Media And Communications CLE

Social media and mobile phone contests and sweepstakes may seem like a no-brainer for many businesses, but are you equipped to help clients set up and conduct them legally? This course outlines the legal issues involved in conducting sweepstakes and contests, otherwise known as chance and skill prize promotions, when conducted via social media or mobile devices. It will cover applicable state gambling laws, how to handle user-generated content per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Communications Decency Act, and the Consumer Review Fairness Act. It will also outline practical considerations such as privacy concerns, specific platform requirements, and FTC endorsement guidance so your clients’ social media and mobile contests can run smoothly.

To increase sales as well as goodwill, many companies like to partner with charitable organizations to market their products. One common marketing plan is the commercial co-venture, which involves advertising that the company will donate a portion of sales to a charity. This highly-regulated area of law has numerous requirements, from contractual and advertising obligations to registration and bonding. In this program, you will learn best practices for running successful charitable marketing campaigns, as well as the difference between commercial co-ventures and other cause marketing efforts. You will also learn about applicable state laws and how to problem solve for compliance issues in commercial co-venture campaigns.

The term “5G” has become ubiquitous in recent months, appearing in everything from technology news reports and discussions on national security to wireless carrier advertising campaigns. Along with widespread marketing campaigns has come a crush of land use applications by carriers seeking to install small cell facilities in the public rights-of-way as well as to upgrade existing rooftop and tower sites with 5G equipment. This has caused concern and anxiety among many local land-use officials who are unsure of how to handle the expanded number of applications. This course begins with a brief overview of the wireless telecommunications space. We then dive right into current developments in the telecommunications industry, including new and updated federal laws and regulations, and how they impact a local jurisdiction’s capacity to manage its own rights-of-way, and to draft land use regulations that hold up against federal telecommunications preemptions. This course will benefit municipal, county and state level attorneys, local land use boards and their counsel, zoning board attorneys, as well as county and state counsel and private land owners with cell towers on their property: that is, it will benefit anyone who deals with wireless communications facilities on a proprietary or regulatory level.

“The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is intended to “prohibit[] discrimination and guarantee[] that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else to participate in the mainstream of American life.” But how the ADA applies to websites can be challenging to navigate. In this course, presenter Stacey Turmel will discuss how the ADA’s intent translates to websites that allow individuals to purchase goods or services, what websites might be subject to the ADA, as well as the risks of noncompliance and recommendations for website accessibility.

This course provides insight into the new California law (AB 288) that comes into effect in January 2023 and will change how companies and brands run online charitable promotions. This new comprehensive law significantly changes the landscape of national online charitable promotions. This course will provide participants tips to recognize when and to whom this new law applies, how to comply with the requirements of the new law, including registration of promotions, contracts with charities, sending donations to charities and disclosures.

The topic of Website Regulatory Compliance is made up of a complex set of federal regulatory rules and guidelines to ensure that business websites and digital communications are honest and truthful, accessible to people with disabilities and compliant with financial services requirements.  These rules and guidelines can be found under: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
The Americans with Disabilities’ Act (ADA);The Federal Communications Commission (FCC); and
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

For the past 10 years the DOJ has remained mostly silent on the issue of website accessibility, which silence has led to an onslaught of private litigation. However, in March of 2022, the DOJ publicly released its "Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA" purportedly establishing "how state and local governments and businesses open to the public can make sure that their websites are accessible to people with disabilities as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).” This course will explore: