CMLP Staff's blog

We are delighted to announce the public launch of the Berkman Center's Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono (i.e., free!) initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics from across the country with online journalists and digital media creators who need legal help. Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide qualifying online publishers with pro bono and reduced fee legal assistance on a broad range of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.    read more »

On Monday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) heard oral argument in Fustolo v.Hollander, No. SJC-10485.  As you may recall, last month the Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM) and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association in submitting an amicus curiae brief urging the SJC to reverse a lower court's decision interpreting the state’s anti-SLAPP legislation.  Representing CMLP, Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic co-authored the brief.   read more »

On Thursday, the Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM) and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of the Boston Bar Association in submitting an amicus curiae brief urging the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to reverse a lower court’s decision interpreting the state’s anti-SLAPP legislation.  Representing CMLP, Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic co-authored the brief.

The brief was filed in support of Freda Hollander, a party in Fustolo v. Hollander, No. SJC-10485.  The lawsuit involves allegations of defamation based on articles Hollander wrote for the Regional Review, a free local newspaper serving the North End community in Boston.  The articles in question reported on development activities planned by plaintiff Steven Fustolo and meetings of community groups that opposed his plans.  In response to Fustolo’s lawsuit, Hollander sought dismissal of the case under the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP law, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 231, § 59H.   read more »

Even though Glenn Beck has a prime spot on cable television to offer up his beliefs, it's sometimes quite hard to understand what his beliefs actually are.  For example, as Jon Stewart has pointed out, he believes we have the best healthcare in the world, except when he says it's a nightmare.  Or as Politico underscored, he believes that President Obama is a racist, but he doesn't believe that Obama doesn't like white people.

But if there's one thing Beck believes, it's that he didn't rape and murder a young girl in 1990.  And he's siccing his lawyers on a website that asks him — with tongue firmly placed in its virtual cheek — to deny it.   read more »

The Citizen Media Law Project today launched a cool new page that aggregates everything on our site relating to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("Section 230"), the important federal statute that protects operators of websites and other interactive computer services from liability for publishing the statements of third-parties.  

We've also added some detailed background on Section 230, links to our legal guide materials, and feeds showing recent legal threats from our database, CMLP blog posts, and news from other websites.  The page also has a list of outside resources and will soon host a compendium of Section 230's legislative history.

We hope that this new page will help our readers conveniently access the diverse and ever-increasing materials and commentary on our site and across the Web relating to Section 230 and provide useful context for understanding the statute and the debates surrounding it.

You can check out the new page here.

Over the past few weeks everyone at the CMLP and Harvard's Cyberlaw Clinic (with whom we share an office) has been focused on the question of what legal protections courts should apply to anonymous speech (see this post about our amicus participation in the Maxon v. Ottawa Publishing case).  When you are immersed in an issue like this, it is easy to forget how lucky we are to live in a country that has robust protections for speech.

In a post earlier this week, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist reminds us that our neighbor to the north is grappling with this same issue, but has come up with a very different answer.  In his post, Geist reports that an Ontario court has ordered the operators of the right-wing Canadian forum site, FreeDominion.ca, to turn over personally identifying information for eight anonymous posters to the site.   read more »

Are you a lawyer interested in dealing with emerging legal issues relating to the intersection of law, journalism, and new media on the Internet?  Would you like to help online journalism and new media ventures meet their legal needs?  Do you want a stimulating yet laid back work environment?

The Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society is looking to hire a Staff Attorney/Resident Fellow to assist with the development of a pro bono network of media lawyers and law school clinics to support online journalism and new media startups. 

The position requires a Juris Doctor degree with admission to at least one state bar (and eligibility for admission on motion to the Massachusetts bar if you're not a Massachusetts lawyer) and a minimum of 3 years of legal-practice experience with a significant Internet, intellectual property, or media law focus.  Our offices are located at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, so you must be willing to work in Cambridge, MA.

We're really excited about this position and about bringing someone new on board to help with our work.  We're building a network of lawyers across the country who want to work on online media cases, and we need an extremely capable individual to take the lead in screening new cases and clients, maintaining relationships with clients and members of the network, and providing direct legal assistance to clients in collaboration with lawyers and law students in Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic.    read more »

Are you a law student interested in working on challenging legal issues relating to online speech and non-traditional journalism?  Are you looking for media and cyberlaw experience? Do you want to get involved with the Berkman Center community?  

The Citizen Media Law Project is seeking paid interns for part-time work during the spring semester and for full-time work over the summer.  Law students with media and/or cyberlaw experience, or a background in journalism, are especially encouraged to apply. 

Applicants should have a demonstrated interest in and enthusiasm for journalism, citizen media, or technology-related legal issues, along with excellent research and writing skills and the initiative and energy to see projects through to completion in a fast-moving environment.

Our offices are located at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, so spring interns must live in the Cambridge/Boston area, and summer interns must be willing to relocate to the area for the summer.

For more information on these positions and how to apply, visit our pages on academic year and summer internships.  Applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis, but we recommend that interested students apply as soon as possible.

We may be seeing the start of a trend in California, as one lawsuit regarding a review posted on the website Yelp.com settled last week just as a second case got underway.

San Francisco-based chiropractor Steven Biegel and his former patient, Christopher Norberg, have reportedly settled a lawsuit relating to a critical review that Norberg posted on Yelp.  Biegel commenced the lawsuit in February 2008, alleging that Norberg’s post wrongly accused Biegel of being dishonest and engaging in fraudulent billing practices.  The case – which has received considerable attention in recent weeks (including here and here) – involved claims of defamation and false light.  The parties were preparing for a trial in the coming months.

Published reports indicate that the parties reached a resolution last week, following a court-ordered mediation.  The settlement terms were not disclosed, but Norberg has replaced his post on Yelp.com with the following statement:   read more »

Looking to catch up on the latest legal happenings in the world of online and citizen media?   Or perhaps you just need something to fill your dreary Friday afternoons?  Now is the time to subscribe to the Citizen Media Law Project's weekly newsletter, the Citizen Media Law Brief. 

The Brief includes recent blog posts, media law news, legal threat entries, and other new content from the CMLP's website.  Better still, it's completely free and comes delivered every Friday to your email inbox.

Interested?  To subscribe, all you have to do is go here and enter the email address where you would like to receive it. Past issues of the Brief can be found on this page.

The following post was submitted by one our loyal readers, Theo Karantsalis.

A Web security standard compromised by security researchers exposed a weak link in the system that could give hackers access to PCs.

At risk: all E-commerce and online banking transactions.

Researchers said that they used 200 PlayStation 3 video game consoles to defeat Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, a security mechanism designed to prevent eavesdropping and guarantee Internet users that their connections are encrypted and safe.

"This break is major," said Karsten Nohl, a cryptography expert and a researcher at the University of Virginia,” via e-mail from his home in Germany. "It definitely is the most wide-scale attack, because anything short of patching all browsers in the world to not accept the certificates, there's nothing you can do to prevent it."

The team of security experts from the United States, Switzerland, and the Netherlands said at the 25^th annual Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Germany on Dec. 30 that it took three days of computing time to defeat SSL security measures.

SSL is employed whenever a user points to an address that begins with "https://".

"Centrally-controlled top-down public-key infrastructures have always had problems,” said Philip R. Zimmermann, via e-mail from his home in California.  Zimmermann is a cryptography expert and creator of Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, an encryption program protects information. "That's why I designed PGP to not depend on them, and that's why PGP has done so well."   read more »

Like a storm coming over the horizon, the recent lawsuit filed by GateHouse Media against the New York Times Company, which operates Boston.com, has thrown the CMLP into disarray just as we were preparing to depart to warmer climes for the holidays.

For those who haven't yet heard about this case, here is a bit of background.  On December 22, 2008, GateHouse Media, which operates more than 375 newspapers and associated websites, filed a lawsuit against the New York Times Company in U.S. District Court in Massachussets, claiming, among other things, that headlines from -- and links to -- GateHouse content on Boston.com's "Your Town" sites constitute copyright and trademark infringement.  The New York Times, which owns the Boston Globe, operates local sites — currently in Newton, Needham, and Waltham, MA — that aggregate local content from the Globe, area blogs, and other newspaper websites, including GateHouse's Wicked Local websites.   read more »

Eric Goldman reminds us (here, here) that angry companies and individuals are still suing Xcentric Ventures, LLC and Ed Magedson left and right over reports submitted to Ripoff Report.  Ripoff Report is a website that allows users to post reports about individuals and companies that they believe have "ripped them off" or treated them unfairly.  The website has attracted much criticism and litigation for refusing to remove allegedly false reports and offering a service to aggrieved businesses called the "Corporate Advocacy Program" ("CAP"), under which, for a fee, the website will investigate "rip-off" reports targeting member companies and post prominent rebuttals to those reports.

Ripoff Report has been remarkably successful in fighting off lawsuits for defamation and other torts based on user-submitted reports.  In large part, this success is due to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act" ("CDA 230"), which states that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1).    read more »

Massachusetts has no statutory provision that specifically prohibits the use of photographic or video equipment inside a polling place while you are voting.  There is, however, a Massachusetts statute that makes it a crime to "hinder[], delay[] or interfere[] with . . . a voter while on his way to [an] election, while within the guard rail, while marking his ballot or while voting or attempting to vote." Mass Gen. Laws ch. 56, § 29.  If your photographing or videotaping obstructs the voting process or interferes with other voters, you could run into problems with this provision. 

But, if your activity is not disruptive, it appears to be legal (from the perspective of state law) for you to take photographs or record video inside a Massachusetts polling place. Local officials, however, may have the authority to prohibit or discourage photography and videography inside polling places.  For instance, the Town Clerk of Stoneham, Massachusetts told us that he intends to post signs discouraging the use of cameras inside the polls.   read more »

Last Friday, the Citizen Media Law Project joined Public Citizen, EFF, and Public Knowledge in filing an amici curiae brief in support of BlockShopper.com's motion to dismiss Jones Day's bogus trademark claims against it.   read more »

We're pleased to announce that News University launched its Online Media Law course today.  The course is specifically designed for individuals and journalists engaged in online publishing, and it covers three important areas of media law -- defamation, privacy, and copyright. The course is free. Students can enroll online at the NewsU site and take the course at their own pace. 

CMLP Director David Ardia co-authored the course with Geanne Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at City University of New York’s Baruch College.  The course was created at the behest of the Media Bloggers Association (see MBA's announcement).  You can see NewsU's official press release here.

(Note: News University is funded by the Knight Foundation, which also provides funding for the CMLP.) 

When you publish information about someone without permission, especially personal or private information, you potentially expose yourself to legal liability even if your portrayal is factually accurate. While you should keep this potential liability in mind, the law generally gives online publishers quite a bit of breathing space to report and comment on matters of legitimate public concern, even when the person being discussed objects to the coverage. This post looks at our Citizen Media Legal Guide's section on Publishing Personal and Private Information.  If you would like to read any of the previous "highlights" from the legal guide, you can find them here. 

Most states have laws limiting your ability to publish private facts about someone and recognizing an individual's right to stop you from using his or her name, likeness, and other personal attributes for certain exploitative purposes, such as for advertising goods or services. These laws originally sprang from a policy objective of protecting personal privacy; the aim was to safeguard individuals from embarrassing disclosures about their private lives and from uses of their identities that are hurtful or disruptive of their lives. Over time, the law developed and also recognized the importance of protecting the commercial value of a person's identity -- namely, the ability to profit from authorizing others to use one's name, photograph, or other personal attributes in a commercial setting.

There are two main types of legal claims that relate to unauthorized publication of personal and private information:(1) publication of private facts and (2) unlawful use of name or likeness.   read more »

A great New York Times article last weekend drew our attention to this rather colorful legal threat and its target, Jason Fortuny, a freelance web designer, programmer, and noted (or notorious) Internet troll. In 2006, Mr. Fortuny engaged in what he called the "Craigslist Experiment," in which he posted a fake ad on Craigslist pretending to be a woman seeking a man for rough sex.  According to the Times article, over one-hundred men responded, providing photographs and contact information. Mr. Fortuny allegedly posted this material to his blog, RFJason, and Encyclopedia Dramatica (described by the New York Times as "an online compendium of troll humor and troll lore"). Mr. Fortuny disputes posting the photographs and contact information to Encyclopedia Dramatica.    read more »

This is the tenth in a series of posts calling attention to topics we cover in the Citizen Media Legal Guide. In this post, we highlight the section on trade secrets, which describes the limitations imposed on publishers who rely on or publish certain confidential business information and offers practical advice to citizen media creators on how to avoid liability for publishing trade secrets.

Trade Secrets

A trade secret is a form of intellectual property that applies to business secrets. If a company or other organization creates or compiles information that gives it an economic advantage over its competitors, it can protect that information as a trade secret -- in a sense becoming the "owner" of the trade secret. To do so, however, a business must take reasonable precautions to keep the information secret, and it loses its property right when competitors or the public at large uncover the secret. Trade secrets law is governed by state law. However, most U.S. states have adopted their own slightly modified version of the Uniform Trade Secret Act (UTSA), so there is a good deal of uniformity among state laws on the subject. For state-specific information, please see the State Law: Trade Secrets section of this guide.
  read more »

This is the ninth in a series of posts calling attention to topics we cover in the Citizen Media Legal Guide. In this post, we highlight the section on copyright, which provides an overview of this important area of law and offers practical advice to citizen media creators on how to use the copyrighted works of others and protect their own work from exploitation.

Before we jump into the copyright overview, which is reprinted below, we would like to thank Allan Ryan, who is the Director of Intellectual Property at Harvard Business School Publishing. In addition to writing a large portion of the copyright overview, Allan provided invaluable feedback on the intellectual property sections of the guide and kept us focused on the unique needs of citizen media.

Copyright Overview

A basic understanding of copyright principles is essential for any blogger, researcher, reporter, photographer, or anyone who publishes their creative works. It’s important for two reasons. First, you should understand how you can properly make use of someone else’s work – quoting from it, reprinting it, summarizing it, even satirizing it. And second, you should understand how you can protect your own legal rights in what you create, so that others don’t take unfair (even unlawful) advantage of it.   read more »