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23 Media L. Notes 1 (1995-1996)

handle is hein.journals/mdilwnts23 and id is 1 raw text is: _j Volume 23 ~U ~ r 4 Number 1 Media Law Notes Fall 1995 CT 3 0 1995 Inside This Issue Convention reflection..........2 V-chip update......................3 Supreme Court roundup....5 Non-legal bibliography........7 New law journal.................13 JFK files report .................15 Legal bibliography.............18 Newsletter of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Law Division Internet interest proves high By Louise W. Hermanson Law Division Chair People stood around a lot at this year's AEJMC convention - in overflow Law Division sessions. The pre-convention session Barbara Petersen (South Florida) organized, which was capped at 50 by host Annenberg, filled weeks before the convention, and late registrants were turned away. The public affairs representatives at the Supreme Court had to move us to a larger room when more than 60 made the trip to the Supreme Court building for the off-site tour and lecture. Kathy Fitzpatric's (Southern Methodist) panel featuring Columbia's Eli Noam and FCC's Christopher Wright also drew more than 50. So did sessions jointly sponsored with Visual on copyright of digitized information and with History on how to overcome apathy in the required course. Only two of the 20 sessions sponsored or cosponsored by the Law Division drew fewer than 20 audience members. The excellent attendance at sessions is a tribute to Greg Lisby's (Georgia State) brilliant idea to focus on changes in the law caused by infusion of new communications technology into our current society. The availability of top- notch speakers created intellectual debate of the highest order. What this year's convention sessions made clear is that technology is rapidly unsettling free speech legal models. Headnote Louise W. Hermanson Newspapers are going on line. No one understands who owns or has legal re- sponsibility for what's on the Internet. Privacy questions focus more on who keeps what in- formation in which data- bases avail- able to whom than on whether your neighbors know you practice less-than sterling personal habits. And we can't even define multimedia creations for purposes of protecting intellectual property. Law diverges from what the technology permits, Stephen Bates (Annenberg) said in the pre-convention session, and emerging technologies that permit almost limitless manipulation of information require rethinking traditional definitions of speech rights. Old debates about what controls should be placed on what types of speech are resurfacing as pornography becomes readily available on-line and speakers can hide behind computer anonymity to present a variety of socially questionable speech to a world-wide audience. Multiple international communications channels raise new national security questions. In traditional mass media, mega-mergers threaten old concepts of the marketplace of ideas, and restraints on information gathering by bottom-line- thinking executives limit what the public receives in new ways. As reflected by Tim Gleason (Oregon), a respondent in the copyright session, and in comments by Don Gillmor (Minnesota) from the audience in the anti-trust session, maybe the most important question is Who decides what speech society receives? As the process of Who decides? evolves, it will be an exciting time for media law scholars. Our students must learn how to follow the law as it evolves. Knowledge about how the process works may become more important for journalists and society than what the Supreme Court said in 1979 or 1991 or last year. Therefore, I propose next year's convention focus on defining an appropriate balance between policy and procedure as we teach journalists about the law. Possible topics for discussion under this theme (in no particular order of importance) include the following: -What is the appropriate balance between Ph.D. and law school training in teaching media law? -What role should legal research play in media law class assignments, and how (Please see Page 26.) L

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