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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News from the Citizen Media Law Project...
As part of Monday's launch of YouTube's Reporters' Center, which features how-to videos on news reporting, the Citizen Media Law Project created a short video addressing some of the newsgathering and privacy issues people are likely to face as they head out with camera in hand to cover the news. With the help of CMLP/Berkman interns Lee Baker, Courtney French, Andrew Moshirnia, and Andrew Sellars and Berkman Digital Media Producer extraordinaire Dan Jones, we created two short videos (part 2 is forthcoming) addressing the legal issues that impact your ability to document news events through video and still photography, including attending governmental meetings, reporting at crime scenes, filming political rallies or protests, and interviewing others.
See the video and read more here.
And best wishes for a happy (and dry) Fourth of July!
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The latest from the Citizen Media Law Project blog...
Andrew Moshirnia looks at what happens when MySpace and employment worlds collide.
Employee Privacy and Social Networks: The Case for a New Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
Sam Bayard looks at two recent cases testing the limits of reporters' shield laws.
News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters
Lee Baker reports on a possible blow to England's tourist industry, as plaintiffs may soon lose the ability to head across the pond to pursue libel claims.
House Passes "Libel Tourism" Bill
Eric Robinson examines the FTC's proposed guidelines for product endorsements and testimonials by bloggers.
Blog Buzzer Sounds; FTC Calls Foul
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Recent threats added to the CMLP database...
Ricobene v. JP Morgan Chase
Posted July 1, 2009
Consociate Inc. v. Macon County Shared Version
Posted June 30, 2009
Tanner Friedman v. Doe
Posted June 30, 2009
Skutt Catholic High School v. Does
Posted June 30, 2009
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Other citizen media law news...
MySpace, Web servers not liable for assaults: court
Washington Post - Wed. 7/1/09
Fledgling website hopes to open journalism to all
Reuters - Wed. 7/1/09
Should linking be illegal?
Guardian.co.uk - Wed. 7/1/09
Keeping the Fizz in the Journalism Biz
Slate - Tue. 6/30/09
Former U employee files defamation suit against blogger
Minnesota Daily - Tue 6/30/09
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The full(er) Brief...
"'Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.' - Benjamin Franklin. Private thoughts are a dying breed. You may recall the story of the city government of Bozeman, Montana, which mandated that job applicants turn over their social networking passwords. Another 'give me (voluntary) access to your private life or I will hurt you' case has appeared, this time in a Houston's Restaurant in New Jersey. After the management at Houston's learned that two servers, Brian Pietrylo and Doreen Marino, had set up an invite-only MySpace group as a venting forum for their dissatisfied peers, the bosses demanded that a hostess and member of the group, Karen St. Jean, give up the password. She did. They did not like what they read. . . And then management fired Pietrylo and Marino for failure to exhibit 'a positive mental attitude.' . . . . On June 18th, a jury found that the managers had violated federal and state telecommunication laws. . . finding that they improperly pressured St. Jean for her password, accessed the MySpace group, and then acted on that information. . . . The jury found in favor of the defendants on Pietrylo's and Marino's claims for invasion of privacy, finding that the plaintiffs had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the MySpace group. . . .
Andrew Moshirnia, Employee Privacy and Social Networks: The Case for a New Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
"This week brings word of two new cases testing whether state shield laws apply to user comments posted on news websites. In Texas, a Taylor County District Court judge ruled that the Abilene Reporter-News may refrain from disclosing the identities of commenters who posted comments to articles about a murder victim and the teenager charged in connection with his death. According to a follow-up story by the Reporter-News, defense counsel in the criminal case had sought the commenters' identities to make sure they weren't chosen as jurors in the trial, which began last week. Details of the Texas court's decision are sketchy, but reports indicate that the Reporter-News invoked Texas's newly minted shield law, as well as the commenters' First Amendment rights to speak anonymously. The new Texas shield law expressly covers Internet news media and grants protection for both the identity of sources and unpublished materials obtained or prepared while acting as a journalist. . . . In Kentucky, a college student filed a John Doe lawsuit and subpoenaed The Richmond Register, seeking the identity of a commenter going by '12bme,' who posted a comment on a forum linked to an August 12, 2008 story on the newspaper's website. . . ."
Sam Bayard, News Websites in Texas and Kentucky Invoke Shield Laws for Online Commenters
Lee Baker, House Passes "Libel Tourism" Bill
"What do Harry Potter books, The Blair Witch Project, Razor scooters, the Ford Focus and Hebrew National hot dogs have in common? In the late 1990s and 2000s, these brands -- or, more precisely, the marketers behind them -- were at the cutting edge of a new advertising technique: 'buzz marketing.' A decade later, the government's efforts to control such marketing techniques may have impact on blogs and other citizen media. Inspired by Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, the idea behind buzz marketing, as explained by BusinessWeek magazine in July 2001, was to eschew traditional advertisements, replacing them with 'influencers' whose role is to promote a brand to a particular group of people. These 'influencers' can be paid in the traditional sense, or instead they can be offered special perks and benefits, or given free samples for their own use, or to give away to others. They key is that the 'influencers' do not reveal the arrangement, so that their use and interest in a product seems to be a genuine personal preference. The Federal Trade Commission took notice of this trend in 2006, in response to a petition by the advocacy group Commercial Alert. The result was a FTC staff opinion letter questioning the practice. . . ."
Eric Robinson, Blog Buzzer Sounds; FTC Calls Foul
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