Law Commons^™

Embedding Content Or Interring Copyright: Does The Internet Need The "Server Rule"?, Jane C. Ginsburg, Luke Ali Budiardjo

Faculty Scholarship

The “server rule” holds that online displays or performances of copyrighted content accomplished through “in-line” or “framing” hyperlinks do not trigger the exclusive rights of public display or performance unless the linker also possesses a copy of the underlying work. As a result, the rule shields a vast array of online activities from claims of direct copyright infringement, effectively exempting those activities from the reach of the Copyright Act. While the server rule has enjoyed relatively consistent adherence since its adoption in 2007, some courts have recently suggested a departure from that precedent, noting the doctrinal and statutory inconsistencies underlying …

Baum Lecture 2010, Lee C. Bollinger

Faculty Scholarship

As part of the Baum Lecture Series at the University of Illinois College of Law, Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger delivered a lecture on September 14, 2010, on the essential role of a global free press in providing the information needed to understand the many problematic issues we face as a result of globalization. In this presentation, President Bollinger addressed the challenges of maintaining high-quality institutions of American journalism with an international reporting capacity in the face of rapidly changing market forces. He further discussed America’s interest in seeing the rise of a free and independent press in nations …

Implications Of The Internet For Quasi-Legislative Instruments Of Regulation, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

It is a quarter century since I began telling my Administrative Law students that they had better be watching the Internet and how agencies of interest to them were using it, as they entered an Information Age career. The changes since then have been remarkable. Rulemaking, where the pace has perhaps been slowest, is now accelerating into the Internet, driven by a President committed to openness and consultation. This paper seeks little more than to point the reader toward the places where she can find the changes and watch them for herself.

Just One Click: The Reality Of Internet Retail Contracting, Ronald J. Mann, Travis Siebeneicher

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the enforceability and presence of pro-seller contract terms in internet retail contracts. Analyzing case law on internet contract enforceability and a survey of 500 firms'websites, it demonstrates that even the enforceability of many internet contracts is questionable. It then presents new data that suggest that the prevalence of pro-seller contract terms is far less than usually assumed. It suggests that the benefit of making these terms enforceable is outweighed by the loss of user friendliness required for the necessary interface changes. Finally, it uses fresh statistical analyses to determine what relationship, if any, exists between enforceability, pro-seller …

A Tale Of Two Platforms, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

This paper discusses future competitions between cellular and computer platforms, in the context of a discussion of Jonathan Zittrain, The Generative Internet, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 1974 (2006).

China's Network Justice, Benjamin L. Liebman, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

China's Internet revolution has set off a furious debate in the West. Optimists from Thomas Friedman to Bill Clinton have predicted the crumbling of the Chinese Party-state ("Party-state"), while pessimists suggest even greater state control. But a far less discussed and researched subject is the effect of China's Internet revolution on its domestic institutions. This Article, the product of extensive interviews across China, asks a new and different question. What has China's Internet revolution meant for its legal system? What does cheaper, if not free, speech mean for Chinese judges?

The broader goal of this Article is to better understand …

Network Neutrality: Competition, Innovation, And Nondiscriminatory Access, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

The best proposals for network neutrality rules are simple. They ban abusive behavior like tollboothing and outright blocking and degradation. And they leave open legitimate network services that the Bells and Cable operators want to provide, such as offering cable television services and voice services along with a neutral internet offering. They are in line with a tradition of protecting consumer's rights on networks whose instinct is just this: let customers use the network as they please. No one wants to deny companies the right to charge for their services and charge consumers more if they use more. But what …

The World Trade Law Of Censorship And Internet Filtering, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Consider the following events, all from the last five years: (1) An American newsmagazine, Barron's, posts an unflattering profile of an Australian billionaire named Joseph Gutnick on its web site – the publisher, Dow Jones, Inc., is sued in Australia and forced to settle; (2) Mexico's incumbent telephone company, Telmex, blocks Mexicans from reaching the web site of the Voice-over-IP firm Skype; (3) the United States begins a major crackdown on web gambling services, causing serious economic damage to several small Caribbean economies; (4) the Chinese government prevents its citizens from using various foreign Internet services, including foreign e-mail and …

The Promise Of Internet Intermediary Liability, Ronald J. Mann, Seth R. Belzley

Faculty Scholarship

The Internet has transformed the economics of communication, creating a spirited debate about the proper role of federal, state, and international governments in regulating conduct related to the Internet. Many argue that Internet communications should be entirely self-regulated because such communications cannot or should not be the subject of government regulation. The advocates of that approach would prefer a no-regulation zone around Internet communications, based largely on the unexamined view that Internet activity is fundamentally different in a way that justifies broad regulatory exemption. At the same time, some kinds of activity that the Internet facilitates undisputedly violate widely shared …

The International Privacy Regime, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy has joined one of many areas of law understandable only by reference to the results of overlapping and conflicting national agendas. What has emerged as the de facto international regime is complex. Yet based on a few simplifying principles, we can nonetheless do much to understand it and predict its operation.

First, the idea that self-regulation by the internet community will be the driving force in privacy protection must be laid to rest. The experience of the last decade shows that nation-states, powerful nation-states in particular, drive the system of international privacy. The final mix of privacy protection that …

Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Communications regulators over the next decade will spend increasing time on conflicts between the private interests of broadband providers and the public's interest in a competitive innovation environment centered on the Internet. As the policy questions this conflict raises are basic to communications policy, they are likely to reappear in many different forms. So far, the first major appearance has come in the "open access" (or "multiple access") debate, over the desirability of allowing vertical integration between Internet Service Providers and cable operators. Proponents of open access see it as a structural remedy to guard against an erosion of the …

The Challenges Of Globally Accessible Process, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter embraces the strategic use of the Internet for achieving new forms of transparency and participation in the regulatory cooperation process. It explores ‘the challenges of globally accessible process’ through the use of new information technologies. It holds that the incorporation of these technologies in agency processes at the US federal level has created possibilities for the most transparent, participatory, and broadly deliberative regulatory system in the world to become still more so. The Internet promises not merely to expand access to information about the substance and process of regulation, but also to ‘move the government closer to the …