is...
Government Regulation and Student Speech
Posted on March 13, 2009Josh Paul Davis and Joshua D. Rosenberg, University of San Francisco School of Law, have published "The Inherent Structure of Free Speech Law: Government as Patron or Regulator in the Student Speech Cases." Here is the abstract. Free speech law...
Sexual Harrassment Among "Friends" and Other Annoyances
Posted on March 13, 2009Kimberly D. Phillips, Texas Tech University School of Law, has published "My Body is a Sacred 'Garment': Does the First Amendment Protect Clothing Designers Who Work Naked?" Here is the abstract. A Warner Brothers employee, Ms. Lyle, sued the writers...
The End of Libel Tourist Holidays?
Posted on March 13, 2009Sarah Staveley-O'Carroll has published "Libel Tourism Laws: Spoiling the Holiday and Saving the First Amendment," in volume 4 of the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty (2009). Here is the abstract. On April 28, 2008, New York Governor David Paterson...
Military Judge Rules That Qualified Privileges Applies; CBS Does Not Have To Turn Over Outtakes In Haditha Trial
Posted on March 13, 2009A judge has refused to order CBS News to turn over unaired video of an interview with Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, a Marine charged in conjunction with the 2005 deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha. The government had sought...
Cell Phone Service Contract Fun
Posted on March 13, 2009An interesting post from Bob Sullivan of the Red Tape Chronicles regarding his attempt to cancel cellphone service with Sprint, and his subsequent communications with Sprint and the FCC when he discovered that his final month's service was not pro-rated.
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If a person defames me and threatens me to pay a bill that they made and it is posted to others besides myself, can I sue ?
The documentation of your actions in this case pretty much preclude any legal ac...
Is it libel to write blog posts and/or online reviews about a local business that defames one's reputation?
Libel is the form of defamation expressed in fixed-- usually written form. Sland...
Is it illegal to resell dvds/cds?
Nope, it is not illegal, assuming you are in the U.S.; there is a "first sa...
How can I make my blog more popular?
You have to write and submit articles, with backlinks to your blogsite....

If a person defames me and threatens me to pay a bill that they made and it is posted to others besides myself, can I sue ?
The documentation of your actions in this case pretty much preclude any legal ac...
Is it libel to write blog posts and/or online reviews about a local business that defames one's reputation?
Libel is the form of defamation expressed in fixed-- usually written form. Sland...
Is it illegal to resell dvds/cds?
Nope, it is not illegal, assuming you are in the U.S.; there is a "first sa...
How can I make my blog more popular?
You have to write and submit articles, with backlinks to your blogsite....








