Welcome to the Citizen Media Law Brief, a weekly newsletter highlighting recent blog posts, media law news, legal threat entries, and other new content on the Citizen Media Law Project's website. You are receiving this email because you have expressed interest in the CMLP or registered on our site, www.citmedialaw.org. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter, you can unsubscribe by following the link at the bottom of this email or by going to http://www.citmedialaw.org/newsletter/subscriptions.
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The latest from the Citizen Media Law Project...
Court Awards Perez Hilton Nearly $85,000 in Attorneys Fees in Ronsen Suit
CMLP staff provide a legal primer on copyright law.
Primer on Copyright Liability and Fair Use
Sam Bayard discusses whether Slate.com's video poking fun at Hillary Clinton violated the DMCA.
Mashups, DVD Ripping, and Fair Use
David Ardia highlights Fernando Rodrigues' recent visit to the Berkman Center.
Fernando Rodrigues Discusses Access to Public
Information in Brazil
David Ardia comments on a forthcoming paper comparing different approaches to fair use in copyright law.
Comparative Analysis of Copyright Fair Use in Canada, United Kingdom, and United States
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Other citizen media law news...
Latest Test for DMCA Safe Harbors: Warner Sues SeeqPod
EFF Deep Links - Thurs. 1/24/08
Utah reporters now protected by shield rule
FOI FYI - Thurs. 1/24/08
Afghan journalist gets death for insulting Islam
Telegraph.co.uk - Thurs. 1/24/08
Memo to Internet nutjobs: Please, think before you post
Ars Technica - Tues. 1/22/08
Partner Offers $10K Bounty for Blogger's Identity
ABA Journal - Tues. 1/22/08
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Recent threats added to the CMLP database...
Prince v. Princefans.com
Posted January 25th, 2008
Federal Grand Jury v. MySpace
Posted January 25th, 2008
O'Malley v. Karkhanis
Posted January 25th, 2008
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz v. Maura Larkins (letter)
Posted January 21st, 2008
Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz v. Maura Larkins
Posted January 20th, 2008
(If you've been threatened with legal action or know of someone who has, please let us know by entering the information into the database through our easy to use threat entry form or by using our contact form.)
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The full(er) Brief...
"I previously blogged at length about Mario Lavandeira's victory under California's anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 425.16) in the libel lawsuit brought against him by celebrity DJ and Lindsey Lohan pal Samantha Ronsen. Now, my RSS feeds are clogged with reports that the California court has awarded Lavendeira nearly $85,000 in attorneys fees under the anti-SLAPP statute. I guess that's what happens when you mess with a blogger with some resources! Kudos to Bryan Freedman, Lavandeira's attorney, for defending this case so successfully."
Sam Bayard, Court Awards Perez Hilton Nearly $85,000 in Attorneys Fees in Ronsen Suit
"As a lead up to the launch of the Citizen Media Law Project's Legal Guide later this month, we are putting up longer, substantive blog posts on various subjects covered in the guide. The first addressed the subject of immunity and liability for third-party content under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In this post we discuss copyright and fair use in the context of citizen media."
CMLP Staff, Primer on Copyright Liability and Fair Use
"Chris Soghoian at CNET Blogs published an interesting post yesterday -- Did Slate violate copyright law? It talks about a hilarious mashup video that Slate posted a few days ago called Hillary's Inner Tracy Flick, which juxtaposes images from the 1999 film Election and current footage of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. . . . Forget about fair use, [Soghoian] says, because it's clear that whoever made the Slate video must have ripped the movie footage from a DVD. That means that the mashup maker must have circumvented the DRM on the DVD (probably using DeCSS or something like it) and must therefore have violated 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), which prohibits "circumvent[ion] of a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected [by copyright]."
Sam Bayard, Mashups, DVD Ripping, and Fair Use
"Today at the Berkman Center, Fernando Rodrigues, a journalist from Brazil who is currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, spoke about 'Journalism and Public Information in Brazil.' In 2002, Rodrigues launched 'Políticos do Brasil,' a website that contains approximately 25,000 records of Brazilian politicians showing electoral information and personal data – including the list of personal assets of each politician who ran for office in the past three general elections in Brazil. On one day in 2006 the site drew 1,000,000 viewers. The site is free to the public and has been the source for many news stories for media outlets all over Brazil."
David Ardia, Fernando Rodrigues Discusses Access to Public
Information in Brazil
"Giuseppina D'Agostino, a law professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, has a new paper coming out entitled 'Healing Fair Dealing? A Comparative Copyright Analysis of Canadian Fair Dealing to UK Fair Dealing and US Fair Use.' . . . It's nice to see some scholarly attention paid to the differences
between the Canadian, U.K., and U.S. approaches to this important
subject."
David Ardia, Comparative Analysis of Copyright Fair Use in Canada, United Kingdom, and United States
