Sports Law

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This amendment made it illegal to fire women for becoming pregnant, to deny insurance coverage for pregnancy-related conditions, or to require women to take unpaid leave after ... Read More

With the backdrop of November midterm elections and social media executives testifying before Congress about foreign efforts to interfere in U.S. democracy, California lawmakers are working on finalizing a new bill aimed to promote transparency and accountability around political advertisements on social media platforms. The “Social Media DISCLOSE Act” (the ... Read More

Longtime friend of The Sports Law Blog, Professor Peter Carfagna of Harvard Law School, just released the THIRD EDITION of his fantastic book "Representing the Professional Athlete." The book begins with a comprehensive overview of the complex regulatory framework pertaining to the legal representation of pre-professional NCAA student-athletes. It then ... Read More

Does your company have an incident response plan in place in case of a cyberattack or data breach? Companies that do not understand the gravity of these events should take heed of this statistic: 90 percent of businesses that lose data due to a security incident shut down within two ... Read More

By Leslie Berman Edited by Elissa D. Hecker GENERAL NEWS Letter Claims Attempted Assault by a Teenage Brett Kavanaugh and Kavanaugh's Accuser Comes Forward, Saying He Pinned Her on Bed and Groped Her A letter claiming Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh assaulted a teenage girl while he was at a ... Read More

Alston v. NCAA:  What Is this So-Called Productof College Football and Men’s Basketball?Richard G. Johnson*         After a week’s rest, the consolidated Alston v. NCAA trial resumes on Monday, so are we all ready, which means, do we actually know what this fight is really about?         I have previously written about this case in the following ... Read More

VIDEO: http://firemark.com TRANSCRIPT: When do you have to blur the faces of people you capture in your videos shot in public places? Hi, I'm attorney Gordon Firemark, and this is Asked and Answered, where I answer your entertainment law questions, to help you take your career and business to the ... Read More

I am a week late to the conversation about the blowup between Serena Williams and the chair umpire during the US Open women's final. I do believe there is a race-and-gender piece to this, although it is not as simple or direct as some make it out to be. Kevin ... Read More

EU approves copyright directive blasted by big tech — “With the vote, MEPs can now start negotiations with the European Council representing the 28 member states which already reached a compromise on the issue in May. These closed-door discussions, which also include the European Commission, are known in EU jargon ... Read More

From May 2014 until May 2017, I was part of the Football Players Health Study at Harvard University. Created in 2014 pursuant to an agreement between Harvard Medical School and the NFLPA,* the Football Players Health Study is a long-term, multi-faceted research project dedicated to understanding the causes of conditions that ... Read More

By Barry Skidelsky, Esq. The recently enacted John MCain National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2019 (NDAA) adds §722 to the Communications Act. It requires the filing of reports with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by statutorily defined U.S. based foreign media outlets, including details of their legal structures ... Read More

The Latest episode of my Entertainment Law podcast, Entertainment Law Update, is now available for your enjoyment. Listen here, or subscribe and download in your favorite podcast listening app.  Show notes are located at http://entertainmentlawupdate.com/101. Here's what we talked about.. Olivia DeHaviland Update – California Supreme Court refuses to revive, so she’s ... Read More

Stacey Steinberg, University of Florida College of Law, is publishing Changing Faces: Morphed Child Pornography and the First Amendment in the Emory Law Journal (2019). Here is the abstract. Technology has changed the face of child pornography. The Supreme Court ... Read More

"This is a great day for Europe’s creators." Music industry welcomes European Parliament vote for Article 13 and EU digital copyright reform. #CopyrightDirective https://t.co/9laPO8GMiD pic.twitter.com/fFJ2ebqGmt — Music Week (@MusicWeek) September 12, 2018 In a major defeat for Google’s astroturf campaign, the European Parliament has passed the new European Copyright Directive. ... Read More

The latest issue of Music & Copyright is now available for subscribers to download. Here are some of the highlights. Despite legal successes, stream ripping remains a significant threat to the recorded-music industry Music streaming has quickly become the dominant revenue source for recorded-music companies. Moreover, recorded music is now ... Read More

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By Eric Lanter Edited by Elissa D. Hecker General News Kavanaugh Hearings Draw Controversy President Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, has faced pointed questions regarding the power of presidents to obstruct investigations and the issue of a president being indicted or being subpoenaed by special counsel ... Read More

Rebecca Aviel, University of Denver College of Law, is publishing Rule 8.4(g) and the First Amendment: Distinguishing between Discrimination and Free Speech in volume 31 of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics (2018). Here is the abstract. The ABA’s recent ... Read More

From the Guardian: reporting on surveillance, investigation, and censorship of inmate participants and some others (not inmates) in PEN America's Prison Writing Program, based on security concerns. The Guardian article begins: Did or did not the prisoner turn into a ... Read More

Right on cue, SiriusXM attacks the Music Modernization Act at the 11th hour with a frothy op-ed in Billboard that strings together what I would argue are a lot of half-truths and misrepresentations in a desperate effort to fool both artists and the Congress into preserving the Sirius crony insider ... Read More

VIDEO: http://firemark.com TRANSCRIPT: Do you need to clear music rights for your social-media advertising campaigns? Hi, I'm attorney Gordon Firemark, and this is Asked and Answered, where I answer your entertainment law questions, to help you take your career and business to the next level. Andrew wrote in with this ... Read More

NAFTA Emails Flood Gov’t — In the final stretches of NAFTA negotiations, opponents of modern copyright rules in trade agreements are pulling out all stops. From Canada, Blacklock‘s reports, “The Department of Foreign Affairs says it’s received tens of thousands of emails over NAFTA talks. About half originated from Open ... Read More

Wannes Vandenbussche, Institute for the Law of Obligations, KU Leuven, has published Rethinking Non-Pecuniary Remedies for Defamation: The Case for Court-Ordered Apologies. Here is the abstract. Legal scholars have been encouraged to examine alternative remedies for defamation in response to ... Read More

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has indicated that nearly all initial coin offering (“ICO”) filings they have seen are securities offerings. Based on this expansive view, it may be more likely to find a Unicorn than an ICO that is not a securities offering. Ironically, a recent ... Read More

Jason M. Shepard, California State University, Fullerton, and Kathleen Bartzen Culver, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Center for Journalism Ethics, and University of Wisconsin, Madison, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, have published Culture Wars on Campus: Academic Freedom, the First ... Read More

Ned Snow, University of South Carolina, is published Denying Trademark for Scandalous Speech in volume 51 of the UC Davis Law Review (2018). Here is the abstract. Recently in Matal v. Tam, the Supreme Court held that the disparagement clause ... Read More

Attorney Michael Santucci recently visited Nine Mile in Saint Ann, Jamaica, the birthplace and now resting place of the musical and spiritual legend Bob Marley. His gracious host, Richard Booker, is Bob Marley’s brother and a long-time client of Santucci Priore, P.L. with whom Michael stayed on the family compound. ... Read More

Celeste Tien-hsin Wang, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, has published Is Intellectual Property ‘Disrupted’ by the Algorithm That Feeds You Information in an Era of Fake News? at 15 The Sciencs Po Law Review / La Revue des ... Read More

By Daniel Scott Daniel Scott As if the death of the Queen of Soul was not tragic enough, then came the news that Aretha Franklin died without a will. How could this happen, again? Franklin did not die suddenly or unexpectedly -- she was 76 years old and her health ... Read More

By Nick Crudele Edited by Elissa D. Hecker General News United Nations Says Rohingya Purge Is Genocide The United Nations (UN) declared that the mass killing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar is genocide. The Myanmar army generals and commanders carrying out the genocide should face trial for their actions, according ... Read More