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NOTE: This page was first created for the Law of Electronic Media 2007 class (LEM07), and uploaded on August 12, 2007. On January 14, 2008, the process began of adding some resources more directly applicable to the Cyberspace Law Seminar 2008 (CLS08).

It will be added to and revised from time to time -- primarily in the "Articles" sections with articles thought to be of relevance to topics covered in the course. It is intended as no more than a small sampling of the range of organizations, publications and other sites that one might list. (Aside from what would have been a very long list of Web sites maintained by various media outlets themselves, nothing has been deliberately omitted for reasons other than considerations of space.) It is recommended that, at a minimum, you do a quick click on each site to get a sense of the variety of institutions and sources of information -- and potential employers -- available to you, both this semester and once you are in practice. -- N.J. - Last updated 20071030, 20080114, 22, 23, 27, 28, 30, 31; 20080201, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 18, 22, 27; 20080321, 24, 28; 20080403.

What could you do with $10 billion worth of "the public's airwaves"? "The F.C.C. has set a minimum price of $10 billion for five blocks of licenses — 1,099 in all. . . . The auction’s daily bids can be watched on the Web site, auctions.fcc.gov." Stephen Labaton, "Airwaves, Web Power at Auction," New York Times, January 22, 2008.

Convergence. "Buyers of this year's most advanced televisions might notice a curious new feature -- a little jack that connects the sets directly to the Internet." Alex Pham and Dawn C. Chmielewski, "Connecting the Net With Your TV Set; As more content is put online and broadband improves, shows could be watched without local stations or cable," Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2008.

Road bumps along the Flat World's Information Superhighway to the global business. "Nick Thomas, European media industry analyst at Jupiter Research in London, said, 'If you’re an intellectual property lawyer, there’s probably a lot of money to be made over the next few years.'” Eric Pfanner, "In Europe, Apple Faces Hurdles to iTunes Movie Rentals,"New York Times, January 21, 2008. "Peter Scharr, Germany’s data protection commissioner, told a hearing of the European Parliament that I.P. addresses should generally be seen as personal information . . .. Mr. Scharr is the head of a group of European privacy regulators who are preparing a report on ow Internet search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, comply with Europe’s privacy laws, which are generally much tougher than those in the United States. . . . Google and other companies maintain that I.P. addresses are not personally identifiable information." Saul Hansell, "Europe: Your I.P. Address is Personal," New York Times, January 22, 2008.

And how can the U.S. regulate offshore, virtual gambling casinos? "The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 made it illegal for banks and other financial institutions to process online wagers. The goal was to find an indirect way to regulate offshore casinos, which are outside the jurisdiction of American law enforcement. . . . The question now is whether the banks are capable of stopping the transactions. Matt Richtel, "BITS: Congress to Take Testimony on Internet Gambling Ban," New York Times, April 1, 2008,  7:37 p.m.

If 95% of global Internet traffic is moving on under-ocean cables, what would happen if one of those cables were cut? "India Internet capacity at 80 pct after cables break," New York Times/Reuters, February 1, 2008, 2:32 a.m. EST; "Most telecommunications specialists and cable operators say that sabotage seems unlikely, but no one knows specifically how the cables were damaged or if the incidents were related. . . .  'These are owned by private operators,' he [Col. R. S. Parihar, the secretary of the Internet Service Providers Association of India] said, 'and there are no governments or armies protecting these cables.'” Heather Timmons, "Cut Undersea Cables Raise Questions of Safety," New York Times, February 4, 2008. And for possible consumer responses to these threats, now that five more cables have been mysteriously cut, see Annalee Newitz, "Media Culture: The Fragility of the Information Age," AlterNet, February 6, 2006.

Cyberspace Business Models: How to Prosper by Giving it Away. “'I’ve always envied the movie industry when they put a film out in the cinema, then they go to retail with a different business model and then to pay television and then free TV,' he [Gerhard Florin, Electronic Art's executive vice president] said. 'They have the same content reaching different audiences with different models, and we could never figure out a way to do that.'" Seth Schiesel, "The Video Game May be Free, But to Be a Winner Can Cost Money,"New York Times, January 21, 2008. And hoping to prosper by paying $44.6 billion for it. Miguel Helft, "Microsoft Bids $44.6 Billion for Yahoo," New York Times, February 1, 2008. "Big Bother is Watching You!" CBS is testing a system of delivering ads to cell phones that uses GPS to advertise places near your location. Laura M. Holson, "In CBS Test, Mobile Ads Find Users," New York Times, February 6, 2008.

Meanwhile, Congress considers an "Internet Freedom Preservation Act" that "requires the Federal Communications Commission to assess whether broadband providers are 'blocking, thwarting or unreasonably interfering' with consumers' rights to access, send, receive or offer content, applications and services over networks."  Associated Press, "Bill Bars Web Traffic Discrimination," New York Times, February 13, 2008, 3:57 p.m. ET.

Content, Conduit and Network Neutrality. "The agency [F.C.C.] is considering rules and enforcement decisions to force the cable and telephone companies to disclose their policies more clearly for delaying traffic that they say is clogging their systems. Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, has been the subject of a complaint after it acknowledged that it slowed down some Internet traffic of BitTorrent, a file-sharing service, because of heavy use of video-sharing applications.
Consumer groups have said that such discrimination against some content providers has been aimed at Comcast’s rivals and is both unnecessary and threatens to undermine the freewheeling nature of the Internet." Stephan Labaton, "F.C.C. Weighing Limits on Slowing Web Traffic," New York Times, February 26, 2008.

Obscenity, Indecency, Blasphemy and Censorship. Is "NYPD Blue" too blue for TV? The FCC forbids depiction of "sexual activities" and "sexual organs" and thinks the brief display of the buttocks of a woman entering a shower deserves a $1.4 million fine. ABC asserts the buttocks are not a "sexual organ." Should these regulations apply to the Internet? AP, "Nude Buttocks May Cost ABC $1.4 Million," Washington Post, January 26, 2008, 7:15 a.m. Sticks, stones and the words that can hurt you. Journalist gets death penalty for downloading an article Afghanistan's upper house thinks is "insulting Islam." "Afghan MPs back blasphemy death; The upper house of the Afghan parliament has supported a death sentence issued against a journalist for blasphemy in northern Afghanistan," BBC News, January 30, 2008, 9:03 a.m. GMT. "Myanmar authorities have stepped up their surveillance of the Internet since the beginning of the month, pressuring Internet cafe owners to register personal details of all users and to program screen captures every five minutes on each computer, the release said." Associated Press, "Myanmar Arrests Blogger, Watchdog Says," New York Times, January 31, 2008, 12:47 a.m.

Privacy. "RFD" used to refer to the Post Office's "rural free delivery" of mail. Today, "RFID" is providing urban free delivery of information about you to anyone with curiosity and a receiver. Jaikumar Vijayan, "Privacy Concerns Over 'Leaky' U.S. Passport Card; A proposed new RFID-enabled U.S. passport card poses serious security and privacy risks for users, the Centers for Democracy and Technology warns," Computerworld/PC World, January 8, 2008, 6:00 p.m. PST. (And see, "Myanmar Arrests Blogger, Watchdog Says," above.) "[T]he Senate handed the White House a major victory by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants." Eric Lichtblau, "Bush Presses House on Surveillance," New York Times, February 13, 2008. "Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data." Maria Aspan, "How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free,"New York Times, February 13, 2008; Maria Aspan, "Quitting Facebook Gets Easier," New York Times, February 13, 2008. "A group led by a Princeton University computer security researcher has developed a simple method to steal encrypted information stored on computer hard disks. The technique, which could undermine security software protecting critical data on computers, is as easy as chilling a computer memory chip with a blast of frigid air from a can of dust remover." John Markoff, "Researchers Find Way to Steal Encrypted Data," New York Times, February 22, 2008. "Two State Department employees were fired and a third has been disciplined for improperly accessing Sen. Barack Obama's passport file, the State Department announced last night." (A story involving the Privacy Act, the propriety of the government's "contracting out" access to sensitive passport information, and an illustration of the ease with which employees' access to sensitive data (e.g., medical, military, criminal, academic, bank records) can be (and probably is) used for personal purposes.) Glenn Kessler, "Two Fired for Viewing Obama Passport File; State Department Investigating Whether Contractors Broke Law," Washington Post, March 21, 2008, p. A3.

Piracy; Copyright; Fair Use. "A teenager hacked into the outfit charged with protecting companies like Sony, Universal, and Activision from online piracy -- the most daring exploit yet in the escalating war between fans and corporate giants. Guess which side is winning." Daniel Roth, "The Pirates Can't Be Stopped," Portfolio, February 2008. "One of Denmark's largest ISPs [Tele2] said on Wednesday it will fight a court injunction mandating that it shut off access to a file-sharing Web site [The Pirate Bay], in what could be a closely-watched battle with the music industry in Europe." Jeremy Kirk, "Danish Service Provider to Fight Injunction," IDG News Service/New York Times, February 13, 2008. How can 1.2 million iPhones have gone missing? "For months, tourists, small entrepreneurs and smugglers of electronic goods have been buying iPhones in the United States and then shipping them overseas. There the phones’ digital locks are broken so they can work on local cellular networks . . .." David Barboza, "After China Ships Out iPhones, Smugglers Make It a Return Trip,"New York Times, February 18, 2008.
 

Question: I heard a storage gadget is available for the Nintendo DS online that would allow me to play downloaded games, maybe even big titles. It sounds interesting, but I'm worried that it isn't legal. What do you think?

Answer: These gadgets fall into a legal gray area. Sure, they can be used legitimately. For example, you could play games you've created yourself. Or, you could play games made by other amateur developers. But the gadgets can also be used for piracy. Popular copyrighted games could be downloaded from the Internet. This is clearly illegal. Games for the DS are expensive; I know firsthand. But breaking the law is not the way to save money. So, I wouldn't do this. Rent games if you can't afford to buy them.

Google's ads competing with Web sites it's searching; search engines, deep linking and advertising. "Retailers and publishers have fought hard to work their way up in the ranking of Google’s search results and refine the search features of their own Web sites to help users once they arrive. Now, Google is taking a greater role in helping users search within particular sites. And some of the same retailers and publishers are not happy about it." Bob Tedeschi, "A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites," New York Times, March 24, 2008.

Politics, Campaigns, Governing and the Internet. "Obama has shattered fundraising records and challenged ideas about the way presidential bids are financed [with] contributions from more than 1 million donors [totalling] $91 million in the first two months of 2008 alone, most of it in small amounts over the Internet." Matthew Mosk, "Obama Rewriting Rules for Raising Campaign Money Online," Washington Post, March 28, 2008, p. A6.

. . . And "Practicing Law" Online. "[An Iowa couple] whose marriage ended last month, are part of a growing statewide and national movement. Iowans are increasingly handling domestic disputes, small claims and divorces with little or no help from attorneys, according to lawyers, judges and recent studies. Many consider the growing do-it-yourself approach a response to high legal fees and an explosion of free online forms." Grant Schulte, "More Iowans handle legalities alone," Des Moines Register, March 24, 2008.

What is "the media"?/First Amendment. Andy Hamilton, "Athletes' Photographs Under Review; Expert Talked to Coaches About Sites' Dangers," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 22, 2007, p. A1; Scott Dochterman, "A Question of Judgment; Douglas' Facebook Photos Strike Nerve with Iowa Staff," The Gazette, August 22, 2007, p. C1 [Note: The Gazette requires (free) account; use drop down menus on Web page to go to date and page specified]. Tom Ashbrook, "9/11, Fear, and Politics," On Point, WBUR, September 10, 2007; Bill Carter, "NBC to Offer Downloads of Its Shows," New York Times, September 20, 2007.

International/Comparative Media Law. "Afghan MPs pass new mass media law; The BBC World Service Trust has played a crucial role in the debate about Afghanistan's new mass media law," BBC World Service Trust, June 21, 2007; K.C. Jones, "Yahoo Seeks Dismissal Of Lawsuit Alleging It Helped China Torture, Jail Dissident; Yahoo insists it's bound by Chinese law, not U.S. law, when it does business in China," InformationWeek, August 28, 2007 05:29 PM.

Political Speech.Paul Kane, "Craig Considers Remaining in Senate During Legal Battle," Washington Post, September 5, 2007; audio of Senator Larry Craig's cell phone conversation with lawyer Billy Martin regarding statement (provided by Roll Call on its site). Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear, "Fred Thompson Makes a Late-Night Entry,"Washington Post, September 6, 2007. Periscope, "The Oprah Ticket; The Most Powerful Woman in Show Business is About to Do Barack Obama a Big Favor," Newsweek, September 10, 2007. Eric Pfanner, "Britain's Labor Party Hires Agency That Aided Thatcher's Rise,"New York Times, October 2, 2007; Brian Stelter, "The Colbert Nation Quickly Colonizes Facebook," New York Times, October 29, 2007; Katharine Q. Seelye, "Horserace Prevails in Campaign Reporting," New York Times, October 29, 2007.

FCC. Linda Moss, "Adelstein: Digital Transition Could Spark ‘Tsunami of Consumer Complaints;’ FCC Member Calls for Digital-TV-Conversion Task Force; Criticizes Verizon Waiver," Multichannel News, July 31, 2007, 10:23:00 PM.; Kim Hart, "FCC Tells Sprint to Speed Rerouting From Public-Safety Airwaves," Washington Post, September 12, 2007; and see "Cable," below.

Privacy; State Secrets.Editorial, "Sense on Secrecy; A court weighs government's needs and Americans' rights,"Washington Post, August 15, 2007, p. A10; Eric Lichtblau, "Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed," New York Times, August 24, 2007; Eric Lichtblau, "F.B.I. Dana Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets," New York Times, September 9, 2007.

Cable. Stephen Labaton, "F.C.C. Set to End Sole Cable Deals for Apartments," New York Times, October 29, 2007.

Copyright. Larry Neumeister, "YouTube Seeks to Depose Stewart, Colbert," Associated Press, August 14, 2007 - 9:57pm [wtopnews.com]

Non-Political Speech.Seth Schiesel, "Courts Block Laws on Video Game Violence," New York Times, August 21, 2007; Edward Wyatt, "New Mexico Looks Again at Show's Use of Children," New York Times, August 24, 2007; Rita K. Farrell, "CBS Appeals Punishment for Super Bowl Incident," New York Times, September 12, 2007.

Media Ownership ("corporate censorship"). John Nichols, "AT&T Censors Criticism of Bush," The Nation, August 10, 2007 [CommonDreams.org News Center]; Adam Liptak, "Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Messages," New York Times, September 28, 2007; Stephen Labaton, "Plan Would Ease Limits on Media Owners," New York Times, October 18, 2007; Al Kamen, "FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA," Washington Post, October 26, 2007.

General Semantics. Wendell Johnson, "The Communication Process and General Semantic Principles"; Wendell Johnson, "Verbal Cocoons" from People in Quandaries; Nicholas Johnson, "Searching for the Right Word: The Language of Heterosexual Relationships"
 

Organizations American Civil Liberties Union Berkman Center for Internet and Society, The Harvard Center for Internet and Society, The Stanford Center for Citizen Media Center for Digital Democracy Copyright Office Department of Justice Antitrust Division Electronic Frontier Foundation Electronic Privacy Information Center Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (publisher of Extra!) Federal Communications Bar Association Federal Communications Commission     FCC Attorney Honors Program     History of Communications Federal Trade Commission Freedom Forum freepress Iowans for Better Local Television Media Access Project National Association of Broadcasters National Cable & Telecommunications Association National Telecommunications and Information Administration Patent and Trademark Office Pew Research Center for People and the Press Project Censored Reporters Without Borders (English), Reporters Sans Frontieres (French) Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ "Code of Ethics")

Statutory Law Federal Cable Law Federal Broadcasting Law     Publications, Audio & Video Adbusters Advertising Age Broadcasting & Cable cnet News Columbia Journalism Review Federal Communications Law Journal Future Tense (streaming audio) Global Press Hollywood Reporter Marvin Kitman New York Times: Arts/Television, Technology, Business/Media and Advertising On the Media (streaming audio; transcripts) Variety Wired Magazine and Wired News     Foundations Annenberg Foundation Benton Foundation Ford Foundation     Ford Foundation/Media, Arts & Culture Markle Foundation     Instruction Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial (UCB)