Source: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/media_law_prof_blog/2018/12/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 10:44:34+00:00

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Christophe Geiger and Elena Izyumenko, both of the Université de Strasbourg - CEIPI, are publishing Freedom of Expression as an External Limitation to Copyright Law in the EU: The Advocate General of the CJEU Shows the Way in the European Intellectual Property Review for 2019. Here is the abstract.
This article analyses the recent Opinion delivered by the Advocate General Szpunar of the CJEU in the “Afghanistan Papers” case. It highlights, in particular, four crucial points that stand out in the Opinion. First, the adoption of a fundamental right perspective when evaluating copyright regulation in general. Second, the need to ensure that copyright’s internal mechanisms designed to take into account the fundamental right to free expression (i.e., the idea/expression dichotomy, the criteria for protection such as the originality requirement and the exceptions and limitations) are interpreted in a manner that gives full effect to freedom of expression. The presence of such mechanisms should, third, by no means be understood as immunising copyright from any further freedom of expression scrutiny: according to the Advocate General, if on the contrary fundamental rights are not sufficiently taken into account by the existing copyright system, there are circumstances when the exclusive rights “must yield to an overriding interest relating to the implementation of a fundamental right or freedom” – an explicit admittance (for the first time at EU level) of the admissibility of an external limitation to copyright by freedom of expression. Finally, the Opinion highlights the unacceptability of misusing copyright for the purposes not corresponding to its rationales and its social function.
From Smithsonian Magazine, a piece about Mary Katherine Goddard, the newspaper publisher who printed and signed the Declaration of Independence in January 1777. She also served as postmaster of Baltimore, until the first Postmaster General appointed a man instead.
Newly published: Eric P. Robinson, University of South Carolina, has published Reckless Disregard: St. Amant v. Thompson and the Transformation of Libel Law (LSU Press, 2018). Here, from the publisher's website, is a description of the book's contents.
In the years following the landmark United States Supreme Court decision on libel law in New York Times v. Sullivan, the court ruled on a number of additional cases that continued to shape the standards of protected speech. As part of this key series of judgments, the justices explored the contours of the Sullivan ruling and established the definition of “reckless disregard” as it pertains to “actual malice” in the case of St. Amant v. Thompson. While an array of scholarly and legal literature examines Sullivan and some subsequent cases, the St. Amant case—once called “the most important of the recent Supreme Court libel decisions”—has not received the attention it warrants. Eric P. Robinson’s Reckless Disregard corrects this omission with a thorough analysis of the case and its ramifications. The history of St. Amant v. Thompson begins with the contentious 1962 U.S. Senate primary election in Louisiana, between incumbent Russell Long and businessman Philemon “Phil” A. St. Amant. The initial lawsuit stemmed from a televised campaign address in which St. Amant attempted to demonstrate Long’s alleged connections with organized crime and corrupt union officials. Although St. Amant’s claims had no effect on the outcome of the election, a little-noticed statement he made during the address—that money had “passed hands” between Baton Rouge Teamsters leader Ed Partin and East Baton Rouge Parish deputy sheriff Herman A. Thompson—led to a defamation lawsuit that ultimately passed through the legal system to the Supreme Court. A decisive step in the journey toward the robust protections that American courts provide to comments about public officials, public figures, and matters of public interest, St. Amant v. Thompson serves as a significant development in modern American defamation law. Robinson’s study deftly examines the background of the legal proceedings as well as their social and political context. His analysis of how the Supreme Court ruled in this case reveals the justices’ internal deliberations, shedding new light on a judgment that forever changed American libel law.
Roy Shapira, Stigler Center, University of Chicago Booth School of Business; Interdisciplinary Center, is publishing Law As Source: How the Legal System Facilitates Investigative Journalism in volume 37 of the Yale Law & Policy Review. Here is the abstract.
Legal scholars have long recognized that the media plays a key role in assuring the proper functioning of political and business markets. Yet we have understudied the role of law in assuring effective media scrutiny. This Article develops a theory of law as source. The basic premise is that the law not only regulates what the media can or cannot say, but also facilitates media scrutiny by producing information. Specifically, law enforcement actions, such as litigation or regulatory investigations, extract information on the behavior of powerful players in business or government. Journalists can then translate the information into biting investigative reports and diffuse them widely, thereby shaping players’ reputations and norms. Levels of accountability in society are therefore not simply a function of the effectiveness of the courts as a watchdog or the media as a watchdog, but rather a function of the interactions between the two watchdogs. This Article approaches, from multiple angles, the questions of how and how much the media relies on legal sources. I analyze the content of projects that won investigative reporting prizes in the past two decades; interview forty veteran reporters; scour a reporters-only database of tip sheets and how-to manuals; go over syllabi of investigative reporting courses; and synthesize insights from the communication science and economics of information literatures. The triangulation of these different methods produces three sets of insights. First, this Article establishes that legal sources matter: in today’s information environment, court documents, depositions, and regulatory reports are often the most instrumental sources of accountability journalism. Second, the Article identifies how and why legal sources matter: they extract quality information on the (mis)behavior of powerful players in a credible, libel-proof manner. Finally, recognizing the function of law as source opens up space for rethinking important legal institutions according to how they contribute to information production. In the process, we get to reevaluate timely debates, such as the desirability of one-sided arbitration clauses, which have been at the center of recent Trump Administration orders and Supreme Court decisions.
Relying on Article 10 (freedom of expression), the applicant company complained that by finding it liable for posting a hyperlink on its website which led to defamatory content the domestic courts had unduly restricted its rights....The Court highlighted the importance of hyperlinks for the smooth operation of the Internet by making information available through linking. When it came to reporting, hyperlinks were different from other traditional acts of publication as they did not present content or communicate it, but directed users to information available elsewhere or called readers’ attention to its existence. The content behind a hyperlink had also already been made available by the original publisher, providing unrestricted access to the public. Given such considerations the Court did not agree with the Hungarian courts’ approach of equating the posting of a hyperlink with the dissemination of defamatory information, which led to objective liability....Such objective liability could have negative consequences on the flow of information on the Internet by impelling authors and publishers to refrain altogether from hyperlinking to material whose content they could not control. That could directly or indirectly have a chilling effect on freedom of expression on the Internet.
Doris Estelle Long, John Marshall Law School, is publishing Copyright Reform in the 21st Century: Adding Privacy Considerations into the Normative Mix in Making Copyright Work for the Asian Pacific: Juxtaposing Harmonisation with Flexibility (ANU Press 2018). Here is the abstract.
The new technology of the ‘Digital Age’ has led to the creation of potentially new copyrightable forms of works and new methods of distribution that do not automatically fit within existing paradigms based on a hard-goods world. As a result, copyright reform efforts are underway in jurisdictions as diverse as Australia, China, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, the European Union (EU), Hong Kong, Japan, Canada and the United States. To avoid the mistakes of the past, and create reforms whose effectiveness survives more than a few years, we must consider a broader array of normative inputs, including, critically the inter-relationship between copyright and personal and data privacy. In the 21st Century such privacy concerns are no longer adjuncts to issues of copyright protection but instead increasingly impact the scope and effectiveness of such protection. Using examples from the United States, Canada, the European Union and the Asia Pacific, I explore the impact of privacy considerations on such diverse issues as the author/subject dichotomy, fair use/fair dealing, digital enforcement mechanisms, including notice and takedown regimes, anticircumvention protections, database and other data collections, and distributional relief, including injunctions and suggest the shape that such reforms might take. Adding privacy concerns to copyright reformation considerations will not simplify the process. But the resulting normative framework could provide a copyright regime that not only provides a balance more in concert with the social justice and access to information/culture concerns but also remains viable regardless of what the next technological revolution may bring.
Eric Goldman and Gabriella Ziccarelli, both of Santa Clara University School of Law, have published Emojis and Intellectual Property Law. Here is the abstract.
Everyone loves emojis, and why not? They are a fun and an increasingly ubiquitous way for people to express themselves. But despite their superficial frivolity, emojis can raise potentially complex and serious legal issues, including novel and complicated questions about intellectual property (IP). This essay surveys how United States IP law protects emojis, and why such protection may be problematic.
Kirill Chmel and Nikita Savin, both of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and Michael X. Delli Carpini, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, have published Making Politics Attractive: Political Satire and Exposure to Political Information in New Media Environment in Russia as Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 63/PS/2018. Here is the abstract.
There is an extensive body of research devoted to how political satire affects political knowledge and political behavior. Extant studies are focused on political satire in democratic countries and do not pay enough attention to authoritarian regimes. This study extends this research to non-democratic regimes, while also adding to it by exploring the extent to which the use of political satire encourages exposure to political information. We conduct an online experiment on the sample of Russian students. We borrow satirical pictures from Lentach – popular Russian social media public page, whose motto is “a propaganda of common sense” as opposed to biased political messages proliferated by government-controlled media outlets. Using both frequentist and Bayesian approaches, we found that access to political information containing satirical illustrating content increases attention to the information, relative to political news reports accompanied by standard news illustrations. The findings contribute to the literature on the political entertainment and exposure to political information, as well as to research on media under authoritarianism.
Rebecca Gould, Islamic World & Comparative Literature, College of Arts & Law, University of Birmingham; Harvard University - Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies is publishing Is the ‘Hate’ in Hate Speech the ‘Hate’ in Hate Crime? Waldron and Dworkin on Political Legitimacy in Jurisprudence. Here is the abstract.
Among the most persuasive arguments against hate speech bans was made by Ronald Dworkin, who warned of the threat to political legitimacy posed by laws that deny those subject to them adequate opportunity for dissent. In his influential defence of hate speech bans, Jeremy Waldron addresses these objections. Dworkin’s concern with political legitimacy is misplaced, he argues, given the provision speech bans make for substituting permissible modes of expression for impermissible ones. I argue that this defence of speech bans misidentifies the “hate” in hate speech with the “hate” in hate crime. In contesting Dworkin, Waldron fails to contend with the necessarily entangled criminalisation of manner and viewpoint entailed in hate speech bans. By failing to grapple with the way in which every linguistic sign is constituted by both manner and viewpoint, Waldron sidesteps the ways in which hate speech bans undermine political legitimacy within liberal democracies.
David L. Hudson, Jr., has published Justice Kennedy and the First Amendment at 9 Houston Law Review Off the Record 49 (2019). Here is the abstract.
This essay reviews some of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s most significant contributions to First Amendment jurisprudence. These include his calls for absolute protection for pure political speech, his strong protection for commercial speech, his distaste for campaign finance reform laws that censored speech, his general concern for the silencing of sexual expression, his coercion test in Establishment Clause cases, and his significant failure in the public-employee free-speech decision Garcetti v. Ceballos.

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