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Media & Entertainment Law

Media Law Prof Blog

Media law resources, information, and news for the academic community.

Post Frequency: 34.8/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 12:48:00

Sky Told To Sell Most of Its Holding in ITV

Posted on January 29, 2008
The UK government has ordered Sky (BSkyB), which owns nearly 18 percent of ITV, to sell most of its holdings in the network, but rumors are that Rupert Murdoch may fight the government's ruling, which came after complaints by ITV...

Ofcom: Satiric Show Not in Breach of Broadcasting Code Over Reference To Madeleine McCann

Posted on January 28, 2008
Ofcom has okayed a Channel 4 satire that poked fun at British politicians, saying the point was the lengths to which they might go to win an election, not the unsolved disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine McCann. The sketch, which aired...

Music Downloads With No Copy Protection? Not Quite Yet

Posted on January 28, 2008
In spite of an announcement from Qtrax saying that it has clinched agreements with three major labels to do so, Warner, EMI, and Universal say they have no plans to allow the company to permit users to download their music...

Judge Reinstates Defamation Lawsuit Against Professor

Posted on January 25, 2008
The judge who dismissed a defamation lawsuit against a University of California, Irvine professor has now reinstated the suit, based on new evidence presented to the court. One of the authors of a study published in the Journal of Reproductive...

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Afghan Journalist Sentenced To Death For Blasphemy

Posted on January 24, 2008
An Afghan court has sentenced a twenty-three year old journalist to death for blasphemy after a trial which was conducted in secret and at which he apparently was not represented by counsel. Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh was accused by others of...

No Walkout At BBC

Posted on January 24, 2008
The BBC and its unions have signed a deal, averting a walkout. Read more here.

BBC, Popular Drama, Under Fire For Episode Showing Violent Attack on Character

Posted on January 24, 2008
A scene in the long-running BBC drama "Eastenders" has caused a ruckus, and several viewers have complained to Ofcom, the government agency charged with overseeing radio and television in the UK. The episode shows an attack on one of the...

The Media and Counter-Terrorism Laws: The View From Australia

Posted on January 24, 2008
Lawrence McNamara, University of Reading School of Law, has published "Australian Counter-Terrorism Laws and Limits on Media Freedom: Working Paper No. 1". Here is the abstract. This paper is the first working paper in a project that aims to identify...

More on Australian Defamation Law From David Rolph

Posted on January 24, 2008
David Rolph, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, has published "Preparing for a Full-Scale Invasion? Truth, Privacy and Defamation" at 25 Communications Law Bulletin 5 (2007). Here is the abstract. One feature of the national, uniform defamation laws, which came...

Australian Copyright Law and Infringement

Posted on January 24, 2008
Jason John Bosland, and Robin W. Wright, both of the University of Melbourne Centre for Media and Communications Law, have published "Australia: Copyright - Secondary Infringement by Authorization - Hyper-Linking," in volume 18 of the Entertainment Law Review (2007)...

"Dating Game" With Drew Peterson Not in the Cards For Radio Station

Posted on January 24, 2008
Radio station WJMK-FM won't sponsor a competition to find Drew Peterson a date. The former Bolingbroke, Illinois police officer, whose fourth wife Stacy disappeared last October, apparently suggested to the station that this "dating game" event would be a good...

AT&T and Piracy

Posted on January 23, 2008
AT&T says it may begin checking out the traffic on P2P networks to see if copyright infringement is going on, and if so, if the company can do anything to counter it. Read more here. Here's an article by Thomas...

MPAA Says Downloading Study Was Wrong; College Students Don't Pirate As Much as Previously Reported

Posted on January 23, 2008
In 2005, the Motion Picture Association of America reported that college students were pirating like mad, at a rate that accounted for forty-four percent of the "industry's domestic losses." Now, it seems that "human error" caused a miscalculation--those rogue downloaders...

One Year After Hrant Dink's Murder

Posted on January 19, 2008
A year after he was assassinated, journalist Hrant Dink was memoralized by those who wished to honor his efforts on behalf of freedom of speech. Meanwhile nineteen people charged with complicity in his death are on trial in Istanbul. Read...

Publisher Sentenced To Three Years for Reproducing "Prophet Mohammed" Cartoons

Posted on January 19, 2008
Alexander Sdvizhkov, the editor of the Belarus newspaper Zgoda (Consensus), has received a three year sentence for publication of the cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed that first appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2005. Many in the country have condemned...

DGA, AMPTP To Ink Deal

Posted on January 18, 2008
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has apparently reached an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), averting a walkout that might have rivaled that of the WGA, which has now now hit the two month...

French Journalists On Trial in Niger

Posted on January 17, 2008
Two French journalists have been detained for attempting to report on the escalating level of violence in the northern part of the country of Niger. The government says the journalists were permitted to report only on the outbreak of bird...

Group Told It Must Identify Itself in Ads Attacking Clinton's Voting Record

Posted on January 16, 2008
From Legal Times' blog: a federal court has denied Citizens United's request for a preliminary injunction to block the Federal Election Commission's enforcement of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act against it with regard to ads targeting Senator Hilary Clinton's voting...

Fifth Circuit Rules That Single Publication Rule Applies to Internet

Posted on January 15, 2008
Nationwide Bi-Weekly Mortgage brought defamation and various other claims against Belo Corporation, The Dallas Morning News, and one of its reporters because of a 2004 article that appeared in the News concerning Nationwide's business practices. The article also appeared on...

The Case of the Cookbooks

Posted on January 15, 2008
Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld are in a stew over cookbooks with Missy Chase Lapine. Ms Lapine, the author of The Sneaky Chef, a New York Times bestseller, claims that the Seinfelds, and more particularly, Ms. Seinfeld, infringed her rights with...

Ouch! Was Photog on Legislative Floor a Paparazzo?

Posted on January 15, 2008
Colorado Republican Douglas Bruce, a member of the State House, is under investigation for kicking a photographer. Javier Monzano, who works for the Rocky Mountain News, took Mr. Bruce's picture while he was standing for a prayer on January 14th,...

Media Oppose Crown's Request for Secrecy in Murder Trial

Posted on January 15, 2008
Media including the Guardian and the BBC have requested that the court hearing the case of Wang Yam, who is accused of murdering an 86-year-old man, deny the government's request that the trial be held in secret for national security...

Ernest Zundel's Lawyer Sentenced to Prison for Holocaust Denial

Posted on January 14, 2008
Sylvia Stolz, the attorney who defended Ernest Zundel in his first trial against charges that he denied the existence of the Holocaust, has herself been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for making statements that questioned the...

Another Plagiarism Scandal?

Posted on January 13, 2008
The New York Times has an article about the current debate over whether romance novelist Cassie Edwards plagiarized passages in several of her books, and the part that bloggers have played in uncovering these questionable passages. Romance writer Nora Roberts...

Patarkatsishvili Charged With Conspiracy

Posted on January 11, 2008
Georgian prosecutors are pursuing several charges, including "conspiracy to overthrow the government", against Badri Patarkatsishvili, the co-owner of Imedi TV. Mr. Patarkatshishvili challenged the current President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, for the post, in last year's election, when Mr...

French Court Refuses to Ban Book on Cecilia Sarkozy

Posted on January 11, 2008
A French court has refused to grant Cecilia Sarkozy's request to prevent publication of a book by Anna Britton about her called Cecilia. The former wife of France's President objects to some of the comments attributed to her in the...

Golf Channel Suspends Anchor For "Poorly Chosen Remarks"

Posted on January 10, 2008
The Golf Channel has decided to suspend anchor Kelly Tilghman after her ill-chosen words concerning up and coming young golfers who might want to take on champion Tiger Woods. Reaction was swift from many, and from Golf Channel management, which...

Case Ends Against British Official Who Leaked Documents Dealing With Rendition

Posted on January 10, 2008
The British government has dropped the case against Derek Pasquill, accused under the Official Secrets Act of leaking information to the press concerning the US practice of rendition, after a nearly two year investigation. The government bore the burden of...

An Additional Post Regarding Sparks v. Reneau Publishing

Posted on January 10, 2008
Mr. Dennis Sparks sent me an email yesterday about the post U. S. District Court Holds That City Manager, As Public Official, Must Show Actual Malice in Defamation Suit Against Newspaper. In it he says I left out a "critical...

Comcast On FCC Agenda

Posted on January 09, 2008
The New York Times reports that the Federal Communications Commission will take up complaints that Comcast is interfering with file sharing. The AP ran a story yesterday reporting that several consumer organizations have objected that the company interferes with subscriber...

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