Editorial Review

Reviews

The Mark Twain of lawyer jokes, September 21, 2005
There are plenty of lawyer-bashing books, but this is not one of them. Rather, like a modern Mark Twain, Marc Galanter uses lawyer jokes to reflect trends in American society. Through thousands of jokes and cartoons that mock lawyers and legalization, he shows on how the legal system is influencing and being influenced by changing relationships between individuals, between citizens and government, and between consumers and corporations. Lawyer jokes are popular because lawyers still fight and win for the little guy. A good read for your favorite lawyer or lawyer-to-be.

Lawyer jokes for smart people, September 20, 2005
I thought about starting this review with one of the hundreds of lawyer jokes that are "told" and given life in this excellent book, but I wouldn't want to spoil the punch lines.

The author, evidencing an extrodinarily broad range of knowledge, shows how lawyer jokes have evolved over time (and how some jokes previously targetted at Jews, minorities, and businessmen have evolved into lawyer jokes), and how this evolution reflects larger changes in society about attitudes towards law and individual rights.

In addition, the artwork in the book combines so old favorites from The New Yorker, plus older drawings from earlier centuries.

This is a great book for lawyers and for those who like to make fun of lawyers -- basically, everybody.

Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal culture, March 9, 2006
Very funny lawyer jokes. I am enjoying them. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

Superb, Engrossing, Useful, Relevant, Alarming, March 25, 2008
I ordered this book on the strength of the title, and on receiving it, discovered that the author is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School (they hate it when we just say "Harvard"--must be a culture thing). So right off I know this is at least as serious a book as I hoped for.

The book is instructive without being tedious, alarming without being hysterical. It is balanced, informed, and most relevant to all of us.

The entire book focuses on the transformation of the Internet from one in which the innovation could be done at the edges, with generative innovation that built on the provided software or hardware, to one in which we are allowed to buy tethered appliances like iPhone or X-Box that are "locked down."

Even PCs are being locked down today, and with this and other examples the author has my total attention.

He suggests that the end point matters, and that the confrontation between flexibility and openness, versus security and perfect reliability (and later, perfect enforcement) is one that requires more creative thinking rather than knee jerk mandates one way or the other.

He notes that historically IBM tried to bundle everything, and they were forced by anti-trust to unbundle, just as AT&T was, as Microsoft was, and as Google will be if the USG Government ever gets either honest or informed--either will do. Look for my book review of "Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator" to understand this suprnational unsupervised threat to multiple sectors, never mind privacy and copyright.

In a nutshell, he frames the challenge as that of modularity within which the end-user can innovate, versus walled gardens that are locked down.

In passing the author vindicates both Morris, and the manner in which justice was applied. Morris intended to count the computers on the Internet, and screwed up the code. The judge intended to punish him but not end his promising career. All good.

The author discusses what Vint Cerf and others have, the degree to which bots have taken over tens of millions of computers, using broadband connections left on at all times to create a subrosa network that does evil.

On page 63, three important principles from the author on generativity:

1. Our information technology ecosystem functions best with generative technology (i.e. NOT with locked down appliances hard-wired to a center)

2. Generativity instigates a pattern both within and beyond the technological layers of the information technology ecosystem (i.e. content collaboration and social collaboration and value-added)

3. Proponents of generative systems ignore the drawbacks attendant to generativity success at their peril.

This is followed by a great discussion of features of a generative system as they would be hoped for by the author:

- Leverage
- Adaptability
- Base of mastery
- Accessibility
- Transferability

He cites benefits of a generative system as including:

- Non-profit social innovation
- Disruptive innovation
- Broad participation
- Generative systems from generative building blocks
- Recursion (of value) to content and then to society

The scary chapter in the book--the author is elegant but one needs little help to imagine the worst--discusses how tethered appliances enable "perfect enforcement" to include GPS devices turned on remotely to serve as audio surveillance on demand, and so on.

Turning to solutions, the author distinguishes between flexibility needed at the content level (he is laudatory about Wikipedia) and the technology layer. He discusses one possible solution, a Green-Red split system in which the Green system is locked down and totally reliable, and the Red system is open to innovation but also treated with caution.

He calls for better easier security tools for group and individual use, but as one who could never ever find a coder willing to document their code, and as one completely fed up with the pig code that comes out of Microsoft and Norton--pig in the sense of way too much crap and way too big a footprint--I fear that only an open source conversion experience will do. I note with interest a chart that shows that Sun Open Systems are the LAST to plug security holes, Not good.

The author suggests a "least harm" protocol.

He calls for a very large conversation among end-users, coders, manufacturers, regulators, and so on, and what I hear him saying is that the "system of systems" is on auto-pilot, the government is out of brakes (or brains, I would add), and if we don't all do a collective "STOP, We Want to Discuss This," we are destined to suffer the same fate as the sheep at Virginia Polytechnic who stood still while a moron killed 20+ of them--stood still while he reloaded. Had the sheep "rushed and crushed," no more than one or at most two would have died. I am harsh here, because information technology can either be our cage or our liberation, and the author is very well qualified to present the case for concern.

I learn for the first time on page 174 of the National Science Foundation's FIND initiative, and that alone is worth the price of the book.

Turning to protections, the author discusses data portability, network neutrality and generativity (I can assure all readers, Google is neither neutral nor generative), Application Program Interface (API) neutrality; privacy, individual liability versus technical mandates, and collective character (digital shunning combined with reputation bankruptcy and a clean sheet fresh start).

He discusses privacy 2.0 and problems such as code, patent, and content thickets. I like very much his reminding us that the Constitution provides for anonymity to encourage unpopular opinions. He naturally discusses data genealogy (what I call data provenance, like an art work), and reputation.

In passing, I love the brutal critique by Gene Spaford of the $100 laptop. He likens its projected impact--exposing millions to the bright side while not fixing their poverty, water, and disease--to subsidizing pet rats for every household just prior to the Black Death plague. My friend Lee Felsenstein is an equally virulent opponent of the $100 laptop, for different reasons. Me personally, I think the cell phone (but not the iPhone) is the only way to educate 5 billion people fast and with day to day relevance to their needs.

I put the book down feeling pensive, and wondering why CISCO CEO John Chambers, who has been asked in writing via Federal Express three times, continues to refuse to create a router-server that is both recyclable (or even better, updatable remotely without having to flip boxes) and that will provide data at rest encryption and Application Oriented Network (AON) features at the point of creation--in other words, every creator can control the privacy, content routing, access, sharing, and so on, and by implementing something like Grub Search on the same box, we can put paid to programmable search engines patented by Google that will only show you what the highest bidder has paid to "allow" you to see, and to the Googleplex, which "confiscates" everything it touches and then claims to "own" it--including your medical records.

This is a great and important book, if you care about the global role of the Internet is creating wealth and consequently peace.

Ten other books that come to mind as equally important:
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Manufacturing Consent
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Managing Privacy: Information Technology and Corporate America
Who Owns Information?
Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

My bottom line: as we all press toward localized resilience in community, I for one would be happy to shun all tethered appliances and rely solely on collective human intelligence in community. I really like the work of Naomi Klein (No Log, Disaster Capitalism) and Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest, Natural Capital, Ecology of Commerce). We are all long overdue for a massive boycott of all that is not in our interest, and we can start by evaluating the true costs of fuel, long-distance food and clothing, and perverted uses of water that we are running out of.

Peace.

Wonderful Exposition Poor Persuasion, September 15, 2008
This book should have either been 150 pages shorter and simply an argument or 100 pages longer with fully developed ideas. Zittrain frequently references and discusses the idea of "generativity" and changes the definition at each usage. Sometimes it means "creativity" sometimes it means "openness" and sometimes it means "freedom", while all these ideas are tied to generativity, none are categorical or clear. It seems to be a shorthand for "computer good stuff" in the same way the word "umami" or "freedom" is used with several means and a body of meanings that's poorly defined.
The book also references several seeming contradictions that I felt were poorly addressed. The opening of the book talks about the triumph of the Internet because of its openness over walled garden, then says that it's under thread by tethered services, which the Internet had initially bested.
Hacking isn't referenced for devices like DVRs, iPhones, and other such beasts.
DRM is entirely ignored as well as its failure in the music realm. I think the Sony Rootkit debacle would have served as a nice piece.

Finally, the book's title includes "and how to stop it". I don't recall much in the book that actively tells the read what to do to stop a tethered device dominated network nor what legislation should be avoided or promoted.

The center bits on generativity and how it pops up in everyday life was both informative and interesting. Maybe this book should have been broken into two parts rather than the odd mingling that took place in this text.

A major stake in the ground on the policy implications of the net, June 30, 2008
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It is a major work of business, legal and policy research that will be less accessible to most people, but important to those looking to understand the future direction of today's ecommerce world. Zittrain is both a technologist and a lawyer and he appears to be writing this book more to influence policy and thinking rather than proposing a specific solution.

This is fine, in my opinion, as Zittrain provides two important frameworks that define new ways of thinking about the net and its impact: the notion of generative technology and the idea that the value of that technology is moving from the network to the endpoints. The book describes these ideas and develops them into a range of policy and technical decisions facing business, political and judicial leaders.

In the Future of the Internet, Jonathan Zittrain provides a detailed analysis of the development of the Internet, the nature of networks, and the evolution of technology. This book concentrates on the central elements of what Zittrain calls "generative" solutions. A generative solution is one that provides a basis for innovation, new products and new sources of value through experimentation and individual innovation (ala Cheesbourgh's open innovation). Zittrain sees the Internet and the PC as generative technologies, which the clearly are. However he sees generative technologies go through a pattern where the openness and high levels of trust that made them generative and attracted new solutions soon fall prey to fraud, abuse and outright criminal activities.

Zittrain argues that this is what the Internet is going through now as SPAM, Malware, Phishing and other forms of cyber crime and mischief are eroding the value of the Internet as a generative platform. The book makes this argument in a very logical way with good examples. This takes up the first part of the book and is perhaps the best part.

Zittrain's idea is that as these generative technologies become compromised, the value potential moves from the network that connects devices to the devices themselves. Here is where he introduces the notion of appliance devices that are purpose build, not readily programmable at the functional level and give the consumer more protection and the provider more control. The notion that the value is moving away from the network is very intriguing; particularly interesting give the recent warm reception of appliances such as the iPhone, Wii, Tivo and others.

Overall this book is not for the faint of heart, nor for the casual reader of business and technology books. The text is well written, loaded with examples and details that will make for good cocktail party stories, but it is more of a policy book and a scholarly work than a business text.

CIOs should read the first half of the book with great interest as it lays out a new way of thinking about the network.

Corporate development officers at technology companies should read the whole book as it describes a possible legal, regulatory and economic framework for the future of technology.

Business leaders should read the first part of the book to understand the true nature and exposure they have in the current generative Internet era.

Compelling and thought-provoking, May 14, 2008
Someone once said, "The plural of anecdote is data." Zittrain's new book is a delightful illustration of this principle, engaging the reader with fascinating observations and stories, then weaving them together to present a powerful narrative. Whether or not you share his vision for the future, you'll gain a new appreciation for how the online world that we take for granted today could easily have been--and still threatens to become--a strikingly different place.

interesting, but flawed, look at the future of cyberspace, February 4, 2009
Contrary to what Zittrain would have us believe, reports of the Internet's death have been greatly exaggerated. Not only is the Net not dying, but there are signs that digital generativity and online openness are thriving as never before.

Essentially, Zittrain creates a false choice regarding the digital future we face. He doesn't seem to believe that a hybrid future is possible or desirable. In reality, however, we can have a world full of some tethered appliances or even semi-closed networks that also includes generative gadgets and open networks. After all, millions of us love our iPhones and TiVos, but we also take full advantage of the countless other open networks and devices at our disposal.

Further, while it's true that the creators of iPhone and TiVo maintain a high degree of control over the guts of the devices or their operating systems, the technologies themselves are hardly sterile or non-generative. In fact, these devices have amazing uses, and they have both recently become more open to third-party add-ons and applications. Geeks who demand still more are also hacking away at these and other digital devices to get them to do everything but wash their dishes.Most of us want networks and digital devices that work.

Zittrain, by contrast, seems to long for the era when we all had to load floppy disks into our PCs each morning to get our operating systems running. But those were hardly the good old days. Device makers realized that only techno-geeks would tolerate such hassles, and so our PCs and phones now come with more software and services built in to make our lives easier. Nothing stands in the way of those who still prefer the rugged individualist approach to conquering cyber-frontiers and digital devices. But what Zittrain does in The Future of the Internet is generalize his personal preferences to the whole of cyber-society. What's good for the ivory-tower digerati may not be what the rest of us want or need. [My complete review of Jonathan's book can be found on the Technology Liberation Front blog.]

Why you should both love and hate your Amazon Kindle e-reader?, November 16, 2008
I read this book on my Amazon Kindle. Ironically this book describes why my Amazon Kindle (and for that matter your iPhone) may represent a problem for the information technology industry (and for all of us as individuals).

Zittrain describes how open devices and software platforms can faciltate innovation and how closed platforms don't. Further, he discusses how these emerging closed device platforms risk converting the internet into a tool for simplified corporate or governmental control of what you see and hear. This book, along with "The Big Switch" by Nicholas Carr, challenge the conventional cyber-utopian assumption that the internet will continue to be a wide open landscape where you independently (and privately) choose when and where you can go. The battle is for control of the end-point device.

Zittrain has certainly spotted the dark side of Web 2.0. He has specifically illuminated those selected design assumptions within and around the internet that can shift the net from a tool by which you manage your life -- to a tool by which others manage your life. This is a serious book that merges the future of technology with public policy (and without ever actually discussing public policy -- he instead wisely focuses on the implications of certain technology architectural choices).

"The Future of the Internet" is one of the first books to directly question the sustainability of cyber-libertarian assumptions about the internet. If you cherish those long standing assumptions, you may want to spend a little time on this book.

Simply Outstanding, May 15, 2008
Kudos to Jonathan Zittrain for producing a book accessible to both a lay audience as well as his technorati crowd. His blending of history, early digital anecdote, and his strong analysis make this an academic book that transcends the blogosphere and onto both main street and wall street. A remarkable accomplishment.

Generation Generators, April 11, 2009
The Internet has indeed evolved and it continues to create myriad social and legal questions far beyond battles over hacking and file sharing. In fact, technological control and government regulation are now the biggest issues, but they've largely escaped the public's notice. This book is a very useful primer on up-to-the-minute issues in cyberlaw, and Zittrain insightfully frames the history of the Internet from multiple social and technical perspectives. The Internet was once totally user-defined but is now in the process of being locked down into proprietary tethered devices under the control of for-profit corporations, with the (supposed) need for security against hackers, viruses, and copyright infringement. But in the process, the Internet is in danger of becoming little more than a mass media outlet, to the peril of public collaboration and cooperative programming.

These are truly worrisome issues, and Zittrain frames the problem very well, but as the book drags along his overall argument becomes more and more directionless. The first problem is that Zittrain expends far too much effort trying to add theoretical support to his concept of "generativity," reaching awkwardly into areas of education policy and social construction of technology that are not his forte. And while Zittrain maps out the potentially unhappy "Future of the Internet," he comes up short on "How to Stop It" - or even why. Surely a certain segment of netizens would wish to avert the coming disaster, but it's a disaster that probably only they can see. Zittrain bemoans, but largely evades, the fact that the overwhelming majority of current Internet users are passive consumers of information on sites like this one.

This book's main deficiency is not in framing the problem, but in making the need for solutions relevant to the huge demographic that really has some kind of say in the near future of the Internet. Besides, technology will still allow truly passionate netizens to abandon the locked-down and corporatized World Wide Web. Figuring out how to make everyone else care is still the 64 gazillion dollar question. [~doomsdayer520~]

Not a Bedtime Story, November 9, 2008
You do not want to crawl into bed with this book. A mind stimulator, it narrates the history of the Internet's making and a possible doomsday scenario in which what started out as a generative platform could become a tightly regulated one that suppresses innovation. Although projections of the future are certainly interesting, the making of the Internet and its early characteristics is a 101 for anyone who doesn't quite understand how the Internet came about. Some sections go into technical depth that can be a bit too much for an average reader to swallow, but then again, this isn't science fiction.

Eh..., August 21, 2010
I saw a video of a talk he gave which seemed to be a prelude to this book. I liked his talk and presentation style, so I read the book. My review is in the middle of the road. The author is brilliant. He has a broad vocabulary, uses impeccable grammar, and offers decent ideas and concepts regarding the subject matter. That said, the delivery is long-winded, sluggish, repetitive, contains many near-run-on sentences, and is at times downright tedious, flowing like a lawyer's contract. There are times when he goes over the same points more than once, but then briefly mentions other concepts which may be foreign to the reader, only to move on leaving them unexplained. I also don't agree with with most of his proposed "solutions"-I believe they would not work, but this does not affect my review either way. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This current and comprehensive, market-leading textbook addresses the most relevant and important aspects of mass media law in the United States, stretching from the history and adoption of the First Amendment to the most recent judicial opinions, statutory enactments, and regulatory controversies affecting speech across the print, broadcast, cable and Internet media. From the laws of libel and privacy to the regulation of advertising and telecommunications, Mass Media Law examines timely issues that are shaping the United States' legal system and the future of media content. ... Read more

Reviews

One of the best media law sources out there, January 25, 2001
I've just finished writing a paper for my Advanced Placement Journalism class about freedom of speech and obscenity over the radio. This book was one of my best sources. It portrayed Supreme Court cases and laws passed by Congress in great depth and detail and managed to write it all in a language most Americans will understand. I plan to use this book for every essay I can.

Publisher/Authors once again attempt to rip off students..., July 30, 2010
Buy last years edition at 98% off... ISBN# 0073378828

There is no reason this textbook needs to be republished every year. This is pure GREED by the publisher and authors. There is very little, to no new information in the new edition.

Maybe if you like being PATRONIZED, May 13, 2004
I haven't hit my 21st birthday yet, and I've had my share of run-ins with the law, so I was somewhat familiar with the American Penal System before I read this for a class in college. That said, Don Pember patronizes the hell out of this book. On page 492, it says "The photo was a picture of a diary farmer and a cow standing in the field." Yep. A diary farmer. It made the typo; I'm just repeating it. On page 383, it says "Certainly a reporter could not be laid by the heels for contempt because he missed the essential point in a trial or failed to summarize the issues to accord with the views of the judge who sat on the case." On page 370, it uses the word "lawbreaker." Page 269: "Society often judges the rape victim to be as guilty as the rapist." haha god gimme a break ... Read more

Editorial Review

In Losing the News, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex S. Jones offers a probing look at the epochal changes sweeping the media, changes which are eroding the core news that has been the essential food supply of our democracy.
At a time of dazzling technological innovation, Jones says that what stands to be lost is the fact-based reporting that serves as a watchdog over government, holds the powerful accountable, and gives citizens what they need. In a tumultuous new media era, with cutthroat competition and panic over profits, the commitment of the traditional news media to serious news is fading. Indeed, as digital technology shatters the old economic model, the news media is making a painful passage that is taking a toll on journalistic values and standards. Journalistic objectivity and ethics are under assault, as is the bastion of the First Amendment. Jones characterizes himself not as a pessimist about news, but a realist. The breathtaking possibilities that the web offers are undeniable, but at what cost? Pundits and talk show hosts have persuaded Americans that the crisis in news is bias and partisanship. Not so, says Jones. The real crisis is the erosion of the iron core of news, something that hurts Republicans and Democrats alike.
Losing the News depicts an unsettling situation in which the American birthright of fact-based, reported news is in danger. But it is also a call to arms to fight to keep the core of news intact.

Praise for the hardcover:

"Thoughtful."
--New York Times Book Review

"An impassioned call to action to preserve the best of traditional newspaper journalism."
--The San Francisco Chronicle

"Must reading for all Americans who care about our country's present and future. Analysis, commentary, scholarship and excellent writing, with a strong, easy-to-follow narrative about why you should care, makes this a candidate for one of the best books of the year."
--Dan Rather ... Read more

Editorial Review

This volume considers the depiction of law and legal institutions in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. It contains more than twenty chapters by legal academics from the U.S. and abroad. The chapters are organized in five sections: Legal Traditions and Institutions, Crimes and Punishments, Harry Potter and Identity, the Wizard Economy, and Harry Potter as an Archetype. Some chapters analyze the way law and legal institutions are portrayed, and what these portrayals teach us about concepts such as morality, justice, and difference. Other chapters use examples from the narratives to illustrate or analyze legal issues, such as human rights, actual innocence, and legal pedagogy. The volume is suitable for undergraduate or law school courses, and will be of interest to those Harry Potter fans who also have an interest in law and the legal profession. ... Read more

Editorial Review

•Practical and comprehensive—the only book of its kind•Revised edition focuses on the changing world market for television

Broad in scope and rich in detail, This Business of Television has been the essential sourcebook for producers, writers, broadcasters, network executives, and other television professionals since the first edition was published in 1991. And as the television business continues to evolve This Business of Television evolves along with it. This comprehensive guide to the legal, economic, and production aspects of the industry has been completely revised and restructured to reflect the rapid changes in television today, both domestically and internationally, A user’s guide to television contracts, plus directories of associations, governmental agencies, and producers and distributors, make this book an invaluable resource for anyone involved with—or simply interested in—the business of television. ... Read more

Reviews

Imagine the Future, Study the Past, November 3, 2000
This Business of Television is a landmark volume in our practice (entertainment industry economic forecasting) for three reasons.

Reason # 3: it is incredible that guys of this stature would take the time to compile such an essential and complete perspective of the television business. Goodenough, a seasoned entertainment lawyer, law professor, and a scholar pioneering the study of law and evolutionary biology, brings the structure and rigor, while Blumenthal, a prolific TV, multimedia, and online entertainment producer and businessman brings the been-there-done-that street savvy.

Reason # 2: it is, after all, the business that pays for the content (the subscriber, pay-per-view, advertising, syndication, and the latest, e-commerce revenue models) and the content that drives the migration to new technology (streaming media webcasting and video-on-demand, interactive TV, and wireless). The clear understanding of the financial systems supporting television and video entertainment offered by Oliver and Howard in this book facilitates the modeling of future monetary transactions.

Reason # 1: video programming spread from broadcast to cable and then to satellite in one generation. The last decade found it spreading to the PC via CD-ROM, DVD, and broadband Internet. In the future it will be found on our cell phones, wristwatches, car seat backs, and refrigerators. There will be innovations in business arrangements along the way, but those who cannot converse in the basic economics will be doomed.

This segues into a jacket quote by Morty Morton, former producer of the Late Show with David Letterman, who remarked, "This Business of Television has gotten me through years of moderate success in the TV business. I'm now ready to burn the damn thing and open a restaurant."

Stolen 3 times... This book is hot!!!, April 4, 2002
This book is so hot that it's been stolen from my office library 3 times. I'm on my 4th purchase of this book. I felt like I could have an intellegent conversation about any aspect of the television business after using this book. It is my main resource for getting quick answers that are easy to understand. This is required reading for those getting started and a great resource for those that have been in the industry a while. It also includes a computer disk containing forms such as U.S. Copyright registration and others found in the book that you can import to your word processor.

Ron Hebert
Producer
2002 Emmy Awards - Pacific Southwest Chapter

This book is gold!, August 22, 1999
Our start-up entertainment company has used the first edition as our essential reference book. We have not found anything else like it. We are excited about ordering the second edition.

Imagine the Future, Study the Past, November 7, 2000
This Business of Television is a landmark volume in our practice (micro-economic forecasting for the entertainment industry). Here are the top three reasons why.

Reason # 3: it is incredible that guys of this stature would take the time to compile such an essential and complete perspective of the television business. Goodenough, a seasoned entertainment lawyer, law professor, and a scholar pioneering the study of law and evolutionary biology, brings the structure and rigor, while Blumenthal, a prolific TV, multimedia, and online entertainment producer and businessman brings the been-there-done-that street savvy.

Reason # 2: it is, after all, the business that pays for the content (the subscriber, pay-per-view, advertising, syndication, and the latest, e-commerce revenue models) and the content that drives the migration to new technology (streaming media webcasting and video-on-demand, interactive TV, and wireless). The clear understanding of the financial systems supporting television and video entertainment offered by Oliver and Howard in this book facilitates the modeling of future monetary transactions.

Reason # 1: video programming spread from broadcast to cable and then to satellite in one generation. The last decade found it spreading to the PC via CD-ROM, DVD, and broadband Internet. In the future it will be found on our cell phones, wristwatches, car seat backs, and refrigerators. There will be innovations in business arrangements along the way, but those who cannot converse in the language of economics will be doomed.

Solid and comprehensive., August 16, 1999
The first edition was handy, detailed, and filled with suggestions on where to find further information. I'm glad the revised edition includes a disk. Highly recommended for anyone in the television, video, or CD-ROM production business. And not a bad price, considering the cost of other texts.

An excellent resource, October 7, 2005
This book (textbook) is an excellent resource for just about everything in TV. The disk included is a great utility to have for printing out your own contracts. I only with this book could be updated, say, every two years.

The Best Television Book Ever, April 4, 2008
When I was in film school there was a lot of film history and film theory, and no one talked about television often enough for us to learn anything worth while about it. I now work as a television director, and it was this book that taught me the "business" aspects of the industry. Without this book I would probably be out of work or directing the local news someplace like Lima, Ohio. ... Read more

Reviews

Cearly Explains Copyright Law and Procedures, January 15, 2010
This is an excellent resource book on legal issues involving clearance and copyright issues affecting the film industry. Numerous sample contracts are presented within this book.

Readers learn a copyright automatically exists to any original book, play, song, photograph, etc. There is no registration required.

It is a violation of the copyright law to make even one copy of a movie.

A copyright lasts 70 years after the death of the author. If a work was written by a corporation, employee or hired employee as a condition of employment, the copyright lasts the lesser of 1.) 120 years from when if was created or 2.) 95 years after it was published.

A derivative work must secure permission from the copyright owner in order to produce an alteration of an original work.

A public performance of copyrighted material, even if performed for free, must request permission from the owner of the owner of the copyright.

Ideas can not be copyrighted. Copyright protects something in a tangible form. Thus, the more written, the more it is protected is someone steals it.

An implied contract bonds an agreement between parties even though the terms have not been settled.

An express contract is an agreement between parties of specific terms, either in writing or orally.

A dispute where a court agrees a story concept was stolen requires both parties to be industry professionals. A studio has no obligation to pay a non-writer for a movie concept. The court also has to agree that the stolen concept was specific enough to the concept used in the movie. The courts in most states will require the concept must be a novel one. Payment for the concept requires showing the author was denied the ability to make money for it in order for it to be a contract dispute rather than a copyright dispute.

A producer who pitched an idea that a studio makes has an implied contract. Courts have upheld this when the studio than made the film with no payment to the producer who pitched the idea. Such cases are often difficult to prove. The person accusing another of stealing ideas has to show by the preponderance of evidence that the accuser's ideas were sent and received by the defendant, that it was clear the sender expected payment should the idea be used, and the accused knew this and accepted the idea on such payment terms.

Many studios require writers to agree to waive their rights before allowed to pitch ideas. Some studio lawyers avoid making this requirement too overbearing that a court would find it unenforceable.

Writers should keep all writings from a studio mentioning their ideas. This may be useful if a paper trail is every needed. It is helpful to keep a record of all meetings and telephone discussions.

Treatments and scripts should be registered with the Writers Guild (WGA). Mailing a script to oneself and not opening it until a trial may not work as opposing counsel may dispute that the seal can not be proved to have never been altered.

Another may make fair use of another's work depending upon how it is used, depending whether or not it is used for profit, the nature of the work, the degree to which a copyrighted work is used, and how much the use of the work affects its value. Appellate courts have made inconsistent rulings regarding fair use. There are arguments between the need for copyright protections versus the needs of First Amendment expressions.

Court rulings have failed to produce clear definitions of what is or is not fair use of copyrighted materials. Fair use will require that it was necessary to make a point, only enough required to make the point was used, and there is a clear connection between what is used and the point.

A parody can be made of a copyrighted work that criticizes or comments on it so long as it does not diminish the value of the copyrighted work. There is no requirement the parody contain humor. 2 Live Crew's "Pretty Woman" was ruled a parody of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman".

A work whose owner can't be found after a legitimate substantial written search is an orphan work that can be used. If the orphan work's owner later appears, fewer copyrighted protections are afforded the owner. A copyright dispute over a character may depend on whether a character has enough original "character delineation". Also important, to a lesser degree, is the degree to which the "story being told" concerns the character in dispute.

A copyrighted logo that appears on clothing used as costume in a film that uses the clothing in its intended use should not be a trademark violation. Documentaries have less to worry about. A lawsuit was filed by the trademark owner of the Barney costume, but lost as it was a parody, over the commercial use of a Barney-like costume.

The owner of source material which a script is based upon owns "underlying property". The "underlying rights" must be obtained from this owner.

A film company has to own the underlying work in order to do anything with the story that involves a film, including re-releases. A work with a -re-1978 copyrighted story may have seen its film rights to a studio cease when a writer died and those rights were inherited.

Often a studio buys an option of a film which gives the studio the right to decide if it will make the film. No other studio could bid on the film while the option remains in effect. The author advises the option be in writing.

In a joint writing effort, if one person has the right to decide what goes into the script, that person has superintendence over the script. Courts have varied over the degree to which superintendence determines the rights between joint authors.

A person generally does not have a reasonable expectation to privacy when in public. Usually a person can be filmed in a public place. The following, though, may be disallowed to be shown if an affirmative misrepresentation was made in the filming.

fictional film should obtain a location agreement for all locations used. Government permits may be necessary for public locations. The author advises making sure the permission is obtained from the right sources. A building owner may not have the right to grant permission for filming inside a tenant's space. A tenant may not have the right to allow cable for filming brought into a building.

Permission may be required to film a decorate art piece. Different court rulings have been reached on this issue. Issues to consider are whether a short focuses on the original art piece, if it is recognizable, and if it is a focal point rather than set dressing.
A prop created for a film should be an original piece. Using a knock-off protected by a copyright still can violate the copyright. A sculptor sued Warner Brothers seeking an injunction to prevent distribution of a movie using a similar sculpture. Warner Brothers settled the suit.

A movie title has to be cleared. Movie titles do not have copyrights. They can be a product protected by trademark. Some movie titles have trademark status. The Motion Picture Association of America registers titles.

A title should not indicate an endorsement from anyone when no endorsement exists.

Errors and omissions insurance protects a film against accidental infringement of a copyright, trademark, person's privacy, etc. Media/Professional and Chubb offers the bulk of this type of insurance.

A final film, called a locked film, should be registered with the Library of Congress.

A copyright infringement can occur if too many specific details of another film are used in a film. A court prevented the release of the movie "Great White" for being too similar to "Jaws."

Clear and Concise Copyright, October 9, 2008
I love this book. Donaldson takes an otherwise confusing topic and brings insight and clarity to an array of issues. As with his other books, Donaldson employs an easy to follow format with easy to read language. This book is a must for anyone trying to find answers to their copyright questions.

A MUST READ for indie producers, September 24, 2008
This book is so full of useful information and it's so easy to read. Ever think you needed to clear the use of logo on someone's t-shirt that appears in your film? Well, this book answers that question and a lot more!

Should be considered as the Bible of information pertaining to copyright law, May 28, 2009
Entertainment Attorney Michael C. Donaldson's third edition of Clearance & Copyright should be considered as the Bible of information pertaining to copyright law. He has crafted a guidebook that encompasses the entire scope of modern day copyright law pertaining to almost every conceivable rights issue that filmmakers, videomakers, and television producers might encounter. It is little wonder that more than fifty film schools in the United States and Europe and even a few law schools use it as well as large film studios, television networks, cable channels, and countless attorneys.

What readers receive is Donald's thirty years of experience covering the fundamental principles and laws pertaining to fair use, parody, satire, jokes, public domain, characters, costumes, acquiring the rights to someone else's property, hiring scriptwriters, writing with a partner, buying someone else's completed script, agreements, registering copyrights, photographs, trademarks, logos, business signage, sets, set dressing, clearing music, hiring a composer, clearing film clips, title clearance, insurance, infringement, Internet, and international copyright. All of these subjects are organized in an easy to read chronological order in which you would encounter in the film and publishing industry. And as Donaldson states: "nothing is overly esoteric here." In other words, you can actually understand him without breaking your head! In addition, Donaldson provides his readers with references to important cases, important forms and agreements, his personal commentaries, and other documentation that can also be downloaded from sites he mentions.

Particularly informative is the chapter on Fair Use wherein Donaldson includes a Table of a Summary of Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. The table divides itself into three categories, Class, Use and Limit dealing with four situations, employing copyright material as the object of social, political, or cultural critique, quoting copyright works of popular culture to illustrate an argument or point, capturing copyrighted media content in the process of filming something else, and using copyright material in an historical sequence. Within these sections Donaldson comments on each of these important elements providing concrete examples. Another very useful chapter is the step-by-step guide to registering copyright of your script that includes precise instructions. What more can you ask?

Also included is an entire chapter devoted to Legal Referral Services, as well as an extensive glossary of the many terms used throughout the book. In addition, there is a Table of Forms and where to find them in the book, Table of Cases, Film and Television Shows Mentioned in the Book, and a comprehensive index.

There is no doubt that the detailed research and breadth of information Donaldson presents is remarkable and for anyone who may be directly or indirectly involved with copyright, this is a must read and a book to keep.

Donaldson's credentials include service on the Advisory Committee for the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use, and he serves on the Advisory Committee of the Standard Fair Use Project. In addition to Clearance & Copyright (Third Edition) he has authored E-Z Legal Guide to Trademarks & Copyright, Negotiating for Dummies and Fearless Negotiating.

Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures

Clearance & Copyright Rocks!, November 19, 2008
This book is fantastic! It uses plain language to navigate through the quagmire of legal issues rampant in film and television produuction. This book is a must for anyony contemplating making a film or television show. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Today's film industry is a legal and financial obstacle course that all independent filmmakers must learn to master. In view of this, "The Biz" - a highly accessible overview of the industry's important business, legal and financial aspect - is a must-read for all filmmakers. It includes thorough explanations and discussions of: film-industry business jargon; raising financing; business structuring; securities laws; budgeting essentials; dealing with the guilds; loans; completion guarantees; the legal and financial ramifications of distribution deals; calculating net profits; film-industry accounting practices and contingent payments; copyright, publicity, and trademark laws; screen credits; talent demands; litigation problems; bankruptcy; taxation of film companies; and, the Internet distribution of film ...and much more. It also includes a dozen useful sample forms and agreements. ... Read more

Reviews

Handbook for Entertainment Lawyers, March 14, 2000
Mr. Moore teaches at UCLA, and his course is extraordinarily well attended. His book is considered a must-have for lawyers working in Entertainment, and although the focus is law, I think it would be a handy reference for anyone new to the creative side of Entertainment, especially those seeking to protect themselves and their interests when making deals and such.

Complete, informative, funny-- what more can you ask for?, April 13, 2003
I was afraid when I picked up _The Biz_ that it was going to be a dry read-- legal aspects of any business are not known for being a scintillating read. However, I am happy to report that it was not only a quick and interesting read, it was a genuinely funny one. Moore had me laughing out loud on several occasions.

Even granted that this is not a book you read for the humor, it is refreshing to see a reference book so well written. My only quarrel was that I would have liked to see a bibliography included with the book in case I wanted to go in depth into any of the areas covered.

How hot is "the Biz?", February 4, 2001
One thing about Professor Moore: the man rides motorcycles and has more energy than a 6-year old. He's not the average UCLA professor.

Thus, you should be aware that the book reflects it's writer's personality. The book is not only informative, but a pretty fun read as well. Friends from other law schools tell me how dry and dull their entertainment law texts are - a fact which absolutely boggles my mind. The Biz is concisely written, and filled with lively examples ... Read more

Editorial Review

This current and comprehensive market-leading textbook addresses the most relevant and important aspects of mass media law in the United States, stretching from the history and adoption of the First Amendment to the most recent judicial opinions, statutory enactments and regulatory controversies affecting speech across the print, broadcast, cable and Internet media.From the laws of libel and privacy to the regulation of advertising and telecommunications, Mass Media Law 2009/2010 examines timely issues that are shaping the United States’ legal system and the future of media content. The new edition has been streamlined to include new opinions and updated coverage of important current media law concerns, including the right of reporters to protect their sources, censorship problems related to terrorism, file sharing, and the law of privacy. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Praise for Robert W. McChesney

"Robert McChesney's work has been of extraordinary importance. . . . It should be read with care and concern by people who care about freedom and basic rights."
—Noam Chomsky

"Robert McChesney is one of the nation's most important analysts of the media."
—Howard Zinn

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known—a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.

Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the political economy of the media, illuminating its major flashpoints and controversies by locating them in the political economy of U.S. capitalism. It deals with issues such as the declining quality of journalism, the question of bias, the weakness of the public broadcasting sector, and the limits and possibilities of antitrust legislation in regulating the media. It points out the ways in which the existing media system has become a threat to democracy, and shows how it could be made to serve the interests of the majority.

McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy was hailed as a pioneering analysis of the way in which media had come to serve the interests of corporate profit rather than public enlightenment and debate. Bill Moyers commented, "If Thomas Paine were around, he would have written this book." The Problem of the Media is certain to be a landmark in media studies, a vital resource for media activism, and essential reading for concerned scholars and citizens everywhere.

Reviews

Hypercommercial Antimarkets Revealed, June 10, 2004
Expect this book to get a wave of one-star liberal-bashing reactionary reviews once the neoconservatives learn that it exists. That's because their entire philosophy, especially concerning the media, is decisively shot down in this powerful manifesto. McChesney's specialty is media ownership patterns and their effects on popular democracy. Here we find that the modern push for deregulation in media industries is leading to a real crisis for democracy in America - in effect there really is a "problem of the media." While megacorporations wrap their campaign for unlimited profits in rhetoric about free speech, the First Amendment, and giving the people what they want, McChesney finds that all of these claims are false and usually downright dishonest.

The current wave of media deregulation has been greased by big media money in the halls of power, and influence peddling among a few power players (including FCC chairman Michael Powell, whom McChesney unapologetically cuts down to size). The common people are left out of the loop, with a loss of media coverage toward local and dissenting viewpoints, and more and more lowest-common denominator media content. Despite the rhetoric about free trade and capitalism, today's media is far from competitive and equitable. Instead it's a hyper-commercial oligarchy of power consolidation and political power grabbing, and McChesney provides plenty of evidence and eloquent arguments about these trends and the damage they are doing to popular democracy.

Certain parts of this book also serve as a monumentally informative primer on modern neoconservative politics, with that movement's almost total contempt for the public interest and slavish kowtowing to corporate bigwigs. That makes this book essential for media watchdogs, plus more general political observers who can then learn more about media trends as a specific issue. A bonus is Chapter 3 in which McChesney brutally deconstructs the standard right-wing claims of "liberal bias" in the media, finding that this is merely an attempt by conservatives to monopolize social thought, in addition to income and political power. This book's final chapter presents a partial happy ending in documenting the vast popular uprising that is now confronting the media giants and their pocketed politicians. The people are up for a long fight against media money and power, but all those who read this outstanding treatise from McChesney will certainly have the knowledge necessary for true democratic progress. [~doomsdayer520~]

Next time you hear 'them' screaming about 'Liberal Media'..., May 23, 2004
The corporate owners of the media, their executives and their business partners (commercial and political advertisers) are in collusion to make sure that the deck is stacked against regular citizens who are raised to believe in fairness and in favor of those in collusion. Their tools include the Federal Communications Commission and their agenda is the perpetuation of commerce, not an informed citizenry.

This book explains the early traditions of American media, how the media has been coopted and corrupted by the Right and by powerful commercial interests, and how this situation has become self-perpetuating and institutionalized by the FCC.

Don't be persuaded that this book is a left wing screed. Although this issue is a major reason why we have a Bush administration, it is not a personal indictment. Rather, it is an indictment of the system that is, and a case for why it should be (and once was) very different.

Robert McChesney tries hard to be an honest broker of information about the Media and he largely succeeds. In the lengthy (chapter-length) appendix, he is meticulous with his sources and invites further reading on all sides of the issue. While you're reading McChesney, read John Nichols (and particularly the book they wrote together, called "Our Media, Not Theirs").

The next time you hear people ranting about the liberal media, ask them to question who influenced them to think that way and point them to this book. Consider: why is it that the more citizens question the consolidation and bias of the media, the more the issue is fogged up by figures in the media? The answers are simple; McChesney helps the reader understand.

Extraordinary, June 8, 2005
Extremely well researched. McChesney has been a key figure in the "media debate" and he approaches the subject with knowledge and objectivity. His disciplined, almost scientific investigation is an example of non-partisan coverage of a crucial issue. If only a few politicians were as concerned with the public interest as McChesney, we would be in a better world. I am a Mexican citizen so I couldn't care less about U.S. partisan politics, and if you care about the fate of public communications, you shouldn't either. This is a problem that affects every country, not just the U.S.A., since the big telecommunication companies are broadcasting all over the World. The interest of big advertisers is being protected by U.S. policy and their marketing messages are then blasted everywhere. Even the smallest community in the South-Mexican jungles knows Ronald McDonald. CNN has Latin editions of their biased news transmitted to most Latin countries. As an outsider, I hope the U.S. citizenry will realize that this is not an issue of Democrats vs. Republicans but a World-wide issue of the individual vs. the big corporations. In reality they don't care about your political affiliations, as long as you saturate your credit cards to buy their heavily advertised products, you can debate each other to death.

Everyone should read this, July 26, 2006
This book takes some very complicated issues and makes them easy to understand. The arguments are persuasive and well researched. I found myself getting angry at what is happening to our country and this book explains much of it. This is an interesting perspective and I hope it will start a new debate about the value of public media and spectrum as a public resource.

Media? Propaganda Machine., March 29, 2006
Robert W. McChesney's exploration into the historical underpinnings and contemporary realities facing the United States media system has proven to be an extremely well-researched discussion. The Problem of the Media covers the evolution of American systems of journalism and entertainment media while exploring the problems of this evolution in their current manifestations. McChesney has produced an almost unerring synopsis of current problems facing the media, and, unlike most of his colleagues, offers real optimism and motions for future change.

I was extremely pleased with the way McChesney illuminates the historical nature of the media in the United States. He does a phenomenal job at coupling past incarnations of American media structures in their inherently partisan and biased formulations with today's antiseptic and sterile "professional" variety. The Problem of the Media is exceptional in this historical analysis as it does a logical and rational job of dropping left hook after right cross to the philosophical and practical foundations of the professional journalistic structures. It was as if someone has finally shown me real foundations, actual alternatives, and structures for change, but the beautiful part of all of this was that they had actually already existed (and in this country to boot).

McChesney's arguments are absolutely extraordinary as he goes toe to toe with the right wing noise machine's accusations of the liberal bias that exists within the mainstream newsroom. Drawing upon cogent arguments backed up with innumerable sources, McChesney goes on to systematically deconstruct the false arguments that are time and again posed by the conservative sophists that dominate the entirety of American information mediums. I have read several texts arguing against the so-called "liberal media," but none were as persuasive and apt as McChesney's proved to be. In addition to this, I thought that The Problem of the Media also did a very astute job of explaining to the reader all of the news that has not been covered in mainstream press, while foolish and arguably unimportant issues take to the forefront of coverage. Examples of this reality include the extremely lackluster and ill-timed coverage of the 2000 American Presidential elections as well as the seemingly censor-ridden coverage of the current war (if it can even be called that) in Iraq.

McChesney does not stop at the line of criticizing the current journalistic regime and its anti-democratic systems of "professionalism" and obtuse neutrality, but instead goes on to make vital connections between a capitalism gone crazy (hyper-capitalism) and the entertainment industry. I think if any regular American took the time to sit down and ready chapter four of The Problem of the Media s/he would find that s/he intuitively knew about the detrimental affects of massive media conglomerates, oligopolistic market controls, and the current manifestation of an increasingly intrusive and overbearing advertising/public relations sector. McChesney does a fine job at providing the reader with real examples of televisions shows (i.e. Monster Garage, Trading Spaces) that use this disgusting development in embedded advertising strategies and exposes the companies that support this process for what they are.

Fortunately, McChesney closes The Problem of the Media with words of encouragement and optimism. The discussion abounds with the realization that in order for there to be the massive change for a new positive media evolution their must be widespread education on the topic. This book is a fantastic step in furthering that agenda, however I am somewhat skeptical as I believe the media system is simply a tool of the neoliberal policy agenda, and as I understand it unless the greater economic beast is laid to rest, its pups will continue to thrive.

Great book, but some confusing philosophical notions, January 9, 2006
I should begin by saying that I like McChesney, and I admire and respect him as the leading authority in this area. I went into reading the book as if it were a magnum opus. The book started weak and ended strong.

Most of what you'll read here is common sense to anyone on the left who has paid attention to what has happened to the media in the past 30 years. However, McChesney does an excellent job at arguing against the common assumptions about the media. This is an excellent polemical resource for media activists for that reason, but do not turn to it for realistic policy prescriptions or philosophical soundness.

Yeah, democracy depends on a free press. But does a free press depend on democracy? I doubt that it does. A free press relies on freedom, obviously. The problem is that corporate owners manage the press, censor journalists, and set the agenda for the media. If journalists had more autonomy, you would bet that we would have a better press... but grassroots participation? The last thing we need is a press run by different interest groups that slant content towards a certain direction. Democracy is good for some things, but not for perveying truth. The press should be protected from public meddling the same way it should from private meddling. I'm fine with the public influencing media policy, but not journalism itself.

The second problem with this book is that it attributes the lack of political participation to the free press. If anything, the education system has more of an impact on public participation than the mass media. Yes, I think the media does a bad job at purveying important stories that could rouse political participation. What about people who aren't interested in current events? What about those who don't read the news? You cannot attribute a lack of participation to mass journalism when people don't read or watch the news. I know people who get most of their news entirely from mainstream television who are very into politics. They hold inaccurate ideas, but I wouldn't call them apathetic. Most of the people I know who are apathetic don't watch or read the news. Most of the people I know who are politically active have parents who were also interested in politics and had teachers who inspired them to be politically active.

Overall, this is a great book. McChesney has some great ideas about how the media needs to be nonprofit and how commercialism threatens journalism.

Another enlightening book with a more historical perspective would be Newton Minow's "Abandoned in the Wasteland", which is more focused on children, but provides an excellent history of the mass media.

a Marxist view, June 25, 2006
It's always interesting to read a Marxist view of anything to get a vastly different perspective from the usual liberal and conservative views (and the few moderate views that manage to find their way into print).

At bottom, the problem with the news media, according to McChesney, is that it's not far enough to the Left! He rejects the criticism of the media's liberal bias. This rejection is based on an eccentric use of the term "liberal". For instance, Bill Clinton and Al Gore are "moderate to conservative Democrats" (p. 102). "The Left" consists of radicals and "social democrats". (p. 103) He sees both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as "neoliberals": "with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal moment had commenced. Neoliberal ideology became hegemonic not only among Republicans but also in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman." (p. 49)

McChesney opposes professionalism in journalism, because professionalism "is a journalism of fact without regard to" a political ideology. (p. 67). "The claim that it is possible to provide neutral and objective news" is suspect. (p. 68) Professionalism refuses "to place every important issue in a larger political ideology." (p. 71)

He deplores the influence of corporations on news broadcasting (Don't we all?), but he also deplores NPR and PBS: "NPR and PBS at a national level tend to provide a bland variant of mainstream and conventional journalism" (p. 245). So, the root problem is that even NPR and PBS are not far enough to the Left!

He wants unlimited funding of these public media without any overseeing or accountability. (Perhaps a Constitutional Amendment--although he doesn't actually propose such a thing or say how this would otherwise be achievable.) One wonders why he is so sanguine that he would be happy with a public news broadcasting source that was not answerable to anybody. Is it because he assumes that it would be run by insiders who share his Marxist views? He would certainly not be happy with it otherwise. (See, in this connection, the film "Shattered Glass".)

Bottom line: Skip this book and buy Don't Blame the People or Freedom of the Press--for Whom?
... Read more

Editorial Review

The rise of the "information society" offers not only considerable peril but also great promise. Beset from all sides by a never-ending barrage of media, how can we ensure that the most accurate information emerges and is heeded? In this book, Cass R. Sunstein develops a deeply optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives.

In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs. The justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia--all of these resulted from decisions made by leaders and groups trapped in "information cocoons," shielded from information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and ordinary people challenge insular decision making and gain access to the sum of human knowledge?

Stunning new ways to share and aggregate information, many Internet-based, are helping companies, schools, governments, and individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge. Through a ceaseless flurry of self-correcting exchanges, wikis, covering everything from politics and business plans to sports and science fiction subcultures, amass--and refine--information. Open-source software enables large numbers of people to participate in technological development. Prediction markets aggregate information in a way that allows companies, ranging from computer manufacturers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions about product launches and office openings. Sunstein shows how people can assimilate aggregated information without succumbing to the dangers of the herd mentality--and when and why the new aggregation techniques are so astoundingly accurate.

In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming together might well provide the best path to infotopia. ... Read more

Reviews

Complements Wikinomics, Solid but Incomplete, January 17, 2007
I was initially disappointed, but adjusted my expectations when I reminded myself that the author is at root a lawyer. The bottom line on this book is that it provided a very educated and well-footnoted discourse the nature and prospects for group deliberation, but there are three *huge* missing pieces:

1) Education as the necessary continuous foundation for deliberation

2) Collective Intelligence as an emerging discipline (see the Innovators spread sheet at Earth Intelligence Network); and

3) No reference to Serious Games/Games for Change or budgets as a foundation for planning the future rather than predicting it.

In the general overview the author discusses information cocoons (self-segregation and myopia) and information influences/social pressures that can repress free thinking and sharing.

The four big problems that he finds in the history of deliberation are amplifying errors; hidden profiles & favoring common or "familiar" knowledge; cascades & polarization; and negative reinforements from being within a narrow group.

Today I am missing a meeting on Predictive Markets in DC (AEI-Brookings) and while I regret that, I have thoroughly enjoyed the author's deep look at Prediction Markets, with special reference to Google and Microsoft use of these internally. This book, at a minimum, provides the very best overview of prediction markets that I have come across. At the end of the book is an appendix listing 18 specific predictions markets with their URLs.

The author goes on to provide an overview of the Wiki world, and is generally very kind to Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia, and less focused on the many altneratives and enhancements of the open Wiki. It would have been helpful here to have some insights for the general reader on Doug Englebart's Open Hypertextdocument System (OHS) and Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language (IEML), both of which may well leave the mob-like open wiki's in the dust.

Worthy of note: Soar Technology is quoted as saying that Wikis cut project development time in half.

The book draws to a close with further discussion of the challenges of self-segregation, the options for aggregating views and knowledge and for encouraging feedback, and the urgency of finding incentives to induce full disclosure and full participation from all who have something to contribute.

This book excels in its own narrowly-chosen domain, but it is isolated from the larger scheme of things including needed educational changes, the importance of belief systems as the objective of Intelligence and Information Operations (I2O), the role of Serious Games/Games for Change, and the considerable work that has been done by Collective Intelligence pioneers, who just held their first convergence conference call on 15 January 2007.

Final note: the author uses NASA and the Columbia disaster, and CIA and the Iraq disaster, as examples, but does not adequately discuss the pathologies of bureaucracy and the politicization of intelligence and space. As a former CIA employee who also reads a great deal, I can assert with confidence that CIA has no trouble aggregating all that it knew, including the reports of the 30 line crossers who went in and then came back to report there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. CIA has two problems: 1) Dick Cheney refused to listen; and 2) George Tenet lacked the integrity to go public and go to Congress to challenge Dick Cheney's malicious and impeachable offenses against America (see my reviews of "VICE" and of "One Percent Doctrine" on Cheney, and my many reviews on the mistakes leading up to and within the Iraq war). See also my reviews of "Fog Facts" and "Lost History" and Gaddis' "The Landscape of History."

To end on an upbeat note, what I see in this book, and "Wikinomics" and "Collective Intelligence" and "Tao of Democracy" and my own "The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political," is a desperate need for Amazon to take on the task of aggregating books and building out from books to create social communities where all these books can be "seen" and "read" and "understood" as a whole. We remain fragmented in the production and dissemination of information, and consequently, in our own mind-sets and world-views. Time to change that, perhaps with Wiki-books that lock-down the original and then give free license to apply OHS linkages at the paragraph level, and unlimited wike build-outs. That's what I am in Seattle to discuss this week.

Read the 1/5 about deliberation, leave the rest., June 13, 2007
In the 1960's, legal scholars discovered what the rest of us always knew: that pure legal scholarship is really, really boring. Law and economics demonstrated that a multidisciplinary approach could breath fresh life into the corpse of law. Then, suddenly, all the rock star law professors were interdisciplinarians. And along with this devaluation of pure legal thought came a general loss of intellectual rigor. By the 1990's, celebrity law professors were becoming like journalists with really good grades, each writing outside of his or her area of competence with an astonishing self-confidence. Richard Posner, who was on relatively solid ground in economics, crowned himself an expert on military intelligence. Lawrence Lessig wrote a whole series of books without any thesis or logical argument. And this new breed of scholar seemed to be in a race to publish as much as possible as quickly as possible, without regard for quality.

I have always thought that Cass Sunstein epitomizes the worst of this trend. He seems to rush a book into print every six months, and with each new work drifts further and further away from "law." But after hearing him on Russ Roberts' fantastic EconTalk podcast, I was genuinely dying to read this book. The topics chosen are all fascinating, and no one has really treated them all under one roof before.

The problem is that, once again, Sunstein has given short shrift to these topics. All of them, with the exception of group deliberation, has been covered better elsewhere. Where Sunstein is not stealing the limelight from people like Robin Hanson (prediction markets) he is rehashing the pop science books of people like James Surowieki (statistical group judgments).

The reason this book gets three stars instead of zero is that the material on bias in group deliberation is genuinely insightful and original. In brief: deliberative bodies make very poor decisions, due to a whole slew of biases and feedback loops. When Sunstein suggests that we reform deliberative bodies, generally, to incorporate anonymous voting and minority voices, he is offering something genuinely useful. (Interestingly, at one point in the podcast mentioned above, Sunstein all but admits that this was initiated as a book about deliberation and that the project was changed to incorporate the other topics in media res. This explains a lot.) Read it for the bits on deliberation, but be prepared to be bored and underwhelmed by large portions.

Like The Wisdom of Crowds without the hype, July 18, 2008
There's a lot of overlap between James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds and Infotopia, but Infotopia is a good deal more balanced and careful to avoid exaggeration. This makes Infotopia less exciting but more likely to convince a thoughtful reader. It devotes a good deal of attention to conditions which make groups less wise than individuals as well as conditions where groups outperform the best individuals.
Infotopia is directed at people who know little about this subject. I found hardly any new insights in it, and few ideas that I disagreed with. Some of its comments will seem too obvious to be worth mentioning to anyone who uses the web much. It's slightly better than Wisdom of Crowds, but if you've already read Wisdom of Crowds you'll get little out of Infotopia.

I added it to my syllabus immediately, June 6, 2007
I originally bought this book as a birthday present for my brother, a philosopher, and then immediately stole it from him. (I gave it back after I bought my own copy.) The book paints a frightening picture of how group processes can lead us very, very astray. In many ways, it reads as a sequel to his book on Punitive Damages, which documents frightening trends for experimental jury pools to assign harsher damages than the individual jurors planned to assign in pre-deliberation surveys.

I quickly added the chapters on group deliberation failures to the syllabus for my class on psychology and economics. My only trepidation was that I am also assigning sections of Punitive Damages and Laws of Fear, so there's now an entire unit on Cass Sunstein's work. But he does an excellent job of exploring in readable prose the societal consequences of psychological influences on choice. As such, his books offer a very accessible mirror into aspects of bounded rationality or heuristics & biases that we study in economics. I figure the marginal contribution of this book, in terms of class discussion and actual post-exam take-aways, exceed the contribution of a few more technical empirical papers.... At least, I hope that turns out to be the case!

"Kluge" for groups, January 13, 2010
this book, as its subtitle indicates, is about the production of knowledge by many minds. but the book is less about the fact that many minds produce knowledge than about the ways in which information that is dispersed among many minds can be accessed and the conditions under which those varying methods work best. under discussion are surveys/polls, deliberation, markets, wikis, open source software, and blogs.

so, for instance, he starts off the book talking about the surprising ways in which large groups of people can outperform individuals when answers are averaged out. often the average answer -- when guessing the weight of some object, when trying to correlate body weight with gender -- is not only better than the best individual answer, but also better than what a supposed expert can offer. to be sure, aggregating information like this only works under specific conditions, say, when it is reasonable to presume that people might have a general idea about something. it would be useless to rely on the statistical responses of people for information not privy to most people, say, the year of some lesser known historical event or the name of someone's pet (unless that someone is famous, maybe).

the reason that this works, Sunstein explains, is due to the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which states that the probability of arriving at a correct answer increases as the size of the group increases provided that there is greater than a 50% chance that people will arrive at a correct answer. the more people you have, the closer you approach to 100%. this is the reason why "ask the audience" usually works well in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? -- because there's a decent chance that some people know the answer, or at least can correctly rule out false answers. in these types of situations, it is beneficial to rely on the responses of a large group of people (as large as possible, in fact) to increase the chances of arriving at the correct answer.

the flip side of this math, however, is that if people have less than a 50% chance of knowing the correct answer -- again, when asking about information not widely disseminated -- the probability of arriving at the correct responses approaches 0% as the group increases. so clearly this isn't always (or even often) the best way of arriving at the truth.

the second method under review is deliberation. Sunsstein is open about giving deliberation a bad rap here not because it is entirely inefficient, but because it is so often assumed to be the ideal way of accessing dispersed information and thus the truth. deliberation lies at the heart of many practices in this country, from trials by jury to our deliberative democracy. the problem with deliberation, in short, is that it doesn't work very well. Sunstein offers a number of reasons for this, owing to some of the natural shortcomings of the human mind (some familiar terrain after reading Kluge) and to particular behavioral phenomena in group settings, such as the general "groupthink" idea, along with informational cascades (when people factor into their responses the likelihood that other people, who may hold a different opinion, would be wrong and so answer or vote not purely on the basis of information but on what everyone else appears to know as well) and the many pressures on individuals to preserve group harmony (or their own status) by not offering information they may have that goes against the conventional group wisdom. in experiments, people also tend to accord more authority to people in higher positions (including class, gender, and race -- even if those social statuses are irrelevant to the immediate context) and to ignore others, regardless of the value of the information.

in one particularly illuminating example, the author discusses an experiment in which individuals of a group are asked to vote for candidates in an imaginary election. the experiment is set up in such a way that Candidate A is clearly the most fit choice for the position. when group members are all given about 2/3 of the relevant information for the candidates, the deliberation usually results in the correct choice of Candidate A (a statistical improvement over the initial poll of individuals -- so here, deliberation helped). however, when the members are all given 2/3 of the information about the other candidates, and the information about Candidate A is dispersed among individual members (even if the total information is more than in the previous scenario), the groups fail to access the relevant information contained by some of its members. as a result, they end up choosing one of the demonstrably inferior candidates. moreover, the percentage of votes for Candidate A fell after deliberation. why? because the information favoring the wrong candidate is that which is held by all the members -- a phenomenon aptly called "the common knowledge effect."

the major concern here is that deliberation groups often fail to access the relevant information held by some of its members because of the tendency to favor (and focus on) information shared by all rather than on individual perspectives, even when there was no evident (or stronger than usual) "status" issues or instances of social pressure on conforming to group opinion (indeed, there was no group opinion until the hypothetical information was given out). in other experiments, the success of deliberation groups was also dependent on whether the group members were "primed" to think that arriving at the correct answer was important, as opposed to priming them for getting along. this is cold comfort when thinking of juries and governmental deliberation.

this is not to say, however, that deliberation never works -- obviously it worked in the first part of the experiment. indeed, deliberation groups can perform as well as their best member, and sometimes they can even outperform their best member when pieces of relevant information are dispersed and the information, together, helps the group arrive at the correct answer. but deliberation is best limited to instances when an answer is readily available (like problem solving) or "eureka" problems -- when the correct answer can be identified by all as soon as it is made apparent. on more ambiguous matter -- say on social or moral issues, or anything involving ideology of whatever sort -- deliberation groups are fairly terrible, often resulting in the amplification of previous biases (a well-documented event, familiar to anyone who's ever been in a chat room or on a message board -- or even among a group of like-minded friends, really).

Sunstein then moves on to markets -- prediction markets, more specifically. on the general level, the author discusses why online review sites (of movies, restaurants, products, etc.) have worked so well on the principle of a market and the establishing of a "price" of a particular commodity. but what is most interesting is his discussion of more recent developments of prediction markets in which people place value (and trade stock) on the likelihood of a certain outcome -- say, the winners of Oscars or the results of a political election. surprisingly, these "markets" have often (but not always) outperformed even the best experts in their predictions. the reasons why these markets work is that they provide an incentive for people with good information to put their money where their mouth is, resulting in predictions made by people who, in theory at least, have relevant information. if you are concerned, as the author is, with how we most efficiently go about accessing widely dispersed information in society, then markets are often an excellent way of bypassing some of the social pressures and dynamics of deliberation groups. these don't always have to be (indeed, they often aren't) open to the public and so can limit the predictions and trading to the relevant individuals. so far, these types of markets have proved excellent within individual companies (e.g., Google and HP) at predicting what products will be the most successful or when a new product or program will be ready for distribution. this new approach undermines conventional wisdom of a board of big wigs -- who couldn't possibly have access to all of the relevant information possessed by all the employees -- making the decision from the top down.

to keep the rest of this brief(er), Sunstein then moves on to the various Web 2.0 developments in social media and information aggregation -- including wikis, open source software, and blogs -- and discusses their relative merits, as well as causes for concern. as it turns out, unmediated forums for the sharing and refining of information have proved more effective than many feared. that is not to say there are not problems with, say, wikis -- indeed, Wikipedia is far better on some topics than others, and even then usually as a general guide, not the end-all authority -- or blogs -- here we can find some pretty terrible groupthink behavior, along with more than generous helpings of rubbish -- but overall, they are very effective in ensuring that dispersed information sees the figurative light of day. in fact, Sunstein discusses a few instances where information shared online by bloggers helped to correct statements made by political candidates (leading to apologies) or to debunk a phony document (leading Dan Rather to apologize and retire).

the book ends with a few discussions about the situations in which the various methods work best and a few suggestions about how groups and organizations can best make use of them.

overall, this is a very interesting book and fascinating information. unfortunately, for even such a short book (225 pages), it was more repetitive than necessary and could have benefited from more individual case studies. also, while I am tempted to say that this book is to groups what Gary Marcus' Kluge is for the individual mind, this book is not nearly as entertaining and engaging as Marcus', which is unfortunate because it certainly had the potential to be as captivating and perhaps even more relevant.

A Critique of Deliberation and Introduction to Alternate Approaches, May 3, 2010
The basic message of this book is that deliberation can be bad and that markets are better at dealing with information and coming up with good results. Sunstein describes the many pitfalls in deliberation, like group polarization and self-silencing, for example. The author also covers the pros and cons of other information gathering and decision making approaches, like averaging from populations, polls and consulting experts. He establishes a type of continuum of preferred methods, with group deliberation at one end and markets at the other, although certain methods may shift on the continuum based on the kind of answer being sought. He concludes with prescriptions for improving group deliberation since this is the method most likely to be employed in most settings, suggesting things like leaders not committing to a specific view, and explicitly requesting input from adversarial voices, for example. Some of his suggestions and concerns remind me of Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats technique, where participants are asked to deliberately wear a different type of thinking hat so as to allow in a structured fashion for the various viewpoints required to deal with issues comprehensively. Sunstein also advocates the increased use of markets by both the private and public sector to supplement decision making. I wonder, though, if his enthusiasm for markets may be calmed by the recent revelation of manipulation in the movie revenues market, HSX, one that he provides as a good model. Infotopia is a good critique of the deliberative process, which we mostly assume is an effective means of arriving at the best possible solution. Sunstein clearly demonstrates why it is not and why other methods need to be considered and applied.

Discussion of information sharing and collective thought, March 16, 2009
In this delightful book, Cass R. Sunstein offers a cogent, compact and gently witty discussion of information sharing. His explanations of how different knowledge-aggregation processes work are extremely useful. They range from the theoretical (laying out the philosophical structures underpinning deliberation) to the practical (offering focused and specific suggestions for improvement). This certainly isn't the first book on how groups create knowledge - thinkers have rushed to make sense of the new possibilities that information technology presents. It is, however, one of the more quietly critical approaches, one that debunks extreme claims, points out the dangers that balance the often-trumpeted benefits and shares first-hand experiences. Sunstein is an enthusiast for certain types of collective information processing, but he is far from na�ve. getAbstract recommends this book to managers interested in improving organizational decision making.

Very Enlightening!, October 13, 2008
The book provides an excellent overview of various methods for knowledge aggregation and group collaboration, particularly statistical averaging, deliberation, prediction markets, wikis, open source projects, and blogs.

Sunstein provides a penetrating and balanced analysis of both the potential benefits and risks of each form of aggregation/collaboration, thus giving us some guidance on when to use (and not use) each method, and how to do it more effectively. I wish the book had provided clear summaries of that guidance, but it's still clear enough as is.

Sunstein is definitely a great writer. The result is a book which is easy and enjoyable to read, and the pages tend to fly by despite much of the material being a bit technical.

This book has started me thinking in new ways about some important issues, and it's not often that a book comes along which can do that. This is truly a book for our times, and is on the cutting edge on several fronts.

Very highly recommended for anyone who needs to, or wants to, deal with other people in order to get things done - in other words, everyone!

Wonderful Discussion about Discussions, December 27, 2009
The author explained how conclusions are generated in different discussion situations. It tells the readers that conclusions are not always the thoughts of the majority. Mass intelligence is not always trust-worthy. This book is a must for people interested in cyber psychology, management, marketing, and media.

Infotopia -, January 9, 2007
I have an interest in development of creative ideas and themes by small groups. I read this book to expand my knowledge.

On the high side, I was fascinated with the Jury Theorem and outcomes of statistical groups. I derived the formula on page 234 and played with different probabilties and group sizes to understand sensitivities. Lots of fun. I can see why political strategists would want to identify and slant a campaign to a (probably) small percentage of people to sway an election.

I was a little disappointed in the chapters about deliberations and problems in groups which seemed to apply to larger group sizes. Much seemed to be common sense not worthy of a lot of theoretical research - my personal interest is different. In my own career, I found that understanding personalities and agendas was extremely important because my arguments could then be tailored so others could best hear.

I played a prediction market game (MIT Technology Futures) for a while, but drifted away because I had no vested interest. Winning a TV set didn't turn me on. It seems to me that the prediction market must have real significance to succeed and be useful. If the emotions aren't there or are negative (eg. DOD predicting wars), it may not draw a large and informed crowd.

I am a casual user of Wikis and find Wikipedia useful especially in math and science. The soft stuff takes me a lot of time to understand writers' viewpoints, true also for blogs that I occasionally run across. That certainly stretches my critical thinking, but sometimes I don't want to think - I just want the answer or an answer from someone I trust.

Regarding the author's bottom line, I certainly agree that markets and democracy rest on the belief that many minds can be trusted. I would like to see the author make the jump from his theoretical world to that of real people working in small groups. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The best-selling Fundamentals of Corporate Finance (FCF) is written with one strongly held principle– that corporate finance should be developed and taught in terms of a few integrated, powerful ideas.As such, there are three basic themes that are the central focus of the book:1) An emphasis on intuition—underlying ideas are discussed in general terms and then by way of examples that illustrate in more concrete terms how a financial manager might proceed in a given situation.2) A unified valuation approach—net present value (NPV) is treated as the basic concept underlying corporate finance.Every subject covered is firmly rooted in valuation, and care is taken to explain how particular decisions have valuation effects.3) A managerial focus—the authors emphasize the role of the financial manager as decision maker, and they stress the need for managerial input and judgment.The Eighth Edition continues the tradition of excellence that has earned Fundamentals of Corporate Finance its status as market leader.Every chapter has been updated to provide the most current examples that reflect corporate finance in today’s world.The supplements package has also been updated and improved.From a new computerized test bank that is easier than ever to use, to new narrated PowerPoint for students, to new interactive learning modules, student and instructor support has never been stronger.There is also an optional, exciting new web-based program called "McGraw-Hill’s Homework Manager" that will help your students learn corporate finance by duplicating problems from each chapter in the textbook and by providing automatic grading and feedback to both students and instructors. ... Read more

Reviews

A good and readable book on Corporate Finance, September 20, 2005
"Fundamentals of Corporate Finance" is a recommended textbook of finance which is simple to read and follow. I am a Senior Engineering manager and wanted to have a good grasp of financial principles and concepts. I found the book to be very user friendly. As I go up the corporate ladder, I need a good grasp of financial concepts and their practical implementation in the real corporate world. This book provided me with most the information I needed.

The book will enable the reader to use the theory underlying corporate financial decisions to assess advanced corporate issues and decisions. The major topics covered in the book include financial statements, valuation of cash flows, capital structure and budgeting, risk and return, use of debt and equity, cash and credit management and international corporate finance, among other topics.

The book has a wide range of learning tools that should facilitate the learning process. Reference to several website reinforces the concepts being presented in the book. Whether one is a student wishing to learn the important subject of finance or a manager wishing to manage the company finances more effectively, this is a good choice of book.

The only limitation I found in the book is its main focus on US systems only with few examples on what is happening in Europe and elsewhere. To learn about the City Institutions (London) or European Stock Exchanges, for example, you have to search for your information elsewhere. Notwithstanding this, I enjoyed reading the book, particularly self-assessing my understanding by attempting the exercises in the CD-ROM which comes with the book.

katz, April 19, 2005
Wow! Great! Excellent! Amazing etc.., the list can continue.This is one book that any starter in finance area will want to learn from. Its a power-packed source of information for any student who is just starting to learn finance, however if you are already a pro in finance, then don't even considering this book because you'll finish reading the entire book in a couple of weeks.

I used this book for my exams preparation along with brealey myers text and the combination simply pushed my rank into the outstanding bracket.

This book is particularly useful for the following chapters:
5. Introductio to valuation: time value of money
6. Discounted cash flow - Interesting chapter opening
7. Interest Rates and Bond Valuation - Great Derivations
8. Stock Valuation - Once again great derivation on formula's
9-11: Capital budgeting - will be useful to only absolute starters. I liked the material in Brealey Myers text, it is more advanced
12. Some lessons from corporate market history
13. Return,Risk and Security Market Line
15. Cost of Capital
19-21: Short Term Finance - Best coverage, though not complete in all respects.

Finally one honest note, I didn't know how to produce PV/FV/Annuity tables by myself before I bought this book. Now I able to produce them all by myself.

I you want to dig deeper in finance, just like I am doing, then I suggest you buy this book and principles of corporate finance by brealey myers.This book will provide you with the base that is needed to cover the other book that I mentioned.

As good a textbook can get., February 17, 2010
The textbook was in good shape when it arrived and it arrived in a timely manner. No complaints.

Terrible explanations, February 7, 2010
This book is boring to read and doesn't provide adequate explanations of the techniques it's trying to explain.

Seller not reliable, January 18, 2010
The seller of this product, Umalucky is very unreliable. I had to wait over three weeks and I stil did not get my book.

Cheaper than college bookstores, June 30, 2009
Got a good price on the book, and received the product within a few days. Very happy with the purchase. Had to learn everything from the book because the teacher didn't know how to teach!

BEST BOOK FOR Corporate Finance!!!, June 8, 2008
It's really very interesting and useful book for corporate finance and you can find many good and usful things in this book!

Good Book, May 27, 2004
I am new to Finance aspects. This book very well served the purpose. Thank you ... Read more

Editorial Review

Journalism and communication law is anything but dry and boring, so why should learning about it be? Getting away from densely written text, The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication offers readers essential coverage and substantive discussion, but brings the subject to life with an abundance of photographs, useful feature boxes, timelines, a marginal glossary, and a colorful interior design.

With an approach geared toward journalists (and future journalists), not future lawyers, the authors provide a foundation for understanding the law by balancing conceptual learning with practical guidance. All of the book's features advance that goal and include:

• Suppose... chapter-opening cases hypothetical scenarios offer the perfect jumping-off point for students to situate legal issues and get them thinking critically;
• Landmark Cases in Context graphic timelines at the start of each chapter help students link landmark cases to key historical events;
• realWorld Law boxes engaging stories of the law in practice lend human interest while illustrating contemporary examples or emerging topics;
• Points of Law boxes nuggets of essential information underscore key points, crystallize knowledge, and often include legal tests and handy checklists;
• Cases for Study two excerpted cases complete with case facts, an explanatory headnote, and questions conclude each chapter and give readers an opportunity to grapple with justices opinions without sending them to a companion casebook.
• Bolded key terms and a marginal glossary students quickly and easily master key legal terms and concepts;
• More than 75 photos compelling images give readers a window into the drama and importance of events, and keep them turning the pages.

Timely updates, a revamped interior design, and a new publisher committed to independent publishing and editorial quality, make the second edition of The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication a must-see offering.

Editorial Review

Informative and entertaining, Reel Justice rates trial scenes in films on a one-to-four-gavel scale, with four being a classic and one being "ask for a new trial." Authors Paul Bergman and Michael Asimow, both accomplished law professionals, discuss the cultural messages encoded in the films, point out what went right and wrong in scenes where liberties were taken, and even answer a few legal questions along the way.

Completely revised and reformatted from the successful first edition, this new edition of Reel Justice includes more than two dozen recent movies as well as many older favorites that weren't covered in the first version. Just a few of the films reviewed:

" A Time to Kill

" Legally Blonde

" Philadelphia

" Inherit the Wind

" A Few Good Men

" The Devil's Advocate

" I Am Sam

" Intolerable Cruelty

" Rules of Engagement

" Twelve Angry Men

" Ghosts of Mississippi

" Runaway Jury

Reel Justice is an indispensable video guide for film viewers who want the legal lowdown on courtroom scenes. ... Read more

Reviews

A popular film guide with real substance., August 24, 2001
As a lawyer, I did not expect that a book on movie trials, aimed at a popular audience, would have much substance. But I was very pleasantly suprised. The authors, two law professors, do an excellent job of pointing out the numerous errors Hollywood makes when it tries to depict a trial. (Most non-lawyers would be surprised, for example, to learn that *My Cousin Vinny* is much more realistic than *The Verdict.*) The authors' discussions go into real (but not tedious) depth about not only the errors in the way judges, lawyers, etc., behave on film, but also the mistakes scriptwriters make in creating tactics and legal theories for their characters. In addition, the authors helpfully explain what would (most likely) *really* happen in many filmed situations. Because the authors treat each movie at length, this is not an exhaustive filmography. However, all the biggies are here, and the book also contains usefully organized indexes. This would be a great selection for lawyers, film buffs, or anyone who has to serve on a jury.

the best reference book updated, June 7, 2006
Narayan of Rebeccasreads highly recommends REEL JUSTICE as a great companion for the courtroom movie buff.

"Every third Hollywood movie is bound to be a courtroom drama/ legal thriller." Not 100% true -- every third movie every produced is bound to be one. The fascination with law, lawyers & courtrooms is not restricted to Hollywood -- it also holds true for Bollywood (Hindi movies) & Mollywood -- the Malayalam movie industry over here in Kerala, India -- where I'm from.

But how real are the concepts of law, courtroom & lawyers presented in movies? Through a finely selected collection of movies -- law professors & exponents in law & popular culture -- authors Paul Bergman & Michael Asimow explain where fact ends & fiction begins in some of the all-time classic movies from around the world.

Though I've seen many of the courtroom classics discussed in REEL JUSTICE, I'm off to pick up CDs of those I'd never heard of.

the new edition is great, May 30, 2006
I've read the new and older edition. Both are great, though the newer edition is even more fun and informative. There's a new feature, 'Picturing Justice' that provides an analysis of how cinema art -- the direction, imagery and screenwriting -- can add an extra dimension to judicial themes. This is a welcom edition for any cinema or legal library. And it's pretty witty, as well.

If you love legal dramas you must read this book., June 3, 1999
Courtrooms are the scenes of many of our greatest dramas, both on film and in real life. So it's no surprise that a book reviewing the legal and dramatic merits of dozens of law-related movies is a great read.

You learn a lot about the law through the authors' explanations of what famous trial scenes in the movies were based in actual law or not. And you get lots of insights into the making of many excellent movies.

Not only did I enjoy this book enormously, I've also used it as a guide for what movies to rent.

An excellent book on "celluloid law.", November 9, 1998
This is a generally well written and informative book that does well what it sets out to do. The legal analyses are nothing if not jurisprudentially educational, and indeed, for any movie listed within, these synopses will probably provide you with a much more thourough and insightful critique than you would get with Siskel, Ebert et.al. A particularly good gift for any lawyer who loves the cinema.

The co-author of Reel Justice responds to the critics., May 13, 1999
As a co-author of this book, I'd like to respond to the review written by Reader from Los Angeles. I'm sorry the reader didn't like our attempts to be humorous. However, I can assure the reader that my co-author and I saw, researched, and analyzed each and every one of the films discussed in the book. If there are errors, we'd appreciate hearing from the Reader so they can be corrected in a subsequent edition.

What is the law really?, January 9, 1998
Few can escape an active filmgoing life without a twisted view of the law. For as many accurate depictions of courtroom behavior as there are in films, there must be dozens that are not even close. Objections that are baseless and would be laughed out of a real court are routinely sustained in films, for example, while thoroughly objectionable conduct, such as attorneys routinely arguing rather than questioning during examinations, goes unchallenged. Law professors Michael Asimow and Paul Bergman have taken their legal skills and their love of films and combined them in what is a relatively unique film and video guide. While they do adopt the trappings of more familiar video guides (such as rating films on a scale up to four gavels), they provide far more considered reviews than one is likely to find in any other guide (with the notable exception of Roger Ebert's). Both authors are professors at the UCLA School of Law, and they use their considerable contacts at the school to the greatest possible advantage, drawing on the years of learning of nationwide experts in various fields of law. "Reel Justice" is both a celebration of the filmed courtroom battle and an examination of the law underlying the films. All too often, the authors expose the legal lunacy in films, pointing out just how egregiously in error the film is. Where a film is correct, they dutifully point that out, too. Though there may be spots in which the layperson finds the going tough, "Reel Justice" is generally accessible to those without a J.D., and it demystifies the legal system that Hollywood strives so valiently to mystify. Probably, though, the best use for the book is after one sees the movie. (Indeed, the authors pull no punches and reveal many endings, though always with a warning to the reader.) In a time when actual courtroom dramas are more accessible to the general public, whether through the televised criminal trial of O.J. Simpson or through Court TV, a station devoted almost exclusively to televising trials, "Reel Justice" can be a valuable tool for helping a reader separate fact from fantasy. The most serious limitation of "Reel Justice" is that it covers so few films. The depth of the reviews, however, necessitates such a limited selection. Moreover, the rating system serves as an excellent means of seeking out the truly sublime films out there (though there are a few that are not readily available on video).

Better than a LSAT...a great review of legal principles, December 19, 2006
Please take note: The book has been updated in 2006 so the new edition includes significantly more movie analysis than the earlier copies. After giving a quick synopsis of "courtroom movies" of all kinds...including comedy...these two law professors discuss the legal issues raised by the films. For example: Did the lawyers use a correct basis for an appeal, what are the standards for expert witnesses, was the cross-examination proper, did the judge make legal error in failing to grant a motion to disqualify the jurors, did a lawyer make unethical statements in his closing argument, etc. Simply a terrific review of legal procedure for those who love the movies. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Now in paperback! New York Times bestselling author Nancy Grace, the acclaimed victims’ rights advocate, throws the book at the criminal justice system

A compelling and gutsy read, Objection! captures Nancy Grace’s inimitable voice which has become a favorite of millions of television viewers and radio listeners around the country.

In Objection!, Nancy makes very clear her views on the imbalance of fairness in today’s judicial system. In an arena where celebrities are released without just punishment and innocent victims are vilified by power-hungry defense attorneys, Nancy seeks to even the scales with her unique, passionate approach.

Behind-the-scenes details from the cases:
-Scott Peterson
-Martha Stewart
-Kobe Bryant
-Jason Williams
-Phil Spector
-Robert Blake ... Read more

Reviews

After The Fact, help?, June 7, 2005
To be objective is the goal of my review, and I am asking my readers to also see this approach by Grace objectively in your mind. There is an obvious crucial problem in the USA with the type of crimes Grace exploits. And if you have read this book and watched Grace over any length of time you will see with open eyes the fact of exploiting the offender and the victim. I want to ask you up front, how does this help? To give example when the murder kidnapping took place recently in Idaho, Grace was asking the officer on scene, about the gruesome details of the murdered victims. In the Jackson trial she jokes of the circumstances surrounding Jackson such as the spider bite, his pajama's, his back problem and makes them comical excuses. If Jackson is Guilty, bring on the Justice he deserves, but in the meantime does this give Grace the right to act like a 12 year old? How does this help us? I am sincerely asking, be objective, and lets take this a step further, why does Nancy Grace bring in the "Glove", the Jackson glove and flash it on CNN? Is this the type of intellect we should be respecting and regarding? Or is this about ratings, have we fallen into the Springer/Geraldo world?? What is the purpose of this and joke around in front of Larry King about this, Larry wasn't laughing, but Nancy laughs at her own jokes. Nancy certainly is having a good time, is this an objective approach to reducing sex offenses in the USA? No, it most certainly is not, if anything she is opening a possible door for allowing the weak to become what we don't want them to be. And the weak are the ones who molest children, not being rational minded,,, which do not pay attention to Graces tactics more or less fully comprehend the law. So we are to say, I am sorry afterwards and not use our god given sense and combat these crimes objectively before they take place? We take it so seriously afterwards, and then joke around about it during trial.
Grace also stresses evidence, which separates humans as accepting each other. Once again I say, If Jackson is guilty, serve him Justice. Nancy's evidence log does not revolve around the fact that whether he did or did not commit a crime. Grace emphasis is on such things as the form and markings of Jackson's Penis being identified by one of the accusers. Many such pieces of evidence like this, actually an over emphasis on evidence like this. We are human, not creatures to be ashamed of one another. When I was a child I saw my female gym teachers in the shower, and many such cases similar. We accepted each other; Nancy is certainly viewing this in a very shallow and limited mind. We Americans are becoming such individuals we are fearing each other of crossing the line of respect and ashamed of our bodies? So much invented fear of being molested because someone saw a human without his clothes on!! Are we not able to see what we are without the self inflicted horror that because Jackson has a penis we accuse him of child molestation before the Jury lets out??? You have to ask why does the USA have more people in prison than any other nation for this exact same accusation. If you have never been to a foreign country, it may be hard for you to relate, men walk with boys nude throughout the world, and women with girls the same, in many cases its mixed, if you doubt me, go to a Japanese bath house, or to a German indoor swimming pool, there are hundreds of other examples much less private everywhere outside the USA. I only bring up this corner of surely usable evidence used by Nancy to further my case of realism as opposed to the real intent of Grace, or if she really knows what she is doing.
Now, what is the point of this book and Nancy Grace's view then? It is an after the fact exploitation of the crime to assist the victim by locking up the offender, WHICH REALLY DOES NOT HAPPEN EITHER WAY!! Convicted sex offenders are out and by the hundreds of thousands. The victims have been made popular and have extreme shock for being exploited publicly. Grace's approach does not bring pride to the victim, but fame, deep from the heart UN wanted fame.
So what is the point of my book review? The secret is prevention, not after the fact exploitation and desire to increase ones ratings on CNN. The number one prevention measure should be complete subject matter education in elementary schools for all children. Being smart is the best prevention, especially if we made the potential weak offender smart on the subject before he was able to be a molester. If you don't want to be raped, if you don't want your children molested, watch them and watch yourself by not being alone (This 18 year old in Aruba was abducted when she was alone). Protect yourself in a number of ways. I am in no way shifting the blame, I'm accepting the fact that the killer, the rapist, the child molester does in fact exist so I help you better by saying the way to rid the problem is to prevent it. When the offender is caught, get rid of him or her. Don't let them out for anything. Look what has happened in Florida, a repeat offender, this is happening everywhere in the USA. What someone needs to do, is write a book on PREVENTION, not on After The Fact IM so sorry approach. A in public school program needs to be installed to teach children at a very early age encompassing this entire subject.
So I ask you to objectively look at Grace, a government prosecutor who was rejected from being a Judge, she is not helping; she is advertising the problem in its hideous Mad Light.

All Huff, Very Little Fact, August 19, 2005
"Objection" is nothing but a rant after rant. There is little coherent in this book. There is no sequence to the chapters and it proves that to be "famous" one just need be controversial, not factual.
For example, Grace spends a great deal of time blistering the criminal justice system for the way it treats victims. She includes a chapter on the New York Central Park jogger case, complaing about the way original case was defended. Amazingly, she makes no mention at all of the fact that the original defendants were unjustly convicted and served many years in jail for a crime they didn't commit. One wonders if ignoring the facts was something she practiced when she was a prosecutor.
That this fact gets not even a footnote in her book makes all of the book suspect.
While the cover of the book proclaims that it takes a look at the inside story of the criminal justice system, she also takes a pot shot at the civil justice system, a part of the law about which she has no experience. She repeats worn out myths about the "McDonalds's hot coffee case", again displaying an astonishing lack of research.
Nancy Grace fans will probably like the book. I was on the fence about her from watching her on TV, but seeing how shallow this book is, I think it makes anything she says or writes about really suspect.

Objection to Nancy Grace, June 13, 2005
This book is full of lots of raw emotion directed against defense attorneys, celebrities, judges, juries and lots of others. The pattern to it is that the emotion is directed against those either who Nancy Grace thinks are guilty or who don't think that Nancy Grace does. The book tries to very loosely offer a plan to make the criminal justice system better, but the plan is ill-defined and weak.

Her objections, summarized by me, are:

- She wants tighter controls on the behavior of the defense.
- She doesn't seem to like the jury system at all
- She wants to re-define downward the standard for guilt. Rather than prosecutors having to prove guilt, the prosecutor would be allowed to make a circumstantial or emotional case for guilt.

She spends a whole lot of time attacking defense attorneys in the book, but its not really credible because its a one-sided attack where she is blind to the possiblity of misconduct by
prosecutors.

The problem with the book is that Nancy Grace is blind to her own faults and her own behavior. She is critical of 24/7 News coverage of trials, but doesn't deal with her own large role in that coverage. She is also blind to the problems in her record as a prosecutor.

Since leaving the prosecutor's office, Nancy Grace has been sharply repremanded by three different appeals courts for unethical and illegal behavior while she was a prosecutor. Her behavior was called illegal by every judge on the Georgia Supreme Court. Georgia is not exactly a friendly place for criminal defense and the lengths the court went in calling out Nancy Grace for ethical violations was very unusual.

They said she:

- Misrepresented facts to the trial judge so that her out of state witness could access the defendants home without the knowledge of the defense. Her witness gained access by breaking down the front door. For good measure, she subsequently also entered the defendants home with CNN cameras.

- Outright misrepresented the testimony of witnesses (falsely indicating in her closing argument that a defense witness had not disagreed with an opinion of the state).

- She inserted false information regarding hearing dates into a court proceeding to gain an advantage.

- She repeatedly ignored the instructions of the court. For example, she made multiple references to issues in her opening statement that the court had ruled (previously) to be inadmissiable.

- She failed to disclose a romantic relationship she knew about between two of her witnesses to the defense. She deliberatly held back her full witness list until the start of the trial.

For those interested, the case was: Carr v. State, 267 Ga. 701, 482 S.E.2d 314 (1997). Its a very detailed case study in how Nancy Grace abused her power as a prosecutor and how she operated without any real sort of ethics.

The court summarized her conduct in really harsh language:
begin quote -

Our review of the record supports Carr's contention that the prosecuting attorney engaged in an extensive pattern of inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the trial.

end quote -

This isn't one bad judge, its the entire very conservative usually pro prosection Georgia Supreme Court giving that opinion.

Its also important to remember that the person involved is free today only because he was rich and had the money to hire the lawyers to fight back against what she was trying to do. Most people would have ended up in jail for the rest of their lives.

Now you can choose to think that Nancy was right in this case and that somehow the entire court system of a state is so corrupt that it is misrepresenting the facts to free a man in a corrupt manner. But if you step back from that, your left with a prosecutor in Nancy Grace whose record of abuse in court is horrible. They didn't say sort-of illegal or maybe illegal, they said illegal.

Nancy has nothing to say about this. Since she doesn't participate in any forum that she doesn't control, nobody really has the chance to ask her about it. And this isn't her only problem with an appeals court.

This is important because it shows the big flaw of the book: hypocrisy. The book gets three stars because its a very useful book to read to see the dishonesty and maybe even self-deception that is behind Nancy Grace. The legal system does have ethical problems and problems with the media. But its not just defense attorneys, its prosecutors too. Its also almost surreal to see Nancy Grace of all people object to the media culture of 24/7 surrounding trials.

Is this a joke?, April 2, 2006
Nancy Grace has co-authored a book decrying the negative influence of 24/7 media and celebrity defendants?!?! She made her millions by slinging mud at celebrity defendants, convicting them on T.V. before they've even been arrested. You need look no further than the cover of the book, which was actually authored by Diana Clehane, but whose name and photo do we see? - one that sells books - Nancy Grace's.

I have to agree with Ms. Clehane and Ms. Grace on one point: We should get rid of the cable shows focusing hour-after-hour on particularly celebrated criminal cases.
But they missed the target in the first part of their book's title... Our focus should not just be on "high-priced defense attorneys" but high-priced, million-book-selling, T.V. drama queens that proclaim their distorted ideas of "justice" as a prosecution system, absent defenses; one where no man is innocent - we're all guilty if she makes that her almighty determination.

Our legal system is not, and should not be, a prosecution mill Ms. Grace.

Oh, boy. . ., July 4, 2006
She's opinionated, ignorant, prejudicial, arrogant, and, yes, bitchy. Nancy is PROOF anybody can be a lawyer; Nancy abuses the power of the microphone. If you want to see how the justice system DOESN'T work in America, this is a good read. If you want to see how the justice system DOES work in America, it is a good read. If you want to see WHY the justice system doesn't work, just look at the Author, here. . .

Nancy is both ignorant and opinionated--an appalling combo, June 12, 2006
Nancy is so blinded by her agenda--attacking defense attorneys and defendants--that she manipulates or ignores facts that are contrary to her extreme views. I have rarely heard anything worthwhile come out of her mouth on CourtTV, and this book is no different. I hope readers (and CourtTV viewers) who are less informed about the judicial system (I am a lawyer) realize not to take anything she says at face value.

Not Much There!, December 29, 2005
Nancy Grace's theme in this book is to bewail the tricks and successes of defense lawyers. She cites some cases where this directly led to tragic crimes committed by a defendant getting off for a prior crime.

While I sympathize with her point of view, I don't know what can be done about it. On the other side is the problem of people being unjustly sentenced for crimes they did not commit - fortunately new DNA evidence has exonerated a number of them. However, the reality is that tightening the system to release fewer guilty people will more than likely also lead to more innocent people being sentenced to life in prison, or even death. (See Bill Kurtis' "Death Penalty on Trial.

a really lightweight book, July 27, 2005
After reading this book, I can't say much to recommend it. Nancy Grace is a really messed up person who doesn't understand the difference law and revenge. The hate inside her just drips out on the page. The problem with hate like that is that it can end up hurting innocent people.

You will not find in the book much mention of a man named Richard Ricci. He was a totally innocent man who Nancy determined was guilty. She screamed day after day on television for his arrest in the Elizibeth Smart kidnapping. After weeks of claims that he was obviously guilty by Nancy in particular, the police put him in jail and tried to get a confession from him. He died in jail at which point Nancy went back on TV telling everyone that we would probably never know the truth about Elizebeth Smart. As much as telling everyone that the case was no longer worth pursuing.

But later, due to the family (and in spite of Nancy Grace), the little girl was recovered and it became clear that Richard Ricci was as he had claimed to be until his death in jail: a totally innocent man.

What did Nancy have to say after this? She had little to say but above everything else she never said she was sorry and never expressed any regret in destroying an innocent man. A man was dead in the ground and for all her supposed empathy for victims, she didn't even accept that he or his loved ones were victims.

Nancy Grace claims to help victims. But nothing could be further from the truth. She uses victims to fill television time and to make money for herself. She uses victims, their emotions and their stories to draw TV ratings from freaks who are attracted not to laws or courts, but to the hearing the details of violent crimes.

Anyone looking for anything reasonable about the law in the book might as well look elsewhere. Her ideas about legal reform are real simple: Get rid of ALL the lawyers and let prosecutors put whoever they think is guilty in jail.

What comes across in some pages is hate for other lawyers and court process. To Nancy, having defense lawyers or juries in court is an insult to the integrity of prosecutors and gets in the way of them doing their job. Prosecutors (like her) are good people who would never bring a case against an innocent person.

The lowest point in the book is when she shares her warped legal ideas about how juries are supposed to decide cases. Nancy Grace says that _beyond a reasonable doubt_ isn't to do with proving a case, its a jury using intuition. If a jury thinks someone is guilty even though the facts are not there, they have to find the person guilty because they would not think that unless the prosecutor had proved their case.

There isn't much more to say about the book. Other than its a good indicator of whats going wrong with the country. innocent until proven guilty is going out of fashion. Now, the only innocent people are the accusers/victims and to be accused is to be the same as guilty.

And as for anyone foolish enough to think that the current legal system is criminal friendly, I hope you either have millions of dollars for lawyers or never get accused of a crime. Because when you get into court, you may well find out that the system isn't what you thought it was. You may well find yourself in court with a lunatic prosecutor who will pass moral judgement on your life in five minutes and decide that your obviously guilty based on nothing more than a hunch. The reason we have courts and lawyers is because taking people's lives away from them is not something that should ever be done in a hurry or done based on emotion or revenge.

Keep it up Nancy!!!!, June 10, 2005
The America we all love is under attack. Since the 1960s, we have allowed evil to get into every area of American life and we need more people in the law like Nancy to clean up the problem. The lives of our loved ones and kids are at stake!

Nancy fights with passion against evil. Scott Peterson murdered his wife and Conner so he could live a life of PORNOGRAPHY and ADULTERY that Lacy would never have tolerated. But Nancy stood up when his high-powered lawyers were about to trick the courts into letting him go free and said NO! The case of Conner Peterson was about more than just murders though. It was about the right of the unborn to LIFE. There are many Conners being murdered every day in abortion clinics.

This country is not about PORNOGRAPHY, child abuse, state-ordered murders of an ill woman in Florida or state-approved murders of Children. I don't want to hear any more whining about the rights of criminals or the rights of PORNOGRAPHERS. The right of unborn babies to LIFE and the rights of THE VICTIMS of crime are what counts. Nancy knows this and tells the truth in her book.

This country needs to stop listening to the whining of the criminals and get on with reforming the system. There are a whole lot of lawyers who should be disbarred. It is a breach of ethics for any lawyer to enter a plea of innocence for those who are obviously guilty. The lawyers need to start being held ethically accountable for their actions in court.

The criminals who have become judges and corrupted the court system need to be fired by our leaders. Every Judge involved in the Terry Schiavo case should have been arrested by our president and put on trial for MURDER. And the PORNOGRAPHY that BREEDS the MONSTERS who attack our loved ones needs to be banned as the law says it should be. As Nancy has said multiple times, where you find PORNOGRAPHY you find the roots of crime.

I greatly admire what Nancy is doing on Television for our troops and our kids. She is a lone voice trying to save the victims from all highly placed elite scum who help criminals.

What I really hope is that when the people of GOD finally fully redeem American Government, that Nancy steps down from Television and takes up the burden of prosecuting all of those responsible for the crimes committed by liberals, corrupt judges and the elite over the past 40 years.

Bless you Nancy!!!!

Give her a break!!, June 9, 2005
I am been a fan of Nancy's for years-mainly because she is so pro-prosecution. Her book points out-accurately-that defense attorneys and money can cloud justice. She is not wrong in this opinion-she just voices it louder and stronger than most. More power to her. We all have our faults, but can a woman who is such an advocate for victims be so bad?? She has a huge heart for victims-and a sharper tongue for the accused. If you don't like it-change the channel.
GREAT BOOK NANCY! ( and I loved the Jackson glove, personally) ... Read more

Editorial Review

The revised edition of the Bible of the newspaper industry.

More people write for The Associated Press than for any newspaper in the world, and writers--nearly two million of them--have bought more copies of The AP Stylebook than of any other journalism reference. It provides facts and references for reporters, and defines usage, spelling, and grammar for editors. There are separate sections forjournalists specializing in sports and business, and complete guidelines for how to write photo captions, file copy over the wire, proofread text, handle copyrights, and avoid libel. This edition of The AP Stylebook keeps pace with world events, common usage, and AP procedures. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This comprehensive, ready-to-use collection of 44 model business and legal forms will save anyone involved in the performing arts thousands of dollars in legal fees! Written by an entertainment lawyer and producer, Business and Legal Forms for Theater includes samples for every aspect of theater law, including author agreements, commissions, production license, play publishing, and more. Artists, producers, directors, theatrical designers and even box office managers will have everything they need to prepare their own contracts, negotiate the best possible deal, and minimize legal risks. Accompanying CD-ROM includes all forms, checklists, and contracts in both Mac and PC formats. ... Read more

Reviews

Concise info, presented clearly, January 18, 2007
This book is a must have for managers in theater. It covers most of the typical contractual issues managers face. This book's biggest asset is the CD. The CD allows you to download and modify virtually all the documents included in the book.
You need to have a bit more than a cursory understanding of the legal principles behind some of the language in the agreements, but if you have that knowledge you will refer to this book time and again. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This book explores the interface between law and popular culture, two subjects of enormous current importance and influence. Exploring how they affect each other, each chapter discusses a legally themed film or television show, such as Philadelphia or Dead Man Walking, and treats it as both a cultural and a legal text, illustrating how popular culture both constructs our perceptions of law, and changes the way that players in the legal system behave. Written without theoretical jargon, Law and Popular Culture: A Course Book is intended for use in undergraduate or graduate courses and can be taught by anyone who enjoys pop culture and is interested in law. ... Read more