Film Screening of Miss Representation

By on November 8, 2012 in Journalism

This coming Monday, November 12, the Center is partnering with the UNC Conference on Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity, Women in Law, Domestic Violence Action Project, Child Action, Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and the Lambda Law Students Association to present a screening of Miss Representation.  The film, written, directed and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  The showing is part of a week-long documentary film festival, showcasing award-winning films about contemporary legal issues that implicate women’s rights.

Check out our events page for more information on the screening.

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Clearing the Haze Over Hazelwood: Student Speech Rights in the Digital Age

By on November 7, 2012 in First Amendment

Tomorrow, with our friends at the Student Press Law Center, First Amendment Law Review and North Carolina Scholastic Media Association, the center will kick off a two-day conference focused on student speech rights and their role in youth civic engagement.  The event, which is entitled “One Generation Under Hazelwood: A 25-Year Retrospective,” will examine the impact of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court’s only ruling addressing the rights of high school journalists.

The team that organized the conference (Tabitha Messick, Whitney Nebolisa, Monica Hill, and Frank LoMonte) have done an amazing job bringing together the leading scholars and thinkers on the subject of student speech rights, including Erwin Chemerinsky, who will be the keynote speaker. You can see the schedule for the two days here.  But don’t fret if you can’t make it in person, UNC’s IT folks will be live streaming the sessions and the Twitter hashtag is #Hazelwood25, if you want to follow along.

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A Marriage Made in Tatooine

By on November 3, 2012 in Copyright

On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain.

–YODA, Dark Rendezvous

Although Hurricane Sandy and the election dominated my social media feeds this week, it was the announcement that LucasFilm FTD had been sold to Disney for $4 billion that seemed to cement the feeling of gloom to the week’s somber headlines.

For Star Wars groupies especially, the news was met with scorn, dismay and a distinctive C-3P0 anxiety attack. While there was some enthusiasm for the announcement, among many aging geeks, there was a sense that George Lucas had sold out his fans and that the whole franchise had run its course.

For those of us who’ve watched the last decade of big media copyright wars, however, the sale presented a certain Jedi-logic.

First, the sale represents an intellectual property marriage between two media giants who have a long track record of suing their fans for infringement – and who never particularly embraced the need for even a modest public relations effort in the wake of filing such claims. (Though Lucas, in recent years, engaged in what Larry Lessig referred to as a form of fandom “sharecropping.”)

The hubris index is not a factor in filing IP claims, but it should be. Neither company has been terribly expert at embracing their fans and understanding the extent to which their entertainment became a shared culture, something people love so deeply they spend their free time building, remixing and dreaming up the next iteration of that culture.

Secondly – and somewhat amusingly — the sale has spurred yet more culture jamming – with dozens of memes passing our screens this week. Most were not exactly the images on which to build the next generation of Star Wars devotees. This, of course, was all protected speech – and 10-year-olds will be oblivious to it — but exactly what kind of a business does a Disney/Star Wars hope to build in the wake of such a reaction?

I think with enough exploitation, derivative works are capable of reaching an endpoint — a Tatooine desert, if you’ll allow the metaphor.

Maybe that’s not the case for the mega-empire that is Star Wars – particularly if they’ve decided the 30+ crowd is no longer their target — but the cynicism this week online has me wondering.

Clearly, Disney is counting on the background noise this week to fade. But its base is the aging geek. And I think we know the difference between a moon and a space station.

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Best New Internet Law Books?

By on October 31, 2012 in Copyright, First Amendment, Internet, Privacy

Each fall I informally survey my media law colleagues and former Ph.D. students in search of great, new books to assign for my Internet law class.  The class is a mix of UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication undergraduates who already have completed a basic media law class and graduate students.  I’m looking for books that are focused on law and policy issues and that are enjoyable to read.  The latter criterion is important because I’m trying to show students how much fun it can be to study law, especially Internet law.

These are the books reported in this fall’s survey that might fit my criteria, although I haven’t yet looked at them closely enough to assess whether they will be enjoyable to read.

  • Hector Postigo, The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright (2012).
  • Robert Levine, Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back (2012).
  • Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, Creative License:  The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling (2011).
  • Rebecca MacKinnon, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom (2012).

This is a book that was suggested that sounds good but probably doesn’t have enough law for my purposes:

  • Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman, Networked:  The New Social Operating System (2012).

These are the books I assigned last year:

  • Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet?  Illusions of a Borderless World (2006). (This is getting dated but provides valuable background on a number of issues.)
  • Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture:  The Nature and Future of Creativity (2004). (When my student read this they begin to get excited about studying law.)
  • Daniel J. Solove, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet (2007).
  • Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (2011).

I also have used these books in the past, with good results:

  • Dawn C. Nunziato, Virtual Freedom:  Net Neutrality and Free Speech in the Internet Age (2009).
  • Lawrence Lessig, Remix:  Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008).

Does anyone have any additional suggestions?  Any comments on these books?  Thanks!

 

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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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