Right to Record Police a “Clearly Established Right”
Journalist’s First Amendment Claim Survives Motion to Dismiss By Brittany Berckes In a case between a freelance journalist covering the Occupy Wall Street protest and the City of New York (“City”), a New York district court held that the First Amendment generally protects the video recording of police and that this right is clearly established….
ECHR Grand Chamber Rules That France Violated Article 10 Rights of Lawyer
“A great victory for the whole legal profession” By Inger Høedt-Rasmussen and Dirk Voorhoof The Grand Chamber in its judgment of 23 April 2015 in the case of Morice v. France has overruled an earlier finding of non-violation of the right to freedom of expression of a lawyer (Chamber judgment Fifth Section, 11 July 2013). The…
College Police Officers Subject to Ohio Open Records Act
Decision Creates More Police Transparency By John C. Greiner In State ex rel. Schiffbauer v. Banaszak, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that police officers employed by private colleges are subject to the Ohio Public Records Act. Therefore, the department can be compelled to produce public records. Anna Schiffbauer was the student journalist who brought the…
From the Next Gen Committee: Three Federal Courts Issue Opinions in May Construing the CDA
One Contradicts Well-Established Precedent By Robert L. Rogers, III May 2015 was a busy month for Communications Decency Act (“CDA”) jurisprudence, as three federal courts published opinions construing the federal law that shields website operators from civil liability for harmful statements posted by others on their websites. And although all three Courts upheld CDA immunity,…
Third Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Defamation Action Against Search Engines Based Upon CDA Immunity
By Robert L. Rogers, III In a helpful per curium opinion construing the Communications Decency Act (the “CDA”), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Obado v. Magdeson affirmed the dismissal of defamation claims asserted against eight webhosts and search engines, including Google and Yahoo!, on grounds that they were immune under the CDA from…
MLRC Holds Annual Digital Media Conference in Silicon Valley
On May 14-15, 2015, the Media Law Resource Center held its eighth annual “Legal Frontiers in Digital Media” conference at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Net Neutrality The first session, titled, “Preparing for the Next Round in Net Neutrality,” began with a technical tutorial on the architecture of the internet by Jonathan…
North Carolina Appeals Court Finds Triable Issues of Actual Malice in Public Official Libel Case
By Mark J. Prak Just when the media bar in North Carolina was hoping the climate for turning back public official libel claims would improve, North Carolina’s intermediate appeals court unanimously affirmed the denial of the McClatchy Company interests’ summary judgment motion in a long-running public official libel case in Raleigh. Desmond v. McClatchy Newspapers,…
New York Times Wins Libel Suit Brought By Libertarian Professor
Professor Was Quoted Stating “Slavery Was Not So Bad”? *Note: In 2016, the Fifth Circuit reversed and remanded the decision discussed in this article, holding that the district court erred in holding plaintiff to a “probability of success” standard. Instead the court should have determined whether a genuine dispute of material fact existed. See Block…
Texas Supreme Court Hands Down First Rulings on the State’s Anti-SLAPP Statute
By Laura Lee Prather In 2011, Texas joined the growing list of states to pass an anti-SLAPP statute, the Texas Citizens’ Participation Act (“TCPA”). On April 24, 2015, in its first two rulings interpreting the statute, the Texas Supreme Court held that the statute broadly applies to all communications about matters of public concern, even…
Washington State Supreme Court Strikes Down State Anti-SLAPP Statute
By Bruce E. H. Johnson, Eric M. Stahl, and Ambika Kumar Doran The Washington Supreme Court invalidated the state’s broad anti-SLAPP statute, holding in a unanimous opinion that the law violates the constitutional right to a jury trial. The decision strikes the statute in its entirety, finding the constitutional problem undermined the law’s “mainspring.” The decision,…
Federal Anti-SLAPP Bill Introduced in House of Representatives
Recent D.C. Circuit Ruling Highlights Need for Federal Legislation By Laurie A. Babinski On May 13, U.S. Representatives Blake Farenthold (R-TX) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) introduced federal anti-SLAPP legislation to provide relief against meritless lawsuits intended to chill free expression. The SPEAK FREE Act of 2015 (H.R. 2304) would provide a mechanism for the quick…
9th Circuit Reverses Innocence of Muslims Copyright Injunction
Whither Copyright Injunctions In The Post-Garcia World? By Laurence Pulgram and Todd Gregorian In the Ninth Circuit’s en banc decision in Garcia v. Google, 2015 U.S.App. Lexis 8105 (9th Cir., No. 12-57302, May 18, 2015), the court reversed and vacated the broad preliminary injunction issued by a three-judge panel that had required Google to remove…
MLRC Issues Model Policy on Police Body-Cam Footage
Memo Explaining the MLRC’s Model Policy on Police Body-Worn Camera Footage Across the nation, police departments and other law enforcement agencies have increasingly embraced the technology of body-worn video cameras (BWCs). Several organizations, both within the law enforcement community and various public interest and advocacy groups, have studied when and where law enforcement agents should…
From the Executive Director’s Desk: A New Conference – For European Media Lawyers
When I started at MLRC in September, one of the new initiatives I planned was to spread our sphere of influence into Continental Europe. After all, over the last decade we have played a role in the UK and we count many British lawyers as our members and friends. Moreover, the Continent could use a…
MediaLawLetter May 2015
Download Publication MLRC From the Executive Director’s Desk: Paris in the Spring MLRC Issues Model Policy on Police Body-Cam FootageMemo Explaining the MLRC’s Model Policy on Police Body-Worn Camera Footage INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 9th Cir.: Whither Copyright Injunctions in the Post-Garcia World?Garcia v. Google LEGISLATION Federal Anti-SLAPP Bill Introduced in House of RepresentativesRecent D.C. Circuit Ruling…