Archive | First Amendment

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.

b2b1-300x231

Look for additional posts by Natasha next week.

0

Students Presenting at AEJMC Conference in August

By on May 20, 2013 in Copyright, First Amendment, Internet, Journalism

Nearly 25 percent of the media law and policy research papers accepted for presentation at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) were written by UNC students.

Five students had six papers accepted for presentation in the Law and Policy Division at the AEJMC convention to be held in August in Washington, D.C.  All paper submissions were blind-reviewed in competition with both student and faculty-authored papers.

No other university had as many as six papers accepted in the Law and Policy Division.

These are the students and the titles of their papers:

  • Jesse Abdenour (J-School Ph.D. student):  “Documenting Fair Use: Has the Statement of Best Practices Loosened the Fair Use Reins for Documentary Filmmakers?”
  • Kevin Delaney (M.A./J.D. student): “The State of Indecency Law: A Positive and Normative Evaluation of the Fox Cases”
  • Karen McIntyre (J-School Ph.D. student): “Droned Journalism: Using Unmanned Aircraft to Gather News and When Such Use Might Invade Privacy”
  • Hysosun Kim (J-School Ph.D. student):  “New Media?  New Guidelines?  FDA Regulation of Online DTC Prescription Drug Promotion”
  • Elizabeth Woolery (J-School Ph.D. student):  “The Press, the Public, and Capital Punishment: California First Amendment Coalition and the Development of a First Amendment Right to Witness Executions”
  • Elizabeth Woolery (J-School Ph.D. student):  “When (News)gathering Isn’t Enough:  The Right to Gather Information in Public Places”

As the titles reflect, these papers present legal research on some of the most pressing and interesting legal and constitutional issues in today’s complex and evolving media environment.

Congratulations, young legal scholars!

0

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.

0

UNC Students Presenting Research at AEJMC Southeast Colloquium

By on February 28, 2013 in Copyright, First Amendment, Internet, Journalism, Privacy

UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication graduate students will present 13 research papers at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium in Tampa this week. Ph.D. student Liz Woolery, who works in our media law center, will present two papers, one of which won third place in the Law and Policy Division. Both of Liz’s papers are about the rights of journalists and others to gather news.

For this conference, papers go through a process of blind review, and then the best papers are selected to be presented at the conference. Faculty and student authors compete against one another.

This will be the first academic conference for most of the students, but they’re ready. They have polished their papers and rehearsed their presentations.

 

Accepted Law and Policy Division papers include:

“Documenting Fair Use: Has the Statement of Best Practices Loosened the Fair Use Reins for Documentary Filmmakers?” — Jesse Abdenour, first-year doctoral student

“The Advertising Regulation ‘Green Zone’: Analyzing Parallels of Commercial Speech Jurisprudence As It Might Apply to the Growing Issue of Medicinal Marijuana Advertising, Using the Denver Advertising Ban as an

Illustrative Example” — Joseph Cabosky, first-year doctoral student

“Hazelwood’s Footnote Seven” — Ryan N. Comfort, first-year master’s student

“Consumer Protection Challenges on the Social Web: How the FTC Regulates Consumer-Generated Media as Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” — Emily A. Graban, first-year master’s student

“Abortion Informed Consent Laws: How Have Courts Considered First Amendment Challenges?” — Jaya Mathur, first-year master’s student

“How the FTC Has Enforced Its Deception Jurisdiction in Cases Involving an Ill, and Therefore, Vulnerable Audience” — Emery Rogers, first-year master’s student

“A Decade of True Threats Decisions Since Virginia v. Black: The Digital Age Demands Supreme Court Attention to True Threats Definition and Doctrine” — Lynn Marshele Waddell, first-year master’s student

“The Press, the Public, and Capital Punishment: California First Amendment Coalition and the Development of a First Amendment Right to Witness Executions” — Elizabeth Woolery, second-year doctoral student

“When News(Gathering) Isn’t Enough: The Right to Gather Information in Public Places” — Elizabeth Woolery, second-year doctoral student

 

Accepted Newspaper and Online Division papers include:

“Three Days a Week: Has a New Production Cycle Altered The Times-Picayune’s News Coverage?” — David Bockino, first-year doctoral student

 

Accepted Open Division papers include:

“The Creepiness Factor: Explaining Conflicting Audience Attitudes toward Tailored Media Content” — Lisa Barnard, second-year doctoral student

“What Motivates People to Pass on Anti-brand Rumors Online?” — Hyosun Kim, second-year doctoral student

“What Sports Journalists Need to Know: Four Areas of Student-athlete Privacy Invasion” — Sada Reed, first-year doctoral student

0

Next Stop: Transit Advertising and the First Amendment

By on November 14, 2012 in First Amendment

About a month ago I went out of my way to take a photo of an advertisement in one of the Chapel Hill town buses. Normally I glance at these interior ad placards and give them little thought. This time was different. I had been searching for this advertisement for weeks and finally found it. I already knew what the ad looked like. It had appeared in the local news as one of the images symbolizing a free speech debate being waged in Chapel Hill. The ad had prominent pictures of a Palestinian man and child and an Israeli man and child and the words, “Join with us. Build peace with justice and equality. End U.S. military aid to Israel.”

When the Presbyterian Church of Reconciliation placed the advertisements in 98 buses this past summer, opponents of the church’s message quickly organized and voiced their disagreement at several recent town council meetings. There were plenty of supporters of the message who attended these meetings as well. And then there were others, like myself, who observed quietly by the side, curious as to how this charming, quintessentially southern town would resolve this tense and upsetting free speech debate.

Chapel Hill isn’t alone in this experience. There are similar debates happening across the country. Subway ads likening Muslim radicals to savages caused an uproar in New York City, and Washington, D.C.’s Metro system was recently told by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to accept that very same ad. The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals found that Detroit’s regional transit agency did not violate the First Amendment when it refused an advertisement reading, “Fatwa on your head? Leaving Islam? Got questions? Get answers!”

The U.S. Supreme Court addressed the transit ad issue once, in Lehman v. Shaker Heights (1974). The Court found a ban on political candidate ads constitutional because the city had not created a public forum and had “limited access to its transit system advertising space in order to minimize chances of abuse, the appearance of favoritism, and the risk of imposing upon a captive audience.”

In Chapel Hill, debate over the Church of Reconciliation ads reached a fever pitch by mid-October. The town hosted a public forum on the matter and released a statement clarifying its policy on issue, religious, and political advertisements, noting that all such ads were accepted so long as the advertisers included contact information in the ads. Discussion then turned to whether the town should change its policy to prohibit ads like those posted by the Church of Reconciliation. The nearby city of Raleigh has a policy in place that bans political candidate and political issue advertisements on its buses. Should this be the model for Chapel Hill as well?

Then the town held a business meeting to discuss the transit policy. But here’s where things start to fall apart. As it turns out, the town’s policy permitting issue, religious, and political ads isn’t actually the town’s policy. Somewhere along the line there was a mix-up, and the policy the town had been enforcing was not the policy that was approved; it was a draft of the approved policy. In fact, the approved policy did ban “religious” and “political and social issue” ads. In late October the ACLU of North Carolina entered the debate with a letter to town attorney Ralph Karpinos. In its letter the ACLU contended that Chapel Hill’s acceptance of political ads classifies the bus ad placards as a public forum. The ACLU added that the town has operated under a “laissez-faire” advertising policy and therefore barring the Church of Reconciliation’s ads would be “fundamentally unfair.” The letter went on to praise the town’s “long-standing tradition of welcoming dialogue, including on its transit system.”

For the moment, the town’s policy has been suspended and no new advertisements are being accepted. The town council will meet again Dec. 3 to discuss whether to re-affirm the policy it actually had adopted, to amend the policy to be what the town thought its policy was, or to adopt a different policy. In the meantime, the question of whether the town should and will accept issue, religious, and political ads remains.

By no means am I a First Amendment absolutist. But it’s hard to ignore the power of ideas and the impact a single advertisement has had on this college town. Those who are opposed to the advertisement have made a compelling case at these public forums, opening up about their relatives who perished during the Holocaust and the pain caused by the Church of Reconciliation’s ad. No free speech supporter can turn his or her back on such emotional and personal appeals. But a transit advertisement policy that accepts controversial ads also has the potential to do so much good – to inspire robust public discussion about U.S. foreign policy, to remind us that there are large communities of people who continue to struggle with the Holocaust every day, and to encourage tolerance.

When I started in the mass communication Ph.D. program at UNC-Chapel Hill just over a year ago, I knew I was at the best place to study media law. I spend my days knee-deep in the First Amendment, lucky enough to take courses with some of the best media law scholars and join them for workshops and lunches. But events and classes can’t begin to rival the First Amendment in action. This transit advertising debate has captivated me, and it’s captivated this town. This is what the First Amendment is all about. The policy itself is interesting enough, but to go to the town council meetings and see the town turn out to talk about free speech – wow! Many who are engaged in this debate aren’t familiar with strict or intermediate scrutiny, they don’t know Shaker Heights, and forum analysis is of little interest. They just care about exercising their First Amendment rights, and right now they are exercising them like never before.

0