Law Commons^™

Digital Terror Crimes, Cody Corliss

Law Faculty Scholarship

Terror actors operating within armed conflict have weaponized social media by using these platforms to threaten and spread images of brutality in order to taunt, terrify, and intimidate civilians. These acts or threats of violence are terror, a prohibited war crime in which acts or threats of violence are made with the primary purpose of spreading terror among the civilian population. The weaponization of terror content through social media is a digital terror crime.

This article is the first to argue that the war crime of terror applies to digital terror crimes perpetrated through social media platforms. It situates digital …

The Legality Of Online Daily Fantasy Sports Versus The Illegality Of Online Poker, John J. Chung

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Eu Privacy Law And U.S. Surveillance: Solving The Problem Of Transatlantic Data Transfers, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Data Scams, Roger Allan Ford

Law Faculty Scholarship

Targeting platforms like Google and Facebook are usually seen as presenting tradeoffs between utility and privacy. This Article identifies and describes a different, non-privacy cost of targeting platforms: they make it easier for malicious actors to scam others. They do this by making it easier for scammers to reach the most promising victims, hide from law-enforcement authorities and others, and develop better scams. Technology offers potential solutions, since the same data and targeting tools that enable scams could help detect and prevent them, though neither platforms nor law-enforcement officials have both the incentives and expertise needed to develop and deploy …

Introductions, Tonya M. Evans, Julia Spivak

Law Faculty Scholarship

An introduction to the Symposium and an introduction to Blockchain technology in preparation for the topics of the rest of the symposium.

Panel 2: Art Law And Blockchain, Tonya M. Evans, Derek Fincham, Katya Fisher, Jeanne L. Schroeder

Law Faculty Scholarship

Panel presentation on Art Law and Blockchain at 2019 AELJ Spring Symposium: Digital Art & Blockchain.

The Role Of International Rules In Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Commercial Disputes, Tonya M. Evans

Law Faculty Scholarship

[excerpt] The concept of online dispute resolution (ODR) is not new. 1 But, with the advent of Web 3.0, the distributed web that facilitates pseudonymous and cross-border transactions via blockchain's distributed ledger technology, 2 the idea of, and pressing need for, appropriate dispute resolution models for blockchain-based disputes to support this novel system of distributed consensus and trust of which blockchain proponents boast, is a primary concern in rapid development. 3 The common goal of each project is to utilize smart contracts to facilitate "superior, quicker[,] and less expensive proceedings by eliminating so many of the tedious and protracted trappings …

Unbundling Employment Flexible Benefits For The Gig Economy, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

Federal labor law requires employers to give employees a rigid bundle of benefits, including the right to unionize, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation insurance, health insurance, family medical leave, and more. These benefits are not free—benefits cost about one-third of wages—and someone must pay for them. Which of these benefits are worth their cost? This Article takes a theoretical approach to that problem and proposes a flexible benefits solution.

Labor law developed under a traditional model of work: long-term employees depended on a single employer to engage in goods-producing work. Few people work that way today. Instead, modern workers are increasingly …

Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (“JOBS Act”) of 2012 into law to “help entrepreneurs raise the capital they need to put Americans back to work and create an economy that’s built to last.” The goal is to “democratize startups” by making capital available to diverse entrepreneurs in new geographies. Yet the net effect of securities regulations and market conditions is the opposite. Startup companies are encouraged to stay private so capital is consolidating in large, mature firms instead of recycling into new startups. Evidence of consolidation is that once-rare “Unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) now number at least 170. …

Doj’S “All-Tools” Approach To Cyber And National Security, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ip Basics: Copyright On The Internet, Thomas G. Field Jr.

Law Faculty Scholarship

This discussion focuses on copyright issues most apt to concern those who post to or own email lists or those who have put up web pages. Such matters as the fundamental distinction between works that are and are not "for hire," registration, and issues to consider in transferring copyright interests are treated in other copyright discussions above.

Bridgefunding Crowdfunding And The Market For Entrepreneurial Finance, Seth C. Oranburg

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the business environment of entrepreneurial finance through the lens of securities regulations. It finds that regulators should be more concerned with protecting investors from startup failure than from crowdfunding fraud. It recommends an amendment to Regula- tion Crowdfunding that may enable startup success: the limit on fun- draising should be raised from $1 to $5 million.

Yale Symposium: Unpacking Nsa's Global Problem, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Of Relevance And Reform Under Section 215, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fisc Query Preapproval: Intelligence Burden Or Bump In The Road?, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judge Pauley’S Opinion In Clapper: Reset Button For Bulk Collection Debate?, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article was originally found in Lawfare, available here: https://www.lawfareblog.com/judge-pauleys-opinion-clapper-reset-button-bulk-collection-debate

Desperately Seeking Substance (Not Slogans) In Review Group Report On Nsa Surveillance, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Portrait Of The Internet As A Young Man, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrain’s1 2008 book The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be “We have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature.” Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes …

Internet Defamation As Profit Center: The Monetization Of Online Harassment, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

Efforts to decrease the sexist aspects of online fora have been largely ineffective, and in some instances seemingly counterproductive, in the sense that they have provoked even greater amounts of abuse and harassment with a gendered aspect. And so, in the wake of a series of high profile episodes of cyber sexual harassment, and a grotesque abundance of low profile ones, a new business model was launched. Promising to clean up and monitor online information to defuse the visible impact of coordinated harassment campaigns, a number of entities began to market themselves as knights in cyber shining armor, ready to …

Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically And Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom,' By Yochai Benkler, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the …

Women In The Web Of Secondary Copyright Liability And Internet Filtering, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Essay suggests possible explanations for why there is not very much legal scholarship devoted to gender issues on the Internet; and it asserts that there is a powerful need for Internet legal theorists and activists to pay substantially more attention to the gender-based differences in communicative style and substance that have been imported from real space to cyberspace. Information portals, such as libraries and web logs, are "gendered" in ways that may not be facially apparent. Women are creating and experiencing social solidarity online in ways that male scholars and commentators do not seem to either recognize or deem …

The Hegemony Of The Copyright Treatise, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

This Article asserts that major conceptions about the appropriate structure, texture, and span of copyright protections and privileges have been fashioned by copyright treatises, particularly the various editions of Nimmer on Copyright. Copyright treatises function in concert with the machinations of Congress, the courts, and custom, but their role is not often scrutinized.

Because copyright treatises typically do a far better job than Congress or the courts of explicating copyright law in straightforward and accessible language, such treatises can not only communicate the copyright law, but also influence its development and direction. Policy makers no doubt understand that content owners …