Law Commons^™

Aclp - Broadband Planning Tool Kit - October 2022, New York Law School

Reports and Resources

This Tool Kit provides state and local policymakers with a range of resources and analyses for use during broadband planning. The Tool Kit focuses on the array of grant and other funding opportunities available to states and localities as a result of the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, as well as other pandemic-era stimulus programs. However, the Tool Kit is also useful for broadband planning outside of these specific funding programs. Indeed, the Tool Kit offers foundational planning resources that can be used now and in the future by officials, ISPs, and other stakeholders in the broadband space.

Social Media Harms And The Common Law, Leslie Y. Garfield Tenzer

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article finds fault with the judiciaries' failure to create a set of common law norms for social media wrongs. In cases concerning social media harms, the Supreme Court and lower courts have consistently adhered to traditional pre-social media principles, failing to use the power of the common law to create a kind of Internet Justice.

Part I of this article reviews social media history and explores how judicial decisions created a fertile bed for social media harm to blossom. Part II illustrates social media harms across several doctrinal disciplines and highlights judicial reluctance to embrace the realities of social …

Wiretapping The Internet: Analyzing The Application Of The Federal Wiretap Act’S Party Exception Online, Hayden Driscoll

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The federal Wiretap Act—originally enacted to curtail the government’s unbridled use of wiretaps to monitor telephonic communications—was amended in 1986 to provide a private right of action, extending the Act’s Fourth Amendment-like protections to private intrusions. Since the advent of the internet, plaintiffs have attempted to predicate claims of unauthorized online privacy intrusions on the Wiretap Act. In response, defendants claim they are parties to the communications at issue and should be absolved of liability under the Act’s party exception. The federal circuit courts of appeal disagree on how the party exception applies in the internet context. This Note evaluates …

Decentralizing Sustainably -- How Blockchain Can Benefit Environmental Goals, Logan J. Losito

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

[...] As presented in this Note, with a lack of clear guidance, disparate legislation from U.S. states continues to form a patchwork approach of policy to the topic of blockchain, with notably little attention paid towards environmentally sustainable practices. While this transpires across the states, sentiments from members of the federal legislative and, most recently, the executive branches of government express priorities in two areas when developing policy on the matter.

As this Note will outline, the concerns are generally over the sustainability of cryptocurrency mining practices and the potential for blockchain innovation to benefit environmental sustainability goals. However, while …

Regulating Auditing Algorithms: An Asian Solution?, Nydia Remolina Leon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As AI becomes more sophisticated and broadly used, algorithmic auditing also involves increasingly complicated ethical, social, and regulatory challenges with different dimensions and implications depending on the sector where the AI is deployed. In this context, regulators play a key role in proposing policies to govern the operations, credentials, and impact of the experts conducting AI audits.

Legal Perspectives On The Streaming Industry: The United States, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, streaming has become one of the most popular formats of “consuming” entertainment and other content—from music to videos, and concerts, sports, conferences, and other events. In the United States, the majority of consumers subscribe to one or more streaming services today. Popular streaming services include famous platforms such as Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, or Apple TV, Pandora, YouTube, and more. Beside subscription-based services, several of these platforms offer “freemium,” or ad-paid version of their services, which allow users to access content with advertisements for free. As elaborated in several industry reports and other publications, the rise …

The Law And Finance Of Infrastructure Investment, Daisuke Asaoka

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

Institutional design facilitates the investment of private capital in infrastructure. The Article deals with concessions, which have been a major format for infrastructure privatization in Japan since their legislation in 2011. It argues that the Japanese government, faced with mounting public debt, walks a thin line between attracting private capital and securing public interest in infrastructure under private operation. By comparing concessions with stock sales, the mainstream form of privatization until the legislation, the Article shows that while concessions have advantages in terms of economics and public interest control, they may hinder the strategic growth of private enterprises by limiting …

Automating Discrimination: Ai Hiring Practices And Gender Inequality, Lori Andrews, Hannah Bucher

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Highly Automated Vehicles & Discrimination Against Low-Income Persons, William H. Widen

Articles

Law reform in the United States often reflects a structural bias that advances narrow business interests without addressing broader public interest concerns.' This bias may appear by omitting protective language in laws or regulations which address a subject matter area, such as permitting the testing of highly automated vehicles ("HA Vs") on public roads, while omitting a requirement for a reasonable level of insurance as a condition to obtain a testing permit.2 This Article explores certain social and economic justice implications of laws and regulations governing the design, testing, manufacture, and deployment of HA Vs which might advance a business …

The Future Of Digital Justice, Dirk Hartung, Florian Brunnader, Christian Veith, Philipp Plog, Tim Wolters

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Justice systems worldwide are under increasing pressure as legal complexity rises andmore people rightfully demand access to justice. Digital transformation is the key forcourts to keep pace. Digital justice is an immense chance to improve the lives ofmillions of people, but only if the technology is understood and implemented fast.Drivers of Digital JusticeGlobally, the digitalization of justice systems is just beginning and generally laggingbehind the digital transformation of the rest of society. This has led to a widening gapbetween the expected user experience for both consumers and businesses and theactual services provided by the courts.Status quo of Digital Justice TransformationThe …

Content Moderation As Surveillance, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Technology platforms are the new governments, and content moderation is the new law, or so goes a common refrain. As platforms increasingly turn toward new, automated mechanisms of enforcing their rules, the apparent power of the private sector seems only to grow. Yet beneath the surface lies a web of complex relationships between public and private authorities that call into question whether platforms truly possess such unilateral power. Law enforcement and police are exerting influence over platform content rules, giving governments a louder voice in supposedly “private” decisions. At the same time, law enforcement avails itself of the affordances of …

An Introduction To "Marshall Law", Ip Theory Volume 12 Editorial Board

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

A Potential Status Update For The Visual Artists Rights Act: The Role Of Social Media Response In Judicial Analysis Of Recognized Stature, Olivia Calamia

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

In 2020, visual artists used the power and reach of social media platforms to share works of art inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, which experienced renewed vigor following the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Many of these works have taken the form of murals painted on city streets, building faces, and other spaces that promote public viewing. Many artists hope that their works will endure long past this moment of social and political reckoning. Manhattan based artist Amir Diop expressed his wishes simply but eloquently: “My hope is that [my art] is a …

Artificial Justice: The Quandary Of Ai In The Courtroom, Paul W. Grimm, Maura R. Grossman, Sabine Gless, Mireille Hildebrandt

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

Facilitating Open Science Without Sacrificing Ip Rights, Or Cohen Sasson, Ofer Tur‐Sinai

Articles

No abstract provided.

Degrees Of Confidence As A Legal Tool To Assess Ai System Liability, Joshua Song

Michigan Technology Law Review

AI systems have become increasingly integrated into our everyday lives, and harms caused by these systems have graduated from raising hypothetical ethical concerns to questions of actual legal liability. Civil liability schemes are generally designed to address harms caused by humans; thus, it may be tempting to analogize new types of harms caused by AI systems to familiar harms caused by humans in order to justify commandeering existing human-centered legal tools to assess AI liability. However, the analogy is inappropriate and misrepresents salient legal differences in how harms are committed by humans and AI systems. Thus, “as is often the …

User Guided Abductive Proof Generation For Answer Set Programming Queries, Avishkar Mahajan, Martin Strecker, Meng Weng (Huang Mingrong) Wong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

We present a method for generating possible proofs of a query with respect to a given Answer Set Programming (ASP) rule set using an abductive process where the space of abducibles is automatically constructed just from the input rules alone. Given a (possibly empty) set of user provided facts, our method infers any additional facts that may be needed for the entailment of a query and then outputs these extra facts, without the user needing to explicitly specify the space of all abducibles. We also present a method to generate a set of directed edges corresponding to the justification graph …

Indiana Law Fertility Expert A Resource On Fraud Legislation, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

A piece of new, bipartisan legislation that would make knowingly misrepresenting the nature or source of DNA used in assisted reproductive procedures or other fertility treatments a federal crime has a tie to the Maurer School of Law.

Jody Madeira, a nationally recognized expert on fertility fraud, bioethics, and law and medicine, worked with victims of fertility fraud as they sought ways to develop legislation making the act a crime.

Auris Health, Inc. V. Intuitive Surgical Operations: A New “Rigid Rule” For Patent Obviousness, Moawad, Jake

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

AURIS HEALTH, INC. V. INTUITIVE SURGICAL

OPERATIONS:

A NEW “RIGID RULE” FOR PATENT OBVIOUSNESS Auris Health, Inc. v. Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc.,

32 F.4th 1154 (Fed. Cir. 2022)♦

A Look At The Current Status Of The Crispr Patent Interferences Involving Broad Institute, University Of California And University Of Vienna, Toolgen, And Sigma-Aldrich, Christopher M. Holman

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Federal Circuit Declines To Find Patent Claims Indefinite For Broad Descriptive Words (And An Ode To 1l Civil Procedure), Barbier, Janelle

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

FEDERAL CIRCUIT DECLINES TO FIND PATENT CLAIMS INDEFINITE FOR BROAD DESCRIPTIVE WORDS (AND AN ODE TO 1L CIVIL PROCEDURE)

Niazi Licensing Corporation v. St. Jude Medical S.C., Inc., 30 F.4th 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2022)♦

A Proposed Analytical Framework For Resolving An Intra-Court Split On Claim Construction Ambiguity, Perez, Erik I.

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The Federal Circuit was created to ensure patent law consistency by reducing inter-circuit splits.1 For decades, the Federal Circuit has oscillated between two standards associated with claim construction. This Article attempts to explain, analyze, and propose a solution to the intra-court split on claim construction. Part I examines the historical overview of patent litigation. This section briefly describes patent document sections, protectable patent rights, and patent interpretation shifts, from relying on the patent’s specification, to the patent’s claim. Part II examines current patent law. This section briefly describes how patent claims are interpreted and what role the specification aids in …

A Reconceptualization Of Website Accessibility Under The Ada: Resolving The Inter-Circuit Conflict Post-Pandemic, Lazar, Jonathan, Ferleger, David

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

The federal circuit courts of appeals are in conflict over whether Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires public accommodations’ websites to be accessible to people with disabilities. Some courts consider websites themselves to be a covered “place of public accommodation.” Others conclude that websites are not covered at all. The predominant view is that a website must be accessible if it has a “nexus” to a physical public location. However, the “nexus” requirement has been problematic from the start and its weaknesses have been particularly exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic exposes a deep mismatch between …

Flattening The Curve While Protecting Our Right To Privacy: How The United States Can Implement The Digital Contract Tracing Efforts Used In East Asia, Evan Morris

Global Business Law Review

This paper looks at the digital contact tracing efforts implemented by other nations and assesses how similar measures could operate under enacted and proposed United States laws. Part I overviews the history of contact tracing and its effectiveness in prior disease outbreaks. Part II delves into the digital contact tracing efforts implemented by South Korea and Singapore. These summaries include: the digital contact tracing efforts taken, the laws that authorize these efforts, the public’s reception, and the overall effectiveness of the efforts. Part III overviews the digital contact tracing efforts in the United States, including proposed legislation aimed at user …

Cyborgs And The Americans With Disabilities Act, Lou Colasanti

Student Scholarship

Medical technology is advancing at lightning speed with the potential to drastically benefit the disabled. These new technologies will result in humans who will use a wide array of assistive technologies and will likely be labelled as Cyborgs. Assistive technologies such as self-driving cars, robots, computer chip implants, insertable medical hardware, and exoskeletons are already well developed. The day is rapidly approaching when Cyborgs as a class will be large and influential. Critically, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the judges tasked with enforcing this legislation, and the legislature itself are all ill equipped to handle the speed of this …

Competition And Innovation: The Breakup Of Ig Farben, Felix Poege

Faculty Scholarship

The relationship between competition and innovation is difficult to disentangle, as exogenous variation in market structure is rare. The 1952 breakup of Germany’s leading chemical company, IG Farben, represents such a disruption. After the Second World War, the Allies occupying Germany imposed the breakup because of IG Farben’s importance for the German war economy instead of standard antitrust concerns. In technology areas where the breakup reduced concentration, patenting increased strongly, driven by domestic firms unrelated to IG Farben. An analysis of patent texts shows that an increased propensity to patent does not drive the effect. Descriptively, IG Farben’s successors increased …

Zen And The Art Of Repair Manuals: Enabling A Participatory Right To Repair Through An Autonomous Concept Of Eu Copyright Law, Anthony D. Rosborough

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Repair manuals are an essential resource for repairing today’s modern and computerised devices. And though these manuals may contain purely utilitarian and uncopyrightable facts, they often receive copyright protection in their entirety as literary works. This protection can impede community-based efforts toward fostering a culture of participatory repair throughout the EU, including repair cafés and tool libraries. Participatory repair activities provide numerous environmental, social, and economic benefits. This article explores whether directive 2001/29/EC’s exception for “uses in connection with the repair or demonstration of equipment” at Article 5(3)(l) (the “Repair Exception”) may offer an avenue for enabling such non-profit participatory …

Dark Systems: Reprogramming Artificial Intelligence Regulations To Promote Fairness And Employment Nondiscrimination, Wennagel, Robert

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

Automated decision-making (“ADM”) systems, whether deploying artificial intelligence, machine learning, or other algorithmic processes, have become ubiquitous in modern life, but their use is often unnoticed or invisible to society at large. Currently no federal laws require notice or disclosure to individuals when an ADM is used to collect their data, evaluate them, or make determinations about their lives. This is particularly concerning for the employment relationship because notice and transparency are essential for personal privacy, and the surreptitious use of ADM systems deprives applicants and employees of the ability to understand employers’ decision-making processes and to seek redress under …

Physiognomic Artificial Intelligence, Luke Stark, Jevan Hutson

Articles

The reanimation of the pseudosciences of physiognomy and phrenology at scale through computer vision and machine learning is a matter of urgent concern. This Article—which contributes to critical data studies, consumer protection law, biometric privacy law, and antidiscrimination law—endeavors to conceptualize and problematize physiognomic artificial intelligence (“AI”) and offer policy recommendations for state and federal lawmakers to forestall its proliferation.

Physiognomic AI, as this Article contends, is the practice of using computer software and related systems to infer or create hierarchies of an individual’s body composition, protected class status, perceived character, capabilities, and future social outcomes based on their physical …

Data Vu: Why Breaches Involve The Same Stories Again And Again, Woodrow Hartzog, Daniel Solove

Shorter Faculty Works

In the classic comedy Groundhog Day, protagonist Phil, played by Bill Murray, asks “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” In this movie, Phil is stuck reliving the same day over and over, where the events repeat in a continual loop, and nothing he does can stop them. Phil’s predicament sounds a lot like our cruel cycle with data breaches.

Every year, organizations suffer more data spills and attacks, with personal information being exposed and abused at alarming rates. While Phil …