Law Commons^™

It's Just Another Little Bit Of History Repeating: Ucita In The Evolving Age Of Information, Thomas J. Murphy

Golden Gate University Law Review

This article will address the procedural and substantive reasons why UCITA is, in fact, overly ambitious. With regard to procedure, Part II.A of this comment will outline the historical naissance and development of the highly successful Uniform Commercial Code and contrast that with the development of UCITA. With regard to substance, Part II.B will address what many practitioners have cited as key objections to UCITA. Further, Part II.B discusses examples of terms used in UCITA and compares them to those of common, established practice. Differentiating UCITA from the UCC in these ways will illustrate how UCITA misses the mark it …

Free Speech And The Myth Of The Internet As An Unintermediated Experience, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, a growing number of commentators have raised concerns that the decisions made by Internet intermediaries — including last-mile network providers, search engines, social networking sites, and smartphones — are inhibiting free speech and have called for restrictions on their ability to prioritize or exclude content. Such calls ignore the fact that when mass communications are involved, intermediation helps end users to protect themselves from unwanted content and allows them to sift through the avalanche of desired content that grows ever larger every day. Intermediation also helps solve a number of classic economic problems associated with the Internet. …

Virtual Intermediaries: Consumption Tax Problems In Japan, Europe, And The United States - The Case Of The Virtual Travel Agent, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Marketplace technology is (inadvertently) chipping away at the effectiveness of consumption taxes – the Japanese Consumption Tax (CT), the European value added tax (VAT), and the American sales tax (ST) are all affected. Frequently a technology-patch or a law change can repair the tax-damage, but sometimes even though a patch or a change is known the design of the levy (or the politics behind the design) impedes application. This paper assesses these consumption taxes by considering the impact that virtual travel agents have had on revenue yields. The paper draws specific conclusions for the Japanese CT, because this consumption tax …

An Interpretive Framework For Narrower Immunity Under Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act, Gregory M. Dickinson

Gregory M Dickinson

Almost all courts to interpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act have construed its ambiguously worded immunity provision broadly, shielding Internet intermediaries from tort liability so long as they are not the literal authors of offensive content. Although this broad interpretation effects the basic goals of the statute, it ignores several serious textual difficulties and mistakenly extends protection too far by immunizing even direct participants in tortious conduct.

This analysis, which examines the text and history of Section 230 in light of two strains of pre-Internet vicarious liability defamation doctrine, concludes that the immunity provision of Section 230, though …

A Portrait Of The Internet As A Young Man, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrain’s1 2008 book The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be “We have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature.” Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes …

Making The Punishment Fit The (Computer) Crime: Rebooting Notions Of Possession For The Federal Sentencing Of Child Pornography Offenses, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Sexual exploitation of children is a real and disturbing problem. However, when it comes to the sentencing of child pornography possessors, the U.S. federal system has a problem, as well. This Article adds to the current, heated discussion on what is happening in the sentencing of federal child pornography possession offenses, why nobody is satisfied, and how much the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are to blame. At the heart of this Article are the forgotten players in the discussion—computers and the Internet—and their role in changing the realities of child pornography possession. This Article argues that computers and the Internet …

Dr. Generative Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Iphone, James Grimmelmann, Paul Ohm

James Grimmelmann

In The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, Jonathan Zittrain argues that the Internet has succeeded because it is uniquely "generative": individuals can use it in ways its creators never imagined. This Book Review uses the Apple II and the iPhone--the hero and the villain of the story as Zittrain tells it--to show both the strengths and the weaknesses of his argument. Descriptively and normatively, Zittrain has nailed it. Generativity elegantly combines prior theories into a succinct explanation of the technical characteristics that make the Internet what it is, and the book offers a strong argument that preserving …