Legal Frontiers in Digital Media

May 20, 2019 12:00 pm to May 21, 2019 12:40 pm

For more information and the full conference agenda, visit: https://www.medialaw.org/component/k2/item/4456

Monday, May 20, 2019

Inline Linking After Goldman v. Breitbart
 (1:10 p.m. – 2:10 p.m.) 

Does one infringe a copyright by in-line linking? If so, how much will our internet be shrinking? Just how pervasive are in-line linking, embedding and framing in today's digital media? A content development and distribution pro first explains the present state before envisioning a hypothetical internet without these tools. Then counsel who won the two leading cases dive deep into the controversy: does copyright law hold embedding a link to be an infringing "display" whether or not the work is hosted on the servers of an independent platform (Goldman v. Breitbart)? Or does infringement depend on actually hosting a copy of the work, rather than pointing a browser to another internet location (Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com)? Would other defenses (like DMCA or implied license) bail out current business models? Has the Supreme Court's indeterminate Aereo decision now come home to roost? And what is the best advice for an anxious client in the current environment?

 

Panelists: 
Erik Stallman, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, Berkeley Law (Moderator)
Andrew Bridges, Partner, Fenwick & West LLP
Angela Kim, Audience Development Manager, Verizon Media
Ken Norwick, Partner, Norwick & Schad

Saving Section 230
 (2:25 p.m. – 3:10 p.m.)

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is under threat. With FOSTA showing the way, voices from all across the political spectrum are calling for new carveouts from Section 230's protection, whether those be for hate speech, harassment, terrorism-related content, violations of privacy, or other issues of the day.  And there is a growing undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Section 230 as a whole, with figures such as Nancy Pelosi suggesting that platforms are on the verge of having their protection withdrawn entirely for abuse of privilege while decisions such as HomeAway.com v. Santa Monica from the Ninth Circuit show a disturbing trend toward a narrow reading of the statute.

But that hasn't happened yet, and perhaps this future might yet be averted. This session will explore the choices and inflection points that platforms and their attorneys face every day, and our moderators will lead a discussion of how these decisions affect the current debate over Section 230 and whether the statute can be preserved in anything like its current form.

Co-Moderators:
Eric Goldman, Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law
Daphne Keller, Director of Intermediary Liability, Stanford Center for Internet and Society

In Conversation: A Fourth Amendment for the Digital Age
 (5:00 p.m. – 5:25 p.m.)

In its landmark decision in Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment requires that law enforcement obtain a warrant before gathering historic cell site location data about a suspect from cellular service providers, calling into question the validity of the "third-party doctrine" in the online context. The decision has opened the door to a new way of thinking about constitutional privacy in the digital age, where third-party platforms store some of our most personal data. How will (and how should) courts respond to government requests for IP addresses, search history, emails and the like? And what could Congress do to clarify existing law? A former federal magistrate judge, the Hon. Stephen Wm. Smith, will discuss these issues with noted practitioner, Marc Zwillinger, and together they will provide their analysis of where we've been and where we're going.

Speakers:
Jim Dempsey, Executive Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology (Moderator)
Hon. Stephen Wm. Smith, U.S.M.J. (retired), Director of Fourth Amendment & Open Courts, 
        Stanford Center for Internet and Society
Marc Zwillinger, Founder & Managing Member, ZwillGen PLLC

Location: 
Mission Bay Conference Center San Francisco, CA

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