Law Commons^™

All The News That’S Fit To Be Identified: Facilitating Access To High-Quality News Through Internet Platforms, Sonja R. West, Jonathan Peters, Lefteris Jason Anastasopolous

Scholarly Works

Roughly half of Americans get some of their news from social media, and nearly two-thirds get some of their news from search engines. As our modern information gatekeepers, these internet companies bear a special responsibility to consider the impact of their platform and site policies on users’ access to high-quality news sources. They should adopt policies that clear the digital pathway between the public and press by facilitating such access. To that end, the companies must first, address the threshold issue of how best to identify high-quality news sources. This article examines factors that would be useful, drawing from legal …

Brokered Abuse, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

Data brokers are abuse enablers. These companies, which traffic information about people for profit, facilitate interpersonal abuse by making it easier to find and contact people. By thwarting people’s obscurity, brokers expose them to physical, psychological, financial, and reputational harm. To date, there have been four common legal responses to this situation: prohibiting abusive acts, mandating broker transparency, limiting data collection, and restricting data disclosure. Though these measures each have some merit, none is adequate, and several recent privacy laws have even made matters worse. Put simply, the current legal landscape is neither effective nor empathetic.

This Essay explores the …

Juridical Discourse For Platforms, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has created a private “Supreme Court,” or so he says. Since 2021, his company’s Oversight Board has issued verdicts on a smattering of Facebook’s decisions about online speech. Cynics frame the Board as a Potemkin village, but defenders invoke analogies to separation of powers to claim that this new body empowers the public and restrains the company. Some are even calling for a single “platform supreme court” to rule over the entire industry.

Juridical discourse for platforms is powerful, but it can also be deceptive. This Response explores how juridical discourse has legitimized and empowered Facebook’s …

Athens News Matters: Cyber Abuse And Intimate Partner Violence, Thomas E. Kadri

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Digital Gatekeepers, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

If in William Blackstone's time we might have thought of a person's home as their castle, in Mark Zuckerberg's time we might say that their website is too. Under cyber-trespass laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, courts have treated online platforms as digital gatekeepers--as property owners that may permit and restrict access to websites much like landowners may do with private land in the real world. If platforms withhold their consent through words or inference, cyber-trespass laws let them enforce their preferences about who may access their services and gather information from the internet. Concerned about reputations and …

Networks Of Empathy, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

Digital abuse is on the rise. People increasingly use technology to perpetrate and exacerbate abusive conduct like stalking and harassment, manipulating digital tools to control and harm their victims. By some accounts, 95% of domestic-abuse cases involve technology, while a sizeable chunk of the U.S. population now admits to having suffered or perpetrated serious abuse online. To make matters worse, people often trivialize digital abuse or underestimate its prevalence. Even among those who do appreciate its severity, there remains ample disagreement about how to address it.

Although law can be a powerful tool to regulate digital abuse, legal responses are …

The “Sovereigns Of Cyberspace” And State Action: The First Amendment’S Application (Or Lack Thereof) To Third-Party Platforms, Jonathan Peters

Scholarly Works

Many scholars have commented that the state action doctrine forecloses use of the First Amendment to constrain the policies and practices of online service providers. But few have comprehensively studied this issue, and the seminal article exploring “[c]yberspace and the [s]tate [a]ction [d]ebate” is fifteen years old, published before the U.S. Supreme Court reformulated the federal approach to state action. It is important to give the state action doctrine regular scholarly attention, not least because it is increasingly clear that “the private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression.” It is critical to understand whether the First …

No. 9 - Cybersecurity And National Defense: Building A Public-Private Partnership, Rebecca H. White, C. Donald Johnson, Loch K. Johnson, Quentin E. Hodgson, Jamil Jaffer, Clete D. Johnson, Victoria Woodbine, Timothy L. Meyer, Adam Golodner, Barry Hensley, Andrea Matwyshyn, Jacob Olcott

Occasional Papers Series

Organized and sponsored by the Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy, Cybersecurity and National Defense: Building a Public-Private Partnership was a daylong conference exploring issues related to the national security dimensions of cyber attacks as well as the role of the private sector in addressing cybersecurity risks. The overarching theme was the scope of public-private collaboration in addressing cybersecurity risks and the potential for future cooperation between government and the private sector. Clete D. Johnson, Chief Counsel for Cybersecurity at the Federal Communications Commission gave a lunchtime address on the FCC’s approach to communications security in the Internet …

To Reveal Or Conceal?—An Isp’S Dilemma, Presenting A New “Anonymous Public Concern Test” For Evaluating Isp Subpoenas In Online Defamation Suits, Cayce Myers

LLM Theses and Essays

This article proposes a new test called the “Anonymous Public Concern Test” which incorporates public concern analysis in enforcing Internet Service Provider [ISP] subpoenas in online defamation suits. Anonymous speech is an important aspect of First Amendment rights that warrants protection. Current tests used by courts to analyze whether to enforce ISP subpoenas are either too pro-plaintiff or too pro-defendant. The article’s proposed “Anonymous Public Concern Test” is the best approach in dealing with ISP subpoenas because it protects both anonymous speeches and preserves online defamation plaintiffs’ rights.

Protecting Children From The Dark Side Of The Internet, Anne Dupre, John Dayton, Christine Kiracofe

Scholarly Works

This article examines the history of judicial and legislative responses to the issue of consumption of pornography and other harmful materials over the Internet by children. The article begins by giving a brief overview of free speech law in the US. Next, summaries of relevant U.S. legislation and corresponding litigation on Internet free speech are given. Highlighted are: 1) the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and the U.S. Supreme Court’s response in Reno v. ACLU; 2) The Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) and Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition; 3) the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and United States v. American …

Deconstructing The Debate Over State Taxation Of Electronic Commerce, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

Elsewhere on these pages, the distinguished economist Charles McLure begins his contribution to the debate over taxation of electronic commerce by observing that “America is focusing on the wrong issues in debating the taxation of electronic commerce ....” He proceeds to provide a fundamental critique of the states' existing sales tax regimes and he lays out a roadmap for radical reform of the system that would, in the course of curing the basic defects in the existing state sales tax structure, incidentally resolve many of the issues that currently dominate the debate over taxing electronic commerce. I do not disagree …

Securities Disclosure Regime - Challenges Posed By The Internet And Technology, Thomas Thomas Thoppil

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis is an effort to evaluate the structural changes that have taken place in the securities market of the United States and its impact on securities disclosure regime mandated by the Federal Securities Act. Part 2 of the thesis discusses the securities disclosure regime and its underlying economic theories. This part also traces the challenges posed by technology and takes a quick look at the argument that the traditional norms are incompatible in dealing with those challenges. Part 3 deals primarily with structural developments in the securities market over the past five years by examining some of the innovative …

Liability Issues Facing Online Businesses, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

Online businesses are confronted by a wide variety of liability issues covering almost the full range of the standard law school curriculum. The liability problems that face a small business in Vidalia, Georgia, which is selling Vidalia onion products at specialty stores, through print advertising, and by mail, do not go away when the business starts marketing through a Web site. In fact, there might be more exposure doing business online, and there are variations depending upon the nature of the business in question. For example, as discussed below, an Internet Service Provider ("ISP") like America Online has worries that …

State Taxation Of Electronic Commerce: Perspectives On Proposals For Change And Their Constitutionality, Kendall L. Houghton, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

Over the past few years, an enormous amount of attention has been devoted to the problems raised by state taxation of electronic commerce, possible solutions to those problems, and, more recently, the question of whether there is a ‘problem‘ at all. We have both been, and continue to be, deeply involved in the debate over these issues -- a debate that has sometimes generated more heat than light. We view this forum as furnishing us an opportunity to take a step back from the fray and to offer our views not only on the critical issues that are dominating the …

Taxing The Reticulum Taxation And Tariff Issues In Electronic Commerce, Neil Lovett Wilkinson

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis will explore, first within a historical context, and second, in a contemporary model, the impact and effect of electronic commerce in both a general and Electronic magazines. The thesis will explore governmental and legal responses, from a taxation and tariff point of view to the challenges posed by commercial transactions initiated and completed via the Internet and the World Wide Web. The broad question is therefore presented: How should governments, primarily American state and local governments, but also governments worldwide, respond to changes in technology that have a direct effect on the way business is conducted within their …

Is The Trips Agreement An Adequate Means To Deal With Unauthorized Copying Of Sound Recordings From The Internet?, Hege Sehested Zakariassen

LLM Theses and Essays

The Internet has expanded vastly in recent years, both in use and utility. It has become one of the most important means of distributors of information in our time. This increasing popularity has also led to "online fraud, theft, piracy, and infringement. The music industry is one of the branches that will experience upheaval in the next few years. The Internet might even change the way music is distributed. Experts believe that the Internet could alter the way music is distributed and undermine the physical distribution of sound recordings. Yet, on the other hand, the Internet could help unknown bands …

The Law Of Sales Taxes In A Cyberspace Economy, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

This article focuses on three questions of state sales’ tax:

(1) What is the basic structure of states’ sales tax laws and how do these laws apply to electronic commerce?

(2) What are the existing federal constitutional restraints on the states’ power to impose sales taxes and how do those restraints limit the states’ ability to apply their laws to electronic commerce?

(3) What are the restraints on Congress – to whom this commission’s recommendations will be directed – in legislating to limit or expand state taxing power, or otherwise enact rules governing taxation of electronic commerce?

State And Local Taxation Of Electronic Commerce: Reflections On The Emerging Issues, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

When Ed Cohen honored me with the invitation to present the principal paper on state and local taxation of electronic commerce for this conference, I was pleased to accept, but with one caveat. Because most of my waking hours over the past year seem to have been consumed by the preparation of papers addressed to state taxation of electronic commerce, I warned Ed that much of what I might have to say would not be new -- at least to me. But a funny thing happened on the way to this forum. When I set about my task to prepare …

Taxing Electronic Commerce: Preliminary Thoughts On Model Uniform Legislation, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

This report on Taxing Electronic Commerce was presented at the symposium on multi-jurisdictional taxation of electronic commerce at Harvard University on April 5, 1997. This report describes the normative principles shared by most serious analyses of the problems raised by state taxation of electronic commerce. It then attempts to translate these principles into legal rules that could provide a model for uniform legislation in this area. Finally it addresses constitutional questions that will likely be encountered in any effort to implement such legislation.

State Taxation Of Electronic Commerce, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

The coming of the information age has profound implications for state taxation as it does for just about everything else. The exponential growth and increasing commercialization of the Internet, along with the sweeping technological and regulatory changes that have reconfigured the telecommunications industry, pose a daunting challenge to the states’ traditional approaches to taxing business activity and the telecommunications system that facilitates it. State tax administrators and policymakers, alarmed at the prospect that their tax bases will disappear into cyberspace, are seeking means to accommodate their taxing regimes to the new technological environment. The business community, on the other hand, …

Taxation Of Telecommunications And Electronic Commerce, Walter Hellerstein

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Legal Aspects Of The Internet, Etienne Pichat

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis will explain the legal aspects of the Internet so that users who wish to protect their rights and avoid liability can log on with a better understanding of the rules of the game. This work will be divided into two chapters. The first chapter will focus on existing legal regulation of the Internet to advise users on which law is relevant, and how to solve problems of conflicts of laws in the cyberworld. It will answer the question of whether cyberspace is, or not, a "no laws land", and what kind of regulation would better fit the cyberworld. …