MLRC’s March Conferences Spotlight Escalating Legal Challenges at Home and Abroad

March is the month when Spring begins, the weather ranges wildly, the beer is green and March Madness dominates the tube. It also is the month of two MLRC Conferences, with heavy prep for two more later in Spring. While I don’t want to prematurely promote our London Conference, September 27-29, in the words of our British friends, both March programs were massive successes.

Early in March we held our Latin American/Florida Conference in Miami. It moved a few years ago from the U. Of Miami (whose Law School I once taught at) to the lovely downtown offices of Holland & Knight – especially picturesque because our meeting room had spectacular views of Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The morphing of this Conference from one focused on cross-border and Latin American issues to the present agenda which heavily includes Florida issues is also interesting- and depressing.

On the one hand, fewer Latin American lawyers had begun to attend the Conference, mainly because of the cost and time of the long trip from Brazil and Argentina. While a hardy group still do attend, and have grown close by these annual meetings, we needed to boost attendance. Problem solved over the last few years when, under Gov. DeSantis’ regime and the result of the Hulk Hogan case, Florida media law became increasingly problematic. The change was especially noticeable to me since when I was at the Times Company and it owned many middle-sized Florida newspapers, the law was very favorable, and we were successful in winning cases even in the “red” central and northern parts of the state. No longer. While Florida was where Sunshine Laws (now FOI) started and libel law was very media-protective- recognizing neutral reportage principles early on- now it’s where our serial litigator President files most of his libel cases and general First Amendment principles are eschewed.

Indeed, our Conference, designed by David Heller along with me, began with an amalgamation of these topics. The opening session featured Venezuelan journalists speaking about the difficulties of reporting in and about their country. It was heartbreaking to hear of the perils and obstacles they face in trying to do their jobs – and just a bit scary to ponder how we here seem to be scooching in that direction.

The next program focused on Trump’s libel litigations in Florida – cases against the Times, the Wall Street Journal ( about the Epstein birthday card he claims not to have signed), the BBC (which spliced together two parts of his January 6 speech, notwithstanding the defendant did not distribute the documentary in Florida or the U.S. and he won the Presidential election just a few weeks after it aired), the Pulitzer Prize Committee (for reaffirming the NYT and Washington Post deserved awards for their coverage of Russian election interference) and CNN ( for a opinionated comparison to Hitler’s Big Lie). Beyond the status and issues in each of these cases, we discussed why he was bringing these meritless cases, whether that was effective, and what we could do about it.

Lunch was put off as we dug into the third session, focusing mainly on the Florida book banning cases. Some of these cases are against our book publisher members, and all are a blatant affront to the First Amendment. A particular poignant part of this panel was that one of the speakers was an Iranian-American mother who had led a fight against school book banning procedures- a speaker we recruited before the hostilities against Iran began. But the existence of our War made her words all the more powerful. 

A sumptuous luncheon buffet followed. David and I had tried to bring a FIFA lawyer or soccer journalist to give a luncheon talk – some upcoming World Cup games will be played in Miami; the city is the American home of FIFA; and the diverse population is soccer crazy, especially since the great Messi plays here- but we failed in that endeavor.

Instead, between a luncheon networking break and an end-of-the-day beer/wine reception , we had two more programs. One was a very interesting comparative law session featuring lawyers from some key South American countries comparing ncopyright and AI laws and practices in the different countries. That was followed by a session on Data Privacy for Media Lawyers covering an array of collection and handling regulations in the US and LatAm.  

In all, a great smorgasbord of timely topics, a collection of expert and engaging speakers and a warm get-together of in- house and outside lawyers who have come to become friends through these annual conclaves.

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Exactly two weeks later, Miami was followed by our 23rd annual Entertainment & Media Law Conference in Los Angeles. The good news was that it went off flawlessly, with attendees uniformly praising the quality, depth and substance of all the sessions. The bad news was that the impresario of the Conference, our Deputy Director Jeff Hermes, could not be there because he had become ill that week. But his impeccable planning, aided by our LA planning committee, paid off in the very successful outcome.

Unlike many of our conferences other than the biggest in Virginia and London, the Entertainment Conference has one time slot for breakout sessions. This enables attendees to go to different rooms, choosing from three different subjects we offer, where they can participate in the discussion among all the attendees, guided by co-facilitators. It’s a welcome change from simply listening to panels throughout the day. At the Entertainment Conference the three breakouts offered were Celebrity Defamation, Deals for Online Content, and Video Game Law. I attended the defamation session , and there was enthusiastic and thoughtful participation from many in the audience of about 50. Why there seems to be an increase in celebrity libel cases, what to do when you receive a threatening letter from a celebrity’s lawyer, whether SCOTUS will narrow who is a public figure protected by the actual malice standard were all issues which were batted around.

The plenary programs were excellent as well. The Conference opened with a session on how to advise entertainment clients who want to use AI. In contrast with many AI programs where the discussion about the law is necessarily vague since the law is so undeveloped, this panel considered many of the practical problems lawyers in this field are handling daily; as such, many attendees commented the session was particularly useful. Adding to the breadth of the discussion, one of the panelists was from the Netherlands and another was the new GC of SAG-AFTRA.

The next panel dealt with current issues in intellectual property, including the ongoing fallout from the Andy Warhol and Jack Daniels cases, AI scraping and training, and copyright termination. AJ Thomas, substituting for the ailing Jeff Hermes as moderator, did a masterful job leading a panel of experts through the subsequent lower court cases and evaluating how they came out.

After the breakout sessions, I led a panel discussion on Trump’s attacks on Hollywood, on some of his attempts to control content and players in the movie and television industries. We began with his assault on DEI and how creators have sometimes hurdled his policies limiting diversity. We then moved to his attempt to control content, from the Jimmy Kimmel episode to the FCC’s role to the more recent brouhaha involving Colbert’s unaired interview of Texas Senatorial candidate James Talarico because of “equal time” threats to the future of CNN under the pending Warner/Discovery merger. Speaking of diversity, we are pleased that the Entertainment conference featured an equal number of male and female speakers, with an eye on racial and ethnic diversity as well.

With the two March conferences behind us, we continue planning the two remaining Springtime gatherings. The first is the Digital Conference which will be on May 14 in San Francisco. This conference features advanced high-level discussion of digital law issues by experts in the field who practice in this area every day. A month later, on June 16, we will be having our European Conference, this year dubbed “Paris in the Springtime.” The aim of this conference, unlike the well-known London Conference, is to bring together media lawyers from many different European countries to discuss improving media law and broadening media protections throughout the EU (and the UK). We started this foray into Europe in France a decade ago, and since then have hosted conferences in Germany, Holland and Ireland before this year’s meeting which will be held at Dentons office “pres de la Madeleine”. Although this meeting is not focused on US law, if American members are interested in attending, please get in touch with me or Deputy Director Dave Heller.

Finally, although it comes well after Spring, indeed during the second week of Fall, on September 27-29 we will be holding our biennial London Conference. This is a unique gathering as it usually is evenly split between American media lawyers and media lawyers from the rest of the world, generally the UK and Western Europe, but a smattering from Australia, Canada, the Iron Curtain countries and beyond. Sunday, Sept. 27, before the working sessions begin, are reserved for networking, bonding and receptions from the London Bridge to a boat on the Thames to Bloomberg’s modern building. And Monday night, after a full day of programming, we are planning a reception in one of the houses of Parliament, high above the Thames and somewhat under Big Ben, My only bit of advice: get your airplane tickets now, before oil prices force more significant increases in the price of airplane tickets.

George Freeman is executive director of MLRC. All opinions expressed are his alone and not those of the organization. Comments welcome: email gfreeman@medialaw.org.