Law Commons^™

Bridgefunding Is Crowdfunding For Startups Across The Private Equity Gap, Seth C. Oranburg

Seth C Oranburg

Title III of the JOBS Act of 2012, which attempts to encourage entrepreneurship by allowing startups and small business to sell stock to the general public over the Internet through “crowdfunding,” is completely backwards. Its ceiling should be a floor—the $1 million limit should be inverted. By capping startups at raising $1 million from crowdfunding, the JOBS Act does not address the private equity gap, a fundamental problem in startup markets, and exposes unsophisticated investors to risk and fraud. This Article presents a regulatory framework premised on “bridgefunding,” an approach that this article develops to protect new investors by encouraging …

Calling Out Maryland V. King: Dna, Cell Phones, And The Fourth Amendment, Jennie Vee Silk

Jennie Vee Silk

In Maryland v. King, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld a Maryland statute that permits police to obtain a DNA sample from an arrestee without a search warrant. A year later, the Court drastically changed course and provided significantly more protection to an arrestee’s privacy. In a unanimous decision, the Court in Riley v. California held that police must obtain a search warrant before they can search the cell phone of an arrestee.

This article is the first to compare the Court’s conflicting decisions in Riley and King. Riley and King present the same issue: governmental invasion of privacy for …

Bowman V. Monsanto: A Bellwether For The Emerging Issue Of Patentable Self-Replicating Technologies And Inadvertent Infringement, Christopher M. Holman

Christopher M Holman

The inherent tendency of patented seeds to self-replicate has led to fears that farmers might face liability for inadvertent patent infringement. To address the perceived problem, some have proposed severely limiting the availability of effective patent protection for self-replicating technologies, for example by denying patent rights to “second generation” self-replicating products, or even by broadly declaring such technologies ineligible for patent protection. The fact is, lawsuits against inadvertently infringing farmers remain of largely hypothetical concern. However, changes in the market could soon render such lawsuits a reality. In addressing the resulting policy concerns, the courts and/or Congress have at their …

Sustainable Cybersecurity: Applying Lessons From The Green Movement To Managing Cyber Attacks, Scott J. Shackelford, Tim Fort

Scott Shackelford

According to Frank Montoya, the U.S. National Counterintelligence Chief, “We’re an information-based society now. Information is everything. That makes . . . company executives, the front line – not the support mechanism, the front line – in [determining] what comes.”[1] Chief Montoya’s remarks underscore the central role played by the private sector in ongoing efforts aimed at enhancing cybersecurity, much like the increasingly vital role firms are playing in fostering sustainability. For example, according to Accenture surveys, the number of managers who consider sustainability to be critical to the future success of their organizations jumped from fifty to more …

How To Maneuver In The World Of Negative Online Reviews, The Important Ethical Considerations For Attorneys, And Changes Needed To Protect The Legal Profession, Angela Goodrum

Angela Goodrum

No abstract provided.

Transformative Teaching And Educational Fair Use After Georgia State, Brandon C. Butler

Brandon C. Butler

The Supreme Court has said that copyright’s fair use doctrine is a “First Amendment safety valve” because it ensures that certain crucial cultural activities are not unduly burdened by copyright. While many such activities (criticism, commentary, parody) have benefited from the courts’ increased attention to first amendment values, one such activity, education, has been mired for years in a minimalist, market-based vision of fair use that is largely out of touch with mainstream fair use jurisprudence. The latest installment in the history of educational fair use, the 11th Circuit’s opinion in the Georgia State e-reserves case, may be the last …

The Doctrine Of True Threats: Protecting Our Ever-Shrinking First Amendment Rights In The New Era Of Communication, Mary M. Roark

Mary M Roark

The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Such protection has withstood the test of time and is heralded as one of our most precious rights as Americans. “The hallmark of the protection of free speech is to allow ‘free trade in ideas’—even ideas that the overwhelming majority of people might find distasteful or discomforting." However, “[t]here are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem." One such proscribable form of speech is the “true …

Managing Cyberthreat, Lawrence J. Trautman

Lawrence J. Trautman Sr.

Cyber security is an important strategic and governance issue. However, because most corporate CEOs and directors have no formal engineering or information technology training, it is understandable that their lack of actual cybersecurity knowledge is problematic. Particularly among smaller companies having limited resources, knowledge regarding what their enterprise should actually be doing about cybersecurity can’t be all that good. My goal in this article is to explore the unusually complex subject of cybersecurity in a highly readable manner. First, an examination of recent threats is provided. Next, governmental policy initiatives are discussed. Third, some basic tools that can be used …

Toward A State-Centric Cyber Peace? Analyzing The Role Of National Cybersecurity Strategies In Enhancing Global Cybersecurity, Scott J. Shackelford, Andraz Kastelic

Scott Shackelford

There is a growing consensus that nations bear increasing responsibility for enhancing cybersecurity. A related recent trend has been the adoption of long-term strategic plans to help deter, protect, and defend against cyber threats. These national cybersecurity strategies outline a nation’s core values and goals in the realm of cybersecurity law and policy, from mitigating cybercrime and espionage to preparing for cyber warfare. This Article assesses the notion that nations bear the primary responsibility for managing cyber attacks and mitigating cybercrime by analyzing thirty-four national cybersecurity strategies as a vehicle to discover governance trends that could give rise to customary …

The New Wild West: Preventing Money Laundering In The Bitcoin Network, Kavid Singh

Kavid Singh

Bitcoin is the most popular online decentralized currency in the world. Created by an enigmatic figure, Satoshi Nakamoto, in 2009, its propagation and use has caused heated controversy. On the legal side of its use, businesses both large and small have started to accept bitcoins as a form of payment. On the illegal side of its use, large quantities of bitcoins worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen from businesses and large Bitcoin currency exchanges. The aim of this article is to introduce workable federal regulation that will help deter money laundering, a pervasive problem in the world …

The Evolution Of Internet Service Providers From Partners To Adversaries: Tracking Shifts In Interconnection Goals And Strategies In The Internet’S Fifth Generation, Rob Frieden

Rob Frieden

This paper will examine new models for the carriage of Internet traffic with an eye toward providing insights on how the interconnection process has changed and what positive and negative consequences have resulted. Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) interconnection used to constitute a cooperative undertaking, but now it increasingly requires difficult and protracted negotiations between ventures that consider themselves adversaries in a winner take all transaction. The paper concludes that new commercial arrangements, such as paid peering, can achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. However, the paper also identifies instances where migration from traditional interconnection arrangements can harm consumers by reducing some of …

Artificial Insemination From Donor (Aid) – From Status To Contract And Back Again?, Yehezkel Margalit

Hezi Margalit

The last few decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the institutions of family and parenthood and an abandonment of the historical emphasis on their bionormative structures. These changes are the result of societal shifts with respect to public openness and technological innovations that segregate marital relations from sexuality and fertility. The resultant parenthood structures, which depart from traditional spousal and parental models, intensify the ability and need to determine legal parenthood in numerous unprecedented contexts. Sir Henry Maine famously stated that mankind is pacing from status toward contract. This theme has had particular resonance during the past half century in …

Applying Software Development Techniques To Statutory Drafting, Hyun G. Lee

Hyun G Lee

This note will examine three characteristics common in poor statutory drafting: legalese, ambiguity, and poor conceptual organization. Legalese is the arcane, lawyerly language that is hard to understand for the layperson. Some common-sense solutions can counter the use of legalese. Ambiguity, which can be either semantic or syntactic, is the uncertainty due to the multiple valid interpretations of the statute. Normalization technique, adapted from the mathematical notation of symbolic logic, can eliminate most ambiguities. Poor conceptual organization results in conceptually related topics physically scattered throughout the statute. Hypertext, legal dialectic, and object-oriented analysis and design are possible solutions to this …