By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-19-16 Patent and copyrights are essentially a contract between the federal government and inventors and artists, which "heightens" the government's responsibility and "solemn promise" to protect those rights. That is the central theme of a new paper, "The Public Contract Basis of Intellectual Property Rights," being released today [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-18-16 The major Hollywood studios were not pleased Monday after the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a decision that it was OK for Google to digitize millions of books and make them available online without compensating the copyright holders. In a blog post after the [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-17-16 National and local TV news was the dominant source people rely on for news topics they follow most closely, but engendering trust across all types of news outlets has become a tougher job. Only 6% of people said they have a lot of confidence in the media, [...]
FOR RELEASE: March 3, 2016 Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Arlington, Va., March 3, 2016 – The Media Institute filed an amicus brief in a California federal district court today, saying that the FBI’s attempt to order Apple, Inc. to write code to “unlock” the contents of an iPhone amounts to [...]
Filed an amicus brief with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Eastern Division) in the matter of the search of an Apple iPhone. The Media Institute argued that the FBI’s attempt to order Apple, Inc. to write code to “unlock” the contents of an iPhone amounts to compelled speech under [...]
Dean Rodney A. Smolla, Delaware Law School, Widener University February 29, 2016 The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently decided a major right-of-publicity case with important implications for creative works based on real events. The case, arising from the film “The Hurt Locker,” was Sarver v. Chartier.1 Mark Boal, a journalist working [...]
FOR RELEASE: February 17, 2016 Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Arlington, Va., February 17, 2016 – Will Johnson of Verizon has been elected to the Board of Trustees of The Media Institute, it was announced today by Institute President Patrick Maines. Johnson is Senior Vice President, Federal Regulatory and Legal Affairs, [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, University of Chicago Law School February 10, 2016 For roughly the last two years, I have been taking improv classes, first at Chicago’s legendary Second City and more recently at iO (equally well-known in the comedy community but probably less well-known to the general public; iO used to be known as [...]
Filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit urging the court to overturn a district court decision in Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. Aereokiller, LLC, which would allow FilmOnX (Aereokiller) to qualify for a compulsory license under Section 111 of the Copyright Act. The brief noted that Congress [...]
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* January 25, 2016 The 1980s brought us market failure fair use analysis.1 Will the 20-teens bring us security failure fair use analysis, particularly in cases of mass digitization? Regarding market failure, Professors Wendy Gordon, Rob Merges, and many others have shown that the absence of manageable [...]