This spring marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan, its most important pronouncement on the freedom of the press, but the ruling has not won the acceptance of Justice Antonin Scalia.
“It was wrong,” he said Thursday evening at the National Press Club in a joint appearance with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “I think the Framers would have been appalled. … It was revising the Constitution.”
Read more in the LA Times
Showing posts with label Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Law. Show all posts
Friday, May 17
Media Balks at Band-Aid Shield Law
49 states plus the District of Columbia have some form of shield law giving journalists a degree of confidentiality similar to that which prevents priests, attorneys, and therapists from testifying in court. But the law has failed to gain traction at the federal level, partially due to indifference outside the media industry, and partially due to concerns that the law would hinder criminal and national security investigations.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Friday, April 19
YouTube Wins Copyright Battle With Viacom
A federal judge has cleared YouTube of liability for infringing copyright by allegedly hosting tens of thousands of clips of content owned by Viacom. U.S. District Court Judge Louis Stanton ruled that Google's YouTube was protected by the “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which broadly give sites immunity when users upload copyrighted material, as long as the sites remove the content upon request.
The ruling marks the second time that Stanton dismissed Viacom's case, which the company filed in 2007.
A Viacom spokesperson said the company intends to appeal the dismissal.
Read more here
The ruling marks the second time that Stanton dismissed Viacom's case, which the company filed in 2007.
A Viacom spokesperson said the company intends to appeal the dismissal.
Read more here
Thursday, February 21
How a landmark Supreme Court ruling has changed student journalism
“When Hazelwood was first decided back in 1988 there was this long period where everybody in the legal and journalism community proceeded under the assumption that it was a case about children,” said LoMonte. “That was a safe assumption for a while, but it’s proving not to be any longer. The federal courts increasingly are looking to Hazelwood as providing the governing First Amendment legal standard for anyone at all who is a student, no matter how old, no matter how mature, no matter the level of education.”
For example, in 2011, a federal district court cited Hazelwood to support a decision by Auburn University at Montgomery to remove a 51-year-old graduate student from its nursing program. The student argued she had been unlawfully expelled for speaking out about perceived problems with the program’s disciplinary policies.
Read more here
Read more here
Saturday, December 1
Governments and internet firms are wrestling with the rules for free speech online
In June Google revealed that 45 countries had asked it to block content in the last six months of 2011. Some requests were easily rejected. Officials in the Canadian passport office asked it to block a video advocating independence for Quebec, in which a citizen urinated on his passport and flushed it down the toilet.
Most firms do accept that they must follow the laws of countries in which they operate (Nazi content is banned in Germany, for example). Big internet firms can prevent users accessing content their governments consider illegal, while leaving it available to visitors from countries where no prohibition applies. Some pledge to be transparent about their actions—Twitter, like Google, releases six-monthly reports of government requests to block information. It also alerts citizens when it has censored content in their country.
Legislators in America want more firms to follow suit. In March a congressional subcommittee approved the latest revision of the Global Online Freedom Act, first drafted in 2004. This would require technology firms operating in a designated group of restrictive countries to publish annual reports showing how they deal with human-rights issues. It would waive this for firms that sign up to non-governmental associations that provide similar oversight, such as the Global Network Initiative. Founded in 2008 by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and a coalition of human-rights groups, it has since stalled. Facebook joined in May but only as an observer. Twitter is absent, too.
Read more here
Most firms do accept that they must follow the laws of countries in which they operate (Nazi content is banned in Germany, for example). Big internet firms can prevent users accessing content their governments consider illegal, while leaving it available to visitors from countries where no prohibition applies. Some pledge to be transparent about their actions—Twitter, like Google, releases six-monthly reports of government requests to block information. It also alerts citizens when it has censored content in their country.
Legislators in America want more firms to follow suit. In March a congressional subcommittee approved the latest revision of the Global Online Freedom Act, first drafted in 2004. This would require technology firms operating in a designated group of restrictive countries to publish annual reports showing how they deal with human-rights issues. It would waive this for firms that sign up to non-governmental associations that provide similar oversight, such as the Global Network Initiative. Founded in 2008 by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and a coalition of human-rights groups, it has since stalled. Facebook joined in May but only as an observer. Twitter is absent, too.
Read more here
Wednesday, October 10
the Copyright Alert System
The nation’s major internet service providers by year’s end will institute a so-called six-strikes plan, the “Copyright Alert System” initiative backed by the Obama administration and pushed by Hollywood and the major record labels to disrupt and possibly terminate internet access for online copyright scofflaws.
The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” (.pdf) that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement. The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action.
Read more here
The plan, now four years in the making, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon. After four offenses, the historic plan calls for these residential internet providers to initiate so-called “mitigation measures” (.pdf) that might include reducing internet speeds and redirecting a subscriber’s service to an “educational” landing page about infringement. The internet companies may eliminate service altogether for repeat file-sharing offenders, although the plan does not directly call for such drastic action.
Read more here
Saturday, September 8
‘Hope’ Poster Artist Sentenced to Two Years Probation
Shepard Fairey, the Los Angeles designer who created the famous poster of then-Senator Barack Obama next to the word “hope,” using an Associated Press photo as a base, was sentenced in a New York court earlier today as a result of AP’s litigation against him. He will face two years of probation and a $25,000 fine. Mr. Fairey had admitted that he tampered with evidence in his own legal efforts against the AP.
Read more here
Read more here
Sunday, September 2
New copyright rules for the digital age
Canada passed a law in June that sets a new standard of permissiveness. Britain too plans to introduce internet-friendly legislation this autumn. As with Canada’s law, the recommended new code entails exemptions for non-commercial uses and user-generated content. Another innovation is a copyright exemption for companies engaged in text- and data-mining (known as “big data”). Ireland and Australia are considering an exception that allows content legally obtained on one device to be accessed on another, called “format shifting”. Without such a provision, cloud-computing and digital-storage companies could be accused of abetting infringement. The Netherlands, South Korea and India are reviewing their copyright laws too.The tide is not all one way. EU officials want to maintain rules whereby computer users pay a small tithe on digital products to collection societies. These fees are meant to go to content creators but often end up enriching the middlemen instead.
Read more here
Read more here
Thursday, July 26
Send a draft of your story to a source? Some journalists do it — but be mindful of the risks
A Washington Post reporter’s decision to share a draft of a story with his sources is provoking a healthy discussion in newsrooms about when, if ever, it’s wise to circulate unpublished material for comments.While it’s difficult to say “never, ever,” a story should never — ever — be sent to anyone outside the newsroom without careful consideration of the legal and ethical perils.
The main one is this: Once a reporter establishes a certain fact-checking protocol, then any deviation from that fact-checking protocol risks appearing, to a judge and jury, like a lapse in diligence. Lapses in diligence are, under the law of defamation, a bad thing.
Read more here
The main one is this: Once a reporter establishes a certain fact-checking protocol, then any deviation from that fact-checking protocol risks appearing, to a judge and jury, like a lapse in diligence. Lapses in diligence are, under the law of defamation, a bad thing.
Read more here
Tuesday, December 13
If We Are All Journalists, Should We All Be Protected?
There are so-called journalist “shield laws” in about 40 different states, but some have been updated to include newer forms of media such as blogs, and others haven’t.
In a decision by the Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit earlier this year, a judge ruled that a man who recorded a video of police beating a man in Boston was entitled to the same protection as the mainstream press. Judge Kermit Lipez said this protection arguably extended to any “citizen journalist” and not just to members of the traditional media, saying the availability of devices like smartphones “means that … news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper” and that such changes “make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.”
Read more at Business Week
In a decision by the Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit earlier this year, a judge ruled that a man who recorded a video of police beating a man in Boston was entitled to the same protection as the mainstream press. Judge Kermit Lipez said this protection arguably extended to any “citizen journalist” and not just to members of the traditional media, saying the availability of devices like smartphones “means that … news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper” and that such changes “make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.”
Read more at Business Week
Saturday, December 10
The trial of Stephen Glass
The state Supreme Court agreed in November to hear arguments on Stephen Glass’s moral fitness to become a member of the State Bar of California. He gained worldwide notoriety in 1998 after dozens of stories he wrote while working as a Washington journalist in the mid-to-late 1990s were discovered to be fabricated. These pieces described incidents that never took place and attributed quotations to made-up people. The scam ended in May 1998 after reporting and inquires from Forbes Digital Tool editor Adam L. Penenberg tipped the New Republic off about the fishiness of Glass’s piece about “Jukt Micronics,” and all of his journalistic work was scrutinized for lies. Depending on how you read them, the documents reveal a fully reformed Glass, or the same old Stephen, cutting corners and conning people as he did in the old days.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Tuesday, August 30
First Circuit upholds right to record public police action
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that there is a clearly-established First Amendment right to film police officers performing their duties in a public space.
Read more here
Read more here
Monday, January 17
Court: Filmmaker Not a Journalist
Documentary Filmmaker Doesn’t Qualify for a Journalist’s Privilege, a Court Says
A federal appeals court has ruled that Joe Berlinger, a filmmaker who was ordered to hand over footage from his 2009 documentary “Crude” to the Chevron Corporation, cannot invoke a journalist’s privilege in refusing to do so because his work does not constitute an act of independent reporting.
Mr. Berlinger’s film chronicles a lawsuit brought by a group of Ecuadoreans who say that the Lago Agrio oil field — initially run by Texaco, which Chevron now owns — polluted their water supply, and he has been locked in a legal battle against Chevron for months.
In May, the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Berlinger would have to give his raw footage, about 600 hours of it, to Chevron. The company said the material would show an improper collaboration between the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Ecuadorean lawsuit and an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court as a neutral party.
Read more at the New York Times
A federal appeals court has ruled that Joe Berlinger, a filmmaker who was ordered to hand over footage from his 2009 documentary “Crude” to the Chevron Corporation, cannot invoke a journalist’s privilege in refusing to do so because his work does not constitute an act of independent reporting.
Mr. Berlinger’s film chronicles a lawsuit brought by a group of Ecuadoreans who say that the Lago Agrio oil field — initially run by Texaco, which Chevron now owns — polluted their water supply, and he has been locked in a legal battle against Chevron for months.
In May, the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Berlinger would have to give his raw footage, about 600 hours of it, to Chevron. The company said the material would show an improper collaboration between the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Ecuadorean lawsuit and an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court as a neutral party.
Read more at the New York Times
Sunday, December 12
WikiLeaks May Impact Newsgathering
There are already indications that Congress could take steps to sanction the publication of certain classified information, moving beyond the current regime in which the confidential source, if exposed, faces the greatest legal exposure.
These moves have sparked intense debate, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other free speech organizations criticizing the U.S response to the leak as censorship akin to the pressure put by the Chinese government on Google. As these organizations point out, government interference with access to websites containing leaked classified documents may be tantamount to a prior restraint and thus may violate the First Amendment principles articulated in the Pentagon Papers case, which involved a high-profile leak of classified documents concerning the Vietnam War.
Read more at the Newsroom Law Blog
These moves have sparked intense debate, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other free speech organizations criticizing the U.S response to the leak as censorship akin to the pressure put by the Chinese government on Google. As these organizations point out, government interference with access to websites containing leaked classified documents may be tantamount to a prior restraint and thus may violate the First Amendment principles articulated in the Pentagon Papers case, which involved a high-profile leak of classified documents concerning the Vietnam War.
Read more at the Newsroom Law Blog
Saturday, December 4
Viacom Appeals YouTube Ruling
Viacom appealed Friday its unsuccessful $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube in a case testing the depths of copyright-infringement protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. (If the June ruling) survives, is a boon for internet freedom — and a decision that would make it more difficult for rights holders to protect their works. (The judge) ruled that YouTube, which Google purchased in 2006 for $1.8 billion, had no way of knowing whether a video was licensed by the owner, was a “fair use” of the material “or even whether its copyright owner or licensee objects to its posting.” The DMCA’s “safe harbor” privilege comes with another price. The law demands intermediaries such as YouTube to take down content in response to a notice from rights holders, without evaluating the claim for reasonableness or accuracy, or considering the fair use rights of users.
Read more at Wired
Read more at Wired
Sunday, July 11
Owning the News
Facts, ruled America’s Supreme Court in 1918 in the “hot news doctrine”, cannot be copyrighted. But a news agency can retain exclusive use of its product so long as it has a commercial value. Now newspapers, fed up with stories being “scraped” by other websites, want that ruling made into law. Critics say that would extend copyright to facts. It would also be hard to make either regime work in practice.
Read more at The Economist.
Read more at The Economist.
Wednesday, June 16
Iceland’s New Media Laws
The Icelandic parliament has voted unanimously to create what are intended to be the strongest media freedom laws in the world. And Iceland intends these measures to have international impact, by creating a safe haven for publishers worldwide — and their servers. The proposal, known as the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, requires changes to Icelandic law to strengthen journalistic source protection, freedom of speech, and government transparency.
Wikileaks says that it routes all submissions through Sweden, where investigations into the identity of an anonymous source are illegal. Wikileaks was heavily involved in drafting and promoting the Icelandic package, and whatever your opinion of their current controversies, they’ve proven remarkably immune to legal prosecution in their short history. Conceivably, other journalism organizations could gain some measure of legal protection for anonymous sources if all communications were routed through Iceland.
All of which is to say that issues of press censorship have long since passed the point of globalization. When an aggrieved party in country A can sue a publisher in country B through the courts of country C (as in these examples), press freedom must be understood — and fought for — at an international level.
But it will be some time before the full repercussions of Iceland’s move are felt. For a start, the new laws are not yet written. And then it may be further years before we understand, from case law, exactly what an “offshore freedom of expression haven” means to journalists worldwide.
Read more at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
Wikileaks says that it routes all submissions through Sweden, where investigations into the identity of an anonymous source are illegal. Wikileaks was heavily involved in drafting and promoting the Icelandic package, and whatever your opinion of their current controversies, they’ve proven remarkably immune to legal prosecution in their short history. Conceivably, other journalism organizations could gain some measure of legal protection for anonymous sources if all communications were routed through Iceland.
All of which is to say that issues of press censorship have long since passed the point of globalization. When an aggrieved party in country A can sue a publisher in country B through the courts of country C (as in these examples), press freedom must be understood — and fought for — at an international level.
But it will be some time before the full repercussions of Iceland’s move are felt. For a start, the new laws are not yet written. And then it may be further years before we understand, from case law, exactly what an “offshore freedom of expression haven” means to journalists worldwide.
Read more at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
Thursday, June 3
Are Cameras the New Guns?
In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law - aka recording a police encounter - the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2.
Read more here.
A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law - aka recording a police encounter - the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2.
Read more here.
Friday, April 23
Copyright Lawsuits
Righthaven has filed five lawsuits against Web sites that allegedly lifted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal including NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), the association Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, real estate agent and blogger Matt Farnham, gambling site MajorWager.com.
Copyright lawsuits over news items remain rare. What's more, when cases are filed, they tend to be against defendants who compete for readers, as happened when Gatehouse Media sued Boston.com or Dow Jones sued Briefing.com. The Righthaven cases, by contrast, are against companies that are not in the news business.
The cases seemed to have come as a surprise to some of the defendants. Farnham, the realtor who was sued last week for allegedly posting portions of two articles to his blog, says no one ever asked him to remove the material. "I would have taken it down in a heartbeat," he says.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require content owners to send publishers takedown demands before suing unless infringing content is uploaded by third-parties. That holds true even if the infringement is relatively insignificant.
Read more at Media Post.
Copyright lawsuits over news items remain rare. What's more, when cases are filed, they tend to be against defendants who compete for readers, as happened when Gatehouse Media sued Boston.com or Dow Jones sued Briefing.com. The Righthaven cases, by contrast, are against companies that are not in the news business.
The cases seemed to have come as a surprise to some of the defendants. Farnham, the realtor who was sued last week for allegedly posting portions of two articles to his blog, says no one ever asked him to remove the material. "I would have taken it down in a heartbeat," he says.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require content owners to send publishers takedown demands before suing unless infringing content is uploaded by third-parties. That holds true even if the infringement is relatively insignificant.
Read more at Media Post.
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