Law Commons^™

Protect The Children: Challenges That Result In, And Consequences Resulting From, Inconsistent Prosecution Of Child Pornography Cases In A Technological World, Francis S. Monterosso

Francis S Monterosso

This Note untangles courts’ problems with the prosecution of child pornography defendants and aims to redirect attention to the social impact associated with these crimes. First, Part I provides an introduction to the Note and discusses the background of the Child Pornography Prevention Act. Secondly, Part II sets forth the evolution of the CPPA and its goals and shortcomings. Next, Part III further explains the development of child pornography prosecutions in the United States through two cases that illustrate the government’s desire to prosecute child pornography defendants.

Moreover, Part IV explains the difficulties courts have encountered in the prosecution of …

Survey Of The Law Of Cyberspace: Introduction, Juliet Moringiello

Juliet M Moringiello

No abstract provided.

Electronic Contracting Cases 2008-2009, Juliet M. Moringiello, William L. Reynolds

William L. Reynolds

No abstract provided.

Electronic Contracting Cases 2008-2009, Juliet M. Moringiello, William L. Reynolds

Juliet M. Moringiello

No abstract provided.

Electronic Contracting Cases 2008-2009, Juliet M. Moringiello, William L. Reynolds

William L. Reynolds

No abstract provided.

Hack Your Blog (Lightning Talk), Laura Quilter

Laura Quilter

A short 101-level lightning talk on "hacking your blog" for Software Freedom Day, Boston, 2009.

Thwack!! Take That, User-Generated Content!: Marvel Enterprises, Inc. V. Ncsoft Corp., Carl M. Szabo

Carl M Szabo

Dear Madam or Sir: As seen in the attached note, I am to make two contributions. First, I address the issue of copyright liability of websites for infringement by the website users. A constant struggle as old as the constitution itself, the issue of copyright protection now makes its way into the virtual world of the internet. While the issue of copyright liability has been seen in hundreds of comments and notes from courts and attorneys alike, the issue of copyright liability on the internet remains an open question that if not addressed could endanger the protection afforded to authors …

P2p 'System Caching' – The Copyright Dilemma, Assaf Jacob, Zoe Argento

Assaf Jacob

This paper explores the legal ramifications of the prevalent Internet Service Provider practice of providing caching services to P2P network users. First, the paper describes the P2P industry, its benefits and drawbacks. Then the paper discusses several caching techniques that can be implemented, and indeed are implemented, by ISPs around the globe. These practices allow ISPs to provide clients with better services but, by the same token, expose them to copyright infringement suits by third parties. The article will discuss how copyright law should consider the costs and benefits to the public of P2P caching practices, especially in the application …

Cyber Apocalypse Now: Securing The Internet Against Cyberterrorism And Using Universal Jurisdiction As A Deterrent, Kelly Gable

Kelly Gable

No abstract provided.

Cyber Apocalypse Now: Securing The Internet Against Cyberterrorism And Using Universal Jurisdiction As A Deterrent, Kelly Gable

Kelly Gable

No abstract provided.

E-Voting And Forensics: Prying Open The Black Box, Candice Hoke, Matt Bishop, Mark Graff, Sean Peisert, David Jefferson

S. Candice Hoke

Over the past six years, the nation has moved rapidly from punch cards and levers to electronic voting systems. These new systems have occasionally presented election officials with puzzling technical irregularities. The national experience has included unexpected and unexplained incidents in each phase of the election process: preparations, balloting, tabulation, and reporting results. Quick technical or managerial assessment can often identify the cause of the problem, leading to a simple and effective solution. But other times, the cause and scope of anomalies cannot be determined. In this paper, we describe the application of a model of forensics to the types …

Meaningful Mortgage Reform, Jake Werrett

Jake Werrett

Should six-year-old children be able to access “the largest pornography store in history?” They can. Should eleven be the average age that a child first views pornography? It is. Should children between the ages of twelve and seventeen represent the largest group of pornography consumers? They do. It is puzzling how a quintessentially adult activity has increasingly edged-out Saturday morning cartoons, homework, piano lessons, and T-ball games. Perhaps social consensus is that teenagers are best served by searching out porn 150 billion times a year. But, I doubt it.

Juxtaposing limitations on children's exposure to speech in the real-world versus …

The Federal Response To A Tragic Teen Suicide: The Stretching Of A Statute To Punish Cyber-Harassment, The Groundbreaking Trial, Implications For Everyone, And Suggestions For The Future., John M. Ivancie

John M Ivancie Jr.

This paper revolves around the novel use of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to prosecute a Missouri woman, who, with her high-school-aged daughter, and a teenage employee created a fake MySpace.com account to get information about, and harass the daughter’s teen-aged friend. This harassment eventually led to that young girls suicide. No local law was broken by the trio’s actions, and thus, there was nothing local law-enforcement authorities could do. Federal prosecutors in California did respond and charged the mother under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a Federal anti-hacking statute. The way prosecutors used the statute is …

Warshak: A Test Case For The Intersection Of Law Enforcement And Cyber Security, Michael C. Mcnerney

Michael C McNerney

Often times, the lines between criminal investigations and intelligence activities can become blurred. How far can a government agency go in gathering electronic information on an American citizen suspected of a crime? What implications are there for Americans suspected of terrorist activities? The American people want their government to have the tools to keep them safe but they also want to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. There are many difficult questions but very little settled law on the subject. Although only a small piece of the puzzle, a recent decision by the Sixth Circuit in a case called …

The Critique Of Negative Knowledge And Unfair Competition In Taiwan, Sheng-Chen Tseng

Sheng-Chen Tseng

Trade secret cases pose special problems distinct from other intellectual property lawsuits because alleged trade secrets are rarely defined in advance of litigation. Perhaps the strangest theory of trade secret law is the concept of negative know-how, a theory under which an employee who resigns and joins a different business can be liable for not repeating the mistakes and failures of his or her former employer. The boundaries of the negative knowledge concepts have not been well articulated in the case law. This article first reviews the Taiwan (ROC) Statutes and theories, especially in Fair Trade Law. There is a …

Discussion Of Trade Secrets Protection Posed By Computerization, Sheng-Chen Tseng

Sheng-Chen Tseng

The amendment of Taiwan Trade Secret Act has not been implemented for economic espionage crimes and new types of technologies. Thus this paper indicates the suggestion for legislation after analysis of United States laws and Taiwan status quo. The purpose of the trade secret protection is to maintain industrial ethics and order in competition, encourage the invention and innovation of technologies. Taiwan has regarded the trade secret as a part of the intellectual property. The TRIP Agreement has a great influence on the Taiwan legislation, and other foreign precedents are also taken as the important reference for the Taiwan legislation. …

40 Sites In 40 Minutes, Geoff Sharp

Geoff Sharp

The best of free mediation resources on the world wide web

The Legal Scholarship Of Blogs, Geoff Sharp

Geoff Sharp

If you’ve ever felt the need to share your opinions with the world, then blogs just may provide you with the global audience you’ve been longing for. Geoff Sharp surfs the wave of the future and finds out the skinny on blawging.

What Is Really Fair: Internet Sales And The Georgia Long-Arm Statute, Ryan T. Holte

Prof. Ryan T. Holte

This article analyzes the current issue of online merchants being forced to defend themselves in foreign jurisdictions during litigation concerning online sales. Part I describes the history of personal jurisdiction from its nineteenth century concerns with territoriality to the twentieth century minimum contacts standard to other, more recent developments. Part II summarizes personal jurisdiction and minimum contacts as applied to the Internet generally and discusses whether Internet sales contain sufficient minimum contacts to satisfy the constitutional prerequisites for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the seller. Part III analyzes the Georgia long-arm statute as it relates to jurisdiction over persons …

Survey Of The Law Of Cyberspace: Electronic Contracting Cases 2005-2006, Juliet M. Moringiello, William L. Reynolds

William L. Reynolds

This article analyzes the judicial decisions involving Internet and other electronic contracts during the period from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006. The authors explain that this year's cases show a maturation of the common law of electronic contracts in that the judges are beginning to recognize the realities of electronic communications and to apply traditional contract principles to those communications unless the realities of the technology justifies a different result.

Virtual Property, Real Concerns, Nelson S. Dacunha

Nelson S DaCunha

The status of digital property protection, especially in virtual worlds, is uncertain to say the least. Several theories have been postulated supporting the case for property rights for players of virtual worlds. Game designers have likewise provided support for maintaining full rights to all aspects of their games. North American society outside of the gaming world, and the legal establishment have written off virtual world property as either child’s play, a passing fad, or too complex to regulate effectively. Virtual worlds, however, have a large economic foothold and deal with large amounts of real money. These virtual worlds will likely …

The New Regulation: From Command To Coordination In The Modern Administrative State, Robert B. Ahdieh

Robert B. Ahdieh

Contributory Negligence, Technology, And Trade Secrets, Elizabeth A. Rowe

Elizabeth A Rowe

In tort law, the doctrine of contributory negligence captures conduct by the plaintiff which falls below the standard to which he should conform for his own protection. Whether one has been contributorily negligent is determined by an objective standard of reasonableness under the circumstances. This Article, for the first time, applies these contributory negligence principles to trade secret law. It draws upon this doctrine to frame and analyze a problem posed by modern technology. The very technological tools in use today that increase the efficiency with which companies do business create challenges for trade secret protection. They make trade secrets …

“We, The Paparazzi”: Developing A Privacy Paradigm For Digital Video, Jacqueline Lipton

Jacqueline D Lipton

In January 2009, the Camera Phone Predator Alert bill was introduced into Congress. It raised serious concerns about privacy rights in the face of digital video technology. In so doing, it brought to light a worrying gap in current privacy regulation – the lack of rules relating to digital video privacy. To date, digital privacy regulation has focused on text records that contain personal data. Little attention has been paid to privacy in video files that may portray individuals in inappropriate contexts, or in an unflattering or embarrassing light. As digital video technology, including inexpensive cellphone cameras, is now becoming …

Zippo-Ing The Wrong Way: How The Internet Has Misdirected The Federal Courts In Their Personal Jurisdiction Analysis, Catherine Ross Dunham

Catherine Ross Dunham

ZIPPO-ING THE WRONG WAY: HOW THE INTERNET HAS MISDIRECTED THE FEDERAL COURTS IN THEIR PERSONAL JURISDICTION ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT

In 1997, the Federal District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania evaluated one in a line of emerging personal jurisdiction cases that raised the question of whether Internet-based contacts with citizens of the forum state can alone establish the defendant purposefully established contacts with the forum state. In this unlikely watershed case, Zippo Mfg. Co. v. Zippo Dot Com, the District Court wrangled with the new concept of purposeful availment through electronic contact with the forum state. The court viewed Zippo …

Website Proprietorship And Cyber Harassment, Nancy Kim

Nancy Kim

While harassment and bullying have always existed, when such behavior is conducted online, the consequences can be uniquely devastating. The anonymity of harassers, the ease of widespread digital dissemination, and the inability to contain and/or eliminate online information aggravate the nature of harassment on the Internet. Furthermore, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides website sponsors with immunity for content posted by others and no incentive to remove offending content. Given the unique nature of cyber harassment, ex post punitive measures are inadequate to redress grievances. In this Article, I propose the imposition of proprietorship liability upon website sponsors …

The Google Dilemma, James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann

Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines has enormous influence on all of us; whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself. This short essay (based on talks given in January and April 2008) uses the stories of five famous search queries to illustrate the conflicts over search and the enormous power Google wields in choosing whose voices are heard on the Internet.

Networked Activism, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

The same technologies that groups of ordinary citizens are using to write operating systems and encyclopedias are fostering a quiet revolution in another area – human rights advocacy. On websites such as Avaaz.org and Wikipedia, ordinary citizens are reporting on human rights violations and organizing email writing campaigns, activities formerly the prerogative of professionals. The involvement of amateurs has been heralded as revolutionizing a variety of industries, from journalism to photography. This article asks whether it has the potential to make human rights organizations irrelevant.

In contrast to much of the recent literature, this article provides a decidedly more skeptical …

Protecting Rights Online, Molly Land

Molly K. Land

Although the human rights and access to knowledge (A2K) movements share many of the same goals, their legal and regulatory agendas have little in common. While state censorship online is a central concern for human rights advocates, this issue has been largely ignored by the A2K movement. Likewise, human rights advocates have failed to examine the cumulative effect of expanding copyright protections on education and culture. These disparate agendas reflect fundamentally different views about what states should regulate and the role of international institutions. Overcoming this divide is critical to ensuring the movements can draw on their respective strengths to …

Internet Killed The Copyright Law: Perfect 10 V. Google And The Devastating Impact On The Exclusiive Right To Display, Deborah B. Morse

Deborah Brightman Morse

Never has the dissonance between copyright and innovation been so extreme. The Internet provides enormous economic growth due to the strength of e-commerce, and affords an avenue for creativity and the wide dissemination of information. Nevertheless, the Internet has become a plague on copyright law. The advent of the digital medium has made the unlawful reproduction, distribution, and display of copyrighted works essentially effortless. The law has been unable to keep pace with the rapid advance of technology. For the past decade, Congress has been actively attempting to draft comprehensible legislation in an effort to afford copyright owners more protection …