Law Commons^™

Megan’S Law And The Protection Of The Child In The On-Line Age, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Fencing Cyberspace: Drawing Borders In A Virtual World, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

In the last few years, the Internet has increasingly become a source of information even for the historically computer illiterate. The growing popularity of the Internet has been driven in large part by the World Wide Web (web). The web is a system that facilitates use of the Internet by helping users sort through the great mass of information available on it. The web uses software that allows one document to link to and access another, and so on, despite the fact that the documents may reside on different machines in physically remote locations. The dispersion of data that is …

Computer Ram 'Copies:' Hit Or Myth? Historical Perspectives On Caching As A Microcosm Of Current Copyright Concerns, I. Trotter Hardy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Legal Aspects Of The Internet, Etienne Pichat

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis will explain the legal aspects of the Internet so that users who wish to protect their rights and avoid liability can log on with a better understanding of the rules of the game. This work will be divided into two chapters. The first chapter will focus on existing legal regulation of the Internet to advise users on which law is relevant, and how to solve problems of conflicts of laws in the cyberworld. It will answer the question of whether cyberspace is, or not, a "no laws land", and what kind of regulation would better fit the cyberworld. …

Internet Jurisdictional Issues: Fundamental Fairness In A Virtual World, Karin M. Mika, Aaron J. Reber

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article explains Internet jurisdictional issues within the current framework that enables a state to assert in personam jurisdiction. This Article argues that existing jurisdictional tests are appropriate in determining the fairness of jurisdiction in cases involving the Internet, despite the vast outreach capacity of computers. This Article will first examine the development of law concerning in personam jurisdiction. Next, this Article will reflect on how courts have handled jurisdictional issues respecting other modes of communication, namely the mail and telephone. Third, this Article will argue that in traditional jurisdictional analysis, courts have placed primary emphasis on business contacts and …

Foucault In Cyberspace: Surveillance, Sovereignty, And Hardwired Censors, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

This is an essay about law in cyberspace. I focus on three interdependent phenomena: a set of political and legal assumptions that I call the jurisprudence of digital libertarianism, a separate but related set of beliefs about the state's supposed inability to regulate the Internet, and a preference for technological solutions to hard legal issues on-line. I make the familiar criticism that digital libertarianism is inadequate because of its blindness towards the effects of private power, and the less familiar claim that digital libertarianism is also surprisingly blind to the state's own power in cyberspace. In fact, I argue that …

Lex Informatica: The Formulation Of Information Policy Rules Through Technology , Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, law and government regulation have established default rules for information policy, including constitutional rules on freedom of expression and statutory rights of ownership of information. This Article will show that for network environments and the Information Society, however, law and government regulation are not the only source of rule-making. Technological capabilities and system design choices impose rules on participants. The creation and implementation of information policy are embedded in network designs and standards as well as in system configurations. Even user preferences and technical choices create overarching, local default rules. This Article argues, in essence, that the set of …

Virtual Realities And Virtual Welters: A Note On The Commerce Clause Implications Of Regulating Cyberporn, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

This Essay draws an analogy between interstate catalog taxation cases such as Quill and National Bellas Hess, and the impact of disparate state obscenity laws on Internet porn. It suggests that the burden of complaying with disparate state obscenity standards could be, like the burden on catalog sellers of complying with disparate sales taxes and classifications, a burden on interstate commerce sufficient to trigger dormant commerce clause scrutiny. It also suggests that First Amendment doctrine should take account of similar concerns and chilling effects.

Law And The Internet: What Are The Dangers Of Putting The World At Your Fingertips?, I. Trotter Hardy

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Information Redlining: A List Of Selected Readings, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

In earlier essays Henry Perritt, Marvin Anderson, Gary Bass and Patrice McDermott discuss the increasing use of computers to access information through the information superhighway, the Internet and online services, the increasing reliance on electronic formats by publishers and the federal government and the continuing debate about "information redlining." They indicate that information redlining is broader than just the availability and effects of technology and enhanced online services on lower income, minority and rural communities. It also deals with what information will be available to these groups. As more and more data comes in digital form and when some information …

Last Writes? Re-Assessing The Law Review In The Age Of Cyberspace, Bernard J. Hibbitts

Articles

This article - the original version of which was published on the author’s website in February 1996, possibly making it the first scholarly article posted online by a law professor before print publication - undertakes a comprehensive re-assessment of the law review from the perspective of the present age of cyberspace. In Part I, I investigate the conditions that initially joined to generate the form, showing how the law review emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the product of the fortuitous interaction of academic circumstances and improvements in publishing technology. In Part II, I trace the …

Intellectual Property Policy Online: A Young Person’S Guide, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited version of a presentation to the "Intellectual Property Online" panel at the Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society, May 28-31, 1996. The panel was a reminder of both the importance of intellectual property and the dangers of legal insularity. Of approximately 400 panel attendees, 90% were not lawyers. Accordingly, the remarks that follow are an attempt to lay out the basics of intellectual property policy in a straighforward and non-technical manner. In other words, this is what non-lawyers should know (and what a number of government lawyers seem to have forgotten) about intellectual property policy …

Garbage In: Emerging Media And Regulation Of Unsolicited Commercial Solicitiations, Michael W. Carroll

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Technological Transformation Of Copyright Law, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Both statutory and case law clearly recognize the constitutional interest in promoting, not restricting, expression. Digital technologies, however, are rapidly changing the application of copyright law to prohibit access, protect ideas and facts, and dramatically expand the monopoly granted to copyright holders.

Whether on a disk or network, digital expression cannot be accessed without being copied into computer memory, as well as onto a hard drive, floppy disk, or magnetic tape if it is to be retained after the computer is switched off. This necessarily violates the exclusive right to reproduce that copyright law grants to copyright holders.

Moreover, to …

Law In Cyberspace, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Internet For Legal Information: The U.S. Experience, Scott Childs

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Property (And Copyright) In Cyberspace, I. Trotter Hardy

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Closing The Barn Door After The Genie Is Out Of The Bag: Recognizing A "Futility Principle" In First Amendment Jurisprudence, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This article argues for a simple proposition: the First Amendment imposes a presumption against the suppression of speech when suppression would be futile. Suppression is futile when the speech is available to the same audience through some other medium or at some other place. The government can overcome this presumption of futility only when it asserts an important interest that is unrelated to the content of the speech in question, and only when the suppression directly advances that interest.

In Part I, the article explores the role that this unarticulated "futility principle" has played in Supreme Court and other decisions …

Censorship Of Cyberspace A Personal Choice, I. Trotter Hardy

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

A Puzzle Even The Codebreakers Have Trouble Solving: A Clash Of Interests Over The Electronic Encryption Standard, Sean Flynn

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The First Amendment And The National Information Infrastructure, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What the First Amendment status of electronic information should be is a fundamental question which must be addressed in any attempt to arrive at appropriate legal standards to protect the multifarious interests of the users of cyberspace. Yet, despite its importance, the First Amendment has largely been ignored in the debate surrounding what sort of legal framework should control the emerging National Information Infrastructure. Professor Cate surveys the current terrain of First Amendment jurisprudence and describes the different analytical approaches which may be taken. Doctrinal anomalies such as the law of common carriage indicate that at times the courts have …

The Top Fives: An Internet Pathfinder For Law Librarians, Yolanda Patrice Jones

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Many law librarians are currently beginning to explore the Internet as a source of legal information. One of the most frequently asked questions after one gets an Internet connection is "Where do I go from here?" The following pathfinder is a list of what I consider to be the most important resources which will lead the legal researcher to the widest possible amount of legal information on the Internet.

This list is purely subjective, and certainly not complete. I tried to stick to the 'top five' format as much as possible, but every so often I couldn't help myself from …

Comments On A Revised Filing System, R. Wilson Freyermuth

Faculty Publications

Professor Edward Adams's article, both in terms of its basic structure and the myriad of options it offers, neatly highlights the basic dilemma facing the Drafting Committee as it addresses the future Article 9 filing system. As he correctly notes, the filing system's shortcomings are largely due to its continued dependence on paper records, despite the increasing sophistication and availability of computerized information technology for both filing and searching. Should the Drafting Committee maintain the basics of the current system (a public, paper-based filing system) and merely attempt to identify and correct the existing shortcomings in that system, with some …

Setting Standards For Fair Information Practice In The U.S. Private Sector, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The confluence of plans for an Information Superhighway, actual industry self-regulatory practices, and international pressure dictate renewed consideration of standard setting for fair information practices in the U.S. private sector. The legal rules, industry norms, and business practices that regulate the treatment of personal information in the United States are organized in a wide and dispersed manner. This Article analyzes how these standards are established in the U.S. private sector. Part I argues that the U.S. standards derive from the influence of American political philosophy on legal rule making and a preference for dispersed sources of information standards. Part II …

Rules Of The Road For Global Electronic Highways: Merging The Trade And Technical Paradigms, Joel R. Reidenberg

Faculty Scholarship

International efforts to define fair information practices for global networks derive from two distinct paradigms. Traditionally, regulatory standards have been cast in trade terms. The trade perspective seeks to promote free flows of information and define standards that balance free flows against human rights values. Fair information practices also draw on another rarely emphasized technical paradigm. This approach seeks to eliminate any technological obstacles to free flows of information by defining standards for system integrity and interoperability. Nevertheless, these technical standards are set in ways that also define fair information practices. While each paradigm provides a basis to establish rules …