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We provide you with essential tools to advance First Amendment and media rights, and a supportive community in which to discuss emerging legal issues and the future of communication.
Not a member yet?
We provide you with essential tools to advance First Amendment and media rights, and a supportive community in which to discuss emerging legal issues and the future of communication.
By Luther Munford and Kimberly Davis The more a media law specialist knows, the more likely it is that what is known to the lawyer may not be known to opposing counsel or to the court. This was certainly true before the MLRC sold its 50-State Surveys to the public, and to some extent remains…
By Jean-Frederic Gaultier and Clara Steinitz On January 24, 2013, the President of the High Court of Paris ordered the US social networking platform Twitter to disclose the identity of some of its users who had published anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic posts (“tweets”). Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, interim order, matters nr. 13/50262 and…
John Wilkes Make Way for Hugh Grant And Max Mosley By David Hooper These are early days in the struggle to regulate the press in the United Kingdom and it is too early to predict the precise form such regulation will take. However, the hard-won freedoms achieved by the likes of John Wilkes in the…
By Brian MacLeod Rogers In Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, 2013 SCC 11, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously upheld a provincial human rights code provision prohibiting “hate speech” against a protected group. The case arose from flyers against homosexuals – one was headed “Keep Homosexuality Out Of Saskatoon’s Public Schools!” – distributed by…
By Marc Fuller A federal district court in San Francisco recently struck down “gag-order” provisions of a controversial investigative tool commonly used by the FBI to obtain information about users of email and social networking services. On March 14, 2013, Judge Susan Illston of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California…
By Christine N. Walz, Charles D. Tobin and David M. Giles In a significant victory for advocates of government transparency, the FBI has agreed to release records documenting the work of photographer Ernest Withers as an informant in Memphis during the civil rights era. The settlement, believed to be the first of its kind involving…
Sites Link to Case Filings and Rulings By Steve Mandell, Steve Baron, and Elizabeth Morris The Seventh Circuit recently affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a plaintiff’s suit which sought to “delink” public records about his employment litigation. The Court found that the First Amendment barred such claims because defendants were republishing facts contained in…
By Chip Babcock Three defendants were awarded nearly $200,000 in attorney’s fees after they prevailed on their motions to dismiss under the Texas Citizens Participation Act commonly referred to as the Anti-SLAPP statute. Cruz v. Burnt Orange Report, et al., No. 12-09275 (Tex. Dist. March 22, 2013). Judge Jim Jordan of Dallas’ 160 District Court…
The Seventh Circuit this month affirmed dismissal of a misappropriation claim against Google by a plaintiff who complained that Google’s suggested search result for her name linked her to the drug Levitra, and sponsored links triggered by her name show advertisements for erectile dysfunction drugs. Stayart v. Google, No. 11-3012 (7th Cir. March 6, 2013)…
By Michael Berry On March 8, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a decision affirming a trial court’s directed verdict in favor of a Virgin Islands newspaper in a libel suit brought by a former judge. See Kendall v. Daily News Publ’g Co., 2013 WL 856433 (3d Cir. March…
Following last year’s success in Iowa and Utah, ten state legislatures have introduced “ag-gag” legislation this term. Though the details of the bills vary, the underlying purpose is the same: prevent photography or recording that exposes operations at farms or agricultural facilities. The bills criminalize taking photos or videos, or lying on employment applications for…
By John Siegal and Peter Shapiro On February 19, Magistrate Judge Ronald L. Ellis in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York quashed a subpoena seeking outtakes from the documentary film The Central Park Five served by the City of New York on the filmmakers Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and…
Substantial Similarity Did Not Exist as a Matter of Law By Steve Mandell, Steve Baron, and Elizabeth Morris A Southern District of Texas judge dismissed a copyright case against a publisher of romance novels, holding as a matter of law, that the two works at issue were not substantially similar. To reach this conclusion, the…
By Judith A. Endejan Music copyright holders were seriously thwacked by the Ninth Circuit in an Order and Opinion released on March 14, 2013 in UMG Recordings, Inc., et al. v. Shelter Capital Partners LLC. (No. 09-55902). The court rejected strained interpretations of the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), 17…
Court: “The world is indebted to the press…” By Collin J. Peng-Sue and Alison B. Schary On March 20, 2013, the Honorable Denise L. Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a sweeping decision in favor of The Associated Press (“AP”), finding Meltwater News, an online media monitoring…
By Rachel F. Strom On March 21, 2013, after an emergency appeal, New York’s Appellate Division, Third Department stayed an extraordinary temporary restraining order that would have prevented Lifetime Television Network from broadcasting a made for television movie entitled “Romeo Killer: The Christopher Porco Story” (the “movie”). Porco v. Lifetime Entertainment Services, Inc., (N.Y. App.)….
En Español By Chuck Tobin, Adolfo Jimenez and Lynn Carrillo There is no such country as “Latin America”. The system of laws, and the consistency of their enforcement, differs vastly from place to place in the region. Venture there only with help of a knowledgeable local lawyer. And rest assured: American journalists and programmers have…
Download Publication MLRC MLRC’s First Conference on Hispanic and Latin American Media Law Issues PRIOR RESTRAINT N.Y. App.: The Show Must Go On: New York Appellate Court Stays Unconstitutional Prior Restraint Prisoner Sued to Stop DocudramaPorco v. Lifetime Entertainment Services, Inc. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY S.D.N.Y.: Commercial Distribution of News Content on the Internet by Media Monitoring…