Digital Media and Data Privacy Law Blog

The New York Times ran an interesting report on how the bad economy has impacted newspapers' decisions on whether to litigate public record and access issues.  The bottom line, according to the Times -- while smaller, regional news organizations are scaling back their legal efforts, large national outlets "have been quietly ramping up."

The Times cited in particular Hearst and the Associated Press as two organizations that have been as aggressive as ever in pushing state and federal officials on public record and access issues.  According to the story, both are dealing with tighter ... Read More 

The Associated Press reported this week of efforts underway in several states to limit access to 911 calls under state sunshine laws.  According to the report, legislatures in Alabama, Ohio, and Wisconsin are considering bills that would pull back from the traditional availability of 911 recordings.  Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wyoming currently exempt 911 calls from the operation of public records statutes.

In Alabama, HB 159 passed the Alabama House earlier this month.  The bill, if enacted, would prevent the disclosure of 911 calls to the public without a prior order ... Read More 

Earlier this month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of a defamation action, holding that the filing of the complaint was sanctionable under Rule 11.  In Ward v. Jett Properties, LLC, the plaintiff filed an action pro se, contending that his landlord defamed him in a letter sent to a representative of the homeowners association of the development where the plaintiff lived.

The matter started with a letter the plaintiff sent to the defendant, complaining about various actions by neighboring tenants.  In response, the defendant wrote back ... Read More 

In yet another data point on the status of anonymous Internet speech, a New York judge this week quashed a subpoena seeking the identity of a person who had posted comments on a newspaper website.

We have covered this topic in a number of prior posts, for example here and here, as courts have grappled in the past year with the question of when to enforce subpoenas to media organizations that would compel the identification of an anonymous Internet speaker.  Such subpoenas have been examined both from a First Amendment perspective, in terms of the constitutional right to ... Read More 

The presiding judge closed a hearing Friday on whether to hold Andrew Young and his wife in contempt for failing to turn over a sex tape purportedly showing Rielle Hunter and disgraced former presidential candidate John Edwards consummating their much-publicized affair.  The hearing was held in Chatham County, North Carolina, and it was set in a lawsuit brought by Hunter to recover possession of the tape from Young.  Young, a former aide to Edwards, was apparently part of Edwards's misbegotten scheme to cover up his fathering of a child with Hunter, as Young originally claimed the ... Read More 

With the arrival of a new presidential administration, and with the explosive growth of alternative ways for people to get their daily news and opinion, a legal issue once thought settled is again in the headlines.

The “Fairness Doctrine,” first imposed by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, required television and radio broadcast stations to give reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance.

In 1987, the FCC ruled that the doctrine violated the First Amendment and did not serve the public interest because it: (1 ... Read More 

January has been a prolific month on the U.S. Supreme Court docket for cases raising First Amendment or other media issues.  In addition to the Citizens United and Presley decisions addressing limits on corporate political speech and access to jury voir dire proceedings, the Supreme Court earlier this month agreed to hear a case out of the Ninth Circuit involving public access to the petitions that put in place a controversial Washington ballot initiative.  The petitions were sought under a state sunshine law in an effort to learn the identities of those who ... Read More 

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations (and labor unions) may make unlimited expenditures to directly advocate for the election or defeat of a Federal candidate at any point in the election cycle.  The crux of the Court’s decision is that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from banning certain types of political speech based on the corporate identity of the speaker. The decision opens the way for greatly increased participation by corporations—large and small, for-profit and non-profit—in ... Read More 

The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a 7-2 per curiam opinion summarily reversing a Georgia Supreme Court decision that had found no error in a lower court ruling that emptied a courtroom during jury selection in a criminal case.  The case was notable in the short work the majority made of the notion that the Sixth Amendment right to a public trial somehow may not include the voir dire process or that applicable test is not clear.  The case therefore represents an important victory for access to court proceedings.

The case, Presley v. Georgia, involved a criminal trial in which a ... Read More 

With 2009 drawing to a close, a panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed a decision by the Eastern District of Virginia holding that the website Consumeraffairs.com was an “interactive computer service” entitled to immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with respect to 20 website postings concerning a class-action lawsuit against an auto dealer. The Fourth Circuit’s opinion in Nemet Chevrolet, Ltd. v. Consumeraffairs.com, Inc. is linked here.

The Fourth Circuit panel’s majority opinion is largely procedural, but it offers an important lesson about ... Read More