Law Commons^™

Virtual Parentalism, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Parents, not Laws, ultimately protect children both online and offline. If legislation places adults at legal risk because of the presence of children in virtual worlds, adults will exit those worlds, and children will be isolated into separate spaces. This will not improve safety for children. Instead, this Article suggests that Congress enact measures that encourage filtering technology and parental tools that will both protect children in virtual worlds, and protectfree speech online.

Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty State Survey, Chesa Boudin

Chesa Boudin

This paper presents a summary of the findings from the first fifty-state survey of prison visitation policies. Our research explores the contours of how prison administrators exercise their discretion to prescribe when and how prisoners may have contact with friends and family. Visitation policies impact recidivism, inmates’ and their families’ quality of life, public safety, and prison security, transparency and accountability. Yet many policies are inaccessible to visitors and researchers. Given the wide-ranging effects of visitation, it is important to understand the landscape of visitation policies and then, where possible, identify best practices and uncover policies that may be counterproductive …

Contracting In The Modern World, Enrico Baffi

enrico baffi

In this paper we try explore some of the basic features of mass contracting. In our opinion, there are basically four characteristics of mass contracting: the reduced negotiations, the dissemination of standard form contracts, the presence of abusive clauses, and the recapitulation of the contract and its execution in a single act of stipulation. a) The reduction in negotiations is the result first of all of the costs that this activity requires and of the costs required to manage personalised contracts; secondly, this reduction is the consequence of the greater advantage of mass-produced goods compared to personalised goods; ) The …

Ids Practice After Therasense And The Aia: Decoupling The Link Between Information Disclosure And Inequitable Conduct, Arpita Bhattacharyya, Michael R. Mcgurk

Arpita Bhattacharyya

An essential element of filing and prosecuting a patent application in the United States is the duty to disclose material information to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“Patent Office”) under 37 C.F.R. § 1.56 (Rule 56). The failure to disclose information can result in a later ruling of inequitable conduct and unenforceability of the patent. The Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in Therasense heightened the “materiality” and “intent” standards for finding inequitable conduct, but there has been much uncertainty in the patent community regarding the future of the duty of disclosure under Rule 56. The majority in Therasense …

Cyber-Terrorism: Finding A Common Starting Point, Jeffrey T. Biller

Jeffrey T Biller

Attacks on computer systems for both criminal and political purposes are on the rise in both the United States and around the world. Foreign terrorist organizations are also developing information technology skills to advance their goals. Looking at the convergence of these two phenomena, many prominent security experts in both government and private industry have rung an alarm bell regarding the potential for acts of cyber-terrorism. However, there is no precise definition of cyber-terrorism under United States law or in practice among cyber-security academicians. The lack of a common starting point is one of the reasons existing law fails to …

Broadcasting Licenses: Ownership Rights And The Spectrum Rationalization Challenge, J. Armand Musey Cfa

J. Armand Musey, CFA

This Article examines the showdown between television broadcast- ers and the government in light of the FCC’s plan to reallocate cur- rently licensed broadcast spectrum to signifcantly higher value mobile broadband use. The government seeks to do so in an economically, socially and legally effcient manner, and has indicated that it seeks a reallocation process that is voluntary for broadcasters. Nonetheless, any spectrum reallocation proceeding raises the question of whether, and to what extent, television broadcasters ultimately possess rights to licensed spectrum, and what type of compensation, if any, they would be owed if the FCC takes their spectrum licenses …

The Drones Are Coming! Will The Fourth Amendment Stop The Threat To Our Privacy., Robert Molko

Robert Molko

The Drones are coming!

Will the Fourth Amendment Stop their Threat to our Privacy?

Local police have begun to use drones and are planning to expand their use of to survey communities for criminal activity.

On February 14, 2012, President Obama signed the “FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012″ into law; it requires the FAA to expedite the process to authorize both public and private use of drones in the national navigable airspace.

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from unreasonable intrusions by the government and we have come to depend on that.

Today, in …

Humans And Humans+: Technological Enhancement And Criminal Responsibility, Susan W. Brenner

Susan Brenner

This article examines the implications our use of technological enhancements to improve our physical and/or cognitive abilities will necessarily have on the processes of imposing criminal responsibility on those who victimize others. It explains that while our use of such enhancements is still in its infancy, it is more than likely that their use will dramatically accelerate over the next century or less. The articles examines how law has historically approached the concept of a “legal person,” with reference to “normal” humans, “abnormal” humans, animals, objects, supernatural beings and juristic persons. It also reviews how two other authors have analyzed …

Toward Cyber Peace: Managing Cyber Attacks Through Polycentric Governance, Scott Shackelford

Scott Shackelford

Views range widely about the seriousness of cyber attacks and the likelihood of cyber war. But even framing cyber attacks within the context of a loaded category like war can be an oversimplification that shifts focus away from enhancing cybersecurity against the full range of threats now facing companies, countries, and the international community. Current methods are proving ineffective at managing cyber attacks, and as cybersecurity legislation is being debated in the U.S. Congress and around the world the time is ripe for a fresh look at this critical topic. This Article searches for alternative avenues to foster cyber peace …

The Large Immortal Machine And The Ticking Time Bomb, Susan Landau

Susan Landau

The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that digitally switched communications networks carrying voice be designed to accommodate (legally authorized) wiretaps. Since the law's passage, there have been a number of breaches in networks with CALEA-type switches. Despite the fact that CALEA is an "architected security breach," the Federal Communications Commission, whose role it is to promulgate CALEA requirements, the agency does not require any type of security testing or threat modeling for the switches. In this paper, I discuss the implications of the law to switch design, the breaches that have occurred, and what changes the …

Federal Common Law And The Courts’ Regulation Of Pre-Litigation Preservation, Joshua Koppel

Joshua M. Koppel

With the proliferation in recent years of electronically stored information and the skyrocketing cost of retaining large amounts of data, issues of preservation have played an increasing role in litigation. Companies and individuals that anticipate that they will be involved in litigation in the future may be obligated to preserve relevant evidence even before litigation is initiated. Because litigation has not yet commenced, they cannot seek clarification regarding their obligations from a court or negotiate them with an adverse party. Statutory or common law preservation duties play a large role in guiding potential litigants in this area.

The federal courts …

Copyright Lawmaking And The Public Choice: From Legislative Battles To Private Ordering, Yafit Lev-Aretz

Yafit Lev-Aretz

On January 18th, 2012, the Web went dark in the largest online protest in history. Two anti-piracy Bills – The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and The Protect IP Act (PIPA) – attracted waves of opposition from the Internet community, which culminated on January 18th into an unprecedented 24-hour Web strike, followed by a decision to shelve the Bills indefinitely. This Article argues that the SOPA/PIPA protest created a new political reality in copyright lawmaking, with the tech industry becoming a very influential actor on the one hand, and social networks lowering mobilization costs of individual users on the other …

Crowdsourcing A Trademark: What The Public Giveth, The Courts May Taketh Away, Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons

Llewellyn Joseph Gibbons

There is a long tradition of trademark holders relying on the public to create designations that they then adopt as trademark. Historically, this has been a long slow process. From the individual’s use of the term, to the acquisition of secondary meaning could take years. Web 2.0 social media has the potential to speed up this process. Frequently, these are nicknames for well-known brands, so they are potentially quite valuable. Trademark law is ambiguous regarding who owns a designation created by the public, if the individual claiming the mark have not appropriated the mark by actually using it in commerce. …

Substantive Rights In A Constitutional Technocracy, Abigail Moncrieff

Abigail R. Moncrieff

There are two deep puzzles in American constitutional law, particularly related to individual substantive rights, that have persisted across generations: First, why do courts apply a double standard of judicial review, giving strict scrutiny to noneconomic liberties but mere rational basis review to economic ones? Second, why does American constitutional law take the common law baseline as the free and natural state that needs to be protected? This Article proposes a technocratic vision of substantive rights to explain and justify both of these puzzles. The central idea is that modern substantive rights—the rights to speech, religion, association, reproduction, and parenting—protect …

The Curious Case Of Convenience Casinos: How Internet Sweepstakes Cafes Survive In A Gray Area Between Unlawful Gambling And Legitimate Business Promotions, Steven J. Silver

Steven Silver

Once relegated to the Nevada desert and New Jersey shore, gambling is now everywhere in the United States. State governments strapped for cash and desperate for increased tax revenues are welcoming gambling with open arms as forty-three states sponsor lotteries and twenty-three states house casinos. Despite this gaming boom, the ease of access to casinos has not deterred entrepreneurs from successfully creating an offshoot industry of “convenience casinos.” Convenience casinos are simply Internet cafes that sell Internet time cards attached with instant-win sweepstakes entries, much like the code underneath a Coke bottle or a McDonald’s Monopoly game piece. Although seemingly …

Consumers: The (Still) Missing Piece In A Piecemeal Approach To Privacy, Clark Asay

Clark Asay

U.S. consumers have little actual control over how companies collect, use, and disclose their personal information. This paper identifies two specific instances of this lack of control under U.S. law related to third-party disclosures, what I call the Incognito and Onward Transfer Problems. It then identifies the types of privacy harms that result and examines the advantages and possible drawbacks of a model law aimed at addressing these specific problems. The model law is based on a system of consumer notice and choice, the predominant method used in the U.S. to provide consumers with control over their information. Up until …

Reproductive Technology Development Of Artificial Wombs And Its Prospective Impact On Employment Law: How Federal Legislation Must Redefine “Birth” After Ectogenesis To Rectify 29 U.S.C.A. § 2612 Of The Family And Medical Leave Act Of 1993, Daniel J. Burns

Daniel J Burns

There are countless issues stemming recent advancements in the field of reproductive technology. This article focuses specifically on redefining “birth” to appropriately reflect how external fetal gestation will inevitably impact the future of both maternity and paternity leave in the United States and provides recommendations on how to rectify the currently ambiguous federal legislation.

Spectrum Rights For Complementary Connectivity, Sarah Oh

Sarah Oh

In spectrum policy, regulators define legal certainties to withstand the dynamics of technology change. Coordinated networks of wireless radios – over-the-air television antennas, 4G LTE mobile broadband, WiFi nodes, satellite dishes, GPS chips, and government devices – each depend on independent rulemakings to provide degrees of operational certainty. Yet innovative technologies can layer noise across radio constituencies with flexibility, as engineers rightly claim, if minds meet in economic alignment.

The stubborn challenge is a sequential one, as hardware design relies on existing knowledge and future uncertainty, with necessary conditions to stabilize emission patterns and harmful interference expectations. The state of …

Towards Determining Legal Parentage By Agreement In Israel, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

In Israel as in other parts of the world, families, parenthood, and relations between parents and children have changed dramatically over the past few decades. So, too, developments in modern medicine have enhanced the ability to separate sexuality from fertility and parenthood. Many researchers feel that the legal system has not kept pace with these changes, and that traditional models of familial relationships no longer provide adequate tools for dealing with them. In order to bridge the gap between a desired social status and current law, a growing number of parents seek to regulate the status, rights, and obligations of …

Determining Legal Parenthood By Agreement As A Possible Solution To The Challenges Of The New Era, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

Over the past decades, we witnessed changes in the matrimonial and parenting institutions. Medical innovations have further created ethical-legal dilemmas. It is, therefore, essential to create a theory and framework that will determine ways to deal with the resulting dilemma in a fully developed manner. This paper surveys the current, conflicting shifts in family structure and the definition of legal parenthood. In it, I deal with the importance and various aspects of defining legal parenthood. I will also focus on the singularity of this dilemma as it is increasingly apparent in the various fertility treatments. I present the sociological-legal roots …

Understanding Search Engines: A Legal Perspective Of Liability In The Internet Law Vista, Gönenç Gürkaynak, İlay Yılmaz, Derya Durlu

Gönenç Gürkaynak

This contribution discusses the legal dimension of the functioning of search engines in an Internet law context, both across the world and in Turkey. The paper initially introduces the subject matter in the growing Internet industry and the role of search engines in distributing and disseminating information. Secondly, a world-wide perspective on the legal dimension of search engines is discussed. Third, the liability of search engines as understood in the Turkish legal context is evaluated. The paper finally concludes by providing an overall evaluation of the general remarks submitted.

A Treaty Of Versailles - How Microsoft Wants To, And How They Could, End The Patent War, Andrew Pierz

Andrew Pierz

Android began as a project by Andy Rubin after developing the Sidekick. The project was soon acquired by Google and licensed as open-source technology for third parties, like Samsung and HTC, to use in their phones. After Microsoft fell in mobile market share, they began to pursue aggressive litigation and licensing deals. Google, after pledging to defend their manufacturing partners, announced they would acquire Motorola Mobility for their patent portfolio. The paper will explore the history of Android and Windows Mobile, the extent of Microsoft’s mobile patent portfolio, the structure of Microsoft’s various deals, the planned acquisition of Motorola Mobility …

The Discoverability Of E-Mails: The Smoking Gun Of The Modern Era, Michael J. Martin

Michael J Martin

The discoverability of e-mails is an area of law that every modern day lawyer must be familiar with in order to avoid the risk of being sanctioned. Over the past years, courts have awarded sanctions to moving parties at a steadily increasing pace. These sanctions have included adverse jury instructions, default judgments, attorney’s fees, large monetary fines, and in one instance, a jail sentence. Courts have sent the message that improper conduct will not be tolerated in this developing area of law by not hesitating to order sanctions. Thus, it is essential that modern day lawyers become acquainted with the …

Offensive Venue: The Curious Use Of Declaratory Judgment To Forum Shop In Patent Litigation, Chester S. Chuang

Chester S. Chuang

Forum shopping is widespread in patent litigation because there are clear differences in outcomes among the various federal districts. An accused patent infringer that is sued in a particularly disadvantageous forum can file a motion to transfer to a more convenient forum, but the general consensus is that such motions are difficult to win. Accordingly, accused infringers often file declaratory judgment actions to forum shop. Such actions allow accused infringers to preemptively sue the patent owner in the accused infringer’s preferred forum, and are considered by many to be the best way for accused infringers to play the forum shopping …

Shaping Preventive Policy In “Cyber War” And Cyber Security: A Pragmatic Approach, Tony Guo

Tony Guo

As the Egyptian government took the country offline—in an effort to squelch public dissent—the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give the President the same emergency powers to shut off “critical” Internet infrastructure in the event of a “cyber emergency.” This bill, along with others like it, has been introduced in light of recent political rhetoric on “cyber war.” The proponents of “cyber war” evoke images of large explosions, poison gas clouds, and a high degree of mortality. In reality, cyber warfare is a misleading metaphor, and has long been confused with crime and espionage. "Cyber war" is not …

Can A Computer Intercept Your Email?, Bruce E. Boyden

Bruce E. Boyden

In recent years it has become feasible for computers to rapidly scan the contents of large amounts of communications traffic to identify certain characteristics of those messages: that they are spam, contain malware, discuss various products or services, are written in a particular dialect, contain copyright-infringing files, or discuss symptoms of particular diseases. There is a wide variety of potential uses for this technology, such as research, filtering, or advertising. But the legal status of automated processing, if it is done without advance consent, is unclear. Where it results in the disclosure of the contents of a message to others, …

Law Student Laptop Use During Class For Non-Class Purposes: Temptation V. Incentives, Jeff Sovern

Jeff Sovern

ABSTRACT LAW STUDENT LAPTOP USE DURING CLASS FOR NON-CLASS PURPOSES: TEMPTATION v. INCENTIVES Jeff Sovern St. John’s University School of Law This article reports on how law students use laptops, based on observations of 1072 laptop users (though there was considerable overlap among those users from one class to another) during 60 sessions of six law school courses. Some findings: • More than half the upper-year students seen using laptops employed them for non-class purposes more than half the time, raising serious questions about how much they learned from class. By contrast, first-semester Civil Procedure students used laptops for non-class …

The Next Battleground? Personhood, Privacy, And Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

Personhood statutes and amendments have been proposed in several states. As a general matter, they establish as a matter of state law that legal personhood begins at conception. Such laws may have implications for state policies concerning abortion and contraception, and will have implications for other areas of law including state policies related to assisted reproductive technologies. Yet, some of the ways in which these different areas of law might be affected are not well understood and thus are explored here.

Autonomous Weapon Systems: A Coming Legal Singularity?, Benjamin N. Kastan

Benjamin N Kastan

Military robotics has long captured the popular imagination in movies, books and magazines. In recent years, this technology has moved from the realm of science fiction to reality. The precursors to truly autonomous weapons, the so-called “drones”, have generated a great deal of discussion. Few authors, however, have applied current law to the developing technology of autonomous military robots, or “autonomous weapon systems”. The treatment of such subjects in the ethics, robotics, and popular literature has generally assumed that autonomous systems either fit perfectly into existing legal regimes or threaten long-standing paradigms. This article demonstrates that neither assumption is correct. …

The Court Misses The Point Again In United States V. Jones: An Opt-In Model For Privacy Protection In A Post Google-Earth World, Mary G. Leary

Mary G Leary

“Nothing is private anymore.” This is an oft repeated sentiment by many Americans, not to mention the focus of judicial confusion and legislative blustering. In the wake of publicly available technologies such as Google Earth, internet tracking, cell phone triangulation, to name just a few, many people feel unable to prevent the government or anyone from obtaining private information. While this may seem simply a function of a modern world, this reality creates a fundamental problem for Fourth Amendment jurisprudence which has heretofore gone unrecognized. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. Therefore, in order for the …