Kimberley Isbell's blog

We know that our readers are a pretty creative, enterprising bunch. Now you can get some cash to help fund your idea.

Our friends over at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation are running a grant competition called the Knight News Challenge, which awards up to $5 million for innovative projects that use digital technology to transform the way communities send, receive and make use of news and information.

More info can be found on their website, which includes application information, as well as details about past winners (including your friends here at CMLP). This year's application deadline is December 1, 2010, so you should get cracking.

The News Challenge is looking for applications in four categories: mobile, authenticity, sustainability and community.  All projects must make use of digital technology to distribute news in the public interest.

To apply, submit a brief pitch (500 words or less) to http://newschallenge.org.If the reviewers like it, you'll be asked to submit a full proposal.  If you have questions you can a) read the FAQ or b) check the archived chat transcripts.

Good luck!

We here at CMLP headquarters are always thinking about ways to improve our Legal Guide in order to make it more useful for you, our readers. As part of this ongoing effort, we recently updated the section on Securing Trademark Rights: Ownership and Federal Registration.

The expanded section provides step-by-step instructions on filing for a federal trademark registration and links to important forms and manuals on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website, as well as information on maintaining your trademark rights through proper usage.

We hope that you find the expanded section useful.  As always, if you have suggested improvements or additions for our Legal Guide, you can contact us. And if you're a journalism or digital media start-up that needs help with trademark issues, check out the Online Media Legal Network.

As anyone who has been following the debate regarding the "future of journalism" knows, there have been a lot of ink (and bytes) spilled arguing over the role news aggregators are playing in the "decline" of traditional journalistic models.  Rupert Murdoch has labeled the practice of news aggregation by entities like Google News "theft," and a professor from the Wharton Business School recently called on lawmakers to amend the copyright laws to prevent aggregators from posting any portion of news stories for a full 24 hours after their initial publication. Even the FTC has gotten in on the act, listing "Additional Intellectual Property Rights to Support Claims against News Aggregators" as the first policy proposal in the Staff Discussion Draft recently released in connection with its workshop series on "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" (To which Google had a thoughtful reply.)  read more »

Earlier this week, we received the good news that travel blogger extraordinaire Christopher Elliott sucessfully resolved the defamation lawsuit brought against him by Palm Coast Travel. Chris found a top-notch lawyer to help with his case through our Online Media Legal Network (OMLN)  (thanks for the shout out to the network, Chris!).

Huge props go to Gregory Herbert and his team at Greenberg Traurig for answering the Bat-Signal and bringing the matter to a successful resolution.  It's dedicated professionals like Greg that make OMLN work.   read more »

The Interwebs are up in arms, again.

This time, the kerfuffle is over a DMCA notice, submitted by The New York Times Co., that caused the removal of the Pulse RSS reader from the Apple Apps Store.

The timing almost seemed designed to bring out the pitchfork-wielding hordes:  Mere hours after the Pulse iPad application was highlighted by Steve Jobs during his keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the app was pulled from the App Store in response to a DMCA claim submitted by The New York Times Co.

So what's the issue with the app? Not surprisingly, the Times' DMCA notice is about as clear as mud.  The relevant portion reads as follows:   read more »

It's that time of year.  The students are finishing up classes and the Berkman Center is catching its collective breath before the summer interns descend in June. 

As we eagerly await the nice weather, we're going to be changing things up a bit here at CMLP headquarters.  With impending staff changes, summer session for our students, and pressing obligations elsewhere, we will be shifting our newsletter, the Citizen Media Law Brief, from a weekly to a monthly newsletter.  It will go out the last Friday of each month, with the next issue expected on May 28. To make sure you get the latest newsletter in your inbox each month, sign up in the box on the right hand side of this page.

If you just can't wait a month to get your CMLP fix, you can always subscribe to the RSS feed for our blog, or follow us on Twitter.

See you on the flip side!

Photo "Summer Time" courtesy of Flickr user nicadlr, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The holiday season is in full swing, as evidenced by the marked uptick in the number of gift-giving guides clogging up my browser.   read more »

California SLAPP jurisprudence is the gift that keeps on giving, especially for weary bloggers looking for something to write about. (SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.  You can read all about them in our Legal Guide.) Our friend Adrianos Facchetti over at the California Defamation Law Blog has been blogging and tweeting up a storm this week about anti-SLAPP cases.

Of particular interest is a case handed down Tuesday by the California Court of Appeal, Second District, in Guessous v. Chrome Hearts, LLC, No. B212074 (Cal. Ct. App. Dec. 1, 2009).  The opinion tackles the question of "whether the filing of a lawsuit in a foreign country is a protected activity under the United States or California Constitutions," and thus falls within the protections of California's "anti-SLAPP" statute, section 425.16 of the California Code of Civil Procedure.  (Section 425.16 allows a defendant to strike any non-meritorious cause of action that "aris[es] from any act of that person in furtherance of the person's right of petition or free speech under the United States or California Constitution in connection with a public issue.")    read more »

Last week, the Practicing Law Institute hosted its annual program on Communications Law in the Digital Age.

Up for discussion were a lot of topics near and dear to CMLP's heart: trends in First Amendment jurisprudence (including prognostications in US v. Stevens), the federal reporters' shield bill, the protection of anonymous commenters, libel tourism, the application of the single publication rule to the Internet, what the hell Congress meant by "copyright management information" in 17 U.S.C. § 1202(c), the future of misappropriation and the "hot news" doctrine, and legal developments related to FOIA and government sunshine laws. 

As anyone who was watching the CMLP Twitter feed probably noticed (you are following us on Twitter, aren't you?), some of the more interesting panelist exchanges centered on privacy issues and the pending federal reporters' shield law.   read more »

"How do I get media liability insurance?"  It's a question we hear a lot here at CMLP. 

A lot has been written about why bloggers and other citizen journalists should consider obtaining insurance to protect themselves against liability for their online activities. But comprehensive, impartial information on the issue remains scattered and hard to find. 

As a service to you, our dear readers, CMLP has attempted to remedy this problem by updating our Legal Guide content on insurance for online journalism ventures.  In the guide, you will find sections on Finding Insurance, Homeowners and Renters Insurance Coverage, Evaluating Homeowners and Renters Insurance Policies, Insurance Exclusions for Business Pursuits, and Media Liability Insurance.   

We've also added a brand-new feature: an Interactive Question Tool for Evaluating Your Insurance Needs.  The tool takes you through a series of questions to help you determine whether your activities are covered by your existing homeowner's or renter's policy, whether separate media liability insurance is right for you, and what issues you should consider when shopping for media liability insurance.   read more »

A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled on predictions about how technology and social media will change the world.  But the new technologies still have their skeptics (with some even going so far as to compare Twitter to the Macarena).  Last week in Mexico City, the Alliance of Youth Movements convened a group of international activists, government officials, academics, journalists, and representatives of new media companies for three days of discussions seeking to prove the skeptics wrong.

The Second Annual Alliance of Youth Movements Summit sought "to explore ways to advance grassroots movements seeking positive social change through 21st century technology and tools." A quick glance at the list of conference sponsors reads a bit like a Who's Who of old-media meets new-media: the U.S. Department of State, Facebook, Hi5, Google, MySpace, Gen Next, Howcast Media, MTV, PepsiCo, Mobile Behavior, Univisión, Interactive Media, Inc., Causecast.org, WordPress.com, Edelman, and YouTube.   read more »

Twitter has been awash today in the typical gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes that accompanies any Gmail outage, no matter how short the duration.  If yesterday's court ruling holds, however, one unlucky Gmail user may wake up one morning soon to an even worse fate.

According to MediaPost, it all started a little over a month ago, when an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank in Wilson, Wyoming, inadvertently sent a file containing the names, addresses, social security numbers, and loan information for more than 1,300 customers to a Gmail address.  When the account holder failed to respond to a subsequent email from the bank asking him or her to please, please, please destroy the file, Rocky Mountian Bank asked Google to provide information about the Gmail account holder.  Google, per its privacy policy, told Rocky Mountain Bank that it needed  a court order to obtain the information.    read more »

I have an article in the newest issue of World Trademark Review.  Entitled "Updating the Lanham Act for the Internet Age," the article looks at four areas for reform of the Lanham Act: fair use, use in commerce, adoption of statutory safe harbors, and the famous marks doctrine.

Below is an excerpt.  You can read the full article here.

The rise of the Internet has facilitated an increasingly interconnected world, allowing for the widespread dissemination of information, and giving unprecedented access to the ideas and experiences of people across the globe -- as when a student in New York can follow in real time the dispatches of a demonstrator in Tehran. In the years since the introduction of Netscape Navigator, a host of third-party intermediaries have arisen to facilitate, catalog and archive this explosion of information on the Internet, including the likes of Blogger, its parent company Google, Twitter, and the Internet Archive.   read more »

It's that time of year again. 

After a productive summer (thanks, summer interns!), things are starting to pick up around CMLP world headquarters.  After several days of dodging overstuffed minivans and new students wandering lost around campus, we're moving full steam ahead into a new school year.

We've got exciting things coming up (some of which will remain under wraps for a little while longer).  But we need some help.    read more »

If you've spent any time in front of a television screen during the last year, you've seen the ads. Even Ed McMahon and MC Hammer got in on the act.  Since 2007, the recession phenomena Cash4Gold has spurred a cottage industry of Internet-age pawnshops, poping up on television screens and in mall kiosks across the land.   read more »

Much has been written on the proliferation of the so-called "clearance culture" and the threat that overly aggressive intellectual property enforcement poses to creativity. Last week brought news of the clearance culture's most recent victim: Spinal Tap.

It all started in 2007, when a 14 year old decided to pay homage to the Spinal Tap (cough) "classic" "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight." Coleman Hickey created a video for the song using stop-action animation and Lego® figures.   read more »

The recent economic downturn has been hard on lawyers.  Inhouse legal departments are downsizing. Firms are conducting layoffs and cancelling summer programs. Even law schools are getting in on the act, encouraging incoming 1Ls to defer admission for a year (or more).

There has been no shortage of advice to help lawyers navigate these treacherous career waters. Everyone seems to have an opinion. The August issue of the Journal of the American Bar Association weighs in, identifying seven practice areas that remain busy despite the overall legal slowdown. 

So, as a public service to you, our dear readers, I'm going to channel my inner Mr. McGuire and say just two words: Employment Law.   read more »

(And was it the same person who put the bomp in the bomp-a-bomp-a-bomp?)

Back in May, Eric Robinson explained why it's always a good idea to know your audience before setting pen to paper. But in the networked online world, how do you determine who your audience is?

As Jonathan Zittrain has noted, the history of the Internet is riddled with examples of content gone viral, spreading to the four corners of the Internet in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, international humiliation is not the only risk when the Internet's eyes all turn towards you.

Most online publishers welcome the idea of having their content viewed by millions of people around the world. After all, if a post goes up on the Internet but nobody reads it, does it make a sound? Yet more than one American company has had occasion to lament the "world" in the "world wide web."   read more »

Tony La Russa's lawsuit against Twitter, which we first published in the Legal Threats Database back on May 29, seems to have hit the mainstream over the past week. Following the path of the case through the Internet and into the mainstream media provides a fascinating case study in the the possibilities of Twitter and other social media platforms for disseminating and amplifying a message. (And indicates that I should revise my previous Cluetrain addendums to include sports managers.)

It all started back on May 21st, when this client alert from law firm Howard Rice caught the attention of those of us in the CMLP offices. (The alert may, in fact, have been sparked by this post over at SFGate, which seems to have flown under the radar when first posted.) By the end of the following week, the Legal Threats entry on La Russa v. Twitter, Inc. was live on the CMLP website. That same day, Twitter user @socialmediainfo sent out a tweet about the case, with a link back to our entry. This was soon followed by tweets from @Jenn822 and @FO_Brooks relaying information about the case.   read more »

Since my Wikipedia post on Monday, I've been giving more thought to the question of who gets to be heard on the Internet, especially with the rising ubiquity of different social networking platforms.  These thoughts were sparked in large part by two occurrences around the Harvard-verse yesterday:  the release by the Harvard Business School of a recent study of Twitter usage, and yesterday's installment of the Berkman Luncheon Series, presented by Berkman Fellow Lokman Tsui.   read more »