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Libel and the Lab: Scientists and Defamation Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Karen M. Markin
Scientists are increasingly involved in defamation claims. Sometimes they are defendants in disputes over the accuracy of articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In other instances, scientists are plaintiffs, filing suits against those who have attacked them in the popular media, harming their reputations. Both situations represent efforts to quell scientists’ speech, generally because
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A Matter of Public Concern: The Case for Academic Freedom Rights of Public University Faculty Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Michael K. Park
Although the Supreme Court of the United States has described academic freedom as a “special concern,” the Court has never recognized a First Amendment right of academic freedom reserved for the professoriate. Legal disputes involving scholarship and classroom speech have overwhelmingly favored institutions over individual academics. However, the lack of uniformity and inconsistent application of the
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Pandering, Priority or Political Weapon: Presidencies, Political Parties & the Freedom of Information Act Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2021-01-27 A. Jay Wagner
Politics have a profound influence on the design and administration of nearly all government laws and policies. And the executive branch, a highly political institution, is given significant latitude in shaping the primary mechanism for accessing government information, the Freedom of Information Act. This article explores the political nature of the FOIA by examining legislative history, party messaging
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Author Index Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2021-01-27
(2021). Author Index. Communication Law and Policy: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 103-132.
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Subject Index Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2021-01-27
(2021). Subject Index. Communication Law and Policy: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 133-160.
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Lidsky, Larissa. Prying, Spying, and Lying: Intrusive Newsgathering and What the Law Should Do About It, 73 Tul. L. Rev. 173 (1998) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Roy S. Gutterman
If the law of invasion of privacy is the child of the seminal Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis law review article of 1890, 1 then the modern newsgathering and privacy law in Larissa Lidsky’s 1998 a...
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Lessig, Lawrence. The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 501 (1999) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Victoria Smith Ekstrand
Cyberlaw taught us everything, actually. The year was 1999 and undergraduate media law professors across the country were hearing what was initially an astounding claim from their students: Illegally sharing and downloading music online were acts of free expression. For seasoned instructors at the time, the statement was initially a source of amusement. For those of us entering the academy, the claim
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Kalven Jr., Harry. The New York Times Case: A Note on “The Central Meaning of the First Amendment,” 1964 Sup. Ct. Rev. 191 Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Joseph Russomanno
Imagining an America in which officials in the highest positions of federal government support laws that criminalize the speech of their critics is not difficult. Not only were such laws passed in 1798 and 1917-18, assaults on First Amendment culture have extended into the twenty-first century. To punish his critics, for example, then-candidate Donald Trump pledged to “open up” libel laws. The ruling
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Bollinger, L.C. Jr. Freedom of the Press and Public Access: Toward a Theory of Partial Regulation of the Mass Media, 75 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (1976) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Philip M. Napoli
In selecting my article, I pivoted at decision time from an article that was influential in my development as a scholar to one that has recently begun to strike me as particularly relevant to ongoing policy debates about social media platforms, despite falling a bit out of favor over the years. With that brief preface, I’ll begin my revisiting of Lee Bollinger’s 1976 article, and attempt to make the
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Blasi, Vincent. The Checking Value in First Amendment Theory. 3 A.B.A. Found. Res. J. 521 (1977) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Sam Terilli
Professor Vincent Blasi in The Checking Value in First Amendment Theory demonstrated not only his insightful knowledge of the Constitution, history and law, he also revealed his keen understanding of the power of rhetoric: “To become a vital part of the living Constitution, a value must have more than a strong historical and analytical foundation. The value must also succeed at the level of rhetoric;
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Bezanson, Randall P. The Right to Privacy Revisited: Privacy, News, and Social Change, 1890-1990, 80 Cal. L. Rev. 1133 (1992) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Erin K. Coyle
Scholarship often traces American privacy law to Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis’s influential 1890 Harvard Law Review article. The Warren and Brandeis article argues judges ought to protect a person’s thoughts, sensations and emotions against invasions by the press, photographers, distributors of portraits, and publishers of gossip. Warren and Brandeis connected the right of privacy to personal
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Balkin, Jack M. The Future of Free Expression in a Digital Age, 36 Pepp. L. Rev. 707 (2009) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Jonathan Peters
In 2011 and 2012, when I was a Ph.D. student, I conducted an interview series about free expression issues for the Harvard Law & Policy Review. I talked with lawyers and scholars who had made indelible marks on how people thought about the First Amendment’s promise and limits. One of them was Jack M. Balkin, the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. I asked
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Blasi, Vince. The Newsman’s Privilege: An Empirical Study, 70 Mich. L. Rev. 229 (1971) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Gregory C. Lisby, Timothy Barouch
In Branzburg v. Hayes, 1 the Supreme Court of the United States determined that the First Amendment to the Constitution 2 does not protect privileged relationships between journalists and their sou...
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Leval, Pierre N. Toward a Fair Use Standard, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1105 (1990) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Patricia Aufderheide
In 1990, Pierre Leval, who had served as a federal trial judge in New York for twelve years, wrote a twenty-nine-page commentary in the highly influential Harvard Law Review. The essay addressed the interpretation of the copyright doctrine of fair use, or the right to reuse copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances. In it, he argued that in the absence of a clear bright-line
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Emerson, Thomas I. The Affirmative Side of the First 32 Amendment, 15 Georgia L. Rev. 795 (1981) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Andrew T. Kenyon
One of Thomas Emerson’s lasting contributions to understanding free speech is his emphasis on the system of freedom of expression, as his well-known book is titled. Free speech needs broad analysis that pays attention to supports for, as well as limitations of, speech; the freedom encompasses practices, principles and institutions as well as rights; and it is the structures underlying speech that should
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Fowler, Mark S. & Daniel L. Brenner. A Marketplace Approach to Broadcast Regulation, 60 Texas L. Rev. 207 (1982) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Stuart N. Brotman
When Newton N. Minow addressed the National Association of Broadcasters annual conference in May 1961, he introduced a new phrase into our lexicon – “vast wasteland.” This summarized in two vivid w...
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Ely, John Hart. Flag Desecration: A Case Study in the Roles of Categorization and Balancing in First Amendment Analysis, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 1482 (1975) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Genelle I. Belmas
John Hart Ely taught me how to be a legal scholar. I first encountered Ely in the late 1980s as an undergrad assigned his brilliant book on judicial interpretation, Democracy and Distrust. 1 I didn...
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Breyer, Stephen. The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs, 84 Harv. L. Rev. 281 (1970) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Nina Iacono Brown
Copyright law is under constant pressure to evolve. Since the Copyright Act of 1790, which protected only maps, charts and books from unauthorized copying, the law has grown to cover dramatic and audiovisual works, music, choreography, pictures, graphics, sculptures, architecture and more. As emerging technologies have created opportunities for new modes of creative expression and distribution, copyright
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Bork, Robert H. Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L. J. 1 (1971) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Erik Ugland
To the extent that Judge Robert Bork lives on in the American consciousness, it is too often as a caricature. Many on the right lionize Bork as an ideological visionary, a cultural warrior, an archetypical Reagan Republican, the grand poohbah of judicial conservatism, and as the preeminent martyr in the partisan battle for control of the judiciary, which was fully joined in 1987 when Senate Democrats
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The State of Research on Communication and First Amendment Law in Traditional Law Journals: An Evaluative and Instructional Take Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Clay Calvert
Scholarship related to First Amendment, communications and media law has changed dramatically in the last twenty-five years. This article analyzes how the changes have impacted that scholarship. In the process, it focuses on the rise and leadership of female law professors in these fields over the past several decades. The views of more than a half-dozen of these women about the importance of this
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Blanchard, Margaret A. The Institutional Press and Its First Amendment Privileges, 1978 Sup. Ct. Rev. 225 Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Dean Smith
Australian citizen Julian Assange is still locked up in Britain’s most notorious prison at the behest of the United States government with no end in sight. He faces no criminal charges in Britain, Australia or Sweden, but awaits a decision on whether he will be extradited to the United States on charges of espionage. He is held in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day. He cannot contact family
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Communication Law and Policy Research in Non-Law Peer-Reviewed Journals, 2010-2019: Trends and Observations Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Derigan Silver, Dan V. Kozlowski
Started in 1995, Communication Law and Policy is a premier outlet for peer-reviewed research on communication law and policy. But what other outlets are there for research on communication law and policy topics? In particular, which non-law, peer-reviewed journals are publishing articles on communication law and policy? And what topics do these journals cover? The purpose of this essay is to examine
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Emerson, Thomas I. Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment, 72 Yale L. J. 877 (1963) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Karen M. Markin
I have probably referred to Thomas I. Emerson’s “Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment” more often than any other article. Emerson’s theory – which covers the values served by the First Amendment, the problems with maintaining a system of freedom of expression, the role of law and legal institutions in this effort, and the formulation of legal doctrine – remains remarkably apt as a framework
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Dworkin, Ronald. Hard Cases, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 1057 (1975) Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Timothy Brennan
When considering cases involving the First Amendment, the Communications Commission Acts of 1934 or 1996, and Federal Communications Commission orders, one should begin by considering three overarching related questions: When interpreting cases, what do judges do, and what should they do?With respect to the First Amendment, how do or should judges determine the meaning of “speech,” “press,” “assemble
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Crossing the Danube: A Comparative Study of Central European and American Access-to-Information Laws Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-04-02 Benjamin W. Cramer
The Freedom of Information Act in the United States was a relatively rare access-to-information, or ATI, statute when passed in 1966, but it inspired many similar statutes in nations around the world. This article conducts a comparative study focused on Central Europe, with Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic selected as nations that illustrate ATI philosophy and enforcement in that region. These nations
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Mimicking the Sacred: Advertising Parody, Religion and Freedom of Expression in the United States and France Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-04-02 Lyombe Eko
International controversies involving mass-mediated caricatures and parodies of religion provided an opportunity to compare and contrast how courts in the United States and France manage the tensions between advertising parody of religion, defamation, and freedom of expression. This article carried out a comparative analysis of the regulation of advertising parodies of religion under American and French
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Regulating Social Media Platforms: A Comparative Policy Analysis Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-04-02 Alex Rochefort
High-profile scandals related to electoral interference, fake news and misinformation, violations of data privacy, and suppression of political activism by anti-democratic regimes have cast a cloud over the social media industry in recent years. The question is not if, but when and how, reform will be undertaken and with what consequences. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this article is to conduct
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Freedom of Journalism in International Human Rights Law Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-04-02 Edward L. Carter, Rosalie Westenskow
Contemporary attacks of various types have prompted calls for stronger public support and legal protections for journalism. Around the world, journalism faces not only government regulation that affects editorial content but also economic and corporate pressures as well as lack of public understanding of its societal functions. In the United States, courts and even journalism organizations have been
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International and Comparative Law as a Reverse Perspective on Communication Law Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-04-02 Kyu Ho Youm, Amy Kristin Sanders
Freedom of speech and the press have become increasingly international and comparative for communication law scholars and practitioners. For those of us who have witnessed the internet revolution of communication since the mid-1990s, this comes as no surprise. As Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger, a noted First Amendment scholar, observed in 2010: “No longer can we divide the world into
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The Google-DoubleClick Merger: Lessons From the Federal Trade Commission's Limitations on Protecting Privacy Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Jenny Lee
In the wake of Big Tech’s growing power, much attention has been directed to the Federal Trade Commission as the regulatory force for monitoring the technology industry. But scholars are largely divided on the issue of whether privacy exists within the scope of antitrust law. Using the 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick by Google as a case study, this article argues that privacy is an antitrust issue
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The Copyright Claims Board and the Individual Creator: Is Real Reform Possible? Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Kathleen K. Olson
Recent copyright reform efforts include legislation in the Congress that would create a copyright claims board to help individual creators and small businesses enforce their copyrights without the expense and complexity of federal court litigation. This article reviews similar tribunals in other countries and examines the proposed board to determine whether it would be effective, both for small claims
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Crossing Constitutional Boundaries: Searches and Seizures of Electronic Devices at U.S. Borders Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2020-01-02 Scott Memmel
In an era of increased attention to border security and continued technological advances, questions have been raised regarding searches and seizures of electronic devices at U.S. borders, implicating the First and Fourth Amendments. Many of these questions remain unanswered or have been made more complicated by conflicting court rulings, legislation and policies. Meanwhile, journalists continue to
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From Holmes to Zuckerberg: Keeping Marketplace-of-Ideas Theory Viable in the Age of Algorithms Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-10-02 Robert L. Kerr
As the most influential theory in modern First Amendment law turns 100, this study integrates in a unified format centric to marketplace of ideas theory an assessment of developments with the potential to reconstruct broad media marketplaces into an array of cocoons, silos and bubbles of fabricated reality. That assessment provides the basis to argue that the most fundamental threat to marketplace-of-ideas
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Tribalism on Campus: Factions, iGen and the Threat to Free Speech Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-10-02 Joseph Russomanno
The American college campus is potentially the quintessential marketplace of ideas – the ideal locale for the free and open exchange of concepts and viewpoints, discussion and debate, and the discovery and sharing of knowledge. The setting, however, has not always materialized in that idyllic fashion. Speech freedom on campus, while challenged over time, is being tested by unique influences in the
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Federal Public Access Policy: A Breach of the First Amendment Rights of Scientists Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-10-02 Karen M. Markin
Federal public access policy requires recipients of federal research grants to place copies of scientific articles they publish based on the awards in a federal repository. Publishers hold the copyrights to these articles, and not all of them permit authors to comply with the policy. This article argues that public access policy infringes on the First Amendment rights of scientist-authors. The Supreme
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The Meaning of the “Marketplace of Ideas” in First Amendment Law Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-10-02 Rodney A. Smolla
The 1919 First Amendment opinions of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis comprise the seminal texts in the cannon that now includes hundreds of decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States interpreting the core of the American free speech tradition. The marketplace of ideas metaphor they developed has been invoked constantly by Supreme Court justices in First Amendment cases. It has achieved
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Hatching Some Empirical Evidence: Minority Ownership Policy and the FCC’s Incubator Program Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Christopher Terry, Caitlin Ring Carlson
Despite the ongoing legal and regulatory battle over media ownership policy, control of broadcast outlets among racial and ethnic minorities and women has remained at critically low levels. The Federal Communication Commission’s latest proposal, an Incubator program, relies on the idea that new, small entities can be created by incentivizing existing media companies to foster new entrants in exchange
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Social Justice, Recognition Theory and the First Amendment: A New Approach to Hate Speech Restriction Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Chris Demaske
There is no way to overstate the severity of the problems related to social inequality today, and treatment of hate speech in the United States is problematic in light of these escalating tensions. Long-standing arguments that free speech serves as a societal pressure valve and that open speech leads to truth hold little sway when, 200 years later, hatred against groups based on their identities is
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Access to 911 Recordings: Balancing Privacy Interests and the Public’s Right to Know about Deaths Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Erin K. Coyle, Stephanie L. Whitenack
Publicly disclosing 911 recordings sometimes sheds light on important matters of public interest. Nonetheless, some state statutes, court opinions, and attorneys general opinions recognize surviving family members’ privacy rights may be harmed by publicly disclosing such recordings when they involve deaths. States take a variety of approaches to balance privacy interests with interests in disclosing
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Measuring Reed’s Reach: Content Discrimination in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals After Reed v. Town of Gilbert Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-04-03 Dan V. Kozlowski, Derigan Silver
Commentators and justices on the Supreme Court of the United States speculated when the Court delivered its opinion in Reed v. Town of Gilbert in 2015 that the case would dramatically reshape First Amendment law. This article analyzes Reed’s impact to date in the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals. The article demonstrates that, although Reed has been consequential in some circuits, it has not
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Protecting Journalists’ Sources Without a Shield: Four Proposals Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-04-03 Anthony L. Fargo
Journalists’ right to protect the identities of their confidential sources relies on an inconsistent set of court decisions based on constitutional and common law interpretations and state statutes. Efforts to bring some consistency to federal law through the passage of a shield law have stalled while journalists face new threats because of the vulnerability of their communications to discovery and
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Expanding Media Law and Policy Education: Confronting Power, Defining Freedom, Awakening Participation Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-04-03 Erik Ugland
The changes brought about by the Digital Age have not triggered significant increases in political participation or meaningful reductions in longstanding social power asymmetries, which are now increasingly negotiated in policy contexts that involve mass media (surveillance, big data, net neutrality). At the same time, new technology and communication patterns have opened fissures in public opinion
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Potential FCC Actions Against “Fake News”: The News Distortion Policy and the Broadcast Hoax Rule Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-01-02 Joel Timmer
President Donald Trump has threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses for airing what he calls “fake news.” While many dismissed his threat as empty, the FCC does have a news distortion policy and a broadcast hoax rule, either of which might be used to target fake news stories. Both the policy and the rule require elements in addition to the falsity of a story for a violation to have occurred, which
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Public-College Student-Athletes and Game-Time Anthem Protests: Is There a Need for a Constitutional-Analytical Audible? Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-01-02 Carmen Maye
National-anthem-related protests among NFL players have revealed complexities associated with symbolic counter-speech tied to American symbols of patriotism. For public-college officials and coaches, who are bound by the First Amendment, the handling of game-time anthem protests may reverberate beyond the court of public opinion. Because uniformed collegiate student-athletes occupy a constitutional
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Considering Fair Use: DMCA’s Take Down & Repeat Infringers Policies Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2019-01-02 Amanda Reid
Courts have recently clarified some aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor system, yet other aspects remain hazy. In this haze, ISPs are incentivized to over-block content, and copyright holders are allowed to give a narrow, subjective reading of a user’s fair use. Subjectively, copyright holders can, in good faith, hold objectively unreasonable views about fair use. The asymmetry
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What is “Robust” Public Debate? An Analysis of the Supreme Court’s Use of the Word “Robust” in First Amendment Jurisprudence Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-10-02 Brett G. Johnson
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, Justice William Brennan famously wrote of “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” “Uninhibited” refers to the lack of government restrictions on debate, and “wide-open” denotes the range of voices participating in that debate. Meanwhile, “robust” is a qualitative adjective that denotes
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Plaintiff Identification in the “Persona Torts”: What Defamation Law Can Offer the Right of Publicity and Related Claims Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-10-02 Matthew D. Bunker, Emily Erickson
Courts applying the persona torts – right of publicity, appropriation and false endorsement claims under the Lanham Act – often lack a precise methodology for determining whether a plaintiff has been depicted or identified. A number of courts have accepted the ambiguous notion that a defendant need only appropriate a plaintiff’s “identity.” Moreover, these courts apply an essentially impressionistic
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A Secret Police: The Lasting Impact of the 1986 FOIA Amendments Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-10-02 A. Jay Wagner
The 1986 Freedom of Information Act amendments were passed as a last-minute rider to Reagan-era War on Drugs legislation. The three pieces – a broad restructuring of Exemption 7, the law enforcement exemption; the addition of exclusions for law enforcement and intelligence requests; and introduction of a new fee structure – have had a lasting impact on FOIA implementation and contribute to the contemporary
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Half the Spectrum: A Title IX Approach to Broadcast Ownership Regulation Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Caitlin Ring Carlson
In theory, the electromagnetic spectrum belongs to everyone. In practice, stations owned by men hold approximately 90% of the licenses to broadcast on the public spectrum in the United States. In order to address this problem, federal legislation should be adopted that mimics the framework of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 by prohibiting broadcast media companies from discriminating based
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The Future of FOIA: Course Corrections for the Digital Age Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Tyler Prime, Joseph Russomanno
After the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act in 2016, criticism of the law is considerable. FOIA has failed to live up to its initial promise of peeling back the layers that too often shroud the federal government in secrecy, frustrating the news media’s efforts to contribute to an informed electorate. Issues with response rates, unorganized systems and subjective interpretations
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The Process is the Punishment: Criminal Libel and Political Speech in Canada Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Lisa Taylor, David Pritchard
The number of U.S. states with criminal libel laws has been steadily declining since the 1960s, and the offense has been struck down in the United Kingdom and several former British colonies. In Canada, however, criminal libel not only continues to exist, but appears to be enjoying a resurgence, albeit one that has flown beneath the radar of Canadian lawyers, judges, and journalists, who frequently
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Copyright Givers and Takers: Mutuality, Altruism and Instrumentalism in Open Licensing Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Aram Sinnreich, Michelle C. Forelle, Patricia Aufderheide
Over the past three decades, open licensing has evolved from hacker culture thought experiment to a transformative force in applied copyright across a range of industries. Yet very little empirical research exists to understand its disparate uses. This article examines social practices and attitudes about open licensing in order to examine the practical experience of creators and consumers who use
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Restoring Dignity and Harmony to United States-European Union Data Protection Regulation Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-02-20 Holly Kathleen Hall
Global data protection laws can be described, at best, as contradictory in philosophy and practice. The 2015 decision by the Court of Justice for the European Union declaring the mechanism for data transfer between the United States and European Union known as “Safe Harbor” invalid and the criticism of its replacement, Privacy Shield, is representative of the conflict in this area. Such contention
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Silencing Bad Bots: Global, Legal and Political Questions for Mean Machine Communication Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-02-20 Meg Leta Jones
As digital automation expands across social contexts, the way in which legal systems respond when algorithms produce lies and hate presents a pressing policy problem. Search results, autofill suggestions, and intelligent personal assistants generate seemingly objective information for users in order to be helpful, efficient or fun but, as social technologies, can also produce prejudicial and false
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Old Love for New Snoops: How Exemption 3 of the Freedom of Information Act Enables an Irrebuttable Presumption of Surveillance Secrecy Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2018-02-20 Benjamin W. Cramer
Exemption 3 of the Freedom of Information Act states that a federal agency can withhold a document that has already been deemed non-disclosable by a different statute. That exemption is often used by agencies that are involved in traditional national security practices and the controversial modern techniques of pervasive electronic surveillance, as justification for keeping information on those practices
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Corporate Chaos: The Muddled Jurisprudence of Corporate Public Figures Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2017-12-19 Matthew D. Bunker
Public-figure determinations in libel law are enormously consequential legal decisions. The divide between public and private status for a defamation plaintiff can be – and frequently is – determinative of whether that plaintiff can succeed. Lower court rulings on how corporate plaintiffs fit into this status determination are inconsistent. Meanwhile, corporations are taking increasingly active roles
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The Right and the Duty: Jefferson, Sedition and the Birth of the First Amendment's Central Meaning Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2017-12-19 Joseph Russomanno
When the right and duty to criticize government and its officials is under attack in the United States, the democracy is threatened. The idea of holding those in power accountable, and its origin, assume particular importance. While this “central meaning” of the First Amendment culminated with Justice William Brennan's New York Times Co. v. Sullivan opinion in 1964, the process of discovering that
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The Heat is On: Thermal Sensing and Newsgathering – A Look at the Legal Implications of Modern Newsgathering Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2017-12-19 Roy S. Gutterman, Angela M. Rulffes
Thermal imaging technology, which was once used primarily by the military, has made its way into the civilian world. Journalists have begun making use of the technology, and, as that use becomes more prevalent, concerns about legal issues also arise. This article, relying on tort privacy cases, Fourth Amendment case law, and theoretical conceptualizations of privacy, provides an in-depth examination
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“Not to Disclose Information Sources”: Journalistic Privilege Under Article 19 of ICCPR Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2017-10-02 Edward L. Carter
International law took a significant step in recent years toward protection of journalists' sources and newsgathering processes. The international law journalistic privilege previously had been upheld by international tribunals, but it was not until 2011 that the United Nations Human Rights Committee adopted an interpretation of freedom of expression that included journalistic privilege. The presence
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Diluting Free Expression: Statutory First Amendment Proxies in Trademark Dilution Law Communication Law and Policy Pub Date : 2017-10-02 Matthew D. Bunker
Trademark dilution law, a relatively recent innovation in federal trademark doctrine, has serious implications for free expression. Dilution law purports to protect famous trademark owners from blurring and tarnishment, although critics of the doctrine suggest the harms of dilution are frequently overblown, if not imaginary. This article first highlights the differences between standard trademark infringement
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