The 2 p.m. presentation of “Current Issues in Media Law” featured a panel of Jason Zenor, Asa Stackel, Leigh Rusyn, Annie Palmer and Carly Olds discussing provocative issues in this evolving field.
The presentation discussed the legal issues various forms of broadcast media have to deal with. One situation given was libelous statements via the Internet and whether anyone saying things on the Internet should be held responsible for their statements. One interesting point given was that people have claimed that any offending statements could have been said as a spur-of-the-moment event, and that making these hurtful statements newsworthy would only increase the publicity.
The other topic involved copyright infringement. Under today’s protection, a copyright stays active until a considerable amount of years after the copyright owner is deceased. Examples of potential copyright-infringing material includes fan-fiction (the use of copyright characters in an original story), parody (a mostly satirical comment on a specific work, usually depends on how much the original work is duplicated) and music sampling (using clips of a copyrighted song without owning the rights to create a new song).