Wrapping 2013 at the Digital Media Law Project

Here we are again, at the end of another year with snow on the ground and Harvard University's winter shutdown rapidly approaching. Tomorrow, the staff of the Digital Media Law Project will be off to spend time with friends and family until Harvard's doors reopen in 2014; but before we go, I wanted to take a quick look back at this year's highlights at the DMLP.

First and foremost, this fall saw the long-deserved promotion of our staff attorney, Andy Sellars, to Assistant Director of the DMLP. Those of you who have had reason to meet Andy will understand how easy this decision was; those of you who haven't had a reason, find one - we get him out into the real world as much as possible.

2013 also saw our formal transition to a new name, "Digital" taking the place of "Citizen" in our project title. This change was a long time in coming, and reflects the evolution of online journalism from a field of individual voices speaking through discrete websites to an online environment where professionals and citizens, institutions and independents, share and develop information in a networked manner. While we continue to strongly support independent journalists and their legal needs, we also consider these needs in the larger framework of the legal issues affecting networked journalism and let our experiences with our constituency inform our future research and action agenda.

And in that regard, we've been very active in pending court cases this year. With the invaluable cooperation of our friends at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, we have filed briefs in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Sixth Circuits (among others) on a range of issues affecting the gathering and publication of information online:

• In Seaton v. TripAdvisor, LLC, the DMLP urged the Sixth Circuit to affirm a district court's finding that a "dirtiest hotels" list published by consumer review website TripAdvisor was protected opinion under the First Amendment and Tennessee defamation law. The DMLP argued that a decision adverse to TripAdvisor would chill reliance on crowdsourced data for research purposes, and that the use of crowdsourcing to collect data has become common in both data-based journalism and academic research. On August 28, 2013, the Sixth Circuit issued a decision affirming the district court's dismissal of the case.

• In United States v. Auernheimer, the DMLP asked the Third Circuit to apply First Amendment scrutiny to the escalation of punishment under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act from a misdemeanor to a felony based upon the defendant's sharing of information on matters of public concern with the press. The DMLP argued that Supreme Court precedent prevents punishment for the disclosure of true, newsworthy information, and that courts considering the disclosure of illegally obtained information have been careful to distinguish between punishment for the unlawful access and punishment for harms caused due to publication of the information obtained.

• The DMLP returned to the Sixth Circuit in Jones v. Dirty-World Entertainment Recordings, LLC, this time teaming up with the ACLU and EFF to warn the court about the consequences of limiting the protection of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in cases where an online intermediary encourages its users to post potentially offensive material. While such a rule might limit distasteful content on the Internet, it could also seriously impair the use of the Internet to gather important information that is available in no other way, such as reports of consumer fraud, child abuse, price gouging, et cetera.

Alongside our interventions in active legal cases, we have launched a number of research projects relating to broader challenges affecting newsgathering and the financial viability of journalism organizations:

• In cooperation with Free Press, the National Press Photographers Association, Journalist's Resource, the Investigative News Network, and the Nieman Journalism Lab, the DMLP launched a nationwide survey of institutional and independent journalists to gather information about their experiences in obtaining media credentials. The study, which asked about journalists' interactions with federal, state, and private organizations,<