John
Zelezny authors two university-level, media-law textbooks
used widely across the United States by students in mass communication,
journalism, advertising and similar fields.
Communications
Law:
Liberties, Restraints, and the Modern Media
By John D. Zelezny
Publisher:
Thomson/Wadsworth
Fifth edition: Softcover, 544 pages, © 2007
Written specifically for undergraduate students, the text
provides all the tools needed to succeed in this challenging
area of study. Current cases, hypothetical exercises,
Quick Check boxes, summary notes, and end-of-chapter Web
resources are a few of the many tools found throughout
the text. The book provides an excellent orientation to
First Amendment law and then further detail in such areas
as defamation, invasion of privacy, open-records laws,
copyright law, broadcast regulation, advertising regulation,
and adult expression. |
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Cases
in Communications Law
By John D. Zelezny
Publisher:
Thomson/Wadsworth
Fifth edition: Softcover, 295 pages, © 2007
Written as a companion to Zelezny's Communications Law
textbook, this book presents 65 strategically selected
and carefully edited cases that familiarize students with
authoritative judicial reasoning on key principles of
communications law. Most of the cases are from the U.S.
Supreme Court and stand as precedent for all other courts
in the country. |
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Media Pirates: Why downloading music and
films often isnt sharing, but really is stealing
(Originally
published by McClatchy Newspapers, June 17, 2007)
By John Zelezny
Oscar-nominated director Taylor Hackford
pitched Ray for 13 years before he found a financier to front
$35 million. It took another two years to produce the critically
acclaimed film.
Online copyright thieves took no time at
all, however, to siphon proceeds from the creative people
who earned them. Less than a week after the films 2004 theatrical
release, digital copies of Ray were being shared around the
globe illegally via peer-to-peer computer networks. By the
millions, consumers accessed Ray without paying a cent and
without regard to the financial consequences for location
scouts, sound technicians, assistant directors and hundreds
of others.
Illegal downloading amounts to taking food
out of working peoples mouths, Hackford says, still riled.
Two years ago this month the Supreme Court
announced what should have been a major victory for those
who create music and motion pictures. In MGM v. Grokster,
a unanimous Court held that marketers of peer-to-peer file-sharing
systems may be liable for the online theft they induce among
consumers. The ruling gave copyright owners a target far preferable
to suing individual downloaders.
But its hard to find anyone in entertainment
celebrating the two-year anniversary of what some billed the
digital ages blockbuster copyright case. For despite the ruling,
online theft remains rampant, and federal enforcement is insufficient
to quell the looting.
Some entertainment executives say Grokster
helped nudge digital-technology companies to the bargaining
table with content-creating companies. BitTorrent, for example,
approached the film industry post-Grokster, agreed to filter
infringing traffic from its website, and today provides authorized
online content.
Yet by any serious estimate, the online
theft picture remains ugly.
For music, the illegal downloading rate
is at least 5.6 billion digital files a year still several
times greater than the growing volume of legal downloads.
And for motion pictures, online theft has grown to about 40
percent of all film piracy. These statistics translate to
several billion dollars in lost revenues for U.S. film and
recording businesses, several billion more lost for such downstream
businesses as advertising and retail, more than a billion
dollars in lost U.S. tax revenues, tens of thousands of U.S.
jobs, and constricted opportunities for new and veteran entertainment
artists alike.
Songwriters have been especially hard hit.
Even writers I know with multiple hit songs are cleaning out
their desks, says Songwriters Guild President Rick Carnes.
Illegal downloading is taking jobs away.
The online theft phenomenon surfaced in
1999, led by Napsters popular file-sharing network, and became
deeply rooted overnight. Taking something for free suddenly
seemed okay. Domestically the problem is most acute among
college students, studies show.
Illegal downloaders often rationalize that
theyre just little consumers exercising a trifle of freedom
against big corporations. Its a shoplifter-like mentality.
Young people tend to be anti-establishment,
and they see us as big entertainment companies. But theres
an insidious quality to that thinking, Hackford says. People
just dont understand. Were freelance people. Every job could
be our last job. There is no steady employment.
In the inherently touch-and-go industries
where eight of ten recordings and motion pictures wont earn
back their costs, the added drain of an online-theft culture
isnt easily absorbed.
The industries are helping themselves by
exploring more popular ways to market their content digitally,
by educating consumers on copyright law, by employing new
technology to inhibit illegal copying and track illegal downloading,
and by filing lawsuits against infringing consumers and software
peddlers alike. Yet the temptation to take for free, coupled
with the foreign locales of most pirating networks, paints
a daunting, uncertain future for content creators.
More aggressive enforcement of copyright
law is the missing ingredient.
Not only has the U.S. entertainment industry
long produced the worlds most robust content something for
virtually every taste but from a global balance-of-trade standpoint
entertainment has for nearly a century been one of the nations
greatest successes. This preeminence is no accident.
Two provisions in the U.S. Constitution
have played significant roles. One is the First Amendments
guarantee of free expression. The other is Article I, Section
8, empowering Congress to promote the arts by securing creative
property rights copyright law.
But today copyright owners too often have
to police infringements on their own in a complex global marketplace
where federal resources are essential. Favorable court rulings
such as Grokster have cleared the way, but brazen theft will
cease only when the threat of criminal or civil penalties
is real.
Last month the Justice Department proposed
legislation the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007
to strengthen its tools for copyright piracy prosecution.
The key, however, is assigning the resources and priority
to effect real deterrence.
For swift progress, government should redirect
budget away from trying to control electronic media content,
which government is not constitutionally authorized to do,
and toward protecting creative property rights, which it is
explicitly authorized to do.
