Author Archive | David Ardia

Welcome to the Center’s New Website

By on October 26, 2012 in Center for Media Law and Policy

I know I’m stating the obvious, but we changed our website.  The old website, which worked well for our first few years, just wasn’t able to keep up with all of the exciting things the center has been doing.  With the help of our fantastic new web guru, John Remensperger, a second-year Master’s student and Roy H. Park Fellow in the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, we’ve been able to add a ton of new functionality to the site.

For example, have you seen the new events page, which lists our events and media law and policy conferences all around the world? Or the new section we created exclusively for students?  We are especially excited about the student pages because we want both current and prospective students to know about all of the great opportunities for studying — and gaining practical experience in — media law and policy at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

The idea behind these changes is to make this site more dynamic and useful.  To make it easy for you to keep track of what we are doing and to get involved.  We also want to make this a place where you can come to find the latest news and information about media law and policy. To make that happen, we’ve started pulling together information and resources about media law and policy from across the Internet.  Check out our new resources page, which includes media law primers and aggregates tweets on media law and intellectual property law.

But we aren’t done yet.  Over the next few weeks we plan to add a job posting page that will list academic and professional job openings available in the areas of media law and media policy (and will be easily searchable).  If you have an employment opportunity you would like us to include in our database, please contact us.  And we are ramping up our blog, with content from UNC faculty, law students, and graduate students.

All of which is to say that the site is still a work in progress, so don’t be alarmed if you come back tomorrow and it looks a little different.  As we add new content and tweak things, we want YOUR INPUT.  Please let us know what you think, either in the comments below or via email.

(Image courtesy of Flickr user Robert Hruzek pursuant to Creative Commons CC BY-NC 2.0 license.)

0

Law School for Digital Journalists: Wrapup

By on September 28, 2012 in Internet, Journalism

Last week, the Center for Media Law and Policy joined with the Online News Association, Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to present a full-day of legal training for ONA members at the Online News Association’s 2012 conference in San Francisco.  The sessions, which we’ve been calling “Law School for Digital Journalists,” covered everything from launching a news business to dealing with defamation risks (a full list of the sessions is here).  Audio recordings, slides, and some video recordings are available here.

While we (Jon Hart, ONA’s general counsel, and I are the primary organizers) try to not to make it too much of a slog for the journalists who come, it’s a lot of ground to cover in a short period of time.  This year the attendance numbers were a bit lower than last year’s sessions at Harvard Law School and we noticed a thinning of the crowd as the day wore on (which meant that some people missed the fantastic plenary panel at the end of the day).  Because we had an amazing faculty for the sessions, including Anthony Falzone, deputy general counsel at Pinterest, Deirdre Sullivan, senior counsel at the New York Times, Karlene Goller, deputy general counsel at the Los Angeles Times, and Stuart Karle, chief operating officer for news at Thompson Reuters, I’m thinking that we simply tried to cover too much in one day.

So, if we do this again next year at ONA13 in Atlanta, what topics should we cover?  What do you think should be part of the essential legal training for digital journalists?

0

Twitter and Free Speech

By on September 3, 2012 in First Amendment

Today’s New York Times has a very flattering (but well deserved) profile of Alexander Macgillivray, Twitter’s “chief lawyer.”  It notes Twitter’s efforts to protect Free Speech and remarks that the company thinks this will give it an edge over its rivals.  That’s one of the reasons I use Twitter — and stay away from Facebook, as much as I can — but this competitive advantage argument only works if companies are transparent about what they are doing (re: subpoenas, etc.) and people actually care enough to make that a factor in choosing an online service. I’m not quite so sanguine that either is the case today.

In any event, the profile is worth a read.

0

Interdisciplinary Lunch: Who Owns Research Data?

By on August 29, 2012 in Copyright, Privacy

Last year, the Center began hosting a bi-monthly gathering of faculty and graduate students from across UNC-CH to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by new communication technologies, including social media, mobile platforms, and the Internet, and the impact they are having on governments, the economy, and cultural and social values throughout the world.

Our first lunch of the fall will address the question, “Who owns research data?”  There are many stakeholders who may have a legitimate interest in determining what happens to data that are collected and generated as part of scholarly research. “Ownership” can be seen as a right to control the data but also as having the responsibility to responsibly care for the data over time. Data ownership issues touch on legal constraints and commitments (e.g. FERPA, intellectual property, human subjects protections, open records laws), requirements of funding agencies (e.g. data management plans), and social norms and behaviors. Perceptions of ownership often do not align well with formal, institutional mandates. And those responsible for creation of data are not always well positioned to provide for long-term access.

The September lunch will be held from noon to 1:15 p.m. on Friday, September 14 in room 208 in Manning Hall. We will provide box lunches and drinks for those who register. All you need to bring is an inquiring mind.

To RSVP for the lunch and to see the list of suggested background readings, please go to our events listing.

And a big thank you to Christopher “Cal” Lee, an associate professor in the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), for taking the lead on this topic and to SILS for hosting the lunch!

0

Call for Papers: The Evolving Role of the Internet in Politics and Political Campaigns

By on July 13, 2012 in Internet

As the incoming treasurer for the Association of American Law Schools’ Section on Mass Communications, I’m excited to announce that we’ll be hosting a joint program with the Internet and Computer Law section at our annual meeting in New Orleans.  Here is the announcement with a call for papers:

The AALS Section on Internet and Computer Law and the Section on Mass Communications are hosting a joint program entitled “The Evolving Role of the Internet in Politics and Political Campaigns” at the AALS Annual Meeting to be held in New Orleans, LA from January 4-7, 2013.  Both sections invite submissions of papers on the program’s topic; one paper will be selected for presentation at the conference.

As the Supreme Court recognized in ACLU v. Reno, “the Internet is ‘a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication.'” Among its unique features is that the Internet democratizes the opportunity to engage in political speech by offering ready access to any speaker with an Internet connection to large potential audiences at the local, state, national or global levels.  This program assesses the impact the Internet has had to date on the relationship between the media and public officials or political candidates.  Traditional newspapers are struggling to find a sustainable business model and appear to be losing some influence over the policy agenda or public officials’ conduct.  Internet-only publications and other forms of political speech on the Internet have a complicated relationship with traditional media organizations, which, of course, also rely on the Internet to interact with their audiences.  To what extent are these changes fostering or inhibiting democracy?  Is law reform necessary in response to these changes?

Abstracts for papers on any topic within this broad scope are welcome and should be submitted to Michael Carroll, mcarroll@wcl.american.edu, and Anuj Desai, acdesai@wisc.edu, by August 15, 2012.

I should also add that UNC’s very own Daniel Kreiss will be on the panel, talking about his new book from Oxford University Press: “Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama.”

0