Law Commons^™

Fulfilling Government 2.0'S Promise With Robust Privacy Protections, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

The public can now “friend” the White House and scores of agencies on social networks, virtual worlds, and video-sharing sites. The Obama Administration sees this trend as crucial to enhancing governmental transparency, public participation, and collaboration. As the President has underscored, government needs to tap into the public’s expertise because it doesn’t have all of the answers.

To be sure, Government 2.0 might improve civic engagement. But it also might produce privacy vulnerabilities because agencies often gain access to individuals’ social network profiles, photographs, videos, and contact lists when interacting with individuals online. Little would prevent agencies from using and …

Government Speech 2.0, Danielle K. Citron, Helen Norton

Faculty Scholarship

New expressive technologies continue to transform the ways in which members of the public speak to one another. Not surprisingly, emerging technologies have changed the ways in which government speaks as well. Despite substantial shifts in how the government and other parties actually communicate, however, the Supreme Court to date has developed its government speech doctrine – which recognizes “government speech” as a defense to First Amendment challenges by plaintiffs who claim that the government has impermissibly excluded their expression based on viewpoint – only in the context of disputes involving fairly traditional forms of expression. In none of these …

Defending Disclosure In Software Licensing, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

For lack of our imagination, this article does not have the most scintillating title. However, the subject matter is critically important. We survey prominent kinds of disclosures in law and show why the disclosure tool, though subject to substantial criticism, is central to the legitimacy of any legal regime. Our working example is the American Law Institute’s “Principles of the Law of Software Contracts” (hereinafter “ALI Principles”).

The ALI Principles include three kinds of disclosure: disclosure of facts (concerning the quality of software),disclosure of terms (of standard forms), and disclosure of post-contract intentions (to pursue remote disablement of software). We …

Principles Of The Law Of Software Contracts: Some Highlights, Robert A. Hillman, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

The final draft of the Principles of the Law of Software Contracts ("Principles") was unanimously approved bythe American Law Institute membership in May of 2009. The goal of the project is to “clarify and unify thelaw of software transactions.” However, the Principles will not become law in any jurisdiction unless and until a court adopts them, so only time will tell whether the project will accomplish this goal. Nevertheless, one thing is certain. The current law of software transactions, a mish-mash of common law, Article 2 of theUniform Commercial Code, and federal intellectual property law, among other things, is in …