Source: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/media_law_prof_blog/2009/04/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 22:38:35+00:00

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The Scientist reports that the drug company Merck paid the publisher Elsevier to put out the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a product that it says turned out not to be a real scientific journal but that seems to have been an advertisement for Merck's own drugs. Says The Scientist, "Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles--most of which presented data favorable to Merck products--that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship." The Scientist also says that the publication did not have a website. The Scientist provides links to two of the publication's issues. Information about the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine came out during the course of a civil trial last week.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that Screen Actors Guile (SAG) ballots will be mailed to the membership May 19, due back June 9. SAG members are voting up or down on whether to ratify the new tentative agreement worked out with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP) which would expire in 2011.
Tony Blair's twenty-five-year-old son Euan, an aspiring banker, has launched a lawsuit at the Sunday Express for printing a story about his personal life. The younger Blair says the story invades his privacy. During the former Prime Minister's tenure at 10 Downing Street, he and his wife often had words with the press over stories printed about their young family. Read more here in a Guardian article.
The Legal Times' Tony Mauro discusses the Supreme Court's 5-4 "fleeting expletives" decision here.
A Hong Kong court has found a computer technician guilty of "copying and distributing" material which he found on the laptop of Chinese-Canadian actor Edison Chen. The material was intimate photographs of Mr. Chen and various well-known actresses. Sze Ho-chun took the material from the laptop when Mr. Chen dropped it off for repair in 2006. Later the material made its way to the Internet. As a result, Mr. Chen says he has received death threats; both he and several of the actresses have taken time off from filmmaking.
Mr. Chen has appeared in such films as The Grudge 2 and The Dark Knight. Read more here and here.
Here's a list of the "most complained about" ads in Great Britain in 2008, according to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Peter Hill, editor of the Daily Express, defended his paper's reporting of the Madeleine McCann kidnapping and of the coverage of the death of Princess Diana, and told Members of Parliament that he never offered to resign over it. Said Mr. Hill, "If editors had to resign every time there was a libel action against them, there wouldn't be any editors." The Daily Express eventually apologized for its McCann coverage after the parents' attorneys threatened legal action.
Mr. Hill also defended the number of stories the paper had written about the possibility of conspiracy leading to Princess Diana's death. "Of course we believed it. I do not publish stories that I believe to be untrue. That is something I do not do." Finally he agreed with the editor of the Daily Mail by saying, "We do not have a free press in this country by any means. We have a very shackled press."
Read more here in a Guardian story.
A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has told both Britney Spears' ex-manager Sam Lufti and a former lawyer, Jon Eardley, to stay away from her, but both say they will appeal the orders. He also ordered a former boyfriend to stay away for three years. Ms. Spears is currently on tour.
The website Football 365 has agreed that the story it published alleging that Aston Villa's manager Martin O'Neill had lied about the possible move of player Gareth Barry from Aston Villa to Liverpool and will pay "substantial damages" to Mr. O'Neill, according to the Guardian. An attorney for the website apologized to Mr. O'Neill in open court.
The prolific Julie Hilden discusses the law of "sexting" here.
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the FCC in the "fleeting expletives" case, finding that the agency has power under the statute to change its prior policy without demonstrating "to a court's satisfaction that the reasons for the new policy are better than the reasons for the old one." But it sent the case back to the lower court on the free speech issue. Here is a link to the opinion.
Here is an excerpt from Justice Scalia's majority (5-4) opinion.
To be sure, the requirement that an agency provide reasoned explanation for its action would ordinarily demand that it display awareness that it is changing position. An agency may not, for example, depart from a prior policy sub silentio or simply disregard rules that are still on the books. See United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 696 (1974). And of course the agency must show that there are good reasons for the new policy. But it need not demonstrate to a court's satisfaction that the reasons for the new policy are better than the reasons for the old one; it suffices that the new policy is permissible under the statute, that there are good reasons for it, and that the agency believes it to be better, which the conscious change of course adequately indicates. This means that the agency need not always provide a more detailed justification than what would suffice for a new policy created on a blank slate. Sometimes it must -- when, for example, its new policy rests upon factual findings that contradict those which underlay its prior policy; or when its prior policy has engendered serious reliance interests that must be taken into account. Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U.S. 735, 742 (1996). It would be arbitrary or capricious to ignore such matters. In such cases it is not that further justification is demanded by the mere fact of policy change; but that a reasoned explanation is needed for disregarding facts and circumstances that underlay or were engendered by the prior policy.
In this appeal from the Second Circuit's setting aside of Commission action for failure to comply with a procedural requirement of the Administrative Procedure Act, the broadcasters' arguments have repeatedly referred to the First Amendment. If they mean to invite us to apply a more stringent arbitrary-and-capricious review to agency actions that implicate constitutional liberties, we reject the invitation. The so-called canon of constitutional avoidance is an interpretive tool, counseling that ambiguous statutory language be construed to avoid serious constitutional doubts. See Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Constr. Trades Council, 485 U.S. 568, 575 (1988). We know of no precedent for applying it to limit the scope of authorized executive action. In the same section authorizing courts to set aside "arbitrary [or] capricious" agency action, the Administrative Procedure Act separately provides for setting aside agency action that is "unlawful," 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), which of course includes unconstitutional action. We think that is the only context in which constitutionality bears upon judicial review of authorized agency action. If the Commission's action here was not arbitrary or capricious in the ordinary sense, it satisfies the Administrative Procedure Act's "arbitrary [or] capricious" standard; its lawfulness under the Constitution is a separate question to be addressed in a constitutional challenge.
Judged under the above described standards, the Commission's new enforcement policy and its order finding the broadcasts actionably indecent were neither arbitrary nor capricious. First, the Commission forthrightly acknowledged that its recent actions have broken new ground, taking account of inconsistent "prior Commission and staff action" and explicitly disavowing them as "no longer good law." Golden Globes Order, 19 FCC Rcd., at 4980, P12. To be sure, the (superfluous) explanation in its Remand Order of why the Cher broadcast would even have violated its earlier policy may not be entirely convincing. But that unnecessary detour is irrelevant. There is no doubt that the Commission knew it was making a change. That is why it declined to assess penalties; and it relied on the Golden Globes Order as removing any lingering doubt. Remand Order, 21 FCC Rcd., at 13308, P23, 13325, P61.
Moreover, the agency's reasons for expanding the scope of its enforcement activity were entirely rational. It was certainly reasonable to determine that it made no sense to distinguish between literal and nonliteral uses of offensive words, requiring repetitive use to render only the latter indecent. As the Commission said with regard to expletive use of the F-Word, "the word's power to insult and offend derives from its sexual meaning." Id., at 13323, P58. And the Commission's decision to look at the patent offensiveness of even isolated uses of sexual and excretory words fits with the context-based approach we sanctioned in Pacifica, 438 U.S., at 750. Even isolated utterances can be made in "pander[ing,] . . . vulgar and shocking" manners, Remand Order, 21 FCC Rcd., at 13305, P17, and can constitute harmful "'first blow[s]'" to children, id., at 13309, P25. It is surely rational (if not inescapable) to believe that a safe harbor for single words would "likely lead to more widespread use of the offensive language," Golden Globes Order, supra, at 4979, P9.
When confronting other requests for per se rules governing its enforcement of the indecency prohibition, the Commission has declined to create safe harbors for particular types of broadcasts. See In re Pacifica Foundation, Inc., 2 FCC Rcd., at 2699, P12 (repudiating the view that the Commission's enforcement power was limited to "deliberate, repetitive use of the seven words actually contained in the George Carlin monologue"); In re Infinity Broadcasting Corp. of Pa., 3 FCC Rcd., at 932, P17 ("reject[ing] an approach that would hold that if a work has merit, it is per se not indecent"). The Commission could rationally decide it needed to step away from its old regime where nonrepetitive use of an expletive was per se nonactionable because that was "at odds with the Commission's overall enforcement policy." Remand Order, supra, at 13308, P23.
The Court of Appeals found the Commission's action arbitrary and capricious on three grounds. First, the court criticized the Commission for failing to explain why it had not previously banned fleeting expletives as "harmful 'first blow[s].'" 489 F.3d at 458. In the majority's view, without "evidence that suggests a fleeting expletive is harmful [and] . . . serious enough to warrant government regulation," the agency could not regulate more broadly. Id., at 461. As explained above, the fact that an agency had a prior stance does not alone prevent it from changing its view or create a higher hurdle for doing so. And it is not the Commission, but Congress that has proscribed "any . . . indecent . . . language." 18 U.S.C. § 1464.
There are some propositions for which scant empirical evidence can be marshaled, and the harmful effect of broadcast profanity on children is one of them. One cannot demand a multiyear controlled study, in which some children are intentionally exposed to indecent broadcasts (and insulated from all other indecency), and others are shielded from all indecency. It is one thing to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act because of failure to adduce empirical data that can readily be obtained. See, e.g., State Farm, 463 U.S., at 46-56 (addressing the costs and benefits of mandatory passive restraints for automobiles). It is something else to insist upon obtaining the unobtainable. Here it suffices to know that children mimic the behavior they observe -- or at least the behavior that is presented to them as normal and appropriate. Programming replete with one-word indecent expletives will tend to produce children who use (at least) one-word indecent expletives. Congress has made the determination that indecent material is harmful to children, and has left enforcement of the ban to the Commission. If enforcement had to be supported by empirical data, the ban would effectively be a nullity.
The Commission had adduced no quantifiable measure of the harm caused by the language in Pacifica, and we nonetheless held that the "government's interest in the 'well-being of its youth' . . . justified the regulation of otherwise protected expression." 438 U.S., at 749 (quoting Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 640, 639 (1968)). If the Constitution itself demands of agencies no more scientifically certain criteria to comply with the First Amendment, neither does the Administrative Procedure Act to comply with the requirement of reasoned decisionmaking.
The court's second objection is that fidelity to the agency's "first blow" theory of harm would require a categorical ban on all broadcasts of expletives; the Commission's failure to go to this extreme thus undermined the coherence of its rationale. 489 F.3d at 458-459. This objection, however, is not responsive to the Commission's actual policy under review -- the decision to include patently offensive fleeting expletives within the definition of indecency. The Commission's prior enforcement practice, unchallenged here, already drew distinctions between the offensiveness of particular words based upon the context in which they appeared. Any complaint about the Commission's failure to ban only some fleeting expletives is better directed at the agency's context-based system generally rather than its inclusion of isolated expletives.
More fundamentally, however, the agency's decision to consider the patent offensiveness of isolated expletives on a case-by-case basis is not arbitrary or capricious. "Even a prime-time recitation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Miller's Tale," we have explained, "would not be likely to command the attention of many children who are both old enough to understand and young enough to be adversely affected." Pacifica, supra, at 750, n. 29. The same rationale could support the Commission's finding that a broadcast of the film Saving Private Ryan was not indecent -- a finding to which the broadcasters point as supposed evidence of the Commission's inconsistency. The frightening suspense and the graphic violence in the movie could well dissuade the most vulnerable from watching and would put parents on notice of potentially objectionable material. See In re Complaints Against Various Television Licensees Regarding Their Broadcast on Nov. 11, 2004 of the ABC Television Network's Presentation of the Film "Saving Private Ryan," 20 FCC Rcd. 4507, 4513, P15 (2005) (noting that the broadcast was not "intended as family entertainment"). The agency's decision to retain some discretion does not render arbitrary or capricious its regulation of the deliberate and shocking uses of offensive language at the award shows under review -- shows that were expected to (and did) draw the attention of millions of children.
Finally, the Court of Appeals found unconvincing the agency's prediction (without any evidence) that a per se exemption for fleeting expletives would lead to increased use of expletives one at a time. 489 F.3d at 460. But even in the absence of evidence, the agency's predictive judgment (which merits deference) makes entire sense. To predict that complete immunity for fleeting expletives, ardently desired by broadcasters, will lead to a substantial increase in fleeting expletives seems to us an exercise in logic rather than clairvoyance. The Court of Appeals was perhaps correct that the Commission's prior policy had not yet caused broadcasters to "barrag[e] the airwaves with expletives," ibid. That may have been because its prior permissive policy had been confirmed (save in dicta) only at the staff level. In any event, as the Golden Globes order demonstrated, it did produce more expletives than the Commission (which has the first call in this matter) deemed in conformity with the statute.
The fact that technological advances have made it easier for broadcasters to bleep out offending words further supports the Commission's stepped-up enforcement policy. Golden Globes Order, supra, at 4980, P11. And the agency's decision not to impose any forfeiture or other sanction precludes any argument that it is arbitrarily punishing parties without notice of the potential consequences of their action.
The Second Circuit did not definitively rule on the constitutionality of the Commission's orders, but respondents nonetheless ask us to decide their validity under the First Amendment. This Court, however, is one of final review, "not of first view." Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). It is conceivable that the Commission's orders may cause some broadcasters to avoid certain language that is beyond the Commission's reach under the Constitution. Whether that is so, and, if so, whether it is unconstitutional, will be determined soon enough, perhaps in this very case. Meanwhile, any chilled references to excretory and sexual material "surely lie at the periphery of First Amendment concern," Pacifica, 438 U.S., at 743 (plurality opinion of STEVENS, J.). We see no reason to abandon our usual procedures in a rush to judgment without a lower court opinion. We decline to address the constitutional questions at this time.
The Second Circuit believed that children today "likely hear this language far more often from other sources than they did in the 1970's when the Commission first began sanctioning indecent speech," and that this cuts against more stringent regulation of broadcasts. 489 F.3d at 461. Assuming the premise is true (for this point the Second Circuit did not demand empirical evidence) the conclusion does not necessarily follow. The Commission could reasonably conclude that the pervasiveness of foul language, and the coarsening of public entertainment in other media such as cable, justify more stringent regulation of broadcast programs so as to give conscientious parents a relatively safe haven for their children. In the end, the Second Circuit and the broadcasters quibble with the Commission's policy choices and not with the explanation it has given. We decline to "substitute [our] judgment for that of the agency," State Farm, 463 U.S., at 43, and we find the Commission's orders neither arbitrary nor capricious.
Qualcomm and Broadcom have settled their longstanding patent disagreement with a multi-year agreement and a payment from Qualcomm to Broadcomm of $891 million over a four year period. Here's a link to the press release.
The photo-op flyover wasn't such a good idea after all. The White House's Military Office Director, Louis Caldera, who okayed the use of one of the President's two 747's for the event, now apologizes, saying he probably should have realized the effect it would have on a jittery New York. And the President himself is reported to be really annoyed. Here's a link to Mr. Caldera's statement [reproduced below].
"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, however, says he was not notified of the flyover.
As new rules allowing the press to report on family court proceedings go into effect in Britain, some confusion still reigns. Read more here.
Fox will not air the President's prime time news conference Wednesday, instead airing its regular programming, Lie To Me. The press conference will be available on other Fox networks, including the Fox Business Channel. Read more here.
FindLaw's Julie Hilden discusses the Moreno case here; it's the one in which a high school principal submitted a former student's poem (previously published on MySpace) to a local paper without her permission. The poem was not complimentary of the town in which the student had lived, and the student's family subsequently received death threats and was forced to close down its business and leave town. The student sued the paper and the principal for various invasion of privacy claims and for IIED.
The appellate court allowed the plaintiff's IIED claim to proceed but upheld the dismissal of the privacy claims.
It is for the court to determine in the first instance whether the defendant's conduct may reasonably be regarded as so extreme and outrageous as to permit recovery.... In making this determination, the court employs an objective standard applied to the actual conduct, i.e., how reasonable people might view it, excluding from that category those who are either overly sensitive or callous.... But, "'[w]here reasonable men may differ, it is for the jury, subject to the control of the court, to determine whether, in the particular case, the conduct has been sufficiently extreme and outrageous to result in liability.'" ... Here, the trial court concluded that Campbell's conduct did not meet the standard of outrageousness necessary to constitute a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress as a matter of law.
Since this appeal is from the sustaining of a demurrer without leave to amend, this court must assume the truth of appellants' allegations against Campbell. Based on these allegations, we conclude that reasonable people may differ on whether Campbell's actions were extreme and outrageous. Accordingly, it is for a jury to make this determination. Thus, the trial court erred in sustaining the demurrer to the intentional infliction of emotional distress cause of action.
Steven Semeraro, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has published Distinguishing the Right of Publicity: Property Rights, Free Speech Privilege, and Competition Policy, as TJSL Legal STudies Research Paper No. 1374110. Here is the abstract.
The right of publicity is an enigmatic property right. Its many critics argue that it should not be a property right at all, because (1) it is unnecessary to stimulate the pursuit of fame; (2) unneeded to manage the value of publicity; and (3) undeserved in any recognized moral sense. Yet, this ostensibly persuasive critique has had little practical impact. The right of publicity today is stronger than ever.
This article contends that the prevailing critique of the right of publicity has failed to influence the courts in large part because each quiver in its arsenal would be just as fatal were it aimed at any form of property right. To justify denying property-right status to the right of publicity, one needs to distinguish that right from other types of property. Because the existing critique applies across the board, it cannot justify singling out the right of publicity.
In rejecting the broad critique and accepting the right of publicity as a valid property right, many courts have been nonetheless uncomfortable with the right's broad reach. The prevailing view has been that it restricts too much speech, and must be limited to conform to the First Amendment. This approach has been criticized for being insufficiently sensitive to speech interests, because courts are incompetent to judge the social value of particular forms of speech. This article contends that attempting to shape a property right with reference to free speech interests is doomed to fail, because individuals generally have no right to use the property of another to speak. If publicity is property, then it will restrain speech interests just as other forms of property do. After all, you cannot lawfully set up a soap box in my front yard.
If one accepts the right of publicity as a valid property right, competition policy is the most fruitful ground on which to restrict publicity rights. Unlike free speech interests, competition policy does limit the scope of property rights, and courts are fully competent to judge the competitive effects of recognizing publicity rights in different contexts. To the extent that recognizing a right of publicity would restrain competition and create market power in a celebrity, a court would be fully justified in limiting the celebrity's publicity rights, just as antitrust law generally limits a monopolist's other property rights. Where a celebrity has no market power, by contrast, publicity rights would be fully enforceable. Applying this approach would (1) validate the results in a number of controversial right-of-publicity cases; (2) compel a different result in a few cases; and (3) more effectively justify court decisions in areas such as advertising, news reporting, and biography, that have been relatively uncontroversial.
Here's coverage of the Comcast Corp. v. FCC case from court watchers. The April 24th showdown was, by all accounts, very interesting. From Broadcast Newsroom and from the Legal Times Blog. The BLT also noted that the case was likely to draw a huge crowd. At issue: the FCC's 30 percent cap on any company's share of the cable market. Comcast is nearing the cap at 27 percent.
Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry is signing an executive order making the Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize?" the state's rock song. The Oklahoma Senate had voted to do so but the House couldn't muster the required number of votes needed for a majority after one House member objected to band member Michael Ivins' wearing of a T-shirt with a hammer and sickle on a visit to the Oklahoma State Capitol in March and controversy ensued. Mr. Ivins said the band is not unAmerican and he had been at rehearsal earlier that day where he had worn the shirt. Oklahomans voted overwhelmingly to make the song their state rock song in an online poll. Read more here in an article from the Daily Oklahoman (warning: Audio) and here from the AP.
But don't worry: "Oklahoma" is still OK's official state song.
From TMZ.com: A former ABC employee is suing ABC and Henry Ian Cusick, "Desmond" on the show "Lost", for sexual harassment. and wrongful dismissal. The suit stems from an incident last October.

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