A copyright lawsuit filed in New York federal court last week underscores the risk online publications face when they use questionably sourced images. (If you've ever attributed a photo to "Twitter," you really, really need to read and understand this.)
While it's true that these are are factors in figuring out the scope of rights, it's not that simple.
You can't be punished for opposing censorship — at least, not lawfully — as long as you don't break any laws or rules in how you choose to protest.
We spend a lot of time learning about how the First Amendment is supposed to work and very little time learning what to do when it doesn't.
One story we've been following very closely here is the controversy surrounding the fate of Georgia State University's student-run radio station. After negotiating for years in secret, Georgia State University entered into an agreement (let's not use the word contract, just yet) with Georgia Public Broadcasting to give the latter organization 14 hours of daytime analog signal, depriving WRAS students of an educational opportunity and the community of a 42-year tradition of original music.
Registering the copyright to your yearbook takes only a few hours of your time and protects the book for 95 years. Plus, it could even help your staff make some money.
Our examination of the 25th anniversary of the Hazelwood decision limiting student expression rights continues next week with a panel discussion titled "The First Amendment Goes to School: 25 Years of Hazelwood v.
Pop quiz: should you tell the police if you think someone is responsible for a pattern of sexual assaults?Well, that ain't how they do things down Oklahoma State way.In the past, I've made the point that universities shouldn't be adjudicating sexual assault claims. Both because they're bad at it and because they can't actually take these people off the streets.Now, Oklahoma State has provided an object lesson, by showing how much can go wrong when you let a bunch of amateur investigators pretend to do the jobs of police and courts.Consider what happened at Oklahoma State after five different students reported sexual assaults by the same alleged perpetrator.You would assume that a disciplinary committee at an institution faced with multiple reports of sexual assault by one person might say to themselves, "Gee, the training video we watched didn't really prepare us to do the proper investigation of sexual assault at this scale, so maybe we ought to call police."Surely a bunch of amateurs, with no authority to subpoena, no ability to collect or test forensics--certainly they wouldn't attempt to identify and punish a possible serial attacker, would they?
Everybody knows the hot journalists out there are uploading their source documents to online storage for third parties to examine.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, if you received anything of value in exchange for writing a review, you have to tell your readers about it. And while lots of journalists may understand that, they may not understand that the FTC thinks your personal tweets, Facebook status updates, and blog posts are “testimonials.” Let’s take a look at the FTC’s rules, what they mean, and how to follow them.