Welcome to the Citizen Media Law Brief, a monthly newsletter highlighting recent blog posts, media law news, legal threat entries, and other new content on the Citizen Media Law Project's website, as well as upcoming events and other announcements. 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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News from the Citizen Media Law Project...
July was a month of changes and new faces at CMLP. We said goodbye to David Ardia, who will be joining the faculty at the University of North Carolina School of Law this fall. David leaves the CMLP in the capable hands of Assistant Director Jeff Hermes, who has taken over management of the project.
We also welcomed Andy Sellars aboard the CMLP, as our new Staff Attorney. Andy is no stranger to the Berkman Center, having spent two summers in the Cyberlaw Clinic, where he worked with CMLP on two amicus briefs. Andy is tasked with the day-to-day operation of our free legal referral service, the Online Media Legal Network (or OMLN), along with assisting in all of the CMLP's other initiatives.
Speaking of the OMLN, we have recently reached a few significant milestones. As we approach the end of our second year offering legal referrals, we are proud to announce that we now have more than 200 member attorneys in our network and have just served our 150th client. And there's one more big number ahead of us...with the cooperation of our participating attorneys, we will soon hit 300 separate pro bono and reduced fee matters assigned through the network! If you want to help us reach this goal and you're an attorney with experience in media law, intellectual property, or business issues for start-up online ventures, please consider applying to join the OMLN.
The CMLP is also gearing up for two big events this fall. First up is a one-day "Law School for Digital Journalists" conducted here at Harvard on September 22nd, held in conjunction with the Online News Association's annual conference, taking place in Boston. Following that, the CMLP will return to Kennesaw State on October 22nd for the Center for Sustainable Journalism's "Media Law in the Digital Age" conference. Registration for these events is open to the public, so please check them out!
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The latest from the Citizen Media Law Project blog...
Brittany Griffin Smith breaks down the FCC's report on our changing media landscape.
The FCC's Crystal Ball: Non-Profit Journalism and the Future
Timothy Lamoureux considers the broader issues underlying the Supreme Court's Brown v. EMA decision regarding the regulation of violent video games.
Now You Are Playing with Art
Eric Robinson looks at the first federal proceeding to be recorded and posted online.
Cameras Roll in New Federal Court Experiment
John Sharkey ponders the need to protect online posters' anonymity in a Section 230 world.
At the Intersection of Anti-SLAPP and Anonymity
Brittany Griffin Smith applauds Vermont's recent open-records overhaul.
Vermont Gives its Open Records Law Teeth
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Recent threats added to the CMLP database...
Carleton Hotel LLC v. Gladstone
Posted July 7, 2011
Giordano v. Romeo
Posted July 12, 2011
Newport Television, LLC v. Free Press
Posted July 14, 2011
S.C. v. TheDirty
Posted July 18, 2011
Sherrod v. Breitbart
Posted July 21, 2011
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Other media law news and commentary...
Defamation Suit Against Blogger Breitbart Survives Motion to Dismiss
M&A Advisory Network - Thur. 7/28/11
Questions for Baratunde Thurston: What The Onion can teach real news organizations about social media
Nieman Journalism Lab - Fri. 7/29/11
Why Hyperlocals Are Making Anonymity Obsolete
Street Fight - Thur. 7/28/11
Which Part of "Make No Law" Don't I Understand?
The Volokh Conspiracy - Tue. 7/26/11
Righthaven Loses Again (Yes, Again), With Another Judge… But Immediately Refiles Lawsuit
TechDirt - Thu. 7/14/11
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The full(er) Brief...
"[The FCC report] envisions a much different media landscape in the future — one filled with individual journalists and non-profit media, which the Citizen Media Law Project have been supporting since its founding. . . . After first examining the current media landscape and then the policy and regulations that surround it, the report concludes that there is a shortage of “local, professional accountability reporting” which will (not surprisingly to any of us journalist folk) lead to corruption. The working group foresees a world where non-profit media, including web sites, state-based C-SPANs, citizens tweeting, and Low Power FM stations, need to play a bigger role in filling the information gap left behind by contracting newspapers and shrinking broadcast resources. . . ."
Brittany Griffin Smith, The FCC's Crystal Ball: Non-Profit Journalism and the Future
"In considering the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Brown v. EMA, many commentators have focused on violence and sexuality as the key points of discussion, but I want to talk about what I saw as the real issue: whether video games are art (and protected speech) or an activity (and subject to regulation). . . . The real issue to consider is whether the level of interactivity changes the analysis. It is interactivity that can lead to people viewing video games as less art than action, enabling one to attack the form as more ripe for censorship than other art forms. . . . But do video games have too great an impact on players, in ways that art normally does not? This largely seems to be the fear expressed by Justices Alito and Breyer. . . . They could be imagining children as incubators for violence, like in the terrible Robin Williams film Toys where children are used to fly unmanned attack drones while believing them merely to be video games. They imagine children being trained and manipulated through repetition. . . . [But] the natural desire to protect children should not obscure the need to teach future Americans the benefits of art in all its forms and the guiding principle of freedom of speech."
Timothy Lamoureux, Now You Are Playing with Art
"Aside from the issues at stake in the hearing [in Gauck v. Karamian] itself -- which are of interest to citizen journalists and bloggers -- the video is the first recording of a federal court proceeding in the federal court's new pilot program of cameras in selected courtrooms. . . . While most states allow camera coverage of at least some court proceedings, the question of cameras in federal courts remains a contentious one. . . [Gauck] already has set a precedent by being the first – and so far, the only – proceeding recorded and posted online in the federal courts' new test of cameras in courtrooms. Only time will tell if this experiment finally leads to federal courts being open to regular camera coverage, or if it will be just another short period of openness before cameras are once again left outside the courtroom doors."
Eric P. Robinson, Cameras Roll in New Federal Court Experiment
"In a SLAPP suit against anonymous writers, revealing the writer's true identity is often the whole point; it doesn't do a lot of good to let now-revealed defendants use an anti-SLAPP statute. The time for a statute to come to the rescue is before the identity is revealed. So with that in mind, the question becomes: who's in the best position to fight a spurious SLAPP subpoena seeking to reveal hidden identity, and how can we get them to fight? . . . I think there's a case to be made that the company receiving the subpoena for identifying information (an ISP, or Google, or whoever) is in a better position to fight back. . . . We need serious online anonymity protection, and to get it we need to make sure we've got big money on defendants' side. The more we get service-providers to pick up the slack in fighting those subpoenas, the better off we'll be."
John Sharkey, At the Intersection of Anti-SLAPP and Anonymity
"[E]ven if the court finds in your favor and orders the agency to comply with your [public records] request, you won't get any money and your attorney is left uncompensated. And it's hard to get an attorney to take a case if you both know you'll leave him or her empty handed when it's over. That's why Vermont gets a gold star for its amendment to its open records law enforcement, in §319 of the Vermont Statutes, that requires that the public agency pay your attorneys fees if you "substantially prevail" in your case. . . . Vermont's effort to keep public offices open earns uber kudos from this blogger."
Brittany Griffin Smith, Vermont Gives its Open Records Law Teeth
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