MediaLawLetter March 2016
Download Publication MLRC From the Executive Director’s DeskThe Donald Hogan: One Person, Multiple Personas The Monthly DailyA Roundup of Media Law Developments INTERNET 1st Cir.: Claims Against Backpage Dismissed Under Section 230Court Rejects Artful Attempt to End Run ImmunityDoe v. Backpage.com ACCESS Ky. App.: Court Affirms a Major Victory for Newspapers in Access to Records…
Parody Tote Bag Maker Wins Summary Judgment vs. Louis Vuitton
By Andrew Nellis A New York federal district court recently granted summary judgment to the maker of a parody tote bag on trademark and copyright infringement claims brought by luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. v. My Other Bag, Inc., No. 14-3419 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 6, 2016). The court found that the tote…
Circuit Retcons Its “Dancing Baby” Fair Use Decision and Creates More Confusion
By Lance Koonce Retcon /ˈretkän/: Abbreviation of “retroactive continuity”; “Revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events.” – Oxford Dictionaries Apparently, George Lucas is not the only party in California who can edit his own work after release…
Texas Court Dismisses Defamation Suit and Awards Attorneys’ Fees Under Anti-SLAPP Law
By Adrianna C. Rodriguez A judge for the District Court of McLennan County, Texas, dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit alleging two local television stations, the local newspaper, and the City of Waco defamed the plaintiff by reporting on his arrest and charging in connection with a shooting. In dismissing the lawsuit against the media defendants…
Texas Has Personal Jurisdiction to Hear Libel Suit vs. Mexican Broadcasters
Signal Bleed Plus Sales of Ads in South Texas Sufficient to Exert Jurisdiction The Supreme Court of Texas affirmed that a cross border defamation case against two Mexican broadcasting companies and a Mexican television personality can be heard in Texas state court based on defendants’ purposeful availment of the Texas market. TV Azteca, S.A.B. de…
Canadian Court Recognizes Publication of Embarrassing Private Facts Tort
By Ryder Gilliland and Thomas Lipton On 21 January 2016, in Doe 464533 v. ND (2016 ONSC 541) the Ontario Superior Court of Justice recognized, for the first time in Canada, the privacy tort of “publication of embarrassing private facts”. This is the second time in the last few years that the Ontario courts have borrowed from the…
Ideology, Power and Freedom of the Press in Latin America
By Ricardo Trotti When Dave Heller and Adolfo Jimenez invited me to speak about media, law and ideology, I rehearsed a question: Is press freedom threatened by the ideology of the government? My answer is NO. The threat does not depend on the orientation of the government – whether liberal, conservative, progressive, left or center…
MLRC Miami Conference on Hispanic and Latin American Media
On March 7, approximately 70 lawyers from North and South America gathered at the University of Miami School of Communication for a day of discussion and debate on Legal Issues Concerning Hispanic and Latin American Media. The keynote address was delivered by Ricardo Trotti, the head of press freedom programs at the Inter-American Press Association,…
NJ Court Says Open Records Law Does Not Extend to Out-of-State Requesters
Judge Stresses Economic Burden of Complying With Requests By Raymond Baldino Harry Scheeler v. City of Cape May, decided February 19, 2016 by a New Jersey trial court, held that the State’s public records law, the Open Public Records Act (“OPRA”), does not extend to out of state, non-citizen requestors. The Court did not mince…
Court of Appeals Affirms a Major Victory for Newspapers in Access to Records Case
By Jon L. Fleischaker & Michael P. Abate On February 19, 2016, the Kentucky Court of Appeals issued an opinion which hopefully will put to an end bitter litigation between the two largest newspapers in Kentucky and the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services over access to records of children killed or severely injured…
First Circuit: Claims Against Backpage Dismissed Under Section 230
By Jeffrey J. Pyle February 8, 2016 marked the 20th anniversary of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. About a month later, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit handed down its sweeping decision in Doe v. Backpage.com, demonstrating that the statute’s broad prohibition on claims against Internet providers for content posted by…
The Monthly Daily: A Roundup of Media Law Developments
By Jeff Hermes Let’s start with a show of hands: Who predicted that #FBIvsApple would be decided by tech rather than law? Whose prediction in #HulkvGawk was off by more than an order of magnitude? Who thinks we should dump the Bluebook and just cite cases with Twitter hashtags? We’ll get back to the early…
The Donald Hogan: One Person, Multiple Personas
By George FreemanMLRC Executive Director Hulk Hogan and Donald Trump certainly were March’s two biggest newsmakers. But the more I thought about writing about them, the more I realized that, in essence, they were almost the same person. Both are brash, blunt, bullying, braggadocio bloviating brand-purveyors. Both objectify women and have had extramarital affairs. Trump…