Monthly Archive for February, 2007

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Zoeller Sues to Find Author of Wikipedia Post

Published on February 23, 2007 in Journalism and Mass Communication Law. 3 Comments

Zoeller Sues to Find Author of Web Post – washingtonpost.com

This may be the first  Internet defamation case of a public figure in what I have been calling the application of media law to the public. Here, a defamatory allegation of drug and family abuse was added to the Wikipedia entry of golfer Fuzzy Zoeller. As a public figure, he’d have to meet the high standard of “actual malice:”

  • Are the allegations true? (who knows)
  • Are they defamatory? (probably yes in this case)
  • Were they published? (While technically anyone on the Internet could have read the Wikipedia article, there is a remote chance that this question could turn on how many people accessed the article while the defamatory words were posted.  If they were deleted by the first person to load the page, there is a possibility it might not be considered “published.”)
  • Was Zoller identified? (clearly)
  • Finally, was it published with “wreckless disregard for the truth?”

This last part is the tricky one. Under the standard of actual malice, reporters and publishers will usually attempt to show that the defamatory words were published after a good-faith effort to verify their truth. However, without the usual forms of editorial review that preceed conventional publication, it might not be so easy to maintain this legal standard. Even if there have been public figure defamation cases involving anonymous speech (I’m not aware of any), there likely has always been a reviewing publisher who could act as the target of the suit.

As media law becomes applied to the publishing public, can these legal rules built under the assumptions of traditional publishing be maintained?

Communication Law News

Published on February 22, 2007 in Copyright and Mass Communication Law. 0 Comments

Quite a bit of communication/technology law news today…just a few brief thoughts:

Oral Arguments in ATT v. Microsoft

The Supreme Court heard arguments today on whether Microsoft’s sending Vista master disks overseas with some of AT&T’s code constitutes patent infringement. While I’m not quite up to speed on this case, it certainly bears mentioning as the Court may rule on whether or not software may be patented. Currently, computer programs (or more specifically, their source code) are protected by copyright, while in some cases the functions that a program performs have been granted a patent. At one point, Justice Breyer asked, “Since it’s never been held that it’s patentable in this Court, if I were writing something, should I say ‘on the assumption that it’s patentable?’ Since the issue isn’t raised?” The Assistant Solicitor General arguing on Microsoft’s behalf dodged the question, the possibility of a Court statement on the patentability of software could answer some pressing questions.

Edit: Here’s an article from Ars Technica with a good overview of the case background.

RIAA College Crackdown (Full AP story, Local)

The RIAA is targeting higher education with higher numbers of copyright complaints–1000 at some institutions, and 513 so far this school year at UW-Madison. Our school takes a “three pronged” approach to encouraging copyright compliance (in full disclosure, I work for the UW-Madison Division of Information Technology, which is responsible for these guidelines):

The first line of defense is awareness, starting with the “appropriate use” guidelines Internet users on campus are supposed to read and acknowledge when they get their network ID. That’s followed up with e-mails, posters and presentations to keep the issue on students’ radar. DoIT also restricts the capability for music file-sharing by throttling down the bandwidth for UW housing.

This naturally begs the question: do students pay any attention to the e-mails, posters, and presentations? Certainly, part of the University’s duty is to educate students to be law-abiding (if critical) citizens. However, I wonder to what lengths we need to go to… “education” about copyright might become contentious or even political, but promoting critical thinking about a law that a large number of students break is potentially time and resource intensive.

AT&T v. EFF

Read on for more developments in the “state secrets” case against AT&T.

‘Ulysses’ Without Guilt – Dealing with info glut

Published on February 13, 2007 in Education and Media / Sociology. 0 Comments

‘Ulysses’ Without Guilt – New York Times (Subscription Required)

Stacy Schiff, a guest columnist at the Times writes today about Pierre Bayard’s “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read,” which seems like a great invite to talk about a book that I haven’t read. From what I understand, Bayard’s basic argument is that exposing oneself to a breadth of material is just as good as knowing something deeply. Schiff writes:

Say what you will about Professor Bayard, he forces us to confront a paradox of our age. By one estimate, 27 novels are published every day in America. A new blog is created every second. We would appear to be in the midst of a full-blown epidemic of graphomania. Surely we have never read, or written, so many words a day. Yet increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d’oeuvres of education. We read not in continuous narratives but by linkage, the movable type of the 21st century. Our appetites are gargantuan, our attention spans anorectic.

She then goes on to posit that technologies like search, “arguably the very definition of reading has changed.”

These are phenomena that the process of studying for preliminary exams made me deeply aware of.  As information grows over time, the amount of material one must read becomes increasingly dense. I once knew a professor who, when she was studying for prems, was instructed to read everything about her (broad) subject. I don’t think that is remotely possible anymore–but technolgies like search and news aggreation might offer ways to get at what we’re interested in. Hopefully it doesn’t come at the cost of well crafted prose.

The New Web: You have to participate

Published on February 8, 2007 in Why Blog?. 0 Comments

This story (Students offer Net advice to colleges) as well as the video “aside” below get right at the reason why I blog: to experience the new web, you have to be a part of it. More than that, to be considered an expert in Mass Communication (technology), I would argue that one has to be blogging, uploading videos, and be a part of online communities. Naturally, there has to be moments to step back and reflect (hence this post category), but as the web becomes more experiential an expert has to participate in this social creation of the Net.

CNet summarized the students’ sentiment well:

Despite the fears that kids are leaving permanent digital footprints when they post personal information online, college students think it would be even weirder if someone didn’t exist on the Web.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Published on February 8, 2007 in Worth a Look. 0 Comments

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