I found something interesting.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20090626.html(Hopefully that becomes magically clickable, but I'm to the point now that I rarely click on hidden links... following a tinyurl makes it trivial to be rickrolled or goatse'd.... so visible text links that are hopefully magically clicky for those who are lazy.)
It is discussing the idea that the newspaper which sat on Governor Sanford's emails for 6 months might have done so because the emails are protected by copyright.
There isn't a lawyer on Earth who would say printing those emails in their entirety was Fair Use. It doesn't matter whether the person writing them is an elected official because that only covers work-related email; although there are gray areas about what is work-related, these emails were clearly personal. And copyright is automatic and instant, you do not have to claim it or register it in order for your work to be copyrighted. (It might be hard to prove if there is a competing claim, but the copyright exists.)
I found that to be extremely interesting.
Also: after yesterday's screed against the piss-poor news coverage in this country (both newspapers and television) I went out and found quasi-official blogs covering legal news and signed up for the feeds. I saved so much time yesterday by not needing to watch the news... all they had was blather about Michael Jackson. I didn't get it. He's been gone from the public eye for like 20 years, he might as well have been dead already, so what's the big deal? Sure it deserves a mention, but not 6 hours of solid coverage. The news media was so absorbed by this, I was surprised no one was suggesting Governor Sanford had hired a hitman to kill Jackson. Nothing else would have gotten them off Sanford so fast. I'm feeling a little cynical because I really was thinking how damned lucky Senator Ensign was that Governor Sanford was "off hiking the Appalachian Trail" and again how lucky Sanford was that someone pop-culturally famous died. If Farrah Fawcett had waited a week, I'm sure Senator Ensign would completely get away with his infidelity.
(Aside question, is there a word for men cheating on their wives like "cuckolding" for wives cheating on husbands? If not, can we create one?)