The James R. Cleary Prize for Student Media Law and Policy Research 2018 Competition

By on March 12, 2019 in Center for Media Law and Policy

I am thrilled to announce that the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will award an annual prize to students who write the best published scholarly articles on media law and policy related topics. The award honors the legacy of James R. Cleary, an attorney who practiced for 56 years in Huntsville, Ala.  He was particularly interested in the communications field and media law issues.  Cleary’s daughter, Johanna Cleary, is a 2004 Ph.D. graduate of the UNC School of Media and Journalism.

The prize competition is open to all college and university students. Up to three winners will be selected, with a first prize of $1,000, a second prize of $500, and a third prize of $250. The prizes will be awarded to the authors of published papers that most creatively and convincingly propose solutions to significant problems in the field of media law and policy, including First Amendment speech and press issues. All methodologies are welcome.

The deadline for submission is April 15, 2019.

Rules

  1. The author of the submitted publication must have been enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate degree-granting program in the United States at the time the article was accepted for publication. This includes, but is not limited to, students enrolled in M.A. and Ph.D. programs, law school (including J.D., L.L.M., and J.S.D. candidates), and other professional schools (including M.B.A. candidates).
  2. The submitted paper must have been published in a law review or peer-reviewed journal during the prior calendar year.
  3. Each student may submit only one entry.
  4. Jointly authored papers are eligible, provided all authors meet the eligibility requirements for the competition. If a winning paper has more than one author, the prize will be split equally among the co-authors. No work with a faculty co-author will be considered.
  5. Each entry must be the original work of the listed author(s). The author(s) must perform all of the key tasks of identifying the topic, researching it, analyzing it, formulating positions and arguments, and writing and revising the paper.
  6. Papers will be evaluated based on a number of factors, including thoroughness of research and analysis, relevance to the competition topic, relevance to current legal and/ or public policy debates, originality of thought, and clarity of expression.
  7. The prize will be monetary. Winners will be required to submit a completed W-9, affidavit of eligibility, tax acknowledgment and liability release for tax purposes as a condition of receiving the cash prize.
  8. In the unlikely event that entries are of insufficient quality to merit an award, the Center for Media Law and Policy reserves the right not to award some or all of the prizes.

Submission Process

  • All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST on April 15, 2019.
  • Entries must be sent via email to medialaw[at]unc.edu with the following in the subject line: “James R. Cleary Prize Submission: [Name of Author]”
  • Papers should be submitted in Portable Document Format (.pdf).
  • Entries MUST include a signed cover sheet that may be downloaded from the Center for Media Law Policy’s website here.

A review committee comprised of faculty and affiliates from the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will review the submissions and determine the winning paper(s). The decisions of the committee are final. Winners will be notified and final results will appear on the Center’s website in late spring. Due to the large number of expected entries, the Center cannot contact all non-winning entrants.

For more information, please visit our Cleary Competition page. Submit your research to win this award!

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Summer Grants for UNC Law and Graduate Students Interested in Media Law and Policy

By on March 12, 2019 in Center for Media Law and Policy

summer-job-pictureAre you interested in pursuing a career in media law or policy?  Are you worried that you won’t be able to take that plum summer job in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, or Washington, because it’s just too expensive to live there.  Well, the Center for Media Law and Policy is here to help.  For the eighth year in a row, the Center will be providing grants to UNC law and graduate students who have a summer job in the field of media law or media policy.

The Center’s summer grants program provides funds to UNC law and graduate students taking unpaid or low-paying jobs in the fields of media law or media policy. In past years, UNC students have received a summer grant to support their work at a wide range of organizations, including the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, National Public Radio, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Future of Privacy Forum, Student Press Law Center, Broadway Video Group, Screen Media Ventures, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, and Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Wait, you don’t have a summer job yet?!  Head over to our media law and policy Jobs Center, where you will find dozens of summer (and post-graduate) employment opportunities. You can easily find the perfect job for you by using our advanced search feature to search by location, keyword, or practice area.  Also, try browsing by job type or category for a more expansive look at the jobs listed. Still not sure what you want to do for the summer?  You can read about the summer experiences of your fellow students on the Center’s blog.

Requirements and Information on How to Apply for a Summer Grant

You must be a UNC law student or graduate student to apply. You will need to download the application form and send it directly to us at medialaw [at] unc.edu along with the other supporting material described below. Please put “Summer Grant Application” in the subject. The deadline for applying for a summer grant is March 29, 2019.

Law students who applied through the law school’s Summer Public Interest Grant Program are also eligible for a Center grant. You do not need to apply to the Center separately. Simply check the box on the general application for “Media Law or Policy” under the heading “Substantive Areas Your Summer Employment Will Involve” and you will be automatically considered for Center funds in addition to the law school grant.

Applications will be evaluated based on (a) your demonstrated commitment to working in the areas of media law or policy and (b) the quality of your essays (each essay should not be more than 500 words).

Required documents include:

  1. Resume (without grade information)
  2. Offer letter from your employer
  3. Essays (no more than 500 words each) *

* Essay questions:

  • Essay #1: Describe your work responsibilities and how they relate to media law or media policy.
  • Essay #2: Describe your commitment to public service. How have your past interests and work experiences contributed to your proposed summer internship responsibilities?
  • Essay #3: How do you see this summer work experience contributing to your long-term career goals?

Be sure to check out these Tips for Writing a Strong Grant Application. You will be notified of a decision in April.

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Immerse Yourself in IP and Media Law at the UNC Festival of Legal Learning

By on February 6, 2019 in Copyright, Defamation, FCC, First Amendment, Internet, Privacy

One of the biggest annual events at the UNC School of Law is the Festival of Legal Learning. This two-day convocation of legal geekery comprises 113 different continuing legal education (CLE) sessions and 152 speakers. For the past few years, the Center for Media Law and Policy has helped with the selection and coordination of sessions that cover Media Law and Intellectual Property subjects.

This year’s festival, which takes place on Feb. 8-9, will mark the 29th year of the program, and I feel confident in saying that we have more Media Law and IP sessions than we’ve ever had in the past. By my count, there are 16 sessions this year that touch on these topics, ranging from cybersecurity to recent developments at the Federal Communications Commission. And the list of speakers is a who’s who of the top media, entertainment, and IP lawyers in the state. You can see a list of these folks and descriptions of their sessions on our festival event page.

Here are just a few of the sessions available at the festival this year:

Friday, Feb. 8

  • 8:00 AM  –  9:00 AM + Hot Topics in Intellectual Property: Lessons Learned and Cases to Watch 
  • 8:00 AM  –  9:00 AM + The GDPR: The Impact of EU Privacy Law on US Organizations
  • 9:10 AM  –  10:10 AM + Navigating a Watershed Privacy Law: California Consumer Privacy Act Forecast for 2019
  • 9:10 AM  –  10:10 AM + Revenge Porn – NC’s New Law and Resources to Assist Survivors
  • 10:20 AM  –  11:20 AM + Federal Privacy Legislation: Do We Need It? If So, What Should It Look Like?
  • 10:20 AM  –  11:20 AM + Municipal Broadband and the First Amendment
  • 11:30 AM  –  12:30 PM + Defining Privacy Harm for Standing in Federal Courts 
  • 2:40 PM  –  3:40 PM + New Era in Music Licensing: The Music Modernization Act
  • 3:50 PM  –  4:50 PM + Cutting-Edge Topics in Cybersecurity Law 
  • 3:50 PM  –  4:50 PM + Entertainment Law Hot Topics and Litigation Round-Up 
  • 5:00 PM  –  6:00 PM + Open Source 101
  • 5:00 PM  –  6:00 PM + What Every Lawyer Should Know About eSports

Saturday, Feb. 9

  • 8:00 AM  –  9:00 AM + Peek into North Carolina Public Records
  • 8:00 AM  –  9:00 AM + When #Metoo Meets Defamation Law
  • 10:20 AM  –  11:20 AM + Recent Developments at the Federal Communications Commission

As an added bonus, if you stick around until the last session on Saturday (11:30 AM  –  12:30 PM) you will get to see Mary-Rose Papandrea and me do a session on “The First Amendment and Social Media: What (If Any) Rules Apply?” We will be taking on some important questions, including: What role does big tech have in regulating our national conversation? What is the impact of digital censorship? And, in all of this, does the First Amendment have any bearing on social media platforms? This session will explore the intersection of free speech values, the First Amendment, and our growing reliance on major social media companies that wield an increasing amount of censorial power.

The Festival will take place at the William & Ida Friday Continuing Education Center at UNC-Chapel Hill from 8:00 a.m.—6:00 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, and 8:00 a.m.—12:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 9. You can find a full list of available sessions in the program guide.

To register for the Festival, please visit their registration page.

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Redeeming Privacy Law, “Bad Incentives” of Social Media Companies, and the Stored Communications Act: Emerging Scholarship in Media Law

By on November 25, 2018 in First Amendment

This blog post is part of a continuing series examining some of the latest academic scholarship in media law and related fields! Stay tuned for future updates.

In “Body Cameras and the Path to Redeeming Privacy Law,” 96 N.C. L. Rev. 695 (2018), Woodrow Hartzog at Northeastern University School of Law argues that the intense debate over the  implications of police body cameras is a golden opportunity to “redeem” privacy law. Hartzog suggests a number of opportunities for lawmakers, scholars, and judges to alter the traditional approaches to the doctrine of privacy, including changing the “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard and creating laws relating to body camera design. From his abstract:

From a privacy perspective, the movement towards police body cameras seems ominous. The prospect of a surveillance device capturing massive amounts of data concerning people’s most vulnerable moments is daunting. These concerns are compounded by the fact that there is little consensus and few hard rules on how and for whom these systems should be built and used. But in many ways, this blank slate is a gift. Law and policy makers are not burdened by the weight of rules and technologies created in a different time for a different purpose. These surveillance and data technologies will be modern. Many of the risks posed by the systems will be novel as well. Our privacy rules must keep up.

In this Article, I argue that police body cameras are an opportunity to chart a path past privacy law’s most vexing missteps and omissions. Specifically, lawmakers should avoid falling back on the “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard. Instead, they should use body cameras to embrace more nuanced theories of privacy, such as trust and obscurity. Trust-based relationships can be used to counter the harshness of the third party doctrine. The value of obscurity reveals the misguided nature of the argument that there is “no privacy in public.”

Law and policy makers can also better protect privacy by creating rules that address how body cameras and data technologies are designed in addition to how they are used. Since body-camera systems implicate every stage of the modern data life cycle from collection to disclosure, they can serve as a useful model across industry and government. But if law and policy makers hope to show how privacy rules can be improved, they must act quickly. The path to privacy law’s redemption will stay clear for only so long.

Social media companies are ultimately for-profit corporations; regulations that may seem commonsense for First Amendment protections can often end up harming these companies’ bottom line.  Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, proposes financial penalties to counteract the “bad incentives” of social media companies in “Fixing Social Media’s Grand Bargain.” Yale Public Law Research Paper 652 (2018). From the abstract:

To regulate social media in the twenty-first century, we should focus on its political economy: the nature of digital capitalism and how we pay for the digital public sphere we have. Our digital public sphere is premised on a grand bargain: free communications services in exchange for pervasive data collection and analysis. This allows companies to sell access to end users to the companies’ advertisers and other businesses.

The political economy of digital capitalism creates perverse incentives for social media companies. It encourages companies to surveil, addict, and manipulate their end users and to strike deals with third parties who will further manipulate them.

Treating social media companies as public forums or public utilities is not the proper cure. It may actually make things worse. Even so, social media companies, whether they like it or not, have public obligations. They play important roles in organizing and curating public discussion and they have moral and professional responsibilities both to their end users and to the general public.

A reinvigorated competition law is one important way of dealing with the problems of social media. But this essay also emphasizes a second approach: new fiduciary obligations that protect end-user privacy and counteract social media companies’ bad incentives.

Mitchol Dunham at the University of Denver Law School suggests the need for an updated Stored Communications Act to accommodate “current and emerging technology” in “Arbitrary and Outdated: Reforming the Stored Communications Act.” 83 Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & eDiscovery Law and Policy eJournal (2018). From the article’s abstract:

In 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States had the opportunity to revisit the Stored Communications Act and decide the question of whether the Act could be applied extraterritorially. Instead of answering the question directly, the Court left the question for Congress to decide. Congress took this opportunity and passed the CLOUD Act, legislation that acts more as a temporary fix instead of addressing the real issue: the Stored Communications Act no longer properly accommodates modern technology. This article begins with a reading of the Stored Communications Act, describing the limits of law enforcement’s ability to obtain a warrant, including the seemingly arbitrary decisions that Congress made with respect to certain kinds of data. The article then analyzes the issue that Congress addressed through the CLOUD Act and how the paradigm shifted for extraterritorial data before turning to a different example of where the Stored Communications Act falls short: distributed storage technology. The article provides a detailed examination of how this technology works and why it does not fit within the CLOUD Act paradigm. Finally, the article concludes that the Stored Communications Act cannot be fixed through patchwork legislation; instead, the entire Act needs to be reformed to accommodate current and emerging technology. The article recognizes that although there are two diametrically opposed approaches that Congress can take, a privacy-first approach is preferable and better supported both historically and when examining society’s utilization of the internet.

Come back soon for another update!

Research graphic by Nick Youngson licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 from Alpha Stock Images.

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More Exciting Opportunities on our Media Law Jobs Board

By on November 19, 2018 in Center for Media Law and Policy

One of the many resources we offer at the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is our Media Law Jobs Board. The Jobs Board is updated regularly with both full-time jobs and internships/fellowships in a variety of media law and related fields, including journalism, intellectual property, and business affairs. The Jobs Board serves as a centralized place to find opportunities from all over the world.

Looking for an in-house counsel position at a major media company? Perhaps you need a summer internship and want to do public interest work relating to free speech? Are you hoping to spend a year on a fellowship at a major university, developing and expanding your research? Our Jobs Board has postings in all of these areas, searchable by location, keyword, or practice area. Here are just a few of the jobs currently listed on the Board.

  • Fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center
    • The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is accepting fellowship applications for the 2019-2020 academic year, providing an opportunity for those who wish to spend 2019-2020 in residence in Cambridge, MA as part of the Center’s vibrant community of research and practice, and who seek to engage in collaborative, cross-disciplinary, and cross-sectoral exploration of some of the Internet’s most important and compelling issues. The fellowship can be in one of several different topic areas, including Education, Libraries, & Digital Humanities; Ethics and Governance of AI; Governance of Technology & the Internet; Internet Health; Justice, Equity, & Inclusion; Media, Democracy, & Public Discourse; Privacy & Security; and Technology & the Law.
  • Summer Internship at NPR’s Office of General Counsel
    • NPR’s Office of General Counsel offers challenging and diverse work assignments for legal interns as it provides legal assistance to all divisions of NPR, handling a wide variety of legal issues including: FCC regulatory and other communications; First Amendment; Internet; various aspects of intellectual property, including music rights, content licensing, copyright, trademark, and patents; nonprofit tax; technology, such as software licensing; employment and labor, including Title VII, labor relations, and other aspects of the employer-employee relationship; and corporate law, as well as contracts in all areas. NPR offers legal internships on a rolling basis throughout the year, with summer applications due in January.
  • Assistant Professorship (Communication Law/Policy) at the University of Oregon
    • The School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon seeks a scholar active in research and teaching in areas such as communication law, communication policy, telecommunication law and policy and the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and press for a tenure-track assistant professor position. The school is accepting applications until the position is filled, so get your application in quickly!
  • Summer 2019 Legal Internship at the Knight First Amendment Institute (Columbia University)
    • The Knight First Amendment Institute is looking for law students to do ground-breaking First Amendment litigation and help in the early stages of building an exciting new free-speech advocacy and research organization. The Institute aim to promote a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self-government. The intern’s primary responsibility would be to support litigation, working alongside the Institute’s attorneys on all aspects of litigation, including the exploration of new lawsuits, the research and analysis of legal questions, the development of litigation strategy, and the drafting of factual and legal memoranda, affidavits, and briefs. 1L applications are due January 18, 2019.
  • Summer 2019 Internship at Viacom
    • Viacom seeks Summer 2019 interns in their Business and Legal Affairs department, handling legal matters across various Viacom networks in areas including Digital Business, Employment Law, Series Development and Production, Music Rights and more. Any student enrolled in law school can apply.
  • Music Counsel at Netflix
    • Netflix seeks a seasoned production music attorney to help support their domestic and international expansion strategy. The successful candidate will handle music contract and copyright related matters as they arise, will likely need to dig into local law and practice in various international territories, and should be extremely comfortable working independently, counseling business partners and making decisions that have both legal and business impacts. Ultimately, the Counsel will be responsible for structuring, negotiating and drafting agreements with the composers, songwriters, artists and performers who create music for Netflix’s Original film, series and documentary content and with the record companies and music publishers who license music.
  • The Frank Stanton Legal Fellowship at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
    • The EFF legal fellow will work side-by-side with staff attorneys for two years on the EFF’s active civil liberties litigation docket with the goal of developing a deep grounding in cutting-edge free speech law, and related issues in communications privacy and technology law. Non-litigation responsibilities may include advocacy, public speaking, blogging, media appearances, and work on legislative and regulatory matters related to surveillance and law enforcement. Applicants should be recent law school graduates or law students who will be graduating no later than Spring 2019, and have an interest in developing an expertise in First Amendment issues implicated by new technologies.
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computer Science at UNC-Chapel Hill
    • UNC Associate Professor Zeynep Tufekci seeks a post-doc research to work in an interdisciplinary environment to study the social, political and cultural impacts of digital technology, especially with regards to conflict, polarization and instability. Strong research, analysis and writing skills are used and required for this position. This position will assist the PI in studying how digital connectivity, artificial intelligence and the technology industry intersect in terms of social, political and cultural dynamics, with emphasis on Global South but also including Western nations and liberal democracies. There will be special emphasis on the role of surveillance, security and encryption in mediating these dynamics. Applicants must have a Ph.D in Computer Science or a related field.

These are just a few of the job opportunities available on the Center’s Jobs Board. Check the Board regularly for the latest postings.

 

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