Law Commons^™

Annotating The News: Mitigating The Effects Of Media Convergence And Consolidation, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a personal inquiry into the nature of media technology, law, and ethics in an era marked by the convergence of media that have been largely separate-print, broadcast, cable, satellite, and the Internet-and by the consolidation of ownership in all of these media. What inventions, practices, and norms must emerge to enable us to take advantage of this vast new information-based world, while preserving such important professional values as diversity, objectivity, reliability, and independence?

The right to know belongs not only to individuals, but to the public at large, it can (or, perhaps, must) be vindicated by government …

Electronic Billboards Along The Information Superhighway: Liability Under The Lanham Act For Using Trademarks To Key Internet Banner Ads, Christine Galbraith Davik

Faculty Publications

With almost one billion web pages on the Internet today, a search engine is a necessity at times. But search engines are also for-profit ventures and the financial success of these sites hinges on advertising revenue. One of the ways in which these sites generate income is by selling “keywords” to advertisers. Although there has been only one judicial decision – Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Netscape Communications – involving banner ads keyed to trademarks, it will undoubtedly not be the last. This article argues that despite the invisible nature of this unauthorized trademark use, the common practice of keying a …

Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse In Cyberspace, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

John Doe has become a popular defamation defendant as corporations and their officers bring defamation suits for statements made about them in Internet discussion fora. These new suits are not even arguably about recovering money damages but instead are brought for symbolic reasons-some worthy, some not so worthy. If the only consequence of these suits were that Internet users were held accountable for their speech, the suits would be an unalloyed good. However, these suits threaten to suppress legitimate criticism along with intentional and reckless falsehoods, and existing First Amendment law doctrines are not responsive to the threat these suits …

The Internet And Public International Law, John M. Rogers

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

It is perhaps commonplace to observe that recent developments in information technology are revolutionizing most aspects of our lives. Anything that affects our lives so profoundly will, of necessity, have a significant effect on the law. We can expect that the information revolution will have a comparably significant impact on the international system of binding obligations often called public international law. Just what that will be is of course extremely difficult to predict. Compounding that difficulty is the lack of consensus on just what actually amounts to the public international legal system. Scholars and lawyers still debate fundamental questions regarding …

Internet Speech And The First Amendment Rights Of Public School Students, Leora Harpaz

Faculty Scholarship

In exploring the range of the First Amendment issues raised by school efforts to discipline students for Internet activities, this Article first examines Supreme Court and lower court precedent involving student speech outside of the Internet context. It then looks at Beussink, the first reported decision to involve discipline of a student for Internet speech. It also discusses other Internet situations in which schools have sought to impose sanctions on students. In its final section, it applies free speech methodology to a range of Internet situations. This exploration identifies some situations where a school is free to control speech that …

Securities Disclosure Regime - Challenges Posed By The Internet And Technology, Thomas Thomas Thoppil

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis is an effort to evaluate the structural changes that have taken place in the securities market of the United States and its impact on securities disclosure regime mandated by the Federal Securities Act. Part 2 of the thesis discusses the securities disclosure regime and its underlying economic theories. This part also traces the challenges posed by technology and takes a quick look at the argument that the traditional norms are incompatible in dealing with those challenges. Part 3 deals primarily with structural developments in the securities market over the past five years by examining some of the innovative …

Media Law & Ethics Enter The 21st Century, Introduction To Symposium, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

We stand now on the verge of the twenty-first century: an artificial construct yes, but a culturally significant time nonetheless. We are the world the Hutchins Commission foresaw: the world of nations seeking understanding, seeking destiny. We will not predict the future with perfect accuracy, though we will try, because that is out nature. In our effort, we must be mindful that the questions we are asking are not new; they have been asked before and will be asked again. But let us see what we have to say about them today.

Book Review, The Digital Practice Of Law: A Practical Reference For Applying Technology Concepts To The Practice Of Law, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

A book review on Michael R. Arkfeld's 4th edition of, The Digital Practice of Law: a Practical Reference for Applying Technology Concepts to the Practice of Law.

Symposium Presentation: Doing Internet Co-Branding Agreements, Eric Goldman

Faculty Publications

Co-brand agreements are what I do. I am the self-titled "King of CoBrands," as this is what I've been doing with my life.

So, let's talk a little about co-branding agreements and about why they might matter. First let's define our terms.

Now, where there used to be one site, the provider site, there will be two sites, the provider site and co-branded site, which contains the branding of the portal, but contains all the same functionality, or similar functionality, as is in the provider's site.

Then the portal will drive traffic to this co-branding site, for purposes that we'll …

Resolving Tensions Between Copyright And The Internet, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Challenges Of Globally Accessible Process, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter embraces the strategic use of the Internet for achieving new forms of transparency and participation in the regulatory cooperation process. It explores ‘the challenges of globally accessible process’ through the use of new information technologies. It holds that the incorporation of these technologies in agency processes at the US federal level has created possibilities for the most transparent, participatory, and broadly deliberative regulatory system in the world to become still more so. The Internet promises not merely to expand access to information about the substance and process of regulation, but also to ‘move the government closer to the …

Paradigm Changes In Telecommunications Regulation, Phil Weiser

Publications

No abstract provided.

Liability Issues Facing Online Businesses, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

Online businesses are confronted by a wide variety of liability issues covering almost the full range of the standard law school curriculum. The liability problems that face a small business in Vidalia, Georgia, which is selling Vidalia onion products at specialty stores, through print advertising, and by mail, do not go away when the business starts marketing through a Web site. In fact, there might be more exposure doing business online, and there are variations depending upon the nature of the business in question. For example, as discussed below, an Internet Service Provider ("ISP") like America Online has worries that …

Internet Sexual Predators: Protecting Children In The Global Community, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

The Internet, serving as the largest network of computers in the world, has provided the horizontal parallax over which all can participate in communication and transaction, education and entertainment4 It also serves a community of participants and beneficiaries whose goals are not always shared or legal. The rise of this advanced technology has led to a new "red light district."

Unlike the physical spaces available for the distribution of pornography and sexual favors for money, the Internet, with its lack of structure, has led to an unimaginable amount of pornography available for any on-line spectator.' Information necessary for consummation of …

Shaping Competition On The Internet: Who Owns Product And Pricing Information, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, markets have almost always fallen short of satisfying the conditions for and providing consumers with the benefits of perfect competition. Certain characteristics of electronic markets, however, enhance the possibility that e-commercel will be conducted in an environment that comes closer to attaining the perfectly competitive ideal than that of most conventional markets.

Browsers Beware: Avoiding Legal Entanglements On The Internet, Michael Zugelder, Theresa Flaherty, James Johnson

Finance Faculty Publications

When Chicago resident David Loundy ordered a compact disk on the Internet from a British Web site, he received an e-mail confirming his order. Loundy expected to pay the advertised price of £8.99, or about $14. When he was subsequently charged £12.99, Loundy was incensed. He argued that he had accepted the set price of £8.99 and insisted that he pay no more for the disk. But when Loundy filed suit in England under the Consumer Protection Act of 1987, he was told that the Act did not apply to him because, under English common law, the place of the …

Exit, Voice, And Values On The Net, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Professor Lawrence Lessig makes the (rather dire) prediction in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace that the Internet will be transformed from an unregulated medium into a highly regulated one. Lessig posits that the Net will largely be regulated not by the government but by commercial entities - in particular, by the software (or code) written by entities such as AOL and IBM. While the government's regulatory power is limited by the Constitution, regulation by commercial entities is not. For example, Internet service providers can censor "indecent" speech on the Net largely free of constitutional constraints. The "Net libertarians" applaud …

Silencing John Doe: Defamation And Discourse In Cyberspace, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

John Doe has become a popular defamation defendant as corporations and their officers bring defamation suits for statements made about them in Internet discussion fora. These new suits are not even arguably about recovering money damages but instead are brought for symbolic reasons — some worthy, some not so worthy. If the only consequence of these suits were that Internet users were held accountable for their speech, the suits would be an unalloyed good. However, these suits threaten to suppress legitimate criticism along with intentional and reckless falsehoods, and existing First Amendment law doctrines are not responsive to the threat …

Principles Of Internet Privacy, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The definition of privacy developed by Brandeis and Warren and Prosser, and effectively codified by Alan Westin in 1967 - the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others - worked well in a world in which most privacy concerns involved physical intrusions (usually by the government) or public disclosures (usually by the media), which, by their very nature, were comparatively rare and usually discovered.

But that definition's exclusive focus on individual control has grown incomplete in a world in which most privacy concerns involve …

From International Treaties To Internet Norms: The Evolution Of International Trademark Disputes In The Internet Age, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Marcelo Halpern

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In today's dynamic, digital economy, there is a global clash between geographically bounded intellectual property rights and the limitless reach of the Internet. Traditionally, discrepancies in international intellectual property rights, such as trademark disputes, have been resolved through time-consuming, multilateral state-to-state treaty negotiations that have global harmonization as the primary goal.

With the explosion of e-commerce and the birth of a New Economy, however, such a traditional process is no longer economically viable. Instead, a new approach towards international intellectual property is fast emerging - one that rests not on treaties between multiple states, but on the private contracting of …