= Premium Content

  • Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Previous

Next

Christian Legal Society and Montana Law School Settle Dispute

August 11, 2011, 1:57 pm

The Christian Legal Society on Wednesday formally dropped a federal lawsuit against the University of Montana School of Law in response to a settlement reached in a dispute involving the financing of student groups. The settlement came as the case was pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, on a Christian Legal Society appeal of a lower-court ruling upholding the law school’s decision to deny a campus chapter recognition and funds because the society’s membership criteria discriminate on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. Under the settlement’s terms, the law school’s dean and Student Bar Association have agreed to a list of viewpoint-neutral criteria for deciding whether student groups are eligible for the association’s financial support, and, for example, shall not consider whether a group holds unpopular views or faces student opposition. Even if the association denies funds to the campus’s Christian Legal Society chapter, the dean will recognize it as an independent student organization and give it access to campus facilities.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

  • Print
  • Comment
  • old nassau’67

    These are. to me,  the most important criteria of the agreement:
    (#8) CLS-UM is currently ineligible for SBA funding, but may apply.
    (#9, iii.) SBA may consider “Whether the proposed events and activities to be funded are open to all law students.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=562029225 Michael Entner Gómez

    Here’s a novel idea. How about not charging $10+ to see a movie and paying actors millions? All these Hollywood folks are doing is contributing to the disparity of wealth in this country, so I offer up the world’s smallest violin to these studios.

  • http://twitter.com/mdorsher mdorsher

    Paramount and the other copyrighters are talking to the wrong people about how to get students to reduce copyright infringements; they should be talking to (media) ethics professors, not law professors.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Greg-Fischer/1558570171 Greg Fischer

    The problem is there is no enforcement of the law. I am studying to be a graphic designer and I have to understand copyrights, trademarks, etc. and also have to protect my intellectual property. Granted, I am equally disappointed in the money they charge at the movies, but the studios have to protect their intellectual property, and movies cost a lot to make, and I’m not just talking money, but time. Stealing is stealing and when you share movies and music done by others without the proper licensing ,etc.,  it is ‘breaking’ the law. Yes, the laws may be more legal speak than people understand, but laws take time to write and implement. However, what ‘kids’ have realized is that the law (rules) is not being enforced, so who cares? It’s like having parents who do not enforce the rules and then you have unruly children.

    @twitter-17539198:disqus Not sure ethics professors alone will help. Maybe a combination of both, along with law enforcement, a collaborative effort may be the approach. 

    It will not lessen until the laws are enforced, justly and fairly, that the rampant illegal sharing of intellectual properly will slow down. I do not believe it will ever stop as technology moves faster than people and laws. 

    Just my 2 cents…

  • michellelizaso

    I agree with Mr. Gomez above.  Also, is this really an invitation to discuss current affairs of copyright infringement or intellectual property or a grassroots attempt at the audience who is probably the most actively participating in this type of behavior.  I think this is an attempt to get at the students under the guise of a current affairs discussion.

  • http://twitter.com/jhengstler Julia Hengstler

    Hmm. Wondering if movies are a “last bastion” due to costs of production? We see open source of texts, LMSs, etc. with the business model in the ‘wrap around’ secondary products or services associated with the ‘free’ core one. Recently, TV distribution has moved online–with some shows as web exclusives. Viewers receive programming free–exposing themselves to marketing, etc. much as we did when chat was young and the intermittent banner adds would go across the screen. We see publishing moving in a similar direction. Did music win the DRM war? Not really, I don’t think. There’s still lots of P2P sharing. Basically interfaces like iTunes have made it more convenient & less expensive to get what you want–so ease and low prices, can trump “free”. Many popular radio stations also stream their content–many for free.  If the movie industry is concerned about the Internet based market, it needs either to get on the iTunes model bandwagon, or move to free ‘core’ with wrap around goods/services & advertising. Any other successful models?

  • mbelvadi

    The entertainment industries are notorious in their rhetoric for completely ignoring Fair Use and other exemptions to the exclusive rights in US copyright law – they talk as if the copyright holder has absolute and unlimited power to control every use of their work no matter what. I’d love to see their simplistic rhetoric stand in front of classes full of America’s top law students, and hear the students shred them to legal pieces in the Q&A. If they weren’t humbled before they walked in, they would be after that!

  • sand6432

    People at universities who think there is no problem about piracy would do well to walk across campus and spend some time talking with staff at their university press. Administrations require presses, on average, to recover 90% of their operating costs from sales, yet all too many administrators, librarians, and faculty don’t seem to realize that their neglect of the problem of piracy is affecting the ability of their own presses to continue delivering their services. — Sandy Thatcher (past president, Association of American University Presses)

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.