Internet Law Commons^™

Public Forum 2.0, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

Social media have the potential to revolutionize discourse between American citizens and their governments. At present, however, the U.S. Supreme Court's public forum jurisprudence frustrates rather than fosters that potential. This article navigates the notoriously complex body of public forum doctrine to provide guidance for those who must develop or administer government-sponsored social media or adjudicate First Amendment questions concerning them. Next, the article marks out a new path for public forum doctrine that will allow it to realize the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance democratic discourse between the governors and the governed. Along the way, this article …

Gender Biases In Cyberspace: A Two-Stage Model For A Feminist Way Forward, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Amy Mittelman

Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid Professor of Law

Increasingly, there has been a focus on creating democratic standards and procedures in order to best facilitate open exchange of information and communication online—a goal that fits neatly within the feminist aim to democratize content creation and community. Collaborative websites, such as blogs, social networks, and, as focused on in this Article, Wikipedia, represent both a Cyberspace community entirely outside the strictures of the traditional (intellectual) proprietary paradigm and one that professes to truly embody the philosophy of a completely open, free, and democratic resource for all. In theory, collaborative websites are the solution that social activists, Intellectual Property opponents …

Internet Control Or Internet Censorship? Comparing The Control Models Of China, Singapore, And The United States To Guide Taiwan’S Choice, Jeffrey Li

Jeffrey Li

Internet censorship generally refers to unjustified online speech scrutiny and control by the government or government-approved measures for Internet control. The danger of Internet censorship is the chilling effect and the substantial harm on free speech, a cornerstone of democracy, in cyberspace. This paper compares China’s blocking and filtering system, the class license system of Singapore, and the government-private partnership model of the United States to identify the features, and pros and cons of each model on the international human rights. By finding lessons from each of the model, this paper suggests Taiwan should remain its current meager internet control …

Customary Internet-Ional Law: Creating A Body Of Customary Law For Cyberspace, Kam Wai, Warren Bartholomew Chik

Warren Bartholomew Chik

The shift in socio-economic transactions from realspace to cyberspace through the emergence of electronic communications and digital formats has led to a disjuncture between the law and practices relating to electronic transactions. The speed at which information technology has developed require a faster, more reactive and automatic response from the law that is not currently met by the existing law-making framework. This paper suggests the development of special rules to enable Internet custom to form legal norms to fulfill this objective. In Part 1, I will describe the socio-economic problems and stresses that electronic transactions place on existing policy and …

Harassment Through Digital Media: A Cross-Jurisdictional Comparative Analysis On The Law On Cyberstalking, Warren B. Chik

Warren Bartholomew Chik

The cyber world is an extension of the real world. It is another dimension where we can work, study and play. But people also tend to lose their inhibitions on the Internet, often while keeping their anonymity. Because of the perceived and real freedoms in the digital environment, people are emboldened to act in ways that they may not normally do in the real world. One recent phenomenon that is steadily becoming a problem in every country with a high level of electronic connectivity is the act of cyberstalking. The electronic medium is an important factor due to its very …

'Customary Internet-Ional Law': Creating A Body Of Customary Law For Cyberspace. Part 1: Developing Rules For Transitioning Custom Into Law, Warren B. Chik

Warren Bartholomew CHIK

The shift in socio-economic transactions from realspace to cyberspace through the emergence of electronic communications and digital formats has led to a disjuncture between the law and practices relating to electronic transactions. The speed at which information technology has developed require a faster, more reactive and automatic response from the law that is not currently met by the existing law-making framework. This paper suggests the development of special rules to enable Internet custom to form legal norms to fulfill this objective. In Part 1, I will describe the socio-economic problems and stresses that electronic transactions place on existing policy and …

La Libertad De Expresión En Internet Y Sus Garantías Constitucionales En El Control De Contenidos De Páginas Web, Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Master's thesis about freedom of speech in Internet and the constitutional guarantees in the control of websides content.

Cyberwarfare And The Use Of Force Giving Rise To The Right Of Self-Defense, Matthew Hoisington

Matthew Hoisington

Cyberwarfare represents a novel weapon that has the potential to alter the way state and non-state actors conduct modern war. The unique nature of the threat and the ability for cyberwar practioners to inflict injury, death, and physical destruction via cyberspace strains traditional definitions of the use of force. In order to clearly delineate the rights of the parties involved, including the right to self-defense, the international community must come to some consensus on the meaning of cyberwarfare within the existing jus ad bellum paradigm. After examining the shortcomings inherent in classifying cyberattacks according to classical notions of kinetic warfare, …

Survey Of The Law Of Cyberspace: Electronic Contracting Cases 2006-2007, Juliet Moringiello, William Reynolds

William L. Reynolds

In this annual survey, we discuss the electronic contracting cases decided between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. In the article, we discuss issues involving contract formation, procedural unconscionability, the scope of UETA and E-SIGN, and contracts formed by automated agents. We conclude that whatever doctrinal doubt judges and scholars may once have had about applying standard contract law to electronic transactions, those doubts have now been largely resolved, and that the decisions involving electronic contracts are following the general law of contracts pretty closely.

Electronic Surveillance At The Virtual Border, Susan Freiwald

Susan Freiwald

A virtual border divides people into two groups: those subject to the Fourth Amendment’s protections when the U.S. government conducts surveillance of their communications and those who are not. The distinction derives from a separation in powers: inside the virtual border, U.S. citizens and others enjoy the extensive oversight of the judiciary of executive branch surveillance. Judges review such surveillance before, during, and after it transpires. Foreign persons subject to surveillance in foreign countries fall within the executive branch’s’ foreign affairs function. However, the virtual border does not exactly match the physical border of the United States. Some people inside …

Online Surveillance: Remembering The Lessons Of The Wiretap Act, Susan Freiwald

Susan Freiwald

This Article explores those features of electronic surveillance that have made it challenging to regulate effectively. In balancing interests, lawmakers must create a workable law for an exceedingly complex topic, rein in law enforcement agents without crippling them, and draw a line between prohibited and permitted conduct despite society's ambivalence about surveillance. This Article demonstrates that lawmakers met those challenges when they regulated traditional wiretapping, but they have failed to meet them in the online context. It argues that the law should extend the significant restrictions on wiretapping to online surveillance, just as judges did in the case of video …

Comparative Institutional Analysis In Cyberspace: The Case Of Intermediary Liability For Defamation, Susan Freiwald

Susan Freiwald

Almost every day brings reports that Congress is considering new cyberspace-targeted laws and the courts are deciding novel cyberspace legal questions. These developments lend urgency to the question of whether a particular cyberspace legal change should come through operation of new statutes, judicial decisions, or the free market. If we can develop sophisticated analytical methods to evaluate institutional competence in cyberspace, we can vastly improve the development of cyberspace law and public policy.

Comparative Institutional Analysis in Cyberspace: The Case of Intermediary Liability for Defamation promotes just such an approach. By describing and extending a recently proposed model of comparative …

Internet Infoglut And Invisible Ink: Spamdexing Search Engines With Meta Tags, Ira Nathenson

Ira Steven Nathenson

This Article addresses 'spamdexing,' namely, the practice of stuffing invisible keywords into webpages in order to try to get more favorable listings with search engines. For instance, some website owners will stuff the trademarks of competitors into a webpage’s code, particularly by using 'meta tags,' indexing keywords that can be hidden in a webpage’s source code. Although meta tags are not typically viewed by users, the code can be read by search engines, with the result that webpages may be improperly boosted in search engine rankings. Such practices can confuse the public and have also spurred trademark lawsuits. But the …