Assignment 7: Exploiting a News Story

Exploiting a news story is basically manipulation of a story in short. Today, with our blog and web driven media cycle, nothing can escape exaggeration, distortion, fabrication and simplification.

So we’ve all heard the story of Laker player D'angelo Russell ( Aka Swaggy P) allegedly putting his teammate Nick Young “on blast” about cheating on his soon to be wife pop star Iggy Azalea. In perhaps the one of the sneakiest moves of the social media we’ve ever seen from an NBA player, LA Laker D'angelo Russell recorded a video of a private conversation he was having with his teammate  Nick Young who clearly was unaware that he was on film. It reveals that Nick cheated on Iggy Azalea sometime this year. Unfortunately for D’Angelo Russell, the Laker rookie was just hacked yesterday (so coincidental!) so there’s a chance that this video is part of what came from that hack. Iggy made her response through twitter only stating, “hmmm I see D Angelo Russell is trending... I actually liked his film. Thanks bro.”. This “video she’s referring to is the one stated earlier and is provided in the link below.

This story has literally blown up on social media and has been the topic of majority of the leading memes lately. These are big stars were talking about so there is sure to be a little ruffling of feathers when news like this get out, but geeze not this many feathers. That’s what leads me to say this story is definitely being milked for what is actually worth.

If you turn on any pop culture news outlet you’re sure to get a glimpse of this story, but why? This is someone else’s relationship, I could see this not looking too good for the Lakers in the most minute way at most but nothing too devastating. The media does this to distract us from what’s really going on what’s really important. Instead of letting us know about our dying planet all you can seem to find is over exaggerated stories of a cheating NBA player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFqGUyApyic  

Assignment 6: Copyright and Fair Use

Over the past couple of weeks YouTube sensations/stars have been struggling to keep their accounts protected. They want YouTube to change their rules on copyright. “The whole copyright system for online video is broken, allowing for obvious copyright infringement in some places, and punishing innocent people in others. Fixing it will require regulation to restore the protection of creativity.”

People have to understand that copyright is regulation. “It’s a government-created monopoly enforced through legal coercion. With copyright there is no underlying physical object to protect — the policy is about restricting the right of others to make copies, not the right of access to scarce resources. As such, there is a trade-off between enriching the common cultural heritage — the public domain — and allowing authors to profit from their work.”

YouTube, is largest video hosting site on the internet, where thousands of people have made careers and changed their lives by posting their videos. The major problem is "fair use." This is the part of U.S. law holding that people can legally copy portions of works verbatim under certain circumstances, such as critique, parody, commentary, reporting, or education.

A giant portion of YouTube's videos are  fair use, protected even under the highly flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides a legal basis for copyright holders to issue takedown notices of infringing content. Most seriously, they can file official legal papers to YouTube, which puts a copyright "strike" on the account. Three strikes, and the entire account is permanently deleted.

So on the one hand, the law of fair use is being flagrantly ground into dirt, and on the other, the biggest social media company in the world is bootstrapping a video service with blatantly ripped-off content. Online copyright needs new regulation from Congress. The existing legal framework is clearly failing to function as designed, and the profit motive is shockingly not pushing corporations to abide by existing law.

 http://theweek.com/articles/608700/copyright-laws-are-breaking-youtube-heres-how-fix-problem

Assignment 5: Reporters Privilege

Reporter's privilege in the United States (also journalist's privilege, newsman's privilege, or press privilege), is a "reporter's protection under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources." Each states has it different laws on reporter’s privilege so I decided to look into Texas laws.

The Texas Free Flow of Information Act (also known as a reporter’s privilege) is a qualified privilege with separate civil and criminal sections. The civil section applies to confidential and non-confidential sources, journalist’s work product and published and unpublished materials. In order to require a reporter to testify or produce materials, the party who issued the subpoena must show by clear and specific evidence the following: (1) they have exhausted all reasonable efforts to get the information elsewhere, (2) the information is relevant and material to the proper administration of justice, and, (3) the information sought is essential to the maintenance of the claim or defense of the person asking for it. This statement is basically giving you an outline on what exactly reporters privilege is. This is basically the “who” and “what”. The only way that they can be made it testify is if it’s the last resource available to use in the case.

The state of the Reporter’s Privilege is considerably improved with the recent passage of the state’s shield law, although there is still uncertainty as to how some provisions will be interpreted. The new shield law (signed on May 13, 2009, and effective upon signing) has already been used on a number of occasions with mostly positive results. Basically stating that more change have been made in protecting the reporter. Not only have numerous court proceedings resulted in favorable rulings for reporters and the media, but there is considerable anecdotal evidence of many media outlets convincing the subpoenaing party to withdraw the subpoena upon being informed of the passage of the new law.        

The “journalist,” as defined in the statute, cannot be compelled to testify unless the tests set forth in the statute are met. Additionally, a subpoena may not compel a “communications service provider” or “news medium,” as defined by the statute, to disclose information unless the tests set forth in the statute are met. Unless all these status are met nothing can be done to the reporter or their information. Anything that is looked past cannot be used in a court of law.

 http://www.rcfp.org/reporters-privilege