Law Commons^™

Technology Convergence And Federalism: Who Should Decide The Future Of Telecommunications Regulation?, Daniel A. Lyons

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article critically examines the division of regulatory jurisdiction over telecommunications issues between the federal government and the states. Currently, the line between federal and state jurisdiction varies depending on the service at issue. This compartmentalization might have made sense fifteen years ago, but the advent of technology convergence has largely rendered this model obsolete. Yesterday's telephone and cable companies now compete head-to-head to offer consumers the vaunted "triple play" of voice, video, and internet services. But these telecommunications companies are finding it increasingly difficult to fit new operations into arcane, rigid regulatory compartments. Moreover, services that consumers view as …

La Libertad De Expresión En Internet Y Sus Garantías Constitucionales En El Control De Contenidos De Páginas Web, Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Master's thesis about freedom of speech in Internet and the constitutional guarantees in the control of websides content.

Technology Law - Great Google-Y Moogley: The Effect And Enforcement Of Click Fraud And Online Advertising, Amy Tracy

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Internet Governance And Democratic Legitimacy, Oliver Sylvain

Federal Communications Law Journal

Even as the Internet goes pop, federal policymakers continue to surrender their statutory obligation to regulate communications in the first instance to extralegal nongovernmental organizations comprised of technical experts. The FCC's adjudication of a dispute concerning a major broadband service provider's network management practices is a case in point. There, in the absence of any enforceable legislative or regulatory rule, the FCC turned principally to the transmission principles of the Internet Engineering Taskforce, the preeminent nongovernmental Internet engineering standard-setting organization. This impulse to defer as a matter of course to such an organization without any legal mechanism requiring as much …

Everything In Its Right Place: Social Cooperation And Artist Compensation, Leah Belsky, Byron Kahr, Max Berkelhammer, Yochai Benkler

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The music industry's crisis response to the Internet has been the primary driver of U.S. copyright policy for over a decade. The core institutional response has been to increase the scope of copyright and the use of litigation, prosecution, and technical control mechanisms for its enforcement. The assumption driving these efforts has been that without heavily-enforced copyright, artists will not be able to make a living from their art. Throughout this period artists have been experimenting with approaches that do not rely on technological or legal enforcement, but on constructing web-based business models that engage fans and rely on voluntary …

Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed an Internet nondiscrimination rule: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." Among other requests, the FCC sought comment on whether the proposed nondiscrimination rule would "promote free speech, civic participation, and democratic engagement," and whether it would "impose any burdens on access providers' speech that would be cognizable for purposes of the First Amendment." The purpose of this Article is to suggest that a wide range of responses to these First Amendment questions, offered by telecommunications providers …

Google Adwords: Trademark Infringer Or Trade Liberalizer, Ashley Tan

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Google is the world's most preferred search engine, with an audience share of eighty percent of Internet users worldwide. With so many people browsing its search results, Google is a natural advertising vehicle, and it has exploited this quality to become one of the most profitable Internet companies in U.S. history. However, success has not come without controversy, and one of the most significant concerns Google AdWords, which displays keyword-triggered ads and sponsored links alongside non-sponsored search results. AdWords has come under attack in the United States and in the European Union ("EU") for its role in trademark infringement on …

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 …

Creating Effective Broadband Network Regulation, Daniel L. Brenner

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Internet is central to the business and pastimes of Americans. Calls for increased regulation are ongoing, inevitable, and often justified. But calls for "network neutrality" or "nondiscrimination" assume with little hesitation federal agency competence to give predictable and accurate meaning to these terms and create regulations to implement them. This Article's chief contribution to Internet policy debate is to focus attention on the likelihood of successful FCC Internet regulation-a key assumption of some advocates.

The Article analyzes three characteristics that hobble the FCC, which is the likeliest federal agency to provide prescriptive rules. First, the record for the agency …

What Blogging Might Teach About Cybernorms, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Since the dawn of the information age, scholars have debated the viability of regulating cyberspace. Early on, Professor Lawrence Lessig suggested that “code is law” online. Lessig and others also examined the respective regulatory functions of laws, code, market forces, and social norms. In recent years, with the rise of Web 2.0 interactive technologies, norms have taken center-stage as a regulatory modality online. The advantages of norms are that they can develop quickly by the communities that seek to enforce them, and they are not bound by geography. However, to date there has been scant literature dealing in any detail …

Virtually Enabled: How Title Iii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act Might Be Applied To Online Virtual Worlds, Joshua Newton

Federal Communications Law Journal

The rise and popularity of online virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, holds significant promise for people with disabilities. For people who are unable to easily leave home or travel, virtual worlds provide a public venue, wherein people may interact freely without the social stigma that accompanies disability. However, access to these virtual worlds may be inhibited by physical, visual, or aural impairments, and virtual-world developers can be hostile to modifying their products to mitigate these difficulties. Thus, some disability advocates have turned to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, arguing that places of …

Wikipedia's Labor Squeeze And Its Consequences, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

This Essay explains why Wikipedia will not be able to maintain a credible website while simultaneously letting anyone freely edit it. To date, Wikipedia editors have successfully defended against malicious attacks from spammers and vandals, but as editors turn over, Wikipedia will need to recruit replacements. However, Wikipedia will have difficulty with this recruiting task due to its limited incentives for participation. Faced with a potential labor squeeze, Wikipedia will choose to restrict users’ ability to contribute to the site as a way of preserving site credibility. Wikipedia’s specific configuration choices make it an interesting test case to evaluate the …

Margae, Inc. V. Clear Link Technologies, Jonathan Goodman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Whose Burden Is It Anyway? Addressing The Needs Of Content Owners In Dmca Safe Harbors, Greg Janson

Federal Communications Law Journal

Much of today's network neutrality debate addresses concerns that cable providers will limit access to competing Web-based services delivering multimedia content. While proposals to mandate nondiscrimination for all Internet traffic surely will help create a competitive environment where online entertainment providers can prosper, ISP interference is not the only threat. Online entertainment sites that relay user-generated content are threatened by crippling litigation brought by copyright holders for actions taken by third parties using their services. Reliance on the safe harbors provided in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has, in most cases, proved unsuccessful. This Note addresses the concerns of both …

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

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Bad Faith In Cyberspace: Grounding Domain Name Theory In Trademark, Property And Restitution, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

The year 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of domain name regulation under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Adopted to combat cybersquatting, these rules left a confused picture of domain name theory in their wake. Early cybersquatters registered Internet domain names corresponding with others’ trademarks to sell them for a profit. However, this practice was quickly and easily contained. New practices arose in domain name markets, not initially contemplated by the drafters of the ACPA and the UDRP. One example is clickfarming – using domain names to generate revenues from click-on …

Mapping Online Privacy, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

Privacy scholars have recently outlined difficulties in applying existing concepts of personal privacy to the maturing Internet. With Web 2.0 technologies, more people have more opportunities to post information about themselves and others online, often with scant regard for individual privacy. Shifting notions of 'reasonable expectations of privacy' in the context of blogs, wikis, and online social networks create challenges for privacy regulation. Courts and commentators struggle with Web 2.0 privacy incursions without the benefit of a clear regulatory framework. This article offers a map of privacy that might help delineate at least the outer boundaries of Web 2.0 privacy. …

Implications Of The Internet For Quasi-Legislative Instruments Of Regulation, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

It is a quarter century since I began telling my Administrative Law students that they had better be watching the Internet and how agencies of interest to them were using it, as they entered an Information Age career. The changes since then have been remarkable. Rulemaking, where the pace has perhaps been slowest, is now accelerating into the Internet, driven by a President committed to openness and consultation. This paper seeks little more than to point the reader toward the places where she can find the changes and watch them for herself.

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 …

You Can Have It, But Can You Hold It?: Treating Domain Names As Tangible Property, Daniel Hancock

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

Apuntes Generales Sobre La Libertad De Expresión En Internet, Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Germán M. Teruel Lozano

GENERAL NOTES ABOUT THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN INTERNET: This paper presents an overview of how Internet has revolutionized the setting of freedom of speech. In particular, it is focused in to main aspects: On one hand, the delimitation of freedom of expression in the new media, differentiating in particular between web pages dedicated to the dissemination of information, protected by the freedom of speech; and those that are intended to provide other telematics services, which should not have this protection. Secondly, it is also studied the legal status of this freedom when it is exercised through Internet.

Chapter 7 - Restricting Fair Use To Save The News, Ryan T. Holte

Prof. Ryan T. Holte

Ryan T. Holte in “Restricting Fair Use to Save the News: A Proposed Change in Copyright Law to Bring More Profit to News Reporting” examines the present condition of the media and the economic and public policies behind protecting news. He further discusses current means of protecting information through copyright and misappropriation law, before proposing a change in the Copyright Act to better allow the news industry to reap profits from news reporting.