Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Product Life Cycle Theory And The Maturation Of The Internet, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Much of the recent debate over Internet policy has focused on the permissibility of business practices that are becoming increasingly common, such as new forms of network management, prioritization, pricing, and strategic partnerships. This Essay analyzes these developments through the lens of the management literature on the product life cycle, dominant designs, technological trajectories and design hierarchies, and the role of complementary assets in determining industry structure. This analysis suggests that many of these business practices may represent nothing more than a reflection of how the nature of competition changes as industries mature. This in turn suggests that network neutrality …

Free Speech And The Myth Of The Internet As An Unintermediated Experience, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, a growing number of commentators have raised concerns that the decisions made by Internet intermediaries — including last-mile network providers, search engines, social networking sites, and smartphones — are inhibiting free speech and have called for restrictions on their ability to prioritize or exclude content. Such calls ignore the fact that when mass communications are involved, intermediation helps end users to protect themselves from unwanted content and allows them to sift through the avalanche of desired content that grows ever larger every day. Intermediation also helps solve a number of classic economic problems associated with the Internet. …

China In Context: Energy, Water, And Climate Cooperation, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Climate resilient communities can be achieved with the support of global research, development, deployment, and diffusion of environmentally sound low GHG emission technologies and processes. Technology cooperation should lower emissions remaining mindful of biodiversity, ecosystem services and livelihoods. China and the United States need to respond effectively to both economic and climate crises and can do so in part by cooperating on environmentally sound technology that transforms the global use of energy.

Collaborative Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article analyzes the importance of increasing civil society actor access to and influence in international legal and policy negotiations, drawing from academic scholarship on governance, conservation and environmental sustainability, natural resource management, observations of civil society actors, and the authors’ experiences as participants in international environmental negotiations.

Emerging Law Addressing Climate Change And Water, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

The World Economic Forum recognizes that while restrictions on energy affect water systems and vice versa, energy and water policy are rarely coordinated. The International Panel on Climate Change predicts that wet places will become wetter and dry places will become dryer. Transboundary water, energy and climate coordination can occur through international consensus building.

Google Analytics: Analyzing The Latest Wave Of Legal Concerns For Google In The U.S. And The E.U., 7 Buff. Intell. Prop. L.J. 135 (2010), Raizel Liebler, Keidra Chaney

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

The next wave of concern regarding Google involves web analytics. Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. The concerns of web analytics use touches on issues of online user privacy, government use of personal information, and information on website user activity. While Google Analytics is not the sole web analytics product on the market, it is widely used by corporate, non-profit, and government organizations. The product has been reported to have a 59% market share among web analytics vendors in a 2008 study.

Web analytics technology …

Digital Multi-Media And The Limits Of Privacy Law, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

While digital video and multi-media technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent, existing privacy laws tend to focus on text-based personal records. Individuals have little recourse when concerned about infringements of their privacy interests in audio, video, and multi-media files. Often people are simply unaware that video or audio records have been made. Even if they are aware of the existence of the records, they may be unaware of potential legal remedies, or unable to afford legal recourse. This paper concentrates on the ability of individuals to obtain legal redress for unauthorized use of audio, video and multi-media content that infringes their …

Innovations In The Internet’S Architecture That Challenge The Status Quo, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

The current debate over broadband policy has largely overlooked a number of changes to the architecture of the Internet that have caused the price paid by and quality of service received by traffic traveling across the Internet to vary widely. Topological innovations, such as private peering, multihoming, secondary peering, server farms, and content delivery networks, have caused the Internet’s traditionally hierarchical architecture to be replaced by one that is more heterogeneous. Moreover, network providers have begun to employ an increasingly varied array of business arrangements. Some of these innovations are responses to the growing importance of peer-to-peer technologies. Others, such …

Impact Of The Australia-Us Free Trade Agreement On Australian Medicines Regulation And Prices, Thomas A. Faunce, James Bai, Duy Nguyen

Thomas A Faunce

The Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) came into force on 1 January 2005. Before and subsequently to the AUSFTA being concluded, controversy surrounded the debate over its impact on Australia ’ s health policy, specifically on regulation of pharmaceutical patents and Australia ’ s cost-effectiveness system relating to prescription medicine prices known as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This article examines the expectations of both parties in the pharmaceutical sector with regard to the AUSFTA, as well as how successfully they were achieved. It seeks to analyse important relevant outcomes for regulators, the public and pharmaceutical industry, …

Nanotechnology And The International Law Of Weaponry: Towards International Regulation Of Nano-Weapons., Thomas A. Faunce, Hitoshi Nasu

Thomas A Faunce

The development of nanotechnology for military application is an emerging area of research and development, the pace and extent of which has not been fully anticipated by international legal regulation. Nano-weapons are referred to here as objects and devices using nanotechnology or causing effects in nano-scale that are designed or used for harming humans. Such weapons, despite their controversial human and environmental toxicity, are not comprehensively covered by specific, targeted regulation under international law. This article critically examines current international humanitarian law and arms control law regimes to determine whether significant gaps exist in the regulation of nanotechnology focused on …