Cops arrested for spying on Parker, Broderick's surrogate

Two police officers in Ohio were arrested this week for allegedly spying on the surrogate mother carrying the twins of actors Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. The officers are accused of breaking into the woman's house in order to collect information that could be sold to gossip tabloids.

So far the woman hasn't filed any charges, but I think she could make a case for invasion of privacy and intrusion. However, does this woman lose some of her privacy because she's carrying movie stars' babies? I don't think so, but I'm sure if this went to trial that would be a defense. A written story and video can be seen here.

Obama, prof, cop to sit down over brews

This is being called a 'Beer summit'. President Obama is said to not be announcing anything toward racial profiling and will not speak to the press, although they will be allowed to take pictures. The President is hoping that this will foster a dialogue by getting the men together, the arresting officer and the Presidents friend a Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. It is said he will not address the night in question. But instead it will be a more casual setting a meeting at the picnic table at the White House. The arrest sparked a national debate about race, class and police attitudes toward minorities. The President quickly got involved, commenting at a news conference that the police acted "stupidly".

An because he is President that word rang accross the world. I am sure that he had no other choice but to comment because of all the minorities that back him with his election. It is just sad that he selected that word. It is also saddening that he has to take this much time out of his business scheduled to address this.

(http://www.printthis.clicability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title-Obama%2C+prof%2C+cop...)
Week 9

Airborne Settles Lawsuit for $23.3 Million

Some of you may remember this case back from 2008. It invovles Airborne, the herbal supplement company that once claimed to help fight off colds. The company was thrown into a class-action lawsuit brought on for false advertising. It was determined to be false advertising becuase there was "no credible evidence that what is in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment." It basically it a very well-marketed placebo pill. Once the plaintiff filed suit against the company, Airborne's advertising campaign stopped mentioning the cold-curing claims and instead touted claims that it helped boost the body's immune systems.

Read the full article here.

Five Nightmare Photography Court Cases

This article lists five photography court cases that have to do with copyright infringement, rigth of publicity and defamation. I have listed them below with a brief description of each. Too read the full article go here.

1. Lara Jade Coton Vs. Bob Burge and TVX Films - Coton, who if 14 years old, took a provocative self-portrait shot of herself and placed it on deviantART protected with a watermark and copyright symbol. She later found her image was put on the cover of a porn film called "Body Magic."

2. Flickr member sues Virgin Mobile after appearing in an Australian ad - I previously posted and entry about this story and the title really explains it all.

3. Corbis Sued For Losing Photos - Freelance photographer Chris Usher signed up to Corbis to supplement his sales to Time, Newsweek and other major publications. He asked for his images back when he grea dissappointed at Corbis' licensing deals and billing practices. Unfortunatley, Corbis lost, or misplaced as they put it, a large majority of his photos.

4. Passer-By Sues Philip-Lorca diCorcia for Selling his Photo - Philip-Lorca diCorcia took some photos of people walking down the street in New York in a public place. He placed the photos in an exhibition and sold them as prints. He was then sued by Emo Nussenzweig, who appeared in one of the photos and considered the sale an invasion of privacy.

5. Goosed Farmer Seeks $7.5 Million in Damages for Photo - Non-commercial photographer John Burwell took a photo of poultry farmer Andrew Marsinko with a goose on his knee. Burwell then submitted the image to Jupitermedia who licensed it to a company called Leanin' Tree. Leanin' Tree then used the photo on the cover of a greeting card. Marsinko sued Burwell, his wife, Jupitermedia, Getty Images and Leanin' Tree for defamation, unauthorized use of a picture, conspiracy and reckless infliction of emotional distress. Marsinko claims that he never signed a model release form.

Weight-Loss Marketers Fined for False Ads

This issue came up back in 2007 but I thought it nicely illustrated what can happen if companies put forth misleading advertising. The FTC fined Xenadrine EFX, One A Day Weight Smart, CortiSlim and TrimSpa $25 million for making false advertising clamis ranging from rapid weight loss to reducing the risk of serious illnesses like cancer, osteoporosis and Alzheimer's. The companies accepted the FTC fines, but without admitting guilt or accepting liability. One major issue here was that some of the brands used endorsements from celebrities to promote their products, but had to stop making the claims. "Testimonials from individuals are not a substitute for science," said Deborah Platt Majoras, then Chairman of the FTC. "And that's what Americans need to understand. The marketers are required to back up the claims with the science, and if they can't do that they can't make the claim." Good insight here on the use of testimonials in advertising. Pretty straight forward, I'd say.

Read the whole article here.

Mexican ad plagiarizes Apple's "I'm a Mac" commercials?

A new telecommunications company in Mexico is feeling the heat from the advertising industry after creating commercial that looks and feels a lot like Apple's famous "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. The ad agency who created the ad doesn't seem too sorry about it, merely saying that every idea in advertising comes from someone else's idea, that nothing is original. Others, however, say it's blatant plagiarism.

There's no mention in this article about Apple's response to this ad. To me, everything about it reminds me of Apple, which seems like a strong case for plagiarism. The story includes the video of the Meixcan ad.

Microsoft tweaks ad after complaints from Apple

Apple threatened Microsoft with a lawsuit over Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" commercial in which a mom and daughter shopped for a new laptop. In the original commercial, the daughter named the price of the Mac laptop and said it was too expensive. Apple then contacted Microsoft and told them their ads were incorrect because they had lowered their prices. To avoid a lawsuit, Microsoft slightly edited the ads, removing the price and instead make a general reference to Mac having higher prices. Read the full story here.

Outrage Over T-Shirts With Rique Slogans

An Australian chain of kids clothing stores recently began selling a line of t-shirts and infant suits that feature risque and controversial slogans on them. Some of the lines are pretty extreme, in my opinion, so rather than posting the lines here on the blog, I'll let you go to the article here if you want to see exactly what some of the lines are. Many child advocates are stepping forward with remarks against the clothing saying it exploits children for adults' entertainment.

The article made me think about how the clothing line would be received here in the United States and what legal issues could be raised. Obscenity is definitely one issue that comes to mind, especially because the clothing is specifically for children. A defense here though would most likely be First Amendment Freedom of Speech. I personally think these t-shirts are in poor taste and would probably never put one on my kid, but I must honestly admit that they are amusing, humorous and very provocative.

Aging celebrity photos

Trendhunter Magazine's website has posted a bunch of digitally-enhanced photos of what they think some celebrities would look like in 30 years. The pictures are kind of funny, but thanks to this class it made me wonder if the "artist" or the website could get sued by some of these celebrities for false light or appropriation of likeness. It's not clear to me if the website is making a profit, and I don't think there's any actual malice to these pics, but I think the site's defense could be parody. Take a look at the photos here: http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/digitally-aged-celebrities-stars-in-2040

Student sues coach for distributing private Facebook info

While doing research for my paper, I came across this story on the Student Press Law Center's website. In this incident, a 16-year-old girl filed a lawsuit against the cheerleading coach after the coach printed out private information from the girl's Facebook profile and distributed it to teachers and other students. The student, Mandi Jackson, said the coach required the girls to give the coach their passwords to their accounts. While some students immediately deleted their profiles, Jackson did not, and the coach then read and printed out private messages Jackson and another student conducted on the site. Because of the private material in her account, Jackson was not allowed to participate in cheerleading activities. Jackson said she would have been fine with the coach viewing her public profile, but the coach crossed the line in collecting passwords and reading and then distributing the private information.

I have to agree with the student on this issue. It's one thing to check students' public profiles, since they're public. If the students are unwise enough to have inappropriate material on public profiles that would reflect badly on themselves or their teams/schools, they should be punished. I think what makes the coach's actions even worse is that she distributed the private information to others - if the students didn't give her permission to do that and the school has no policy in place about this, she shouldn't have done it.

Hotels.com denied trademark for domain name

In what must be pretty devastating news to the company that owns Hotels.com, they have been denied the ability to trademark their name because it's too common and generic. This is not the first determination of that decision, either. This latest ruling comes from a Federal Appeals court that is backing up the same decision, originally made by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

In the article that I found about this case, it said that hotels.com tried to argue that adding the "dot com" to the word "hotels" would distinguish it from the generic term. Unfortunately for them, the Federal Court of Appeals didn't agree. In their initial argument to the U.S. Trademark board, the company presented an online survey they had that indicated that 76% of the 277 people who responded to the survey viewed "hotels.com" as a brand name. The board said the study didn't do enough to distinguish a domain name and a brand name to the survey participants. This pretty much leaves the name hotels.com unprotected in terms of anyone else who wants to use it to their advantage, say in advertising. This makes me wonder about all of the famous generic-named website companies there are that are similar to this, whether or not they have trademarks, and if any of the people who start these companies have considered this possibility when they name their companies/domains.

Copyright Infringement Case, $1.92 Million Penalty!

This article talks about what seems to be an appeal trial for Jammie Thomas-Rasset who was found liable for willfully infringing 24 copyrights controlled by four major record labels. In this case the jury decided on a $80,000 per song damage award resulting in a $1.92 million total damages award to be paid to the record labels. This was an almost $1.7 million award increase from her first trial where that jury decided on a $9,250 per song damage reward. This is crazy to me! Especially for only infringing on 24 songs where there are probably millions of other people out there who have illegally downloaded thousands upon thousands of songs. Seems to me that the record labels are trying to make an example out of Thomas-Rasset, which is very unfortunate and puts them in an negative, bullying light to me.

Read more about his case here.

Facebook Can Use Your Pictures For Ads, No Permission Required

In the past couple days a handful of my Facebook friends have been posting in my news feed a warning about how my posted photos can now be used by Facebook without my permission. The actual message states "Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission." It continues to explain how you can protect your photos by changing your privacy settings. This article that I found was just as perplexed by these warning messages as I was. I was baffled by how they could do this being that it seems like a classic legal case of misappropriation. The article states that Facebook admits in its terms of service that all Intellectual Property content, like photos and videos, belong to you, the user. But the fine print essentially allows Facebook to do what it pleases with such content, with some limitations. Facebook had not stepped forward yet and made any comments clearing up this matter but some Facebook administrators say that their policy has not changed regarding photos being used in third-party advertisements. Still, the Facebook blog says the site can use your photo for something that you have expressed interest in without your permission. Facebook needs to come forward and publically announce what their policy decision really is. It will be interesting to see what they decide and how clearly they communicate it to the public. It will then be interesting to see the publics reaction to the decision.

Web News Site Publishes Hacked Information

Tech Crunch is a website that was founded to be a source for reviews and news about new Internet products and companies. Since its inception in 2005, as described in the "about" section on their site they have since morphed into "a network of technology focused sites offering a wide range of content and new media." According to this article, Tech Crunch intercepted various pieces of information that were confidential Twitter documents stolen by hackers. There were 310 documents in all, consisting of "everything from growth projections to job applicant resumes to personal credit card numbers." The company announced it had possession of the documents and that it intended to post some of the hacked information. This led to a big Internet controversy about the ethics of publishing such ill-gotten information.

According to our class studies, we know that Tech Crunch could be sued for Invasion of Privacy/Publication of Private or Embarrassing Facts, depending on the information they choose to publish. According to Sam Bayard at the Citizen Media Law Project, the possible laws that could be broken by Tech Crunch in this type of move could be threefold: trade secret misappropriation, invasion of privacy and receipt of stolen goods. Bayard says that to date Tech Crunch appears to be clear of any immediate lawsuits or charges. I find it nteresting what Tech Crunch could be in violation of with publication. I'm lucky this one wasn't on the Media Law Exam, because the only issue I would have forseen would have been Invasion of Privacy.

Trademark Law Case: Frosty Treats, Inc. vs. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc.

This was a case back from 2004/05. To understand the case a little background must be given on both companies. Here we go. Frosty Treats, Inc. is the name of one of the largest ice cream truck street vendors in the United States. Their trucks feature a Frosty Treats logo and a Safety Clown, which is an image of a clown pointing children towards the back of the vehicle. In the mid 90's, Sony released a video game titled Twisted Metal 2 that allows players to wreak havoc on streets with a variety of vehicles. One of these vehicles included an ice cream truck prominently featuring a logo that say Frosty Treats. The ice cream truck in the game was also driven by a crazed clown named Sweet Tooth.

As you can imagine a lawsuit was filed by Frosty Treats, Inc. against Sony contending that the game infringed on the company's trademarks through the use of the phrase "Frosty Treats" as well as similarities between the video game clown and the company's own safety clown. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri dismissed the case, holding that the name could not be protected because it was generic. U.S. District Judge Scott Wright stated that "the various depictions of the Sweet Tooth character in Sony's Twisted Metal games and Frosty Treats Safety Clown are so dissimilar that no reasonable trier of fact could conclude that they are confusingly similar." Frosty Treats, Inc. then appealed the dismissal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals who only affirmed the dismissal made before.

This case reminds me of the sample test question we were given in class on Thursday with Green Bean Cola, saying that the term could possibly not be trademarked because it is descriptive of the product.

Read more about this case here.

Colorado man faces criminal charge in libel case

The article about this case ran in the LA Times about a year ago. What makes it interesting though is, as the title says, the man who allegedly committed an act of libel is being charged as a criminal, unlike most libel cases that are tried in civil court. This is because Colorado is one of a dwindling number of states with criminal law against libel based on a statute that has existed in the state since the 19th century. The actual case revolves around J.P. Weichel, who allegedly posted comments about his former girlfriend on the Craigslist "rants and raves" forum, accusing her of child abuse and welfare fraud and making crude comments about her sex life. He claims he "just wanted to vent" about a visitation dispute with the woman over their young daughter. As news of the prosecution has circulated it has prompted critics of the statute law to call for a revision. One lawyer quoted in the article stated "It's shocking the statute exists." To read more about the story click here.

Copyright Children's Names ?

While reading the sad story of the murdered parents of 12 children. I discovered that at one point the father attempted to copyright the names of his adopted children.

The article said that whenever the DFS attempted to contact the father and mention the children's names he would demand millions in cash claiming copyright infringement.

Is that right ? Can this be done ?

After the state wrote back that the State would take legal action if the letters did not stop. They stopped.

Privacy and Sexism go hand-in-hand

This is an excellent article about the ramifications of privacy invasion and how they can often go beyond one person simply invading another person's privacy. This article brings forth the issues related to sexism in the workplace, how it happens and how it is often ignored or accepted, especially when it relates to women in nontraditional cAreers.

Erin Andrews, a sports journalist, became a victim of video voyeurism after someone shot video of her in a private moment through her hotel room peephole. While they are trying to catch the person who committed this act, the damage that this could cause to women who work in sports, specifically Erin, is enormous.

It is already difficult as the article outlines, because they sometimes must deal with athletes sexually harassing them and sometimes even assaulting them, while they are working as reporters. There is a level of disrespect for their work in the field as reporters, and this privacy invasion has created another hurdle for women.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/post/Assault-on-Erin-Andrews-privacy-scary-for-all-f?urn=top,177592

Bible distribution at Missouri schools

A long held practice in South Iron Elementary School in Annapolis, MO., 120 miles south of St. Louis, was to distribute bibles to grade school students each year. Parents had raised complaints about the effort in 2005, and the school had voted to allow the distribution to continue anyway.

In February of 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of four sets of parents who said the district should be stopped from "endorsing religion." The parents said that they didn't want to school telling their children what their religious beliefs should be because they felt that should be done at home.

After one court upheld an injunction until trial, a three judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July of this year that classroom distribution would be prohibited.

A law group out of Florida who represented the school district says the appeals court ruling concerned a practice no longer in existence.

The current policy, according to the representative, is to allow people and groups to distribute literature, with district approval, before or after school or during lunch break, but not in the classroom. The new policy is open to religious groups beyond Gideon, the original distributor, and is the subject of a pending court ruling at the district level.

If it is open to all religious groups, do you all think that would suffice? I think it would have to be expanded to groups beyond religious groups to give fair access to everyone and to not be "narrowly" drawn.

http://www.fox4kc.com/news/sns-ap-mo--biblesforkids,0,3714930.story

This is a case that began a while ago, but it is interesting. The issue was whether the FCC provided adequate explanation, or acted arbitrarily and capriciously, in changing its policy to permit isolated uses of expletives on broadcast television to be considered indecent under federal laws.

Prior to the case, FCC vs Fox Television stations, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Constitution allowed the government to prohibit the broadcast of vulgar words that were indecent, though maybe not obscene. The FCC previously only acted against broadcasters if they used vulgar language repeatedly or for a sustained period of time.

But after it got complaints when Cher used the F word and Nicole Riche use variations of the F word during the 2003 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards, the FCC issued an order stressing the ban on single usage violations. Fox and several other news outlets challenged the order, and my limited understanding of case law says that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the FCC in April of this year.

At any rate, the case is interesting and is a good discussion related to Indecency and the First Amendment.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/02/nation/na-expletive2

Power.com countersues Facebook over user data

Power.com, an aggregator of social networking sites Sued facebook, on Friday, July 10th, in a California court to try to resolve who owns the data on social networking sites, the user or the sites.

Power says users do and plans to take the stand that users have "complete and total ownership and controlof their content, as well as to protect their content from other users and corporate entities.

The countersuit accuses Facebook of unfair competition, restraint of trade and creating a monopoly. Facebook sued Power,com for alleged copyright and trademark infringement,unlawful competition and fraud.

It looks like both parties believe strongly in their stand and will fight to the bitter end.

To read more see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/0710/AR20090710026331.ht...

Blogger sentenced for leaking music

Blogger Kevin Cogill was sentenced this week to two months of home confinement and a year of probation for posting music from a yet-to-be-released Guns n Roses album. He must also appear in an anti-piracy PSA. Interestingly, Cogill is also cooperating with authorities find out who originally leaked the music - it sounds like he doesn't even know who gave him the music or where it came from.

In this technology era, it seems to be common practice to leak music on the internet before its release date - it gets fans excited about the new album and generates interest in the artist. If these leaks lead to good reviews and heightened sales, the band may not have cared as much that copyright laws were broken. However, since Cogill posted nine of the album's songs, which were poorly reviewed, and record sales were then slow, the band could have argued that Cogill not only broke copyright laws, but also caused them to lose money. It seems the judge disagreed with this point though, and ruled that Cogill only broke federal copyright laws and had no financial motive behind the postings.

AP Fighting Online Copyright Infringement

The Associated Press has been active in filing suits against websites and other news services reprinting their content without permission. This week in New York a settlement was reached with a website that used AP content without authorization. In this particular case, the AP relied on a 1918 Supreme Court decision referred to as the "hot news" doctrine. The decision was that while a fact in itself cannot be copyrighted, there is still a right for a news provider who publishes time-sensitive news to sue for damages another who reprints that time-sensitive information. The new case decided this week held that this 91-year-old legal precedent still is valid.

The article detailing this case found here says it's just another in a series of cases that the AP is fighting in order to protect their original content. While I believe they have every right to protect the original content created by their staff, my mind boggles at all of the times in a day that the AP are ripped off online. There is no possible way they could fight even a third of all of the times their content is reprinted without permission on the Internet. But I suppose if they fight against the largest web aggregators and sites that steal their stories, in that way they can at least discourage people from using their material. It must be to their benefit financially to fight these cases despite legal costs, or I can't imagine they would be so vigilant in their fight.

West County Fir Protection District May Become Tobacco Free

The West County Fire District is planning on becoming the first fire district in Missouri to be totally tobacco free. The plan is to take effect next year and apply even when employees are off the clock. The Chief says the it is a health issue. A firefighter is required to be in excellent shape. It was also mentioned that this would help keep down rising health insurance cost.

That is great that they are concerned with the firefighters, even off duty. It is nice for a company to help you quit, but to possibly deny hiring you because you smoke seems a little off the wall. This seems to be something toward invasion of privacy.

(http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-firefighter-smoking-ban-071009,0,591270,print.story)

Week 8~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Embattled AIG Hoping to Avoid Backlash When Paying Out More Bonuses

AIG received a record $180 billion in federal bailout money, it incited a national uproar when paying out $165 million in bonuses. In an attempt to avoid similar outburst the insurance giant took steps to stop further crys about future bonuses. This time the figures are nowhere near the staggering amount as before: only $2.4 million.

This is very upsetting that we can give bonuses when they should be happy to just have a job now a days. Look at all that money that went to the auto manufacturers and then the Chryslers plant in Fenton still closed. And how more upsetting that other Chrysler Plants in Canada and Mexico get to stay open withe the American tax payers money. Something is really wrong with America.

(http://blogs.abcnews.com/the note/2009/07embattleed-aig-hoping-to-avoid-backlash-when-…)
( week 7 )

Report: Bush Surveillance Program Was Massive

The Bush administration built a surveillance operation to pull in oceans of information far beyond the wiretapping previously acknowledged. A federal inspector team said Friday that this is questioning the legal basis of the effort yet still shielding all details on the grounds that are too secret to reveal. But the activities involved is classified although still in use. Attorney General John Ashcroft wasn't aware up until March 2004, although he was approving them since 9/11/01.
This just amazed me how anything can be passed and half of the higher Government don’t pay attention to what they are passing. It is also a heads up that the Government could listen to almost any conversation that they like but so many terrorist probably reside in the United States and can't be caught.
(http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8052894)
The Associated Press 　( week 6 )

Newspaper Associations Want Their Copyrights Revisited

Some newspaper industry leaders feel that copyright law needs to be reworked in order to protect the original content of the papers from news aggregators all over the WWW. Jason Klein is the head of the National Newspaper Network, a partnership with the Newspaper Association of America, which is comprised of companies like the The New York Times, Hearst, Tribune, MediaNews Group, Gannett, Advance and others. Klein voiced their concerns by saying,
"Part of the challenge around investment in quality, original investigative journalism is that it gets ripped off so quickly without attribution...Google picks it up and profits from it. Other entities rewrite stories very quickly. And all the copyright laws were written in an era before the internet emerged and this was a real trend. I'm not an intellectual property attorney but it certainly seems to me that this is a very good time to revisit the copyright protection that newspapers get for original journalism in this era."
While it's easy to understand the frustration of the already troubled newspapers and the constant linking and rehashing of their original content, there seems to be a big obstacle in how to rework these laws, or whether to change them at all. There is controversy from both sides. Said Klein of the highly contested debate,
"Look, it's certainly a delicate topic because who wants to invite more government regulation in any realm?" he added. "But I think there's a growing chorus saying it's time to reevaluate this." Read more from this article.

YouTube Wins Small Battles, Not Viacom War in Copyright Infringement Cases

It was said that YouTube was a copyright infringement lawsuit waiting to happen. When Google acquired the company, they put enough stock in that notion that budget funds were set aside for legal battles. YouTube turned out to be many lawsuits waiting to happen. But thanks to a U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton of the Southern District of New York, they now have a few less lawsuits to worry about. The judge threw out claims for statutory and punitive damages brought against YouTube by a madding crowd of people even including a European soccer league. The judge reminded the plaintiffs that works created outside of the United States were not covered by copyright law.

Since the soccer players are only a small part of a large class action suit that includes American plaintiffs, and since the powerful Viacom company is also seeking damages against YouTube for American works that are covered by American copyright law, it seems to me that the chances of YouTube escaping this completely unharmed are not very good. Read more here and here.

Judge admonished for raunchy internet files

An Article in the Los Angeles Times talks about chief judge of the U.S 9th Circuit Court of Appeals being reprimanded by federal judges for being " judicially imprudent" and "exhibiting poor judgement by palacing sexually explicit photos and videos on an internet server yhat could be accessed by the public.

The proceedings steemed from a LA Times article published in June 2008 when Judge Kozinski was presiding over a high profile obsenity trial in Los Angeles. The article says that Kozinski maintained a website that accessible to the public, which featured explicit photos and videos. The site was intended to be private.

In the end the panel found that Kozinski was not guilty of "Judicial misconduct", but warrented public admonishement.

It goes to show that even judges make mistakes too
To view full article see:http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kozinski3-2009jul03,0,2032797.story

Flickr Right of Publicity Case

Allison Chang and Justin Ho-Wee Wong sued Australian-based Virgin Mobile Pty Ltd. alleging a number of tort claims including misappropriation of Chang's right of publicity. Plaintiffs claimed that Virgin wrongfully used Chang's picture in an Australian advertising campaign. Virgin obtained the photo, taken by Wong, off of Flickr, where Wong uploaded it attaching a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license. Chang argued that the court could exercise personal jurisdiction based on three contacts: 1. Virgin accessing a Flickr server located in Texas, 2. Virgin's contract (i.e. the Creative Commons license) with Wong, a Texas resident, and 3. the intrastate effects of Virgin's use of Chang's photograph in the advertising campaign. The court found that Chang was not able to sufficiently establish personal jurisdiction based of these contacts. Read why the court decided this and see the ad here.

I was pretty surprised to read that the plaintiff lost this appropriation case where Virgin blatantly pulled the picture off of Flickr and used it in their ad. I think the biggest factor in Virgin's win in this case was that the ad was only in Australia, but it also just goes to show that not all right of publicity cases are won by the plaintiff.

Sullivan Case may apply to Jamaica Law

Media officials and a parliamentary committee were engaged in a heated verbal battle. The two sides were attempting to reach a comprise on whether or not to accept Sullivan versus New York Times principle as it relates to the exposure of of corrupt public officials. The Media Association of Jamaica and the Press Association of Jamaica have asked that the "Sullivan approach be adopted into Jamaican law."

We learned from readings and lecture that under the Sullivan case that damages cannot be awarded to a public official for defamation as it relates to his official conduct and the burden of proving actual malice to the public official before a publication is defamatory.

What I found interesting was that Jamaica is just now debating over this issue.

To read full article see
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090627/lead/lead3.html

High School Principal Confiscates Student Magazine

According to this article in the Orange County Register, the Principal of Orange County High confiscated all copies of a student-produced magazine that he complained contained a "gang like" picture and "offensive" companion article. This has caused a controversy not only amongst the students but from others who are advocates for the rights of the students' free speech. Also stated in the article, "California has the strongest set of laws protecting student speech and student publications in the nation." It goes on to say that California law "allows school administrators to restrict student speech that is obscene, libelous or slanderous. They can also prohibit material that creates a 'clear and present danger' of inciting students to break the law, violate school regulations, or cause "substantial disruption" of school operations.' Certainly shades of last week's guest speaker and the Hazelwood case. Although according to the article, it's fairly clear that what the students wanted to publish in the magazine is protected speech, and the principal overreacted in trying to project a certain image of his school. At this time, however, no lawsuits have been filed nor is anyone talking about filing them in the future.

Libel Lawsuits Involving Social Networkers, Bloggers on the Rise

It's not surprising that with the huge influx of people on Twitter and joining the world of blogging that libel lawsuits against people using these forms of expression are on the rise, according to the Media Law Resource Center. One recent example is a lawsuit filed against rock singer Courtney Love. According to court documents, Love carelessly aired her problem with a clothing designer on Twitter and her blog, calling him a thief, liar and drug dealer who has a record of prostitution. A comment I'm sure he's not exactly thrilled about or is helping his business in any way.

Another court case this year concluded with a woman from Ohio being awarded $129,794 after a blogger wrote about her house being haunted. Because the numbers of cases are growing and damages are high, some people such as the Media Bloggers Association are advising full-time bloggers who make a living from their blogs to take out insurance policies to protect them against libel, defamation and copyright infringement. According to this article, sometimes lesser decisions against small-time bloggers or Tweeters can be covered under homeowners' insurance policies, but each should check their individual policy to see what it covers. The Media Bloggers Association partnered up with an insurance company to sell liability coverage policies to bloggers, called BlogInsure. Bloggers have to take a test to prove their knowledge of the pertinent laws before they will be issued a policy. Robert Cox, President of the Media Bloggers Association promoted a free online course called Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers offered at www.newsu.org so that those who are at risk can learn their legal limits. I'm certainly not into blogging or social networking enough to have to worry about insurance policies, but I suppose making sure you're covered against huge monetary judgements is prudent if blogging is your livelihood. Or at least familiarize yourself completely with what constitutes libel. I think it's safe to say that after this course, at least none of us will have to worry.