Law Commons^™

Poland’S Challenge To Eu Directive 2019/790: Standing Up To The Destruction Of European Freedom Of Expression, Michaela Cloutier

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In 2019, the European Parliament and Council passed Directive 2019/790. The Directive’s passage marked the end of a fouryear- long legislative attempt to impose more liability for copyright violations on Online Service Providers, an effort which was controversial from the start. Online Service Providers fear that the 2019 Directive, especially its Article 17, will completely change the structure of liability on the Internet, forcing providers to adopt expensive content filtering systems. Free speech advocates fear that ineffective filtering technology will infringe upon Internet users’ rights to express themselves, and legal scholars have pointed out the Directive’s inconsistency with prior European …

The Internet Never Forgets: A Federal Solution To The Dissemination Of Nonconsensual Pornography, Alexis Santiago

Seattle University Law Review

As technology evolves, new outlets for interpersonal conflict and crime evolve with it. The law is notorious for its inability to keep pace with this evolution. This Comment focuses on one area that the law urgently needs to regulate—the dissemination of “revenge porn,” otherwise known as nonconsensual pornography. Currently, no federal law exists in the U.S. that criminalizes the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography. Most U.S. states have criminalized the offense, but with vastly different degrees of severity, resulting in legal inconsistencies and jurisdictional conflicts. This Comment proposes a federal solution to the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography that carefully balances the …

Fosta: A Necessary Step In Advancement Of The Women’S Rights Movement, Alexandra Sanchez

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Minimum Virtual Contacts: A Framework For Specific Jurisdiction In Cyberspace, Adam R. Kleven

Michigan Law Review

As the ubiquity and importance of the internet continue to grow, courts will address more cases involving online activity. In doing so, courts will confront the threshold issue of whether a defendant can be subject to specific personal jurisdiction. The Supreme Court, however, has yet to speak to this internet-jurisdiction issue. Current precedent, when strictly applied to the internet, yields fundamentally unfair results when addressing specific jurisdiction. To better achieve the fairness aim of due process, this must change. This Note argues that, in internet tort cases, the “express aiming” requirement should be discarded from the jurisdictional analysis and that …

Is The First Amendment Obsolete?, Tim Wu

Michigan Law Review

The First Amendment was brought to life in a period, the twentieth century, when the political speech environment was markedly different than today’s. With respect to any given issue, speech was scarce and limited to a few newspapers, pamphlets or magazines. The law was embedded, therefore, with the presumption that the greatest threat to free speech was direct punishment of speakers by government.

Today, in the internet and social media age, it is no longer speech that is scarce—rather, it is the attention of listeners. And those who seek to control speech use new methods that rely on the weaponization …

Cultural Democracy And The First Amendment, Jack M. Balkin

Northwestern University Law Review

Freedom of speech secures cultural democracy as well as political democracy. Just as it is important to make state power accountable to citizens, it is also important to give people a say over the development of forms of cultural power that transcend the state. In a free society, people should have the right to participate in the forms of meaning-making that shape who they are and that help constitute them as individuals.

The digital age shows the advantages of a cultural theory over purely democracy-based theories. First, the cultural account offers a more convincing explanation of why expression that seems …

E-Obviousness, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.

Glynn Lunney

As patents expand into e-commerce and methods of doing business more generally, both the uncertainty and the risk of unjustified market power that the present approach generates suggest a need to rethink our approach to nonobviousness. If courts fail to enforce the nonobviousness requirement and allow an individual to obtain a patent for simply implementing existing methods of doing business through a computer, even where only trivial technical difficulties are presented, entire e-markets might be handed over to patent holders with no concomitant public benefit. If courts attempt to enforce the nonobviousness requirement, but leave undefined the extent of the …

Aereo's Errors, Ira Steven Nathenson

Ira Steven Nathenson

This article scrutinizes the many troubling errors made by the United States Supreme Court in its decision in American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. Aereo’s streaming television service allowed subscribers to watch broadcast television on a computer, tablet, or smartphone without requiring them to be directly connected to cable, satellite, or a local antenna. Aereo’s system was designed to comply with existing copyright law by using thousands of antennas, each of which was designated for only one subscriber at a time. Aereo was sued for copyright infringement by a number of leading television broadcasters. The United States Supreme Court, …

Surveillance, Speech Suppression And Degradation Of The Rule Of Law In The “Post-Democracy Electronic State”, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

None of us can claim the quality of original insight achieved by Alexis de Tocqueville in his early 19th Century classic Democracy in America in his observation that the “soft” repression of democracy was unlike that in any other political form. It is impossible to deny that we in the US, the United Kingdom and Western Europe are experiencing just such a “gentle” drift of the kind that Tocqueville describes, losing our democratic integrity amid an increasingly “pretend” democracy. He explained: “[T]he supreme power [of government] then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society …

Through A Prism Darkly: Surveillance And Speech Suppression In The Post-Democracy Electronic State", David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

Through a PRISM Darkly: Surveillance and Speech Suppression in the “Post-Democracy Electronic State” David Barnhizer There is no longer an American democracy. America is changing by the moment into a new political form, the “Post-Democracy Electronic State”. It has “morphed” into competing fragments operating within the physical territory defined as the United States while tenuously holding on to a few of the basic creeds that represent what we long considered an exceptional political experiment. That post-Democracy political order paradoxically consists of a combination of fragmented special interests eager to punish anyone that challenges their desires and a central government that …

After Privacy: The Rise Of Facebook, The Fall Of Wikileaks, And Singapore’S Personal Data Protection Act 2012, Simon Chesterman

Simon Chesterman

This article discusses the changing ways in which information is produced, stored, and shared — exemplified by the rise of social-networking sites like Facebook and controversies over the activities of WikiLeaks — and the implications for privacy and data protection. Legal protections of privacy have always been reactive, but the coherence of any legal regime has also been undermined by the lack of a strong theory of what privacy is. There is more promise in the narrower field of data protection. Singapore, which does not recognise a right to privacy, has positioned itself as an e-commerce hub but had no …

Sealand, Havenco, And The Rule Of Law, James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann

In 2000, a group of American entrepreneurs moved to a former World War II anti-aircraft platform in the North Sea, seven miles off the British coast, and launched HavenCo, one of the strangest start-ups in Internet history. A former pirate radio broadcaster, Roy Bates, had occupied the platform in the 1960s, moved his family aboard, and declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. HavenCo's founders were opposed to governmental censorship and control of the Internet; by putting computer servers on Sealand, they planned to create a "data haven" for unpopular speech, safely beyond the reach of any other …

Facebook, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Fascínios, possibilidades e perigos do Facebook e de tecnologias afins e seu uso. Sobretudo, a pseudo-democracia electrónica, tentação dos demagogos.

Margae, Inc. V. Clear Link Technologies, Jonathan Goodman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Apuntes Generales Sobre La Libertad De Expresión En Internet, Germán M. Teruel Lozano

Germán M. Teruel Lozano

GENERAL NOTES ABOUT THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN INTERNET: This paper presents an overview of how Internet has revolutionized the setting of freedom of speech. In particular, it is focused in to main aspects: On one hand, the delimitation of freedom of expression in the new media, differentiating in particular between web pages dedicated to the dissemination of information, protected by the freedom of speech; and those that are intended to provide other telematics services, which should not have this protection. Secondly, it is also studied the legal status of this freedom when it is exercised through Internet.

Demystifying The Right To Exclude: Of Property, Inviolability, And Automatic Injunctions, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

The right to exclude has long been considered a central component of property. In focusing on the element of exclusion, courts and scholars have paid little attention to what an owner's right to exclude means and the forms in which this right might manifest itself in actual property practice. For some time now, the right to exclude has come to be understood as nothing but an entitlement to injunctive relief- that whenever an owner successfully establishes title and an interference with the same, an injunction will automatically follow. Such a view attributes to the right a distinctively consequentialist meaning, which …

Responsabilidade Civil Dos Robôs? Normas Sociais De Controle Dos Agentes Eletrônicos, Ivo T. Gico

Ivo Teixeira Gico Jr.

Nesta contribuição, discute-se que, mesmo em ambientes cibernéticos, o Direito imposto surge como uma necessidade natural de sistemas sociais complexos.

O surgimento efetivo de robôs e a expansão dos agentes eletrônicos principalmente na Internet impuseram a auto-regulação por normas costumeiras, ontologicamente de adesão espontânea (não cogentes, portanto).

Com o crescimento da rede e a absoluta impessoalidade que agora reina, esse tipo de regramento é simplesmente ineficaz, cabendo ao o Direito positivo delimitar os parâmetros para que a rede evolua e cresça em importância.

In this contribution, the author discusses that, even in cyber environments, tax law emerges as a natural …

Public Availability Or Practical Obscurity: The Debate Over Public Access To Court Records On The Internet, Arminda Bradford Bepko

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Hegemony Of The Copyright Treatise, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article asserts that major conceptions about the appropriate structure, texture, and span of copyright protections and privileges have been fashioned by copyright treatises, particularly the various editions of Nimmer on Copyright. Copyright treatises function in concert with the machinations of Congress, the courts, and custom, but their role is not often scrutinized.

Because copyright treatises typically do a far better job than Congress or the courts of explicating copyright law in straightforward and accessible language, such treatises can not only communicate the copyright law, but also influence its development and direction. Policy makers no doubt understand that content owners …

E-Obviousness, Glynn S. Lunney Jr.

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

As patents expand into e-commerce and methods of doing business more generally, both the uncertainty and the risk of unjustified market power that the present approach generates suggest a need to rethink our approach to nonobviousness. If courts fail to enforce the nonobviousness requirement and allow an individual to obtain a patent for simply implementing existing methods of doing business through a computer, even where only trivial technical difficulties are presented, entire e-markets might be handed over to patent holders with no concomitant public benefit. If courts attempt to enforce the nonobviousness requirement, but leave undefined the extent of the …

Taking Globalization Seriously: Towards General Jurisprudence (Book Review Of Globalization And Legal Theory By William Twining), Doron M. Kalir

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Part II provides an account of the jurisprudence of Globalization and Legal Theory. Due to the novelty of many of the issues discussed in the book, as well as their importance to the understanding of Twining's recommendations, I have provided a longer than usual account of several chapters. Part II touches upon one of the central jurisprudential dichotomies introduced by Twining—the distinction between general and particular jurisprudence. Twining compares different accounts of the distinction using pairs of canonical jurists. In particular, he compares H.L.A Hart's Postscript with Dworkin's Law's Empire. In this part, I juxtapose Twining's record of this …

A Era Pós-Napster, Ivo T. Gico

Ivo Teixeira Gico Jr.

O artigo analisa questões referentes à divugação não autorizada de obras artísticas pela internet e os problemas enfrentados pela indústria fonográfica, contrastando o direito ao acesso à informação, controle e seu papel fundamental na construção de uma democracia. The article examines issues relating to unauthorized disclosure of artistic works on the Internet and the problems faced by the music industry, opposed by the access to information rights, control and its fundamental role in the building of a democracy.

Cyberspace And The "Devil's Hatband", Jonathan J. Rusch

Seattle University Law Review

In this Article, I maintain that while there is an ongoing conflict of legal traditions over the desirability of fences in cyberspace, there are definite virtues in the creation of such fences, so long as we understand the physical, psychological, and moral dimensions of that process. Part I will present a brief survey of the history of barbed wire in the Old West, paying particular attention to the contending legal traditions that affected the manner and extent of that growth in the West. These contending legal traditions, which related to "fencing in" versus "fencing out" cattle, played a key role …

Much Ado About Spam: Unsolicited Advertising, The Internet, And You., Scot M. Graydon

St. Mary's Law Journal

Internet users need protection from unsolicited commercial emails (UCEs), and this protection should come from federal legislation. Despite seventeen states having passed some sort of legislation regulating UCEs, this is insufficient to protect Internet users from UCEs. State laws are not uniformed and UCEs frequently cross state lines. Internet advertisers prefer commercial emails because of the ability to market to millions of consumers at a low cost. Consumers, however, suffer delays to their Internet access because of the amount of data UCEs accumulate, and in some cases may have to pay additional fees if they exceed the data limits of …

Resolving Tensions Between Copyright And The Internet, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

From Little Acorns Great Oaks Grow: The Constitutionality Of Protecting Minors From Harmful Internet Material In Public Libraries Comment., Kimberly S. Keller

St. Mary's Law Journal

Congress should focus on the receiver's end of Internet transmissions to overcome the anonymity and transmogrification elements of the Internet to protect minors from harmful material. Throughout the years, librarians have struggled with monitoring minors’ access to the accumulating number of controversial texts in the library. The Internet’s unique infrastructure affords librarians virtually no opportunity for the pre-shelf review available with books and videos. Congress enacted the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996 in an attempt to protect minors from the underbelly of the internet. The United States Supreme Court, in Reno v. ACLU, struck down the CDA ruling that …

E-Law4: Computer Information Systems Law And System Operator Liability, David J. Loundy

Seattle University Law Review

This Article gives a summary of the current regulatory structure in the United States governing a few of the "Empires of Cyberspace," such as bulletin board systems, electronic databases, file servers, networks (such as the Internet) and the like. Different legal analogies that may apply will be illustrated, and some of their strengths, weaknesses, and alternatives will be analyzed. I will begin by looking at different types of computer information systems, and then the major legal issues surrounding computer information systems will be surveyed in brief. Next, the different legal analogies which could be applied to computer information systems will …