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Media & Entertainment Law

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

Ratz! Spoiled Bratz!

Posted on July 18, 2008
A jury has ruled in favor of Mattel in the Bratz v. Mattel infringement lawsuit, finding that Carter Bryant, the designer of the Bratz dolls, came up with the idea while working at Mattel. Read more here.

Media Apologize, Pay Damages To Robert Murat Over Allegations in McCann Disappearance

Posted on July 18, 2008
Robert Murat, the "person of interest" identified in the Madeleine McCann disappearance has won a defamation settlement against four different media companies: News International, Mirror Group Newspapers, Express Newspapers and Associated Newspapers. The four are paying out 600,000 pounds in...

Revisiting the Plame Leak and the Reporter's Shield Debate

Posted on July 17, 2008
Joel M. Gora, Brooklyn Law School, has published "The Source of the Problem of Sources: The First Amendment Fails the Fourth Estate," in volume 29 of Cardozo Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract. The effort to investigate and discover...

New Documentary on Roman Polanski May Have Some Effect On His Fate

Posted on July 17, 2008
The new documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which has caused a stir in artistic circles, is now agitating legal circles as well. Mr. Polanski, a noted director, and his attorney, Douglas Dalton, are asking the L. A. District Attorney's...

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The Non-Myth of Increased Subpoenas

Posted on July 16, 2008
Ronell Andersen Jones, Brigham Young University Law School, has published "Avalanche or Undue Alarm? An Empirical Study of Subpoenas Received by the News Media," forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review. Here is the abstract. For more than 30 years, proponents...

Regulating Outside the Virtual Box

Posted on July 16, 2008
Cheryl B. Preston, Brigham Young Law School and Brent Little, Brigham Young University, have published "ICANN Can: Contracts and Porn Sites: Choosing `to Play Internet Ball in American Cyberspace'" at 21 Pacific McGeorge Global Business & Development Law Journal 79...

Fourth Circuit Upholds Dismissal of Hatfill Defamation Lawsuit Against Times, Kristof

Posted on July 16, 2008
The Fourth Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling dismissing a defamation lawsuit brought by Dr. Steven Hatfill against the New York Times and reporter Nicholas Kristof. Mr. Kristof had discussed Dr. Hatfill in the context of the anthrax letters...

SAG, AMPTP Will Meet Tomorrow

Posted on July 15, 2008
The Hollywood Reporter reports that SAG and the AMPTP plan to meet tomorrow, for the first time since last Thursday. Here's a strike timeline from the Hollywood Reporter.

Local British Radio Station Calls It Quits, Says Regs Partly To Blame

Posted on July 15, 2008
A local radio station is going off the air in Cambridgeshire, and says watchdog agency Ofcom is partly to blame, because of its overly restrictive policies. Read more here.

The New Reach of British Libel Law

Posted on July 15, 2008
George Monbiot comments on the expansion of the British libel law in a column for the Guardian here. Says Mr. Monbiot in part, "On the website of Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, you can read a letter...

Mosley Lawsuit Against News of the World Concludes

Posted on July 15, 2008
The Guardian has two articles on the final day of testimony in the Max Mosley invasion of privacy lawsuit against the News of the World, here and here.

Bloggers Vs. New York City Prosecutors

Posted on July 15, 2008
New York City prosecutors wanted the name of an anonymous blogger on a site called "Room 8", which comments on city politics, so they sent a subpoena to the blog owners, who were understandably concerned. They asked for more information,...

Tiffany Loses Infringement Case Against eBay

Posted on July 14, 2008
Tiffany & Company has lost its trademark infringment lawsuit against online auction site eBay. U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan ruled that the venerable jeweler must watch out for fakes on the site itself. The judge accepted eBay's defense that it...

L.A. Times Publisher Resigns

Posted on July 14, 2008
Los Angeles Times publisher David Hiller, a lawyer and veteran of the Reagan era Justice Department, has resigned after nearly two years of a bumpy but interesting ride at the paper. During his tenure, editors Dean Baquet and Jeffrey Johnson...

UAB Blogger Terminated Earlier This Year Is Vindicated But Still Unemployed

Posted on July 14, 2008
Roger Shuler, an editor in the University of Alabama publications office, was terminated from that position earlier this year. He says it's for political reasons, notably because he has championed Democrat Don Siegelman, the former governor. The U said it...

Software Transforms Olympic Runner

Posted on July 14, 2008
The American Family Association's policy of replacing the word "gay" with the word "homosexual" caused a problem on its website when Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic trials last week. The AFA's blog software turned Mr....

Followup on the Twitter Story

Posted on July 14, 2008
I posted a story last April last April about James Buck, the graduate student detained in Egypt for an unknown reason who managed to get word out of his arrest via Twitter. Mr. Buck was worried about the fate of...

Former Chicago Reporter Sues Rival Station

Posted on July 13, 2008
The reporter for a Chicago NBC affliate who ended up losing her job after a rival station aired footage of her in a bathing suit at the home of an interviewee has sued that station. Amy Jacobson, who says she...

New York AG Announces Additional ISPs Will Block Access To Child Porn Newsgroups

Posted on July 11, 2008
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that two more telecoms which provide service as ISPs, AT&T and AOL, have agreed to block access to child pornography via newsgroups. This announcement follows on the agreement with several other service providers...

Screen Actors Guild Leaders Refuse Latest Offer From AMPTP

Posted on July 11, 2008
More on the Screen Actors Guild standoff, from the New York Times. President Alan Rosenberg nixes a union-wide vote on the latest offer from the AMPTP.

News of the World Witness Decides Not To Give Evidence In Lawsuit

Posted on July 11, 2008
A key witness has pulled out of giving evidence in the Max Mosley invasion of privacy lawsuit against News of the World. Read more here.

California Court of Appeal Reverses Lower Court on Blogger Subpoenas

Posted on July 10, 2008
In an unpublished opinion, the California Court of Appeal, 6th Appellate District, has reversed a lower court's order to quash subpoenas in an anonymous blogger case and remanded the case to that court for further consideration. Mordecai Tendler "obtained a...

Washington Appellate Court Rules Criminal Libel Statute Unconstitutional

Posted on July 10, 2008
In Parmalee v. O'Neel, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division II, has ruled a state statute prohibiting criminal libel unconstitutional. Washington Revised Statute (RCW) 9.58.010 prohibits "exposure of any living person or the memory of the dead to hatred, contempt,...

Camelot Ad Canned

Posted on July 09, 2008
The Advertising Standards Authority has quelched an ad for a scratch-off lottery card promoted by Camelot, the folks who run the British National Lottery. The Bingo Association complained to the ASA that the ad unfairly denigrated the image of bingo....

Testimony In Mosley Lawsuit Against News of the World Continues

Posted on July 09, 2008
The News of the World editor, Colin Myler, defended his paper's representation of Max Mosley's sexual pastimes in court yesterday. Mr. Myler told the court that the representation was "fair and reasonable." Another NoW reporter testified that the coverage was...

AFTRA Members Ratify Deal; SAG Stands Alone

Posted on July 09, 2008
AFTRA, the second-largest actors union, has okayed a three year contract with AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, leaving the Screen Actors Guild on its own to negotiate a deal with the studios. SAG had urged its...

Third Time's Not the Charm

Posted on July 09, 2008
"Spiderman, Spiderman, Doin' whatever a spider can!" Well, not really. David Malone is the third person to shimmy up the New York Times Building in the past few weeks, and the third to find New York's finest waiting for him...

"Survivor" Producers in Lawsuit

Posted on July 08, 2008
We'll see who survives this lawsuit: "Survivor" producers Mark Burnett and Conrad Riggs are fighting over who owes whom what. Mr. Riggs claims that Mr. Burnett owes him more than $70 million for his contributions; Mr. Burnett says Mr. Riggs...

Ecuadoran Government Seizes Private TV Station

Posted on July 08, 2008
The AP reports that the Ecuadoran government has taken over privately run TC Television in an effort to recover debts owed by the owners. Read more here.

Free Speech on the Net

Posted on July 08, 2008
The AP's Anick Jesdanun discusses how far free speech rights extend online in this article.

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