Digital Commons Network^™

Google Searching For The Truth: Examining The Admissibility Of Internet Search History, Chisup Kim

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The internet has become more ubiquitously available than ever before, with search engines serving as the portals to an unparalleled amount of information. As a byproduct of this phenomenon, a vast amount of internet search history has also begun to enter legal proceedings as evidence. The most intimate questions that defendants have asked their search engines have begun to be examined under the scope of the Federal Rules of Evidence or a state equivalent. This Comment examines the admissibility of internet search history and provides a general legal framework based on the Federal Rules of Evidence. Drawing upon six cases, …

Everybody Wants To Rule The World: Central Bank Digital Currencies In The Era Of Decoupling The World’S Two Largest Economies, James M. Cooper

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Some 130 central banks around the world are experimenting with various levels of a central bank digital currency (“CBDC”), a digitized form of a sovereign-backed, national currency that is a liability of that country’s central bank. Unlike fiat currency, CBDCs are trackable and potentially subject to interference and even freezing by government authorities. CBDCs will affect citizens’ control over commerce, payments, and savings, and impact their privacy rights. The Chinese government has piloted, refined, and rolled out its own CBDC called the Digital Currency/Electronic Payment initiative (“DC/EP”), also known as the digital yuan or e-CNY. The Chinese government is far …

When Ai Remembers Too Much: Reinventing The Right To Be Forgotten For The Generative Age, Cheng-Chi Chang

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems poses novel challenges for the right to be forgotten. While this right gained prominence following the 2014 Google Spain v. Gonzalez case, generative AI’s limitless memory and ability to reproduce identifiable data from fragments threaten traditional conceptions of forgetting. This Article traces the evolution of the right to be forgotten from its privacy law origins towards an independent entitlement grounded in self-determination for personal information. However, it contends the inherent limitations of using current anonymization, deletion, and geographical blocking mechanisms to prevent AI models from retaining personal data render forgetting infeasible. Moreover, …

The Need For An International Ai Research Initiative: How To Create And Sustain A Virtuous Research-Regulation Cycle To Govern Ai, Kevin Frazier

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This paper explains the need for an international AI research initiative. The current focus of lawmakers at the subnational, national, and international level on regulation over research has created an imbalance, neglecting the critical role of continuous, informed research in developing laws that keep pace with rapid technological advancements in AI.

The proposed international AI research initiative would serve as a central hub for comprehensive AI risk analysis, modeled on successful precedents like CERN and the IPCC. CERN exemplifies a collaborative research environment with pooled resources from member states, leading to significant advancements in particle physics. Similarly, the IPCC has …

Dol Fiduciary Rule 3.0 Strikeout, Base Knock, Or Home Run?, Antolin Reiber

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Money Is Morphing - Cryptocurrency Can Morph To Be An Environmentally And Financially Sustainable Alternative To Traditional Banking, Clovia Hamilton

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Survey Evidence In Trademark Actions, Ioana Vasiu And Lucian Vasiu

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Corporate Governance And Compelled Speech: Do State-Imposed Board Diversity Mandates Violate Free Speech?, Salar Ghahramani

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Real Persons Are The Corporations We Made Along The Way, Leonard Brahin

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Digital Coercive Control (Dcc): The Role Of Platforms In Victims’ (In)Justice And Potential For Online Dispute Resolution, Reeve Lanigan

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Domestic violence (DV) is a form of gender-based violence characterized by acts of coercion whereby a perpetrator employs power and control to isolate, surveil, harass, and abuse a current or former intimate partner. The rise of and reliance on digital technologies, especially social networking sites, have intensified gender-based violence and methods of perpetuating DV. The term Digital Coercive Control (DCC) describes mechanisms perpetrators use to stalk, harass, and abuse current or former partners in cyberspace through technological platforms and their associated social media sites. The widespread expansion and power allocated to social networking sites and technology platforms has perpetuated the …

Machine Speech: Towards A Unified Doctrine Of Attribution And Control, Brian Sites

University of Miami Law Review

Like many courts across the country in 2023, courts in the Eleventh Circuit were met with novel claims challenging ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools. These cases raise common questions: How should courts treat the speech of machines? When a machine generates allegedly defamatory material, who is the speaker—mortal or machine? When a machine generates expressive creations, who is the artist, and does that shape copyright eligibility? When a machine makes assertions about reality through lab analyses and other forensic reports, who is the accuser, and how does the answer impact a defendant’s rights at trial? Should those answers stem …

Legal Uncertainty In Virtual Worlds And Digital Goods: Do The Same Laws Apply?, Alanna Sadler

University of Miami Business Law Review

The growth of virtual worlds and digital goods will force US courts to examine whether traditional laws are sufficient to protect consumers. To do so requires judges and legislative officials to possess a deep understanding of concepts that are everchanging. Many aspects of virtual worlds, such as the metaverse(s), are driven by web3 technology, the technology responsible for the NFT and cryptocurrency craze of recent years. It is impossible to ascertain the impact of virtual worlds on daily life, however, companies must nevertheless prepare for the shift toward virtual spaces and digital goods. There is greater skepticism regarding the utility …

The Missing Links: Why Hyperlinks Must Be Treated As Attachments In Electronic Discovery, Lea Malani Bays, Stuart A. Davidson

University of Cincinnati Law Review

This Article sheds light on a unique but centrally important “twenty-first century” issue involving electronic discovery in federal civil litigation that is just beginning to percolate in federal district courts. Historically, courts have held that a document attached to or enclosed with another document must be produced together when produced in response to a discovery request, as that is how the document was “kept in the usual course of business” and how it is “ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form,” as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have required for decades. Today, parties are pushing back on whether …

Understanding Cyber Risk: Unpacking And Responding To Cyber Threats Facing The Public And Private Sectors, Lawrence J. Trautman, Scott Shackelford, Brian Elzweig, Peter Ormerod

University of Miami Law Review

Cyberattacks, data breaches, and ransomware continue to pose major threats to businesses, governments, and health and educational institutions worldwide. Ongoing successful instances of cybercrime involve sophisticated attacks from diverse sources such as organized crime syndicates, actors engaged in industrial espionage, nation-states, and even lone wolf actors having relatively few resources. Technological innovation continues to outpace the ability of U.S. law to keep pace, though other jurisdictions including the European Union have been more proactive. Nation-state and international criminal group ransomware attacks continue; Sony’s systems were hacked by a ransomware group; MGM Resorts disclosed that recovery from their September 2023 hack …

The Kids Are Not Alright: A Look Into The Absence Of Laws Protecting Children In Social Media, Libby Morehouse

Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review

No abstract provided.

Aiming For Fairness: An Exploration Into Getty Images V. Stability Ai And Its Importance In The Landscape Of Modern Copyright Law, Matthew Coulter

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

A Timeless Principle: Copyright Before The Statute Of Anne, Victoria Lieberman

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Innovation At A Crossroads: The Supreme Court's Influence On Pharmaceuticals, Trade Policies, And Public Health, Beau Reeves

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Beautifying The Human Experience: The Road To Knocking Out The Knockoff Industry Through Adaptions To Copyright & Design Patent Protections For Clothing, Moira Mccabe

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

All Eyez On Rap & Hip-Hop: Analyzing How Black Expression Is Criminalized And The Language Of The Rap Act Of 2022, Maia Young

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The Black existence, in the United States of America, has always been regarded as a conditional right. Conventionally, Blackness must always be nonviolent and non-disruptive to safely exist. Because of this, Blackness cannot be confined to restraints and disrupts these conventions with acts of joy and creative expression. Black creativity is both unconventional and sacred. Black creative expression documents, preserves, and unifies cultural lived experiences, from a first-hand lens of those oppressed. Creative and artistic expression celebrates the myriad of stories that are a part of the collective Black experience. Yet, Black creative expression is now being weaponized by prosecutors …

Constitutional Rights Of Artificial Intelligence, Mizuki Hashiguchi

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

On February 8, 2022, the Italian Parliament approved constitutional amendments to protect the environment. A member of Parliament stated that the environment is an element of Italy, and that safeguarding the environment means safeguarding humans. The need to protect the environment seems to have become a critical component of public conscience. Likewise, if society perceives that artificial intelligence is vitally important for humanity, does constitutional law allow constitutional rights for artificial intelligence to be created?

Extending constitutional rights to artificial intelligence may be consistent with the jurisprudential history of rights. Constitutional rights have undergone metamorphosis over time to protect new …

Rembrandt’S Missing Piece: Ai Art And The Fallacies Of Copyright Law, Eleni Polymenopoulou

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article discusses contemporary problems related to Artificial Intelligence (AI), law and the visual arts. It suggests that the fallacies of copyright law are already visible in legal conundrums raised by AI in the creative sector. These include, for instance, the lack of uniformity in relation to creations’ copyrightability, the massive scale of copyright infringement affecting visual artists and the creative industry, and the difficulties in implementing media regulation and cyber-regulation. The deeply cherished ‘human authorship’ criterion that was sustained recently by a US Federal Appeals Court in Thaler, in particular, is a short-term solution to the legal challenges …

Ai, Algorithms, And Awful Humans, Daniel J. Solove, Hideyuki Matsumi

Fordham Law Review

A profound shift is occurring in the way many decisions are made, with machines taking greater roles in the decision-making process. Two arguments are often advanced to justify the increasing use of automation and algorithms in decisions. The “Awful Human Argument” asserts that human decision-making is often awful and that machines can decide better than humans. Another argument, the “Better Together Argument,” posits that machines can augment and improve human decision-making. These arguments exert a powerful influence on law and policy.

In this Essay, we contend that in the context of making decisions about humans, these arguments are far too …

Chatgpt, Large Language Models, And Law, Harry Surden

Fordham Law Review

This Essay explores Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT/GPT-4, detailing the advances and challenges in applying AI to law. It first explains how these AI technologies work at an understandable level. It then examines the significant evolution of LLMs since 2022 and their improved capabilities in understanding and generating complex documents, such as legal texts. Finally, this Essay discusses the limitations of these technologies, offering a balanced view of their potential role in legal work.

The Antidote Of Free Speech: Censorship During The Pandemic, Christopher Keleher

Catholic University Law Review

Free speech in America stands at a precipice. The nation must decide if the First Amendment protects controversial, unconventional, and unpopular speech, or only that which is mainstream, fashionable, and government-approved. This debate is one of many legal battles brought to the fore during Covid-19. But the fallout of the free speech question will transcend Covid-19.

During the pandemic, the federal government took unprecedented steps to pressure private entities to push messages it approved and squelch those it did not. The Supreme Court will soon grapple with the issue of censorship during the pandemic. This article examines this litigation, along …

The Lack Of Responsibility Of Higher Educaiton Institutions In Addressing Phishing Emails And Data Breaches, Muxuan (Muriel) Wang

Duke Law & Technology Review

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are highly susceptible to cyberattacks, particularly those facilitated through phishing, due to the substantial volume of confidential student and staff data and valuable research information they hold. Despite federal legislations focusing on bolstering cybersecurity for critical institutions handling medical and financial data, HEIs have not received similar attention. This Note examines the minimal obligations imposed on HEIs by existing federal and state statutes concerning data breaches, the absence of requirements for HEIs to educate employees and students about phishing attacks, and potential strategies to improve student protection against data breaches.

Killing Two Birds With One Stone: Remedying Malicious Social Bot Behavior Via Section 230 Reform, Jackson Smith

William & Mary Business Law Review

As “interactive computer services” (social media sites) expanded over the past decade, so too did the prevalence of “social bots,” software programs that mimic human behavior online. The capacity social bots have to exponentially amplify often-harmful content has led to calls for greater accountability from social media companies in the way they manage bot presence on their sites. In response, many social media companies and private researchers have developed bot-detection methodologies to better govern social bot activities. At the same time, the prevalence of harmful content on social media sites has led to calls to reform Section 230 of the …

Online Disinhibited Contracts, Wayne R. Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

There have been at least two dominant forces at work in the realm of consumer contracting over the past several decades. One has been the rise and domination of the standard form contract (whereby merchants contract with consumers via the use of standardized, boilerplate terms and conditions that consumers do not read or understand). The second force has been the rise of e-commerce and the purchase of goods and services via websites and other online platforms, and the use of “wrap” formation methodology (whereby merchants obtain consumer assent to the online terms and conditions via the consumer’s informal click, scroll, …

Robots As Pirates, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Catholic University Law Review

Generative AI has created much excitement over its potential to create new works of authorship in the literary and graphical realms. Its underling machine-learning technology works by analyzing the relations among elements of preexisting material in enormous databases assembled from publicly available and licensed sources. Its algorithms “learn” to predict “what comes next” in different types of expression. A complete system thus can become glib in creating new factual summaries, essays, fictional stories and images.

A number of authors of the raw material used by Generative AI engines claim that the machine learning process infringes their copyrights. Careful evaluation of …