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...
We ended our fall conference season a couple of weeks ago with the “Media Law in the Digital Age” event we produced with the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State in Georgia. Over 100 academics, journalists, and attorneys came together and discussed a wide range of media law issues, including the right to record in public, use of social media in the newsroom, and how digital records can change the freedom of information process. You can see a nice clip from the conference here, where Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and David McCraw of the New York Times discuss the trouble Wikileaks is facing due to threats to their funding in the private sphere.
Finally, in December, our Online Media Legal Network will be celebrating its second anniversary. To mark the occasion, we're hosting a Berkman Tuesday Luncheon on December 13th, highlighting our achievements and discussing our plans for future growth. We are always trying to grow the OMLN, so if you are an attorney with experience in media law, intellectual property, or business issues for start-up ventures, please consider applying to join.
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The latest from the Citizen Media Law Project blog...
John Sharkey notes how courts are increasingly confusing medium with message in blog-based defamation cases.
Why Blogs Can't Be Trusted, or: 'Statements Made Here Are Not Likely Provable Assertions of Fact'
Marc Randazza spots an interesting free speech case in New Hampshire, involving Sasquatch.
Bigfoot Spotted Fighting
for Free Speech at the New Hampshire Supreme Court
Victoria Ekstrand ponders whether the AP can do for journalism what iTunes did for music.
Can AP Apply a 99-Cent-Song Business Model to
the News?
Health Reporters Unite! How One Doctor's Complaint Turned a Public Database Private
Arthur Bright examines the balance of free expression and hate speech, as it applies to our neighbors to the north.
Hate Speech v.
Freedom of Expression in a 'Pleasantly Authoritarian Country' (aka Canada)
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Threats recently added to the CMLP database or updated...
Milwaukee Police Dept. v. Kristyna Wentz-
Graff
Posted November 7, 2011
Apple, Inc. v. Odioworks, LLC
Posted November 7, 2011
Obsidian Finance Group v. Cox
Posted November 7, 2011
Antioch University v. The Antioch Papers
Posted November 4, 2011
Justin Bieber v. FreeBieber.org
Posted October 31, 2011
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Other media law news and commentary...
Judge Says Recording Police Stop OK
Law Office of
Martin & Hipple - Thurs. 11/3/11
Milwaukee Photojournalist Arrested Covering Occupy Rally
Photography Is
Not A Crime - Wed. 11/2/11
Austin, Texas Considers Deputizing Smartphone Owners for Parking Enforcement
Legal Blog Watch - Wed. 11/2/11
House Takes Senate's Bad Internet Censorship Bill, Tries Making it Worse
Ars Technica - Thurs. 10/27/11
Google Declines To Remove Police Brutality Videos, Still Complies With 63% of Gov’t Takedown Requests
TechCrunch - Wed. 10/26/11
When Secrets Aren’t Safe With Journalists
The New York Times - Wed. 10/26/11
Louisiana Student Sues After Being Punished for Facebook Status
Student Press Law Center - Wed. 10/26/11
Google News Won't Index Solo Journalists
Poynter - Fri. 10/21/11
Actress Sues Amazon For Publishing Her Age
paidContent.org -
Mon. 10/17/11
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The full(er) Brief...
"The refrain that bloggers can't be trusted to produce accurate, factual information and reporting is a familiar one. Now,
though, courts are beginning to give the cliche some legal bite. While in the short run those cases are wins for the individual
bloggers involved, the bigger picture suggests that we shouldn't be too quick to celebrate. . . . It's possible to argue . . .
that statements on a blog are inherently less "factual," making it harder to sue for defamation. Some online defendants are
starting to find some success with this strategy, and more power to them. I get nervous, though, with any legal standards based
on blogs' second-class status. Other tangible legal interests could be affected by such rulings (I'm thinking in particular of
reporters'-shield laws). And more generally, the "you can't trust these crazy bloggers" sentiment doesn't seem to be in the long
-term interests of online media."
John Sharkey, Why Blogs Can't Be Trusted, or: 'Statements Made Here Are Not Likely Provable Assertions of Fact'
"Back in March, I wrote a snippet about a guy who brought suit against the State of New Hampshire for its burdensome permit
requirements for filming in Monadnock State Park. . . . The facts of the case are nothing short of awesome. [In September 2009]
Jonathan Doyle, a sometimes landscaper, sometimes janitor, and full time free spirit, filmmaker and performance artist decided to
take advantage of the day to engage in an art performance that he called Bigfoot on Mt. Monadnock. That morning the plaintiff
purchased a gorilla costume from IParty and, with his then girlfriend, climbed Mt. Monadnock in Jaffrey, carrying the gorilla
costume in a backpack. At the summit he donned the gorilla costume and started to perform. He beat his chest with his hands and
roared, then retrieved a small handheld video camera from his backpack and walked up to the hikers assembled on the mountain,
while still in costume, and asked if any of them had seen 'Bigfoot' on the mountain, and if they would like to be interviewed
about their sighting. . . . [A few days later] Doyle returned to Mt. Monadnock with five additional people to perform and film a
sequel involving the capture of Bigfoot. Among them were a guy dressed in a Snuggie with his face painted blue to act the part of
'Boda the Blue Yoda,' and a six-year-old dressed as a pirate. . . . [The manager of Monadnock State Park] said that they would
have no performance that day unless they applied for and received a Special Use Permit. A permit requirement is not necessarily a
huge deal, but in this circumstance it requires a $100 fee, a 30-day waiting period, and a $2 million insurance bond."
Marc Randazza, Bigfoot
Spotted Fighting for Free Speech at the New Hampshire Supreme Court
"Is it possible to create a culture for licensing news? This is the question at the heart of a new project begun by The
Associated Press, announced last April by AP CEO Tom Curley. Called The News Licensing Group, the AP, with its membership, has
created a separate company to explore how tagged content can not only be tracked but also monetized. . . . The new venture is
headed by former ABC News Chief David Westin. Its new COO is Srinandan Kasi, formerly vice president and general counsel for The
Associated Press. Last week, Kasi addressed a group of lawyers and journalists at the Ohio State Bar Association in Columbus at
their annual media law conference to explain what NLG is working on and to review the history of the news industry’s business
choices that have led to this moment. . . . Listening to Kasi, I couldn’t help but think that the goal is to change the culture
from scraping to licensing, not unlike the late Steve Jobs did in introducing the 99-cent song to a culture that now largely
accepts that fee for new music. There are remaining questions, of course, about how it will all work and how far the licensing
will extend (and, of course, how aggressive NLG will be about tracking violators). But listening to Kasi, there’s a sense of a
strategy shift away from an outdated news management approach. Aggregators are not the enemy, and indeed, are extremely valuable
to the news industry’s future, in Kasi’s view."
Victoria Ekstrand, Can AP Apply a 99-Cent-Song
Business Model to the News?
"After years of investigating the health care industry, [Kansas City Star reporter Alan] Bavley began to suspect that state
medical boards did not adequately discipline doctors who committed malpractice. Physicians battling substance abuse, for example,
were punished far more harshly. Earlier this year . . . Bavley read a report . . . by Public Citizen that included data on
undisciplined doctors who had multiple malpractice payouts. Many of these doctors worked in Kansas and Missouri, the states
Bavley covered for the Star. The information came from the "Public Use File" of a government database called the National
Practitioner Data Bank ("NPDB"). . . . After learning about this file, Bavley used it to help affirm his hunch and he wrote an
enterprising story about the reluctance of state regulators to discipline doctors with penchants for malpractice. What would
otherwise be a celebrated victory for open records and the journalists who use them has now become a fight against the Obama
Administration for removing that Public Use File. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services . . . , which runs the NPDB,
removed the file on Sept. 1 after a complaint by a neurosurgeon mentioned in Bavley's story who believed the Star reporter
misused the site's confidential information. . . . Despite protest by groups such as the Association of Health Care Journalists,
Investigative Reporters & Editors, and the Society of Professional Journalists, the public database remains off-limits.
Researchers can now only request data, and such requests can be denied."
Justin Silverman, Health Reporters Unite! How One Doctor's Complaint Turned a Public Database Private
"The United States is something of an outlier in the world when it comes to hate speech. Whereas laws prohibiting hate
speech in the U.S. are simply unconstitutional (barring the various unprotected exceptions like obscenity, incitement, etc.), the
majority of Western countries ban hate speech outright. Of course, those same countries also generally protect freedom of
speech. The natural tension between hate speech bans and free speech rights can make for some interesting cases, one of which is
now playing out in Canada. Yesterday, Canada's Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of William Whatcott, an "anti-gay
activist" in Saskatchewan, who in 2005 was found guilty of promoting hate by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal and ordered
to pay the complainants $17,500. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned the ruling in 2010, and the Canadian Supreme Court
agreed to hear the case. . . . It is [the] apparent conflict between hate speech, banned under Section 14(1)(b) of the Human
Rights Code, and freedom of expression, guaranteed under Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that is the
core of the Whatcott case."
Arthur Bright, Hate Speech v. Freedom of Expression in a 'Pleasantly Authoritarian Country' (aka Canada)
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