Computer Law Commons^™

City Of Los Angeles V. Patel: The Upcoming Supreme Court Case No One Is Talking About, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Focusing solely on whether a hotel owner has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a guest registry is akin to asking whether Verizon Wireless has a reasonable expectation of privacy in its customer lists. The answer to those questions should be yes, but the sixty-four thousand dollar question—and the proverbial elephant in the room—is whether hotel occupants and cell phone users forfeit their privacy rights simply because they check into the Beverly Hills Hotel or call their significant others from a Smart Phone on the Santa Monica Freeway. Put differently, a hotel owner’s expectation of privacy in a guest registry …

The Replicator And The First Amendment, Kyle Langvardt

Kyle Langvardt

As 3D printing technology improves, the theoretical endpoint comes into view: a machine that, like the “replicators” of Star Trek, can produce anything the user asks for out of thin air from a digital blueprint. Real-life technology may never reach that endpoint, but our progress toward it has accelerated sharply over the past few years—sharply enough, indeed, for legal scholars to weigh in on the phenomenon’s disruptive potential in areas ranging from intellectual property to gun rights. This paper is concerned with the First Amendment status of the digital blueprints. As of August 2014, it is the first law review …

Omnipresent Student Speech And The Schoolhouse Gate: Interpreting Tinker In The Digital Age, Watt L. Black Jr.

Watt Lesley Black Jr.

This paper focuses primarily on federal circuit level decisions regarding public school district's ability to discipline students who engage in electronic speech while off-campus and not involved in school activities. Particular attention is paid to the question of whether and how appeals courts have been willing to apply the "material and substantial disruption" standard from the Supreme Court's 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines decision to speech occurring off-campus. The paper, which is targeted toward both legal scholars and school administrators, draws together the common threads from the various circuits and weaves them into a set of guidelines for school administrators …

A Comprehensive Approach To Bridging The Gap Between Cyberbullying Rules And Regulations And The Protections Offered By The First Amendment For Off-Campus Student Speech, Vahagn Amirian

Vahagn Amirian

No abstract provided.

Testing The Social Media Waters - First Amendment Entanglement Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates, Lily M. Strumwasser

Lily M Strumwasser

Dear Editor:

I am a third-year student at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, Illinois, where I serve as the executive student publications editor of The John Marshall Law Review. In September 2013, I will work as an associate at Seyfarth Shaw in its labor and employment practice group. I am writing to submit my article, "Testing The Social Media Waters - First Amendment Entanglement Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates" My article considers the contours of student free speech rights within the context of public schools. I think and hope you will find it to be interesting and …

Emerging Technologies And Dwindling Speech, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Decoding First Amendment Coverage Of Computer Source Code In The Age Of Youtube, Facebook And The Arab Spring, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

An Illustration Of Hashing And Its Effect On Illegal File Content In The Digital Age, Stephen Hoffman

Stephen P. Hoffman

I aim to show, through practical examples, that computer forensics techniques such as the use of hash values are inherently flawed in tracking illegal computer files. First, I describe the underlying theory of hashing algorithms and hash values, as well as explain that several U.S. government agencies keep detailed file databases in order to track or detect illegal files, e.g. pirated media or child pornography. These databases include the file’s unique hash values. Then, I provide real examples of hash values using MD5 and SHA-1 hashing algorithms to show how extremely minor alterations to a computer file produce radically different …

Surfing Past The Pall Of Orthodoxy: Why The First Amendment Virtually Guarantees Online Law School Graduates Will Breach The Aba Accreditation Barrier, Nicholas C. Dranias

ExpressO

The impact of the constitutional dilemma created by the ABA’s aversion to Internet schooling is widespread. Currently, 18 states and 2 U.S. territories restrict bar exam eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. Additionally, 29 states and 1 U.S. territory restrict admission to practice on motion to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.

Although numerous lawsuits have been filed in ultimately failed efforts to strike down bar admission rules that restrict eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, none has challenged the ABA-accreditation requirement based on the First Amendment’s prohibition on media discrimination. This Article makes that case.

Despite accelerating technological …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Buried Online: State Laws That Limit E-Commerce In Caskets, Jerry Ellig, Asheesh Agarwal

ExpressO

Consumers seeking to purchase caskets online could benefit from the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision that states cannot discriminate against interstate direct wine shipment. Federal courts have reached conflicting conclusions when asked whether state laws requiring casket sellers to be licensed funeral directors violate the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause. In Powers v. Harris, the 10th Circuit even offered an unprecedented ruling that economic protectionism is a legitimate state interest that can justify otherwise unconstitutional policies. In Granholm v. Heald, however, the Supreme Court declared that discriminatory barriers to interstate wine shipment must be justified by a legitimate state interest, and …

The Secret Is Out: Patent Law Preempts Mass Market License Terms Barring Reverse Engineering For Interoperability Purposes, Daniel Laster

ExpressO

As patent protection has emerged to protect software, courts and commentators have mistakenly focused on copyright law and overlooked the centrality of patent preemption to limit contract law where a mass market license which prohibits reverse engineering (RE) for purposes of developing interoperable products leads to patent-like protection. Review of copyright fair use cases on RE and Congress’s policy favoring RE for interoperability purposes in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act reinforce the case for patent preemption. Also, the fundamental freedom to RE embodied in state trade secret law, coupled with federal patent and copyright law and policies, cumulatively should override …

Choice In Government Software Procurement: A Winning Combination, Mclean Sieverding

ExpressO

Governments are such significant purchasers of IT products and services that their purchasing decisions have a substantial impact on the world’s IT marketplace. This fact calls into question the wisdom of decisions by a few policymakers (on national, state, and local levels) around the world that have sought to require that governmental procurement officials give varying degrees of preference to open source software (OSS) when evaluating competing software solutions, claiming, among other things, that such preferences are justified because OSS is cheaper and more interoperable than proprietary software and needs government handicapping in order to enter the market to compete …

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.