Law Commons^™

Sex, Drugs, And Rock & Roll: Effectively And Equitably Moderating Vice And Illegal Content Online, Elise N. Blegen

Vanderbilt Law Review

The modern internet is vast, with more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day. Content is created, uploaded, downloaded, and shared across an increasingly large number of platforms. Most of this content is legal; however, some is illegal, including hate speech, child sexual abuse material, and content that violates intellectual property rights. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ("CDA") provides that websites are not liable for content posted to their platform by third parties. Instead, websites determine their own content moderation policies, and the law assumes that they will do just that (given that exposure to graphic …

Data Autonomy, Cesare Fracassi, William Magnuson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, “data privacy” has vaulted to the forefront of public attention. Scholars, policymakers, and the media have, nearly in unison, decried the lack of data privacy in the modern world. In response, they have put forth various proposals to remedy the situation, from the imposition of fiduciary obligations on technology platforms to the creation of rights to be forgotten for individuals. All these proposals, however, share one essential assumption: we must raise greater protective barriers around data. As a scholar of corporate finance and a scholar of corporate law, respectively, we find this assumption problematic. Data, after all, …

The New "Web-Stream" Of Commerce: Amazon And The Necessity Of Strict Products Liability For Online Marketplaces, Margaret E. Dillaway

Vanderbilt Law Review

Technology company Amazon has actively transformed into an e-commerce giant over the last two decades. Once a simple online bookstore, Amazon now boasts an ever-expanding identity as global cloud computing provider, major player in artificial intelligence, brick-and-mortar grocery store, and producer of original video content. At its roots, the company remains focused on e-commerce—its multibillion-dollar online marketplace hosts a massive digital space for commerce worldwide where customers can order “anything, with a capital A.”

Amazon derives many of its sales from third-party vendors who list products on the company’s website, Amazon.com. In this broadening chain of distribution for online retail, …

Implementing An Online Dispute Resolution Scheme: Using Domain Name Registration Contracts To Create A Workable Framework, Michael G. Bowers

Vanderbilt Law Review

Online businesses have grown tremendously in the past decade. As a larger percentage of the U.S. economy moves onto the Internet, a larger percentage of people doing business online will find themselves disagreeing with each other. How those disputes are resolved presents an ongoing challenge in a world where traditional ordering mechanisms, like geographical boundaries, become increasingly antiquated. As contracts are formed across state and national lines, dispute resolution systems built around spatial locations become ever more unwieldy. The complications and costs of securing a favorable decision from a far-off decisionmaking body make reliance on geographic-based systems exceedingly difficult. Out …

Constitutionality Of Cyberbullying Laws: Keeping The Online Playground Safe For Both Teens And Free Speech, Alison V. King

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Internet is a blessing and a curse. Along with the manifold benefits the Internet provides-electronic research, instantaneous news, social networking, online shopping, to name a few-comes a host of dangers: online harassment and cyberbullying, hacking, voyeurism, identity theft, phishing, and perhaps still more perils that have yet to appear. The Internet creates a virtual world that can result in very real consequences for people's lives. This creates a challenge for parents, schools, and policymakers attempting to keep pace with rapidly developing technologies and to provide adequate protections for children. The even greater challenge, however, is to balance these vital …

Privacy, Accountability, And The Cooperating Defendant: Towards A New Role For Internet Access To Court Records, Caren M. Morrison

Vanderbilt Law Review

Now that federal court records are available online, anyone can obtain criminal case files instantly over the Internet. But this unfettered flow of information is in fundamental tension with many goals of the criminal justice system, including the integrity of criminal investigations, the accountability of prosecutors, and the security of witnesses. It has also altered the behavior of prosecutors intent on protecting the identity of cooperating defendants who assist them in investigating other targets. As prosecutors and courts collaborate to obscure the process by which cooperators are recruited and rewarded, Internet availability risks degrading the value of the information obtained …

Accommodating Technological Innovation: Identity, Genetic Testing And The Internet, Gaia Bernstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

To evaluate the need for legal change stemming from technological innovation, we need to look beyond the accommodations of specific rules to the impact of technological innovation on social structures, institutes and values. In this Article I study how social tensions created by recent technological innovations produce a need to elevate legal interest from the shadows of legal discourse into the forefront of legal debate. Specifically, I examine two innovations that are exerting significant influence on our lives-genetic testing and the Internet-and their impact on our normative conception of identity. This socially oriented approach leads to several insights.

First, I …

Immunizing Internet Service Providers From Third-Party Internet Defamation Claims: How Far Should Courts Go?, Sewali K. Patel

Vanderbilt Law Review

On April 25, 1995, a notice titled "Naughty Oklahoma T- shirts" appeared on an America Online ("AOL") bulletin board. The notice advertised T-shirts with slogans such as "Visit Oklahoma... It's a BLAST!" and "Putting the kids to bed ... Oklahoma 1995." In short, the notice glorified the Oklahoma City bombings of 1995, which killed 168 people. Under the only known identity of "Ken ZZ03," the author invited readers to call "Ken" at the listed phone number, which belonged to a Mr. Kenneth Zeran. While Mr. Zeran's first name was in fact Ken, Mr. Zeran was not responsible for posting the …

Privacy And Democracy In Cyberspace, Paul M. Schwartz

Vanderbilt Law Review

In this Article, Professor Schwartz depicts the widespread, silent collection of personal information in cyberspace. At present, it is impossible to know the fate of the personal data that one generates online. Professor Schwartz argues that this state of affairs degrades the health of a deliberative democracy; it cloaks in dark uncertainty the transmutation of Internet activity into personal information that will follow one into other areas and discourage civic participation. This situation also will have a negative impact on individual self- determination by deterring individuals from engaging in the necessary thinking out loud and deliberation with others upon which …

State Regulatory Jurisdiction And The Internet: Letting The Dormant Commerce Clause Lie, James E. Gaylord

Vanderbilt Law Review

Cyberspace seems to pose a dual threat to "Our Federalism." Only one aspect of this threat, however, has captured the scholarly imagination. Commentators have devoted a great deal of attention to the problems of horizontal federalism raised by the new technology. Cyberspace, they point out, is a profoundly integrative social and economic force. As a result, local legislation touching on cyberspace is likely to produce effects beyond local borders. State laws like a recently deceased Georgia statute that arguably would have prohibited all Internet users from "falsely identifying" themselves on- lines convince observers that the information superhighway is a dangerous …

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 …