Author Archive | David Ardia

A UNC Student’s Summer Experience at the FCC

By on September 8, 2013 in FCC

FCC-LogoAs I mentioned back in March, the Center provides summer grants to UNC law and graduate students who have unpaid or low-paying public interest jobs in the field of media law or media policy. (I hope some of you will apply for a grant next year!)  If you have been reading Natasha Duarte’s posts this summer, you have a sense of the amazing experience she had at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Well, Natasha wasn’t the only UNC student who had a great summer experience. Below you will find a summary of Minisha Patel’s internship at the Federal Communications Commission.  Minisha is a 3L at the UNC School of Law.

The summer of my second year of law school, I worked as an intern for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). While at the Commission, I worked in the Wireline Competition Bureau, the Commission’s largest and most important bureau. I worked on the Lifeline program, which is a FCC program created in order to aid low-income individuals by providing them with the opportunity to have discounted phone service. The sole purpose of the Lifeline subsidy is to enable low-income individuals to have the same access to telecommunications as the rest of the population. The Lifeline program’s goal is to connect low-income individuals and aims to enable them to access jobs, health care services, schools, and emergency contacts. The program was created by the Reagan administration but is more popularly known as the Obamaphones.

This summer was a very critical time for the Lifeline program as the telephone carriers and subscribers receiving discounts from the program were defrauding the program. This summer, I worked alongside the FCC attorneys to help create a database and stop the carrier’s that are most liable for frauding the system. In addition, I Engaged in legal research and writing in conjunction with several major rulemakings and adjudicatory proceedings, drafted public notices, small business compliance guides, and comment summaries. I also analyzed specific areas of telecommunications law and administrative law and produced memoranda to assist FCC attorneys. Throughout the course of the internship, I worked directly with attorneys on assigned subject matter and attended meetings on a bi-weekly basis.

This internship helped me gain knowledge about interpreting regulations and taught me about the inner workings of the Federal Communications Commission. The internship further enabled me to understand how the government operates with respect to media and telecommunications law.

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Call for Papers: New York Times v. Sullivan, A Fifty Year Retrospective

By on August 20, 2013 in Defamation, First Amendment

FALROn October 12, 2013, we will be partnering with the First Amendment Law Review to help host their annual symposium, which will be focused on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan.  We’ll post more information about the symposium in the next few weeks, but if you are a scholar who writes in this area, you may be interested in submitting a paper to the First Amendment Law Review (note: the deadline is October 1).  Here is their call for papers:

The First Amendment Law Review is hosting its annual symposium in Chapel Hill, NC, on October 12, where scholars from across the country will participate in a discussion focusing on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. In conjunction with our event, the First Amendment Law Review will also publish a symposium edition featuring articles related to Sullivan’s direct impact on the media, and articles that analyze Sullivan’s effect on a broader scale.

We are seeking articles that will be published in Volume Twelve of the First Amendment Law Review alongside work by some of our symposium panelists, which include Bruce Brown, Vincent Blasi, Ronald Cass, Stuart Benjamin, George Wright, and Ashley Messenger. As the only legal journal in the country dedicated solely to the First Amendment, the First Amendment Law Review is an ideal platform for those looking to contribute to First Amendment scholarship, and we have a tradition of hosting excellent symposia with impressive keynote speakers such as Erwin Chemerinsky and Floyd Abrams. This year, we are pleased to announce that Geoffrey Stone, Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, will give our keynote address.

If you would like to be considered for publication in our symposium edition, please submit an article of at least twenty pages, including footnotes, by October 1 to falr@unc.edu. Those selected for publication will be invited, but not required, to attend our symposium on October 12, and will be recognized at the event.

 

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Greetings from San Francisco: A UNC Student’s Summer Internship at EFF

By on May 29, 2013 in First Amendment, Internet

I’m very excited that one of our students is spending her summer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, funded in part by the Center’s Public Interest Grant Program.  Natasha Duarte has graciously volunteered to blog about her summer experience at EFF. Here is her first missive:

On May 24, I witnessed a small victory in the fight against copyright trolls. I attended a hearing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in the case AF Holdings, LLC v. Trinh. The judge ordered the plaintiff, AF Holdings, to pay the defendant $9,425 for attorneys’ fees.

Copyright trolls are companies that buy the rights to content online and then sue unsuspecting Internet users who allegedly use the copyrighted content without a license. AF Holdings is a “porn troll”—it buys the copyrights to pornographic films and then searches for IP addresses that download the films. It sues Internet users, often in large groups, for massive amounts of damages in order to pressure defendants into settling quickly and to avoid going to court altogether.

AF Holdings was represented by Prenda Law, which has been linked to other similar copyright troll cases and was recently sanctioned by a federal judge for abusing the copyright system.

Like many other copyright troll cases, no decision on the merits was reached because the case was dismissed after AF Holdings decided not to pay the costs of continuing with the case. However, the judge’s order granting the motion to dismiss acknowledged that the there was a “reasonable probability” that AF Holdings would lose because its evidence of infringement was “weak.”

On a more fun note, I experienced Bay to Breakers, an annual race followed by a massive outdoor party in San Francisco’s Panhandle where everyone wears crazy costumes (or nothing at all) in a display of free expression.

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Look for additional posts by Natasha next week.

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Carolina Law CLE Session: Media Law in the Digital Age

By on May 2, 2013 in Defamation, First Amendment, Internet

Next Wednesday, May 8, I’ll be presenting a continuing legal education (CLE) session in Wilmington, NC at the New Hanover County Executive Development Center.  The topic will be “Media Law in the Digital Age: Internet Defamation and other Digital Torts.”  Here is the description from the law school’s website:

With the advent of the Internet, everyone is a publisher today. Whether it is a company blog, Twitter or even Facebook, these publishing platforms can open you and your clients up to a potential lawsuit. Professor David S. Ardia will review the most recent case law on this evolving topic and share best practices for limiting liability and responding to claims involving speech on the Internet. UNC School of Law invites you to join Professor Ardia and other Carolina grads for this “lunch and learn” session as we explore the impact the Internet is having on media law, with a particular emphasis on libel, privacy, and other digital torts.

If you are in the Wilmington area, I hope you will come. It starts at noon and (bonus!) includes lunch. To register, go to the law school’s event page.

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