Media

Silicon Valley wins round one in SOPA fight

Over the past week, Silicon Valley’s internet powerhouses out-communicated Hollywood, stopped internet piracy bills pushed by the big studios and even prodded the Republican presidential candidates and President Barack Obama to agree on something — that Hollywood’s internet piracy bills threatened the innovation of the web.

Traditionally, Silicon Valley has been reluctant to play by Washington’s rules. Microsoft did not build a major Washington presence until the late 1990s when it faced a big anti-trust suit. But last week, the industry demonstrated its power through a concerted campaign of shutting down some sites and posting notices on others about the industry’s opposition to the internet piracy bills.

Media

Supreme Court decision on copyright may not injure major opera companies, symphonies

Established opera companies and symphonies should not be hurt seriously by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week upholding a law that moved the work of composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich from the public domain to copyright protection.

Timothy O’Leary, general director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, said in an interview, “It is possible that (the decision) will add some additional costs but not substantially.” O’Leary said that about one of Opera Theatre’s four productions each season is under copyright, but that “we don’t make decisions about what operas to perform” based on whether royalties are due.

Media

First Amendment, the law and the Occupy movement

Occupy Wall Street protesters have a First Amendment right to protest in a public park, but they don’t have the right to camp overnight or to physically block police officers trying to remove their tents. If officers try to forcibly remove protesters, the police may use reasonable, but not excessive force.

That is the consensus of legal experts in the wake of police actions all across the country aimed at removing Occupy encampments. It explains why courts, including U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson in St. Louis, have permitted police to remove permanent encampments.

Some civil libertarians believe that the U.S. Supreme Court should give a more robust interpretation of the First Amendment in order to protect peaceful, overnight assemblies such as Occupy’s. But they acknowledge that current court decisions do not recognize the right to camp overnight in a park.

Media

SIUC sets off Facebook controversy over faculty strike

Only half of the students in my media ethics class showed up on Thursday (Nov. 3) because the Faculty Association at SIU Carbondale is on strike. But the students who came were eager to discuss the ethics and legality of the university’s decision overnight to delete comments about the strike from the university Facebook page.

By deleting the comments, the university had unwittingly ventured onto new, uncertain ground and might have violated the First Amendment, legal experts say.

Even as the university was coming to last-minute agreement with three of four unions late Wednesday and early Thursday, it was removing critical comments from a Facebook page that had been open to student, faculty and alumni comments. Some of the postings contained foul language and clearly could legally be removed. Others argued the pros and cons of the labor dispute. One message, repeatedly deleted, said, “Please settle.”