Law Commons^™

States, Markets, And Gatekeepers: Public-Private Regulatory Regimes In An Era Of Economic Globalization, Christopher M. Bruner

Scholarly Works

This paper illuminates the spectrum of international economic regimes through discussion of an under-theorized regulatory structure in which traditional distinctions between state and market, public and private power, hard and soft law, and international and domestic policy realms, essentially collapse - the public-private gatekeeper.

Specifically, I examine striking similarities between global bond markets and e-commerce markets through comparison of entities regulating admission to them - the dominant credit rating agencies (Standard & Poor's and Moody's), and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Following anexamination of the development of these markets and the global regulatory power exercised by …

Before You Log-On: Incorporating The Free Web In Your Legal Research Strategy, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In 2006, the American Bar Association (ABA) published its Legal Technology Survey Report, which included a volume on Online Research. In the report, attorneys responded that 91% are conducting at least some of their research online. Though 39% report that they start their research using a fee-based service like Westlaw or Lexis, the report shows that even those who start their research with a fee-based resource eventually get it right-87% of attorneys report using some free online resources at some point over the course of a research project.

Using Open Access To Increase Personal Internet Presence, James M. Donovan

Institutional Repository Supporting Materials

Discusses ways to raise internet profile by taking advantage of open access scholarship opportunities

Demystifying The Right To Exclude: Of Property, Inviolability, And Automatic Injunctions, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

All Faculty Scholarship

The right to exclude has long been considered a central component of property. In focusing on the element of exclusion, courts and scholars have paid little attention to what an owner's right to exclude means and the forms in which this right might manifest itself in actual property practice. For some time now, the right to exclude has come to be understood as nothing but an entitlement to injunctive relief- that whenever an owner successfully establishes title and an interference with the same, an injunction will automatically follow. Such a view attributes to the right a distinctively consequentialist meaning, which …

Fifteen Minutes Of Infamy: Privileged Reporting And The Problem Of Perpetual Reputational Harm, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

This Article provides an overview of the labyrinth of media tort defenses, specifically the four privileges – fair comment, fair report, neutral reportage, and wire service – that come into play when the media republish defamatory content about criminal suspects and defendants without specific intent to injure. The Article then discusses these privileges in light of a hypothetical case involving a highly publicized crime and an indicted suspect, against whom charges are later dropped, but who suffers perpetual reputational harm from the out-of-context republication online of news related to his indictment. The Article demonstrates how the four privileges would operate …

Federal Search Commission? Access, Fairness, And Accountability In The Law Of Search, Oren Bracha, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

Should search engines be subject to the types of regulation now applied to personal data collectors, cable networks, or phone books? In this article, we make the case for some regulation of the ability of search engines to manipulate and structure their results. We demonstrate that the First Amendment, properly understood, does not prohibit such regulation. Nor will such interventions inevitably lead to the disclosure of important trade secrets.

After setting forth normative foundations for evaluating search engine manipulation, we explain how neither market discipline nor technological advance is likely to stop it. Though savvy users and personalized search may …

Garbage Pails And Puppy Dog Tails: Is That What Katz Is Made Of?, Aya Gruber

Publications

This Article takes the opportunity of the fortieth anniversary of Katz v. U.S. to assess whether the revolutionary case's potential to provide broad and flexible privacy protection to individuals has been realized. Answering this question in a circumspect way, the Article pinpoints the language in Katz that was its eventual undoing and demonstrates how the Katz test has been plagued by two principle problems that have often rendered it more harmful to than protective of privacy. The manipulation problem describes the tendency of conservative courts to define reasonable expectations of privacy as lower than the expectations society actually entertains. The …

Pornography, Coercion, And Copyright Law 2.0, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

The lack of regulation of the production of pornography in the United States leaves pornography performers exposed to substantial risks. Producers of pornography typically respond to attempts to regulate pornography as infringements upon free speech. At the same time, large corporations involved in the production and sale of pornography rely on copyright law's complex regulatory framework to protect their pornographic content from copying and unauthorized distribution. Web 2.0 also facilitates the production and distribution of pornography by individuals. These user-generators produce their own pornography, often looking to monetize their productions themselves via advertising revenues and subscription models. Much like their …

A Guide To Searching Cyberspace Law Online, Jennifer L. Selby

Law Librarian Scholarship

Cyberspace law is an umbrella term that touches on and encompasses many different areas of the law, including Internet, intellectual property, cybercrime, e-commerce, and privacy, among others. Cyberspace law includes aspects of United States law, in addition to foreign, comparative, and international law.1 Today, legal researchers in cyberspace law can enhance their search capabilities with web-based resources, including primary and secondary materials. Many of the resources discussed here are available freely on the Internet. For those resources that are licensed and networked, researchers may access them only at subscribing law libraries, and not remotely.2

The Public Domain: Enclosing The Commons Of The Mind, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

Our music, our culture, our science and our economic welfare all depend on a delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain. In his award-winning book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press) James Boyle introduces readers to the idea of the public domain and describes how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, …

A Winning Solution For Youtube And Utube? Corresponding Trademarks And Domain Name Sharing, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Articles

In June of 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled on a motion to dismiss various claims against the Youtube video-sharing service. The claimant was Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corp ("Universal"), a manufacturer of pipes and tubing products. Since 1996, Universal has used the domain name utube.com - phonetically the same as Youtube's domain name, youtube.com. Youtube.com was registered in 2005 and gained almost-immediate popularity as a video-sharing website. As a result, Universal experienced excessive web traffic by Internet users looking for youtube.com and mistakenly typing utube.com into their web browsers. Universal's servers …

Net Neutrality, Free Speech, And Democracy In The Internet Age, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Professor Nunziato's book explains why the growth of the Internet as the most open forum for free expression in history is now threatened by the privatization of the Internet, the gatekeeper control over expression exercised by a handful of corporate owners, and their power to censor what we say and read online. She sets forth how we got to this place and what must be done about it to guarantee meaningful free speech rights in the Internet age.

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 …

Restricting Access To Books On The Internet: Some Unanticipated Effects Of Us Copyright Legislation, Paul A. David, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

It is today a commonplace observation that the technical possibilities of accessing enormous global resources of cultural and scientific information have been and are continuing to be greatly [...] One manifestation of the trend towards the strengthening of copyright protection that has been noticeable during the past two decades is the secular extension of the potential duration during which access to copyrightable materials remains legally restricted. Those restrictions carry clear implications for the current and prospective costs to readers seeking 'on-line' availability of the affected content in digital form, via the Internet. This paper undertakes to quantify one aspect of …

Billowing White Goo, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

The title of this symposium is the question: "Fair Use: "Incredibly Shrinking" or Extraordinarily Expanding?" I'd argue that the answer to the question is "no." Fair use isn't doing either. The size of the fair use footprint has stayed remarkably constant over the past 30 or even 50 years. What has expanded, extraordinarily, is the size of rights granted by the copyright law. It may seem as if fair use is either expanding or shrinking, because the greater reach of copyright has made a bunch of uses potentially fair that weren't even potentially infringing 50 years ago. In order to …