media law

After the Portland Press Herald defied a gag order, a judge presiding over a domestic assault case involving an attorney retracted the order, the newspaper's Scott Dolan reports: "'It is certainly very clear to me that this particular order was not lawful, and I should not have ordered the media to refrain from reporting what was said,”' Judge Jeffrey Moskowitz said in a Portland courtroom. It was the testimony of the lawyer's 34-year-old ex-girlfriend that the judge ordered not to be reported.

The Daily Report's Greg Land reports on an issue of first impression in Georgia: does the public have a First Amendment right to attend a plastic surgeon's disciplinary hearing? Dr. Nedra Dodds had her license to practice medicine suspended after two of her patients died following liposuction treatments. The doctor doesn't want a local TV station to cover the hearing before an administrative law judge. The doctor's attorney argues that the privacy of information about patients bars public disclosure of Georgia Composite Medical Board disciplinary hearing, while the station's attorney argues patient privacy is not a compelling state interest that outweighs the public interest in a judicial proceeding.
 

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment rights of a video-game maker don't trump the rights former NFL players have to be compensated for the use of their avatars in the Madden NFL series, the Associated Press' Sudhin Thanawala reports. Courthouse News' Maria Dinzeo reports that the panel ruled that Electronic Arts can't "use incidental use as a defense for its depictions of football players in video games, ... rejecting the company's claims that the athletes' images add little commercial value." The panel also upheld a lower court ruling rejecting Electronic Arts' motion to strike the lawsuit under California's anti-SLAPP law.

The New York Times' James Risen reluctantly took the stand in a preview of what testimony he would give if compelled by the Justice Department to give testimony about his confidential sources for classified information in a book chapter about the Iranian nuclear program, his colleague Matt Apuzzo reports. Risen refused to say anything to help prosecutors in their case against Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer who allegedly provided the information to Risen. Edward B. MacMahon, Sterling's lawyer, said during the hearing, "that without more information from Mr. Risen, the government had no case. He said prosecutors could not even prove that the leak had occurred in Virginia," where the case is being prosecuted.

A British photojournalist was arrested by police as he used a drone above the scene of a fatal fire, The Guardian's Ben Quinn reports. Even though Eddie Mitchell had permission from the landowner to use his drone and is one of the few journalists authorized by the Civil Aviation Authority (the UK equivalent to the Federal Aviation Administration) to fly drones, he was held in police custody for more than 5 hours and had the controller to his drone snatched from his hands. Mitchell told The Guardian "'it was an incredibly dangerous thing that they did. They didn’t know the dangers that they were putting myself, themselves and passing air traffic in. It could have flown off in any direction. They were passing the controller between themselves and eventually got it down with a thud.”'

The U.S. government missed a deadline at the end of 2014 to issue rules on drones, Reuters' Alwyn Scott and Robert Rampton reports. While the Federal Aviation Administration has given a draft of the rules to the White House, the Office of Management and Budget has not finished reviewing them yet.

Reuters also reports that the Motion Picture Association of America and other industry groups want the FAA rules to preempt state or city laws regulating the use of drones.

Finally, the Federal Aviation Administration is close to releasing rules to integrate drones into the American airspace by early 2015, the Associated Press' Joan Lowy reports. But Congress will likely make key decisions. One of the priorities of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee "is writing legislation to reauthorize FAA programs and overhaul aviation policy. The bill is expected to include directions from lawmakers on how to integrate drones into the nation's aviation system. The last reauthorization bill, passed in 2012, directed the agency to integrate drones by Sept. 30, 2015, but it's clear the FAA will miss that deadline," Lowy further reports.

The FAA's rules, which will take another couples of years to finalize, will likely include restrictions on drones flying at night, being kept within the sight of operators and being flown below 400 feet. The FAA may also may more controversially require drone operators to have pilot's licenses.

When the Federal Aviation Administration granted waivers for Hollywood filmmakers to fly drones on movie sets, federal regulators did so despite warnings from safety inspectors that the plans were too risky and should not be authorized, The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reports: "The warning turned out to be prescient. On Wednesday, a camera-toting drone operated by one of the filmmakers, Pictorvision, flew off a set in California and disappeared, according to an FAA report." 

The agency is facing 167 applications to be permitted to use drones in commercial applications and is not keeping up with the technological advances in the drone industry, Whitlock further reports. The agency is expected to miss the September 2015 deadline on integrating drones into the American airspace by two years.

Whitlock has a delayed investigative report into how the FAA is functioning right now amid a lot of pressure to get drones going safely but quickly. One problem, Whitlock writes, is that a consultant was hired to help streamline the FAA's review process, but the company was also an advocate for the Hollywood filmmakers seeking approval for drone use. The relationship has since ended.

New York City Councilman Dan Garodnick has introduced a bill to ban the use of all drones in the Big Apple except by law enforcement officers who have warrants, Ars Technica reports. Councilman Paul Vallone introduced a separate bill that would restrict drones, among other limitations, to not being flown at night, out of the operator's eyesight or above 400 feet.

Barrett Brown, a freelance journalist who also has been portrayed as an Anonymous hacktivist, has had his sentencing delayed until January 22, The Intercept's Michelle Garcia reports.

Before taking a plea deal, Brown faced more than 100 years in prison for posting links to stolen credit-card information hacked by others from the servers of security intelligence firms HBGary and Stratfor: "The HBGary hack revealed a coordinated campaign to target and smear advocates for WikiLeaks and the Chamber of Commerce, while the Stratfor hack provided a rare window into the shadowy world of defense contractors," Garcia reports.

Brown's defense attorneys objected to much of the evidence presented by prosecutors in a hearing this week, arguing it is not relevant to the charges he pled guilty to: threatening an FBI agent on a YouTube video while he was on withdrawal from Suboxone, trying to hide his laptops during the execution of a search warrant and "an offer Brown made to the hacker Jeremy Hammond, to contact Stratfor to see if the firm wanted redactions of the hacked materials." 

Most troubling, Garcia reports, prosecutors revived the claim that Brown's posting the link to the stolen credit-card information constituted complicity with the hack, even though First Amendment concerns were raised by that prosecutorial argument. Defense attorney Ahmed Ghappour told Garcia that “'looking at that as criminal conduct would probably bring an end to all digital journalism, period. There would be no reporting on leaks.”'