Certain state law personal rights, including misappropriation of someone’s likeness or identity, are preempted by federal copyright law.  For example, the right of an individual to prevent a third party from exploiting that person’s image or voice is trumped when that third party purchased the rights to the sound recordings (i.e. the copyright) of that [...]

NPR’s “All Songs Considered” is a show representative of the station’s embracing all things new media. Through digital tools like podcasts and streaming video, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, the show has gained serious clout with both fans and musicians. While much of NPR’s older audience may stumble upon “All Songs Considered” [...]

I wrote last week about the proliferation of the law of libel on the internet, but the same explosion of opportunities for litigation – and risks to would-be publishers – applies via the internet to all forms of speech.  Libel is still libel, but more cases are pushing arguments that speech is conduct that can [...]

Mirsky & Company is looking to hire an intern. Here’s the type of person we are looking for: The candidate must be interested in new media and social media and communications.  Our business is a small law firm, so an interest in law is nice, but the individual need not be a lawyer (nor even [...]

I recently wrote about the dust-up following the awarding of a Pulitzer for political commentary to online cartoonist Mark Fiore, when it was revealed that Apple had rejected Fiore’s proposed iPhone App several months before Fiore’s Pulitzer fame.  As had been widely reported, Apple subsequently invited Fiore to re-apply, which Fiore promptly did and now, [...]

Eric Felten brilliantly skewers the supposed credibility of the online “marketplace of ideas” when he recently wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal: Spend any time on the Internet and – like the naif in the ‘Casablanca’ gambling room dumbfounded when the wheel comes up 22-black twice in a row – one’s bound to [...]

Trumpets Ryan Chittum in the Columbia Journalism Review, “Yes, this is that serious. [The news media] needs to wrest back control of its speech from Apple Inc.  It’s easy to do it now while the press has leverage over Apple.  If the iPad becomes a significant driver of media revenue, and Apple decides to crack [...]

I will be moderating 2 separate panels on Monday and Tuesday at the 2010 Politics Online conference spectacular here in Washington. The first will be Monday April 19th at 2pm, and called “Is this Barack Obama’s Real Facebook Page? Domains, Twitter Handles, Online Presence – real or fake? Intellectual Property, Cyber Identity, and More!”.  I will be joined [...]

NPR’s Lynn Neary reported last week on the value of e-books (“No Ink, No Paper: What’s The Value Of An E-Book?”), illuminating the nuance about pricing of electronic books. Because books – electronic or otherwise – are still almost entirely issued by old-line publishing houses under the same decades-old operational model, a publisher’s cost of operations still has to be recouped. And for publishers, the sole source of that recoupment remains the consumer purchaser of a book, regardless of the medium of a book’s distribution or purchase or presentation. From this perspective, a more alarming (from the publishing industry’s perspective) competitive threat on the market today is the low-cost pricing of hardcover books (including current bestsellers) at places like Target, Costco and Walmart.

Can college and university teachers take their course materials, presentations, notes, slides, PowerPoints, syllabi and other teaching resources with them when they leave their current positions?  Can they sell or license these materials to online universities or market them through Amazon? For a group that tends to dispute everything even a position that would presumably [...]