FOR RELEASE: March 10, 2010Mr. Keith Olbermann “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” MSNBC TV 30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, NY 10112 Countdown@msnbc.com An Open Letter to Keith Olbermann:As members of The Media Institute’s First Amendment Advisory Council, we are writing to take strong issue with your “special comment” of January 21, 2010, in which you personally [...]
FOR RELEASE: March 10, 2010 Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Arlington, Va., March 10, 2010 – A group of distinguished First Amendment attorneys and scholars is calling on MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann to publicly apologize to preeminent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, over Olbermann’s Jan. 21 attack likening Abrams to a [...]
Prof. Jim Gibson, University of Richmond School of Law March 10, 2010 For most of the history of Anglo-American copyright law, copyright was an opt-in system: Authors had to jump through certain regulatory hoops if they wanted to prevent others from copying their works without consent. These threshold formalities included registering their works with a [...]
Prof. Jane C. Ginsburg, Columbia University School of Law* February 26, 2010 In our previous column (Dec. 8, 2009) we addressed the history and policy of authors’ reversion rights in U.S. copyright law, as well as the general outlines of the 1976 Act provisions on terminations of grants of copyright. In this column, we will [...]
Prof. Doug Lichtman*, UCLA School of Law February 23, 2010 Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin held a much-anticipated “fairness hearing” during which a chorus of interested parties spoke both for and against Google’s proposed settlement to its Book Search litigation. My own view aligns closely to the view articulated there by the [...]
Peter S. Menell, Professor of Law, University of California-Berkeley School of Law February 17, 2010 A little more than a decade ago, Napster rocked the music industry by enabling anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to costlessly and virtually anonymously distribute files to millions of others. As cyberculture journalist Joseph Menn observed at [...]
Prof. Randal C. Picker, The University of Chicago Law School February 10, 2010 On Feb. 4, the Department of Justice filed its second statement of interest in the pending Google Book Search (GBS) case. We now have a full slate of second-round filings as we head toward the fairness hearing set for a New York [...]
FOR RELEASE: February 3, 2010Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Arlington, Va., Feb. 3, 2010 – A proposed compulsory-license scheme that would force radio broadcasters to pay royalties to musical artists and record labels would impose an undue economic burden on broadcasters already racked by the recession. In addition, the plan would likely reduce [...]
Prof. Stan Liebowitz, University of Texas at Dallas February 2, 2010 Keeping a monopoly on yourself? Economists are trained to examine individual markets in order to determine whether or not those markets are functioning in an “economically efficient” manner. Economic efficiency, once achieved, requires that there be no way to increase the overall “surplus” – [...]
FOR RELEASE: January 20, 2010 Contact: Richard T. Kaplar The Media Institute 703-243-5700 Arlington, Va., Jan. 20, 2010 – Government intervention aimed at “saving” journalism by funding or subsidizing media companies is a misguided idea that could imperil the future of independent American journalism, says economist and former FCC commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. That idea [...]