Author Archive | David Ardia

A UNC Student’s Summer Experience in Media Law

By on October 31, 2012 in Defamation, Journalism

Tabitha Messick Childs, a 3L at the UNC School of Law (and my former research assistant), spent her summer at the Berkman Center’s Digital Media Law Project.  At my urging, she wrote the following summary of her experience. Our hope is that it will be useful to other students considering summer jobs in media law.

From Tabitha:

My 2L summer at the Digital Media Law Project  (DMLP) at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (based at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA) was simply amazing. I’ve known about the Berkman Center for years, and have frequently used the resources at DMLP (formerly the Citizen Media Law Project). I would have never imagined that I would have the opportunity to work there.

I came to law school with an interest in media law, Internet policy and privacy issues. I am a 2007 graduate of UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.  I chose to enroll at UNC School of Law because of its media law curriculum and because of the Center for Media Law & Policy.

In the spring of my 2L year, I applied to the Berkman Center knowing it was a “dream job,” and I was honored to get an interview and offer. The summer experience exceeded all expectations I had. I was challenged, I met amazing people, and it gave me invaluable legal experience as I pursue a career path involving media law.

The atmosphere at Berkman was incredibly inspiring. There was never a “typical” day, but I liked it that way. Berkman is home to many projects, and with an intern class of 47, every day was a new adventure. It was very collaborative; interns worked in shared workspace, so each day I gained insight from the person sitting beside me and across from me.

There were two other DMLP interns, Natalie and Kristin, who are now my lifelong friends. My supervisors, Jeff and Andy, were incredibly brilliant, always helpful, and I gained practical insight and analyzing skills by working alongside them. I usually learned more by simply listening to their discussions about current issues than being in a classroom! It was great to be surrounded and supported by this group. The DMLP door was always open, and we stayed in constant contact about projects I was working on.

Speaking of projects, I worked hands on with many digital media law and First Amendment issues. Each week, DMLP had a meeting and delegated many different tasks and deadlines to interns. I was always busy and working on many different projects simultaneously! But the work was stimulating, interesting and challenging. For example, I researched, drafted and edited new sections of DMLP’s state-by-state legal guide, including defamation and right of publicity issues.

I was also honored to be able to conduct legal research for the Guide to Reporting at the 2012 RNC & DNC. I researched issues relating to the 4th Amendment and cell phone and camera searches, and the public forum doctrine.

I also assisted in the expansion of the Online Media Legal Network (OMLN). I was delegated with finding lawyers in South Carolina where OMLN still lacked legal representation. I researched and reached out to lawyers in South Carolina, and am happy to report OMLN now has legal representation there.

One of my favorite projects to work on was the legal threats database. There I researched, drafted and edited recent threats to online speech, including recent lawsuits like the “Facebook likes” case. I read through pleadings, briefs and motions and wrote an objective account of the potential threats.

The other interns and I contributed a lot as DMLP staff to the greater DMLP community, but it was the blog posts that felt like my own (and my name was attached!). This process was a fun and important part of the internship. I spent a lot of time thinking about, analyzing and drafting my blog posts. I wrote on defamation by omission, electronic service of process, and trademark issues related to the United States Olympic Committee’s exclusive use of the word “Olympics.”

But it wasn’t all just work!! We went to conferences and court hearings, as well book talks and weekly “intern hours” with the entire intern class. I participated in the broader Berkman community by taking part in a group intern summer-long project on Internet censorship. Working on the group project was fun because it made me understand the underlying dynamic at Berkman and what makes it so special: always working and learning from other people and across diverse projects.  I learned so much and met many colleagues and friends from these experiences.

Leaving Berkman was bittersweet. I still feel a part of a big community, but it was hard to leave such a dynamic atmosphere. I am honored to be a part of the community and will forever be a 2012 “Berktern.”

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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.)

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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?

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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.

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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!

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