Media and Entertainment Law

Ursula Smartt has authored a number of legal textbooks, specializing in media and entertainment law, criminal law and the criminal process – with an emphasis on comparative aspects with European jurisprudence. She is a law lecturer at Portsmouth University with external examining duties at Plymouth University and Cornwall colleges. Ursula serves as a magistrate on the Surrey Bench in Guildford. She has undertaken extensive independent prison research with projects funded by the Home Office and European, US and Australian Ministries of Justice, largely in the area of prisoner labour and correctional industries. Apart from prisons and penitentiaries in eight EU countries, she has inspected HMP Grand Turk on the Turks and Caicos Islands, death row facilities at St Quentin, California and the mother and baby unit at one of the largest prisons in the world, Tihar Jail in New Delhi. For her popular book, Grendon Tales (2001, Waterside Press), she spent two years at the high security prison HMP Grendon near Aylesbury where she interviewed long term and lifer prisoners undergoing psychotherapy at this rather remote and unknown establishment. Ursula Smartt was awarded a visiting Professorship at the Max Planck Institute in Freiburg, Germany in 2001, for her comparative research into stalking and harassment. Another of her most successful books is `Media Law for Journalists’ (2006, Sage Publications) which was adopted by the BBC’s journalist training college and has been used by foreign journalists around the world as a basis for working in the UK or understanding the British legal system. Ursula is now an associate lecturer at Surrey University in Media Law, in addition to her part time law lecturing post at Portsmouth University.

1. Media freedom 2. Privacy and Confidentiality 3. Defamation 4. Contempt of Court 5. Reporting Legal Proceedings 6. Freedom of public information 7. Blasphemy, obscenity and censorship 8. Copyright I (Intellectual Property) 9. Copyright II (Entertainment Law) 10. Regulatory bodies and self regulation