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Alumni involved in movies,
television, radio, and the Internet share stories
from the entertainment field.
By Lewis I. Rice
Flick on your
radio as your drive to work. Surf the Internet
during lunch and make a purchase from a
Web site. Come home, catch some TV, and
run out again to the movies (don’t
worry – your digital video recorder
will save that program you like so you
can watch it later).
It’s a typical day for many Americans.
What most Americans don’t think about,
however, is how lawyers play a role in
their leisure-time choices. In fact, many
George Washington Law School alumni, including
this year’s graduation speaker, Dan
Glickman, JD ’69 (see page 24), work
for law firms and other organizations connected
to the media and entertainment industries,
handling such issues as contracts, patents,
intellectual property, employment law,
government relations, and litigation. They
may not be stars of stage and screen (although
a couple have experienced the spotlight
in front of the camera), but they have,
in their own ways, made it into show biz.
TV Technology
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David Moskowitz, JD ’83, is executive
vice president and general counsel
of EchoStar Communications Corp., which
owns Dish Network. |
Here’s
something most students don’t
learn about in law school: the legal issues
surrounding satellites. EchoStar Communications
Corp. has launched 10 of them and, as executive
vice president and general counsel, David
Moskowitz, JD ’83, has worked to
secure permission to build and launch the
satellites and park them in space, as well
as the warranties and indemnifications
for the company’s essential product,
which costs more than $100 million each.
Joining Colorado-based EchoStar in 1990
from a corporate attorney position in the
home-building and mortgage industry, Moskowitz
learned about satellite technology and
the legal issues involved in beaming hundreds
of television channels into living rooms
across the nation.
“I’m fortunate enough to be
with a company that lets me get involved
in the business and help the company to
grow not only from a legal perspective
but from a business perspective as well,” he
says.
His responsibilities include negotiating
contracts with programming conglomerates,
such as Time Warner and News Corp., so
that their channels are included on EchoStar’s
Dish Network. Occasionally, those relationships
become contentious, as when Viacom threatened
to deny EchoStar the Super Bowl broadcast
unless the company paid more money and
carried more of its channels.
Moskowitz
initiated a lawsuit, alleging a violation
of antitrust law, and eventually settled
the dispute.
He manages an office of more than 20
in-house attorneys, some of whom oversee
outside counsel on litigation matters,
which can range from patent infringement
suits to disgruntled customers filing
in small-claims court. “We have a philosophy of probably
being more willing than most to take a
case to court when we believe we are in
the right,” he says.
The general counsel also works on government
matters, particularly FCC regulation,
and lobbies Congress on legislation that
affects the satellite TV industry. In
one lobbying effort, EchoStar won a key
legislative victory with the passage
of the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement
Act of 1999, which allows satellite subscribers
to receive local broadcast channels,
a breakthrough that inspired a surge
of customers, Moskowitz says.
“We have been successful because
we listen to what customers want, and we
try to provide it to them,” he says. “If
cable would have better listened to its
customers, we probably would never have
been successful.”
Matthew Zinn, JD ’89, is
senior vice president and general
counsel of TiVo Inc.
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Customers also have shown that they
want to control their TV viewing schedule,
says Matthew Zinn, JD ’89, senior vice
president and general counsel of TiVo Inc.
He started with the California-based company
in 2000, when it had about 40,000 customers.
Now it enjoys more than 4,000,000 who use
TiVo’s digital technology to
record their favorite shows or find
shows they may like to watch.
“I decided I wanted to work for a
company that would take advantage of principles
of digitization and changing some paradigms
of how people use media,” Zinn says. “TiVo
fit that bill completely.”
In those early days, however, the
company faced threats from media
companies charging that the recording
device violated copyrights. TiVo
responded that the technology allowed
fair use of television programming.
Similar concerns about copyright violations
were raised when the VCR hit the market,
Zinn says. He notes that the content
industry adapted and profited from
the technology, selling tens of billions
of dollars of VHS tapes and then DVDs.
“Every time a new technology comes
out, it threatens the existing business
models,” he says. “A lot
of those companies decided to invest
in TiVo rather than litigate. And over
time, of course, people have gotten more
comfortable with the technology.”
Though no longer facing copyright
litigation from content providers
for recording programs on a DVR,
TiVo battles “a staggering
amount” of patent suits, which takes
up the biggest portion of his legal budget,
says Zinn, who hires and monitors outside
counsel to handle litigation. The company,
he explains, is often threatened with suits
by “patent trolls” who don’t
have products but acquire patents in
order to file suit.
TiVo also initiates suits to protect
its 87 issued patents, recently winning
a jury decision of $73 million against
EchoStar’s
use of DVR technology (the case is on appeal).
But Zinn says the company prefers making
deals with cable and satellite companies
so that they can offer TiVo’s technology
to their customers. “We think that’s
a much better model than to try to extract
patent licensing fees from a bunch of different
companies,” he says. “We’re
looking for win-win scenarios. Litigation
for us is a last resort.”
Zinn also serves as the chief privacy
officer for TiVo. The company captured
attention when it announced that Janet
Jackson’s
Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction” was
the most replayed TV moment in its history.
Yet Zinn emphasizes that the company
does not collect personally identifiable
viewing data without express permission,
its audience measurement surveys are
based on anonymous aggregated information,
and its privacy practices have passed
muster with the Federal Trade Commission.
He makes sure that personally identifiable
information about what happens in your
TiVo box stays in your control.
Law Firm Practice
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Ian Ballon, JD ’86, LLM ’98, is an attorney with Greenberg
Traurig in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, Calif., where he represents technology,
media, and entertainment companies on e-commerce and Internet matters. |
A n
anonymous person posts critical information
about a company on an Internet message
board. Not much a company can do about
that, right?
Wrong. At least if the company has Ian
Ballon, JD ’86, LLM ’98, in
its corner. The attorney at Greenberg Traurig,
who splits his time between the firm’s
Los Angeles and Palo Alto offices, prevailed
in a lawsuit against the poster, who turned
out to be a salesman for the company’s
lead competitor. Because of that, Ballon
argued that the Internet posting should
be analyzed as commercial speech, rather
than the broader protection afforded
to Internet postings.
Like many legal cases in recent
history involving the Internet
and e-commerce, it broke new ground.
And Ballon has been at the center
of the action as a practitioner
representing technology, media, and entertainment
companies and as author of the three-volume
legal treatise E-Commerce and Internet
Law, which state and federal courts have
cited in their decisions.
He graduated at a time few people
had even heard of the Internet, but
a move to Silicon Valley enmeshed
him in intellectual property and
computer litigation cases. That naturally
transformed into more Internet work
as the tech boom gathered steam in
the mid-’90s.
“I was fortunate to be in the right
place at the right time,” Ballon
says. “It was really exciting because
there really wasn’t much [Internet]
law at all. You had a palpable sense
that the world was about to change in
a very dramatic way.”
He began his treatise after giving
a speech on Internet law at the American
Bar Association convention in 1995. He
drafted a 20-page outline on the subject,
which by default was the definitive text
at the time. Writing the treatise took
several years because of his ongoing
practice and the whirlwind of changes
in the law, Ballon says: “I
felt at many points like the little Dutch
boy with his finger in the dike. As soon
as I updated one chapter in the book,
major developments erupted that made several
other chapters obsolete.”
Today, the field is more settled,
he says, though new laws and cases
are always emerging in copyright,
trademark, privacy, security, and
Internet advertising. He has handled
cases involving cybersquatting, phishing,
spoofing, spamming, and other arcana
of the Internet world. He is sure
there’ll
be new kinds of disputes too, but, when
it comes to Internet law, even he can’t
predict what the claims of tomorrow will
look like.
Daniel Black, JD ’76, a partner with Greenberg Traurig in Los Angeles,
has practiced entertainment law for more than 20 years, facilitating
deals in the television and motion picture industries.
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Working in the same firm as Ballon
in Los Angeles, Daniel Black, JD ’76,
has practiced entertainment law
for more than 20 years, facilitating deals in the
television and motion picture industries.
But like his colleague and fellow
GW Law graduate, he also makes sure to keep current
with the latest trends in the industry.
To that end, Black recently completed
a deal for his client, Microsoft, with
Reveille, a television production and
distribution company that will produce
original content for MSN, Microsoft’s Web site. He
also just wrapped up a “landmark
deal” for the advertising agency
J. Walter Thompson and its content-producing
division JWTwo Entertainment for a new
television series on TBS consisting of
five original episodes each week with
a running time of just two-and-a-half
minutes each.
“Both of these deals are cutting
edge,” Black says. “Everyone’s
trying to find the eyeballs, where the
consumer is.”
Black continues to represent
established studios along with
producers and television and
sports personalities. His clients
include Linwood Boomer, creator of the
hit TV show Malcolm in the Middle, and
sports announcer Joe Buck. In addition
to completing deals, he also initiates
them, matching clients with mutual interests.
Black has worked on the studio side as
an in-house attorney with Columbia
Pictures and Paramount Pictures and later established
his own full service, entertainment-generated
law firm.
He has seen the entertainment
business change radically over
the years, he says. Companies
are trying to tap into hand-held
devices, wireless devices, the Internet
as well as the traditional avenues of
TV and movies—trying to “monetize
their investments and products,” he
says.
“You really have a choice as a lawyer,” Black
adds. “You can say, ‘I cut
my teeth doing the deals in this way in
this space,’ but then you’re
going to be left behind. Or you can be
mindful of the new areas, not only learn
about them but construct the paradigms
for them. At the end of the day, I want
to try to spend my time being of service
to clients whom I feel will be successful.”
Broadcasting
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Steven Lerman, JD ’72, manager of the firm Leventhal Senter & Lerman
in Washington, serves as the outside general counsel for CBS Radio and
has worked with Howard Stern. |
Sooner
or later, everybody always asks Steven
Lerman, JD ’72, about Howard Stern.
After all, while representing
CBS Radio (formerly Infinity Broadcasting
Corp.), Lerman once defended Stern’s
right to broadcast his often outrageous
radio show and until very recently was
involved in a lawsuit against him.
But while Stern grabs attention
as the self-styled “king of all media,” Lerman
may be the reigning attorney of radio.
Manager of the firm Leventhal Senter & Lerman
in Washington, Lerman now serves as the
outside general counsel for CBS Radio,
the nation’s second
largest radio concern. His
firm also handles several
other major radio clients
he brought in, including
Citadel Broadcasting Corp.,
Beasley Broadcasting, and
Greater Media.
Lerman’s first exposure
to the radio industry came
as a new attorney in 1973,
when he represented two former
employees of Metromedia who
bought a radio station in
San Jose. Those businessmen
were the founders of Infinity
Broadcasting (later purchased
by CBS Radio), for which
Lerman helped buy more than
40 stations, in addition
to overseeing talent agreements,
sports rights transactions,
and FCC administrative work.
But he reserves his greatest
passion for his First Amendment
work, which was extensive when
Stern was employed by his client,
which resulted in dozens of cases
before the FCC and in the courts.
“I think the FCC in the last four
or five years has completely gone off the
rails from a First Amendment point of view,” says
Lerman, who has appeared before FCC commissioners
many times in his career. “There
are a series of decisions that are frankly
extremely prudish and not consistent with
the law.” Some of those
decisions are now being challenged
in the courts.
Until recently, he was on
the other side of Stern in
a recent suit that alleged
the radio personality used
CBS Radio airtime to promote
his new stint at Sirius satellite
radio and received a hidden financial
interest in the process. The
case has now been settled on
terms that are confidential,
Lerman says.
Despite that, Lerman calls Stern “a
perfectly fine fellow” who is shy
in person. He has represented other radio
personalities such as Oliver North, Jim
Hightower, and Laura Ingraham— proof
that he’ll take on
a wide array of clients,
regardless of their political
views.
“I do have my limitations, but I
would not shy away from people who are
highly conservative or highly liberal,” Lerman
says. “Certainly the
First Amendment has to have
room for those points of
views. The strength of radio
is promoting a robust exchange
of ideas.”
Bruce Collins, JD ’87, is corporate vice president of C-SPAN. He
has been with the network since 1981.
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In a different forum, C-SPAN
also has promoted the exchange
of ideas since its inception
in 1979. And Bruce Collins, JD ’87,
has been a part of it for
most of that time. In fact, in 1981, he became the
first person hired by the public-interest
network whose job was not to
operate equipment.
Now
the corporate vice president of C-SPAN,
a nonprofit funded by the cable industry,
Collins deals with FCC regulations, vendor
contracts, board management, and intellectual
property issues. Starting as a manager
before attending law school, Collins
served even then as the fledgling
station’s “de
facto general counsel because
I knew how to pronounce certiorari,” he jokes.
He also soon became an
on-air personality when he filled in one day for founder Brian
Lamb and continued to host
programs until a few years ago. Though at C-SPAN, he says, “Even
if you’re on air
for 20 years, you’re
not a celebrity.”
While C-SPAN covers Congress
and governmental matters, “as a journalistic organization,
we keep at arm’s length from Congress,” Collins
says. An exception occurred in the early ’90s
when Congress passed the “must carry” rule,
which required cable
providers to offer all
local broadcast stations.
C-SPAN sued on First
Amendment grounds and
lost; some cable operators
subsequently dropped
C-SPAN programming.
As capacity has increased,
C-SPAN has recovered its presence
but faces more competition,
with Internet sites and government
agencies offering an array
of public-affairs content.
In response, C-SPAN keeps adding
content, Collins says, pointing to
the organization’s
expanded Web offerings and audio streaming
of government events. The network also
protects its copyright, most recently when
C-SPAN asked unauthorized Web sites to
remove the much talked-about video of Stephen
Colbert’s performance this year at
the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“We’re here to serve the public’s
interest. We do it within the business
model of cable and satellite TV,” Collins
says. “The competition
is always there, and
we always have to be
competitive and to prove
our value.”
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Edwin Durso, JD ’78, is executive vice president of administration
at ESPN. He has been with the company since 1989. |
One of the most valuable
media properties in the United
States is ESPN, where Edwin
Durso, JD ’78, has worked to help
build the sports entertainment
empire since 1989. At that point, the company was
10 years old, with a single
domestic channel and 400 employees. Today, it has multiple
TV networks, a radio
network, a magazine, Web site, a robust international presence,
its own cell phone (Mobile
ESPN), retail outlets, and 4,500 employees.
“It was primed at that point for
very significant growth,” Durso says. “And
one of the things we’ve never done
is underestimate the world’s
appetite for more and
different kinds of sports.”
He demonstrated his
own hunger for sports
as a starting shortstop
earning All-Ivy League
recognition at Harvard.
A year after graduating
GW Law, he began a 10-year stint
in the Office of the Commissioner
of Major League, where he rose
to executive vice president and
chief operating officer.
After helping to negotiate MLB’s
first cable deal with ESPN, Durso was hired
as the company’s
general counsel. He is
now executive vice president
of administration, handling
a broad array of operations
including legal, government
relations, communications
and human resources,
and has continued negotiating
deals for ESPN, which
today include acquiring
rights to National Football
League, Major League
Baseball, and National
Basketball Association
broadcasts.
While such major
sports properties
remain the core of
the business, ESPN
has branched out
with television movies
(Durso had a cameo
role—playing himself when he
was an MLB executive—in Hustle, a
movie about Pete Rose) and talk shows like
Pardon
the Interruption. Durso also points
to ESPN’s use of multimedia, like
the Internet and cell phones, to give fans
their sports fix when they’re
away from the television.
“Our mission is to serve sports fans,” he
says. “We’re
trying to give them the
opportunity to consume
what we do wherever they
are and however they
want.”
Movie Studios
Preston Padden, JD ’73, is the executive vice president of government
relations for the The Walt Disney Co. His past jobs include serving as
president of ABC Television and helping to build FOX into a major television
network.
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When
he started his current job,
Preston Padden,
JD ’73, led a real Mickey
Mouse operation.
The executive vice president of government
relations for The Walt Disney Co., he helped
convince Congress to pass the Copyright
Term Extension Act of 1998, which allowed
his employer to retain the rights to the
beloved cartoon mouse for an extra 20 years.
Such
powers of persuasion are
a hallmark of his
role as chief lobbyist
for Disney, in
which he interacts
with legislators,
administrative
agencies, and executive
branch officials
both in the United
States and abroad in representing
the studio’s
interests.
“Lobbying makes democracy possible
because there are lobbyists for every sector
of our society and every interest group,” he
says. “If
the process works
right, which it
does 99 percent
of the time, the
elected representatives
hear from all these
different sectors
of our society,
and then they make
a decision.”
Previously, Padden
served for just over
a year as president
of ABC Television, which is owned
by Disney. Prior to that, he
helped build then upstart FOX
television into one of the major
networks. As head of Disney’s government relations
office in Washington, he and other industry
representatives have responded to complaints
about broadcast indecency by touting “blocking
tools that actually allow parents to have
complete control of what comes into their
homes.” In
addition, he has
spearheaded efforts
against piracy,
working with government
officials in China
and Russia and
antipiracy organizations
to shut down duplication
facilities.
While focused on
government relations,
Padden has also challenged
government regulation.
Last year, as a guest speaker
in a GW Law media and communications
class, he noted that when he was at Fox,
the company fought for a waiver of government
policies designed to promote competition
that in reality stifled it.
“It was a very good lesson in how
sometimes well-intentioned government policies
ended up being counterproductive,” he
says.
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Jimmy Horowitz, JD ’86, is executive vice president of business
and legal affairs at Universal Pictures in Los Angeles. |
On the other
side of the country—and
in another side
of the business—Jimmy
Horowitz, JD ’86,
serves as executive
vice president,
business and
legal affairs,
for Universal
Studios in Los
Angeles. The
man whom The
Hollywood Reporter dubbed “the
don of deals” negotiates the agreements—from
the top-of-the-marquee talent to the behind-the-scenes
production people—that
make possible
the 16 to 20
movies Universal
releases each
year. He says
each production
is comparable
to an individual
business for
which the studio
has to evaluate
how much it should
invest.
“The hard part of our business is
we take risks on every movie,” he
says. “It’s
like introducing
a new product into
the marketplace
each time.”
Those risks
include paying
multimillions
of dollars to actors
in an era with fewer
and fewer bankable stars, he says. While
such deals are breathlessly followed
in trade publications, Horowitz says
for him it’s not a glamorous business. General
Electric, which owns Universal, expects
the same returns from the studio as it
does from its jet-engine or medical-supply
businesses. And he doesn’t enjoy
long lunches with celebrities – he
engages in long
negotiations with
their agents and
lawyers.
“You have to find satisfaction in
the work aspect of it,” says Horowitz. “If
you’re doing it because you want
to meet movie stars, you’re
definitely choosing
the wrong side
of the business.”
Productions
he has been
involved in
recently range
from the blockbuster
King Kong, with Academy
Award-winning director
Peter Jackson and stars
Naomi Watts, Adrian
Brody, and Jack Black,
to more modestly budgeted fare, such
as the recent United 93. The latter
film, about passengers fighting to
take back a hijacked airplane on 9/11,
is one of the movies he’s most proud to
be associated with. “In these jobs,
which are mostly about entertaining and
making money, every now and then you get
to use the skills that you’ve acquired
all the way back to law school to be able
to make a contribution,” says
Horowitz.
Jill Lerner, JD ’80, is senior vice president of corporate affairs
at MGM in Los Angeles.
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Jill
Lerner, JD ’80, is using
her legal skills to benefit another
Hollywood studio. As senior vice president,
corporate affairs and human resources,
for MGM, she heads human resources
and handles employment law issues and
executive agreements. While she could
do the same kind of job in another
type of business, she says the entertainment
industry
provides rewards she couldn’t
find elsewhere.
“By virtue of the business we’re
in, the people are more interesting, the
subject matter is more interesting,” says
Lerner. “I’m surrounded by
creative people all the time. I love movies,
I’m a television
junkie, so being
able to have that
closeness is terrific.”
Indeed,
as a member
of the
senior
management
team, she is
privy to the
activities
of every department,
what deals
the company
is contemplating
and what projects
are in the
works for the
film and TV
studio. Since
she began at MGM in 1991, more women
are making decisions in the industry,
she says: “You have women in very significant
positions of power throughout the networks,
the studios, the ad agencies, the talent
agencies. I do think we’ve
made strides.”
According
to Lerner,
more lawyers
are also
involved
in the entertainment
industry, even producing
and acting as agents.
She jokes that, like
everyone else in Hollywood,
she’d like to direct, too. But really,
she’s happy
being a lawyer
who plays a role
in the entertainment
of our lives, one
of many GW Law
grads who can say
the same thing.
Lewis I. Rice is a freelance writer and
former editor of the Harvard Law School
alumni magazine.
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