Internet Law Commons^™

People V. Robots: A Roadmap For Enforcing California's New Online Bot Disclosure Act, Barry Stricke

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Bots are software applications that complete tasks automatically. A bot's communication is disembodied, so humans can mistake it for a real person, and their misbelief can be exploited by the bot owner to deploy malware or phish personal data. Bots also pose as consumers posting online product reviews or spread (often fake) news, and a bot owner can coordinate multiple social-network accounts to trick a network's "trending" algorithms, boosting the visibility of specific content, sowing and exacerbating controversy, or fabricating an impression of mass individual consensus. California's 2019 Bolstering Online Transparency Act (the "CA Bot Act') imposes conspicuous disclosure requirements …

The Very Brief History Of Decentralized Blockchain Governance, Michael Abramowicz

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

A new form of blockchain governance involving the use of formal games that incentivize participants to identify focal resolutions to normative questions is emerging. This symposium contribution provides a brief survey of the literature proposing and critiquing the use of such mechanisms of decentralized decision-making, and it evaluates early laboratory and real-world experiments with this approach.

Virtual Reality Exceptionalism, Gilad Yadin

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Virtual reality is here. In just a few years, the technology moved from science fiction to the Internet, from specialized research facilities to living rooms. These new virtual reality environments are connected, collaborative, and social-built to deliver a subjective psychological effect that believably simulates spatial physical reality. Cognitive research shows that this effect is powerful enough that virtual reality users act and interact in ways that mirror real-world social and moral norms and behavior.

Contemporary cyberlaw theory is largely based on the notion that cyberspace is exceptional enough to warrant its own specific rules. This premise, a descendant of early …

The Bot Legal Code: Developing A Legally Compliant Artificial Intelligence, Edmund Mokhtarian

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The advent of sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) agents, or bots, raises the question: How do we ensure that these bots act appropriately? Within a decade, AI will be ubiquitous, with billions of active bots influencing nearly every industry and daily activity. Given the extensiveness of AI activity, it will be nearly impossible to explicitly program bots with detailed instructions on permitted and prohibited actions, particularly as they face unpredictable, novel situations. Rather, if risks to humans are to be mitigated, bots must have some overriding moral or legal compass--a set of "AI Laws"--to allow them to adapt to whatever scenarios …

Legal Phantoms In Cyberspace: The Problematic Status Of Information As A Weapon And A Target Under International Humanitarian Law, Jack M. Beard

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Reports of state-sponsored harmful cyber intrusions abound. The prevailing view among academics holds that if the effects or consequences of such intrusions are sufficiently damaging, international humanitarian law (IHL) should generally govern them--and recourse to armed force may also be justified against states responsible for these actions under the jus ad bellum. This Article argues, however, that there are serious problems and perils in relying on analogies with physical armed force to extend these legal regimes to most events in cyberspace. Armed conflict models applied to the use of information as a weapon and a target are instead likely to …

Compelled Production Of Encrypted Data, John E.D. Larkin

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

There is a myth that shadowy and powerful government agencies can crack the encryption software that criminals use to protect computers filled with child pornography and stolen credit card numbers. The reality is that cheap or free encryption programs can place protected data beyond law enforcement's reach. If courts seriously mean to protect the victims of Internet crime--all too often children--then Congress must adopt a legal mechanism to remedy the technological deficiency.

To date, police and prosecutors have relied on subpoenas to either compel defendants to produce their password, or to decipher their protected data. This technique has been met …

An International-Comparative Perspective On Peer-To-Peer File-Sharing And Third Party Liability In Copyright Law, Guy Pessach

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In the last decade, the phenomenon of peer-to-peer file-sharing and its various legal aspects have been dealt with extensively by legal scholarship. The purpose of this Article is to take a closer inspection of several particular legal aspects that are related to peer-to-peer file-sharing as a comparative, social, economic, and cultural phenomenon. The Article begins by providing critical comparative analysis of distinct paradigms that different legal systems have offered regarding the question of third party liability for copyright infringements that occur through peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms. The Article then presents three focal policy considerations that should serve as copyright law's compass …

Is There Judicial Recourse To Attack Spammers?, Ashley L. Rogers

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Note will discuss the issue of non-commercial spam through the prism of a case recently decided by the California Supreme Court, Intel v. Hamidi. Until recently there was no federal regulation for unwanted electronic communication and common law was the only potential solution. Part I of this Note will discuss the nature of spam, focusing on the distinction between commercial e-mail and bulk e-mail and the importance therein. Part II will detail the history and the legal doctrine of trespass as it applies to the Internet. Part III will summarize the case of Intel v. Hamidi as it struggled …

The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act Of 1986: A Measured Response To A Growing Problem, Dodd S. Griffith

Vanderbilt Law Review

Before the invention of the computer, the amount of property an individual could steal or destroy was, to some extent, determined by physical limitations. Criminals could take only as much property as they could carry or arrange to transport. For example, the average amount of money taken in a bank robbery has been estimated to be about ten thousand dollars. Crime has, however, changed with the times. A criminal can use modern technology to transfer extremely large sums of money that formerly would have been impossible to remove without detection. A 1984 study conducted by the American Bar Association Task …