How has media law changed given the new technologies that have emerged?
The Internet issues that have come up in terms of defending libel cases and invasion of privacy cases have a different twist to them because of the technology, but you’re really working off the same legal principles. Sometimes there’s a tendency for people to overestimate the difference between a suit involving some Internet publication and a suit involving a traditional newspaper. We tend to say, “Oh, this is an Internet publication. These must be new and novel issues.” Why that specific assumption? People, including some lawyers, assumed that because the technology was new, all of the legal issues would be new. There are some legal issues that are new, such as federal statutes that control some material distributed over the Internet, but in terms of libel and invasion of privacy issues, they have more things in common with traditional media litigation. Some different issues that I would say have arisen regard confidential-source issues, which have been tough anyway for media lawyers
