Law Commons^™

People V. Robots: A Roadmap For Enforcing California's New Online Bot Disclosure Act, Barry Stricke

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Bots are software applications that complete tasks automatically. A bot's communication is disembodied, so humans can mistake it for a real person, and their misbelief can be exploited by the bot owner to deploy malware or phish personal data. Bots also pose as consumers posting online product reviews or spread (often fake) news, and a bot owner can coordinate multiple social-network accounts to trick a network's "trending" algorithms, boosting the visibility of specific content, sowing and exacerbating controversy, or fabricating an impression of mass individual consensus. California's 2019 Bolstering Online Transparency Act (the "CA Bot Act') imposes conspicuous disclosure requirements …

Sharing The Costs Of Artificial Intelligence: Universal No-Fault Social Insurance For Personal Injuries, Jin Yoshikawa

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The twenty-first century is the artificial intelligence (AI) century. In the past few years, AI has become a familiar fixture of everyday life thanks to services like YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, and Alexa. Stocktraders, doctors, insurance brokers, real estate agents, recruiters, artists,and even lawyers now rely on predictive tools powered by AI to perform their highly skilled--even creative--tasks. In the following decades, AI will continue to transform more fields and deliver astonishing advancements in convenience, comfort, safety, and security. At the same time, however, AI will bring about new challenges. AI will offend, disrupt, crash, breach, incite, injure, and even kill …

Evil Nudges, Michal Lavi

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The seminal book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein demonstrates that policy makers can prod behavioral changes. A nudge is "any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives." This type of strategy, and the notion of libertarian paternalism at its base, prompted discussions and objections. Academic literature tends to focus on the positive potential of nudges and neglects to address libertarian paternalism that does not promote the welfare of individuals and third parties, but rather infringes on it-a concept this Article refers to …

Preemption Of State Law Claims Involving Medical Devices: Why Increasing Liability For Manufacturers Is A Perilous But Pivotal Proposition, Neil M. Issar

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

A circuit split regarding the preemptive scope of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976 (MDA) has widened over the past several years. The split encompasses both the circumstances under which the MDA implicitly preempts state law claims and the scope of the MDA's express preemption provision. Manufacturers of medical devices regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enjoyed many years of favorable rulings on the issue of federal preemption and deference to the primacy of FDA jurisdiction on monitoring or enforcement actions. However, the circuit split is reshaping the litigation landscape, and injured plaintiffs may rely on certain Circuit …

Free Agents: Should Crowdsourcing Lead To Agency Liability For Firms?, Erin R. Frankrone

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Crowdsourcing has emerged as a new production paradigm through which firms outsource traditional employee tasks to an undefined and generally large network of people, the "crowd," in the form of an open call. The relationships between the crowd and the firm vary across different crowdsourcing models and do not represent, either in fact or in theory, the employment or contractor relationships with which the law is familiar. Therefore, the law and the courts are ill-equipped to answer the questions of whether and how liability should attach to firms for the crowd's harmful conduct toward third parties. Agency law is the …

One Work, Three Infringers: Calculating The Correct Number Of Separate Awards Of Statutory Damages In A Copyright Infringement Action, Timothy L. Warnock

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Columbia Pictures provides the most persuasive analysis of the correct number of separate awards of statutory damages available to a plaintiff. Lime Group recognized that the question was a particularly close one, and the court erred in reaching the opposite result from Columbia Pictures. The Lime Group analysis is based on a fundamentally flawed earlier decision and relies, in the end, on an approach as likely to reward infringers rather than defend the rights of copyright holders: determining whether the potential result in any given case is absurd. Regarding the hypothetical case provided at the beginning of this Essay, Warren …

One Strike And You're Out: Alcohol In The Major League Baseball Clubhouse, Steven B. Berneman

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In the past decade, much has been written about Major League Baseball's (MLB) mistaken policies regarding performance-enhancing substance abuse by players. MLB executives are shortsighted, however, if they believe that steroids are the only substances being abused by players. Along with performance-enhancing drugs, professional baseball has a long-standing history of alcohol abuse. Steroids may provide better headlines--Congress has never held an investigation into alcohol abuse by professional athletes--but professional baseball faces a real danger from the unchecked liability of allowing players to overindulge at the ballpark and drive home shortly thereafter. By serving beer in the clubhouse after games, clubs …

A Libel Law Analysis Of Media Abuses In Reporting On The Duke Lacrosse Fabricated Rape Charges, David A. Elder

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The broad outlines of the monumental injustices involved in the Duke lacrosse rape-that-never-happened case are well known. An unethical local prosecutor, Michael B. Nifong, for partisan political reasons, pursued the Duke lacrosse team and ultimately indicted three of its members based almost solely on the accusations of a wholly unreliable, self-proclaimed victim. Nifong received generous support and sustenance from many left-leaning, politically active Duke faculty, an extraordinarily inept (or worse) Duke administration, and almost the entirety of the mainstream media. Ultimately, following a detailed analysis by his office, North Carolina Attorney General Roy A. Cooper publicly excoriated Nifong in concluding …

Xiaoning V. Yahoo! Inc.'S Invocation Of The Alien Tort Statute: An Important Issue But An Improper Vehicle, Denae Thomas

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

U.S.-based Internet service providers (ISPs) are faced with a dilemma when operating in countries with restrictive Internet speech laws: should they comply with these governments' demands for personally identifying information of Internet dissidents or respect their own country's dedication to free speech and refuse to comply? On behalf of Chinese dissidents who were imprisoned for violating Chinese speech laws, human rights advocates have invoked the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) in an attempt to hold ISPs accountable for their acquiescence with the Chinese government's demands. This Note examines one such case, Xiaoning v. Yahoo! Inc., and ultimately concludes that, while the …

Rider Beware: Relying On The Courts And A Nationalized Rating System To Address The Duty Of Care Owed To Amusement Park Attraction Guests, Tobias Butler

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This note explores the history of amusement park attraction regulation, including both the legislative and judicial treatment, and highlights the deficiencies in court approaches in light of "common carrier" law. First, is a brief history of thrill attractions in America as well as regulation of these attractions by both the legislature and judiciary. Specifically it will discuss the major approaches courts have taken in applying or refusing to apply the "common carrier" definition to these attractions. Second, it will analyze why any standard less than "utmost care" does not provide sufficient power for the courts to create a consistent standard …

Taking One For The Team: Should Colleges Be Liable For Injuries Occurring During Student Participation In Club Sports?, Nick White

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Since the 1970s, colleges have not been liable for their adult students' actions or injuries, but courts have since delineated many exceptions to this rule. This Note will analyze the effect of college involvement in club sports as to whether it creates a duty for a college to protect its club athletes and those they might injure. This Note will also examine whether such a duty might exist in the future if the current trends in the law and college policy continue unchecked. Finally, this Note will address the effectiveness of the current defenses to liability and the effect of …

Justice Isn't Deaf--A Behind The Scenes Look At How Bijoux Records' Executives Discuss The Potential Liability For Violence, Renee M. Moore

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

The music industry is an interesting phenomenon. It is a world that exists on image--and everyone has a say. For that very reason, the music industry is no stranger to critics. At its heart, they are what the industry is all about. Critics are the driving force in the business--their written and verbal exchange of ideas predicts the rise and fall of stars. Critics come in all shapes and sizes--they are the everyday consumer, the media at large, the hopeful artist, the record company executive, the legal scholar, and even our nation's government. This article will take you on a …

The Voluntary Practices: The Last-Gasp Of Big Time College Football And The Ncaa, Sarah Lemons

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

College football is desperately in need of new NCAA rules governing voluntary practices and the real problem is that coaches will always find a way to slip around the rules in order to seize the rewards of winning. Therefore, the NCAA must perform its duty and reform the rules to protect the health and well being of the collegiate football player, because as a voluntary association of a coalition of 960 member colleges, it has been given the authority to adopt rules governing its member institutions' recruiting, eligibility, financial aid and admissions.

Part II of this Note will begin by …

The Impact Of State Prohibitions Of Punitive Damages On Libel Litigation: An Empirical Analysis, Dennis Hale

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article explores the role of punitive damages in media libel cases by measuring the quantity and quality of libel appeals for a ten-year period in states with and without punitive damages. Specifically, the Article identifies appellate court decisions for media libel cases over a ten year period from 1986 to 1995, comparing five states with punitive damages (Alabama, New Mexico, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee) to five states without punitive damages (Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oregon and Washington). Each appeal of a federal or state media libel case was coded for the following characteristics: year, whether the media won …