Law Commons^™

The Need For Revisions To The Law Of Wiretapping And Interception Of Email, Robert A. Pikowsky

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

I argue that a person's privacy interest in his email is the same as his privacy interest in a telephone conversation. Moreover, the privacy interest in email remains unchanged regardless of whether it is intercepted in transmission or covertly accessed from the recipient's mailbox. If one accepts this assumption, it follows that the level of protection against surveillance by law enforcement officers should be the same[...] As technology continues to blur the distinction between wire and electronic communication, it becomes apparent that a new methodology must be developed in order to provide logical and consistent protection to private communications. The …

Anonymity And The Supreme Court's Model Of Expression: How Should Anonymity Be Analysed Under Section 2(B) Of The Charter?, Peter Carmichael Keen

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The first part of this article will discuss what anonymity is, and the costs and benefits that anonymity confers on expressive activity. I will demonstrate that anonymity is a double-edged sword in that it can both promote and harm free expression. In the second part, I will suggest that there is no doubt that anonymity can be protected under section 2(b) of the Charter. When I first began this article, I intended to examine ‘‘whether’’ anonymity can be constitutionally protected under section 2(b). As my research progressed, I quickly realised that I was asking the wrong question. I discovered that …

Student Protector, Internet Provider, Or Contractual Party? An Examination Of The Legal Relationship Between A University And Its Students, Anna Christine Milot

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The legal relationship between a university and its students is becoming increasingly complex as the use of technology spreads. Accordingly, it is important to define a university’s responsibilities and legal boundaries in order to understand the liability universities can potentially incur when dealing with students. Each Canadian university is unique in its founding and enacting legislation, as will be discussed further later. The individuality of Canada’s universities means that the questions raised in this paper cannot be given answers that can necessarily be generalized across universities. The approach to analysis in this paper, however, is applicable to any of the …

Computer Law By George S. Takach (Toronto: Irwin Law Inc., 2000, 2nd Edition), David T.S. Fraser

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Banning Bans On New Reproductive And Novel Genetic Technologies, Matthew Herder

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Commentators argue that statutory prohibitions with the force of the criminal law should not be used to regulate new reproductive technologies (NRTs) and novel genetic technologies (NGTs). Bill C-13, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, however, codifies 10 criminal bans. This paper considers the merits of the various arguments levied against Bill C-13, and the corollary claim that only a "non-prohibitive" model of legislation befits NRTs and NGTs. Three types of arguments are used to critique criminal bans: (1) "Structural" arguments hinge on the constraints of the Canadian legal system - legislation complete with prohibitions runs afoul of the Constitution Act …

Intellectual Property Laws In Harmony With Nafta: The Courts As Mediators Between The Global And The Local, Myra J. Tawfik

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper will argue that domestic courts can pro- vide a forum within which to mediate between these two extremes, to reconcile the ‘‘global’’ and the ‘‘local’’ — but that the courts themselves must adapt to meet the challenges that globalization places upon them. More specifically, the paper begins by setting out a framework for understanding harmonization of laws under NAFTA as one that encourages rather than eliminates diversity of law. The paper then studies the prevailing approaches to statutory interpretation that Canadian courts, most especially the Supreme Court of Canada and the Federal Court of Appeal, have been employing …

Technology And International Trade: Wille The Real Transformer Please Stand Up?, Todd Weiler

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The primary driver of change in Canada’s cultural sector has not been some kind of contrived, neo- liberal plot imposed upon an unsuspecting public with the promise of ‘‘jobs, jobs, jobs.’’ Rather, it has been technology. The role for liberalised trade and investment treaties comes only in the form of a conditioning force, limiting the panoply of choices available to govern- mental officials who want to respond to the changes being wrought by technological advances.

This paper begins with some brief definitions, moving next to an elaboration of its thesis, and finally explaining the application of this thesis to some …

Conundrums With Penumbras: The Right To Privacy Encompasses Non-Gamete Providers Who Create Preembryos With The Intent To Become Parents, Lainie M.C. Dillon

Washington Law Review

To date, five state high courts have resolved disputes over frozen preembryos. These disputes arose during divorce proceedings between couples who had previously used assisted reproduction and cryopreserved excess preembryos. In each case, one spouse wished to have the preembryos destroyed, while the other wanted to be able to use or donate them in the future. The parties in these cases invoked the constitutional right to privacy to argue for dispositional control over the preembryos; two of the five cases were resolved by relying on this right. The constitutional right to privacy protects intimate decisions involving procreation, marriage, and family …

The New Privacy, Paul M. Schwartz, William M. Treanor

Michigan Law Review

In 1964, as the welfare state emerged in full force in the United States, Charles Reich published The New Property, one of the most influential articles ever to appear in a law review. Reich argued that in order to protect individual autonomy in an "age of governmental largess," a new property right in governmental benefits had to be recognized. He called this form of property the "new property." In retrospect, Reich, rather than anticipating trends, was swimming against the tide of history. In the past forty years, formal claims to government benefits have become more tenuous rather than more secure. …

Snake-Oil Security Claims The Systematic Misrepresentation Of Product Security In The E-Commerce Arena, John R. Michener, Steven D. Mohan, James B. Astrachan, David R. Hale

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The modern commercial systems and software industry in the United States have grown up in a snake-oil salesman's paradise. The largest sector of this industry by far is composed of standard commercial systems that are marketed to provide specified functionality (e.g. Internet web server, firewall, router, etc.) Such products are generally provided with a blanket disclaimer stating that the purchaser must evaluate the suitability of the product for use, and that the user assumes all liability for product behavior. In general, users cannot evaluate and cannot be expected to evaluate the security claims of a product. The ability to analyze …

The Absentee Ballot And The Secret Ballot: Challenges For Election Reform, John C. Fortier, Norman J. Ornstein

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Reforms in the recently enacted federal election reform legislation primarily address improving voting at a polling place, but there is a growing share of the electorate who vote away from the polling place through increased use of absentee ballots and vote-by-mail systems. Voters who vote away from the polling place do not have the same protections as those at the polling place. In particular, these voters do not have a secret ballot, as any ballot cast without a drawn curtain behind oneself is potentially subject to coercion, vote buying and fraud.

This Article looks at the tension between the Australian …

Beyond Convergence And The New Media Decisions: Regulatory Models In Communications Law, Melanie Mortensen

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

While technological and economic changes have been the most influential factors in stimulating recent policy and regulatory reassessments in Canada with respect to telecommunications and broadcasting regulation, public interest and socio-political concerns should also remain significant in the design of new regulatory and policy responses to convergence and competition. When the CRTC announced that it would refrain from regulating broadcasting in new media for a period of five years, this occasion illustrated the increasing inapplicability of the sector-specific legislation from which the mandate of the CRTC is derived.

The first model addressed is the present sector-specific policy and regulatory treatment …

Patent First, Litigate Later! The Scramble For Speculative And Overly Broad Genetic Patents: Implications For Access To Health Care And Biomedical Research, Ikechi Mgbeoji, Byron Allen

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper will not directly address the ethical considerations of allowing patents on human genetic sequences, although this continues to be a controversial debate in itself. Rather, the aim is to consider the legality of such gene patents and the effects such patents have on biomedical research and health care delivery in definitive terms through an analysis of current developments and research relating to the subject. The operation of current intellectual property regimes regulating such patents will be examined, and amendments to these legal systems will be considered. An emphasis will be placed on identifying practical concerns rather than broad, …

Fast Track Trade Authority And The Free Trade Agreements: Implications For Copyright Law, Samuel Trosow

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act, which restored the presidential fast-track trade-promotion authority that had lapsed in 1994. Fast-track trade promotion authority is a means by which Congress delegates to the president a portion of its constitutional authority over international trade policy. This paper reviews the development, scope, and application of fast-track trade-promotion authority, evaluates some of the copyright provisions in key Free Trade Agreements, and concludes that the process has been effectively captured by the information and entertainment industries. There are numerous negative consequences that flow from the resulting policy environment. Not only is an …

The Rehnquist Court And The Devolution Of The Right To Privacy, Scott P. Johnson, Robert M. Alexander

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rescuing The Balance?: An Assessment Of Canada's Proposal To Limit Isp Liability For Online Copyright Infringement, Scott Nesbitt

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper attempts both to explain the technological and legal imperatives pressing Canada to address the issue of ISP liability in reforms to the Copyright Act and to raise some concerns about the impact of the government’s proposed amendments in this area. The basic elements of copyright law, the impact of digital technology on copyright and the policy arguments surrounding ISP liability are briefly discussed to set the context for judicial treatment of and legislative action on this issue. Next, the paper focuses on the development of American jurisprudence with respect to limitation of ISP liability for third party copyright …

The Emperor Has No Clothes: A Critique Of Applying The European Union Approach To Privacy Regulation In The United States, David R. Nijhawan

Vanderbilt Law Review

Internet users in the United States and the European Union ("EU") often debate the state of international data privacy, while scholars and companies also present questions to the Internet community regarding the regulation of data privacy and the amount of regulation required in the U.S. Inquiries range from how to determine the necessary degree of regulation and how to implement regulations to how to enforce any regulations that the U.S. lawmakers may pass. Historically, the EU and the U.S. approach data privacy regulations in diametrically opposed ways. While the EU relies primarily on legislation and heavy regulation, the U.S. has …

Recognizing The Societal Value In Information Privacy, James P. Nehf

Washington Law Review

Much has been written about database privacy in the Internet Age, most of it critical of the way in which the American legal system addresses the issue. In this article, Professor Nehf maintains that one of the fundamental difficulties with the public policy debates is that information privacy is often discussed as a typical consumer problem rather than a problem of more general societal concern. As a result, arguments over appropriate resolutions reduce to a balancing of individual rights against more general societal interests, such as increased efficiency in law enforcement, government operations or commercial enterprise. Although privacy scholars discussed …

National Do-Not-Call Registry To Stay: Opt-In Feature May Be Its Saving Grace, Amanda Strainis-Walker

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Chicago Police Install Controversial Surveillance Cameras, Gavin Mhley

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

High Schools Must Give Access To Military Recruiters, Amanda Strainis-Walker

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Fragmented Copyright, Fragmented Management: Proposals To Defrag Copyright Management, Daniel Gervais, Alana Maurushat

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The collective management of copyright in Canada was conceived as a solution to alleviate the problem of inefficiency of individual rights management. Creators could not license, collect and enforce copyright efficiently on an individual basis. Requiring users to obtain permission from individual copyright holders for the use of a work was equally inefficient. Collectives, therefore, emerged to facilitate the clearance of rights between creators and users. Even with the facilitation of collectives in the process, clearing rights remains an inherently difficult and convoluted process. This is especially so in the age of the Internet where clearing rights for multimedia products …

Where's The Beef? Dissecting Spam's Purported Harms, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 13 (2003), Eric Goldman

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This article seeks to identify areas that truly require legislative intervention by examining the harms purportedly caused by spam. Identifying exactly what constitutes spam is an imprecise task since one e-mail may be junk to one and an important e-mail to another. The article attempts to analyze why consumers feel strongly against spam. This reaction is compared to consumers’ comparatively tolerant reaction to other unwanted advertisement in different mediums, such as billboards or magazine advertisements. Several factors are considered, such as the waste of time associated with sorting spam, the loss of consumers’ control over their in-boxes, and the annoyance …

Spam Legislation In The United States, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 3 (2003), David E. Sorkin

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This article examines the effect of spam legislation in the United States. It discusses state legislation and the common provisions of state spam legislation, such as disclosure and labeling requirements and opt-out provisions. It also analyzes the consequences of state anti-spam legislation. Federal legislation is analyzed, with a brief look at the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The article concludes that legislation has not had a big impact on spam, and the CAN-SPAM Act is not likely to change or curb spam.

The Do-Not-Call Registry Model Is Not The Answer To Spam, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 79 (2003), Richard C. Balough

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This article discusses why a system to combat unwanted Internet spam, or junk e-mail, should not be modeled after the Do-Not-Call registry developed to curtail telemarketing phone calls. The Do-Not-Call registry is an "opt-out" system where consumers must place their phone numbers on a list that designates them as consumers unwilling to accept telemarketing calls. In the Internet spam context, this article argues that to force Internet users to place their e-mail addresses on a similar do-not-spam list could lead to potential problems. For example, if a would-be spammer was to get a hold of that list, she or he …

After Can-Spam, How States Can Stay Relevant In The Fight Against Unwanted Messages:How A Children's Protection Registry Can Be Effective And Is Not Preempted, Under The New Federal Anti-Spam Law, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 29 (2003), Matthew B. Prince

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

The recipe for success to combat unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, otherwise known as spam, has not yet been formulated by the thirty-six states that have tried by enacting their own versions of anti-spam laws. Only two state prosecutions were ever successfully brought against spammers, and only one was able to enforce its law against an out-of-state spammer. Now, on the federal level, with the passing of the CAN-SPAM act, which essentially rehashes what states have attempted to do, the failure to provide any significant measure of national success against spam seems likely. However, a careful reading of the language of …

Spamming For Legal Services: A Constitutional Right Within A Regulatory Quagmire, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 97 (2003), William E. Hornsby, Jr.

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This article addresses the regulatory schemes applied to lawyers who advertise their legal services to consumers through electronic communications. Concerns have arisen about lawyers using electronic communications to offer their services to their targeted communities. Since the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Bates, lawyers have been able to advertise their services without state permission. However, states have imposed ethical regulations in an effort to ensure that lawyers do not over reach their boundaries during such advertising efforts. The question is raised as to whether states’ spam rules also apply to lawyers who choose to advertise over the Internet. This article …

Vendor Liability For Advertising In Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 137 (2003), Anne P. Mitchell

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

This article discusses whether vendors should be held liable for spam. Vendors are those companies whose products or services are being peddled in spam advertising. Yet, vendors disclaim responsibility for the issuance of spam because they were not the ones who actually sent the spam in the first place. This article takes the stance that because vendors contribute and or benefit from the wrongful acts of the actual spammers, vendors should not be able to escape liability by blaming the primary actors, the spammers. Further, if vendors were to be held liable for spam, they would be an easier entity …

Examination Of The Model Rules Of Professional Conduct Pertaining To The Marketing Of Legal Services In Cyberspace, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 113 (2003), Matthew T. Rollins

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Advancements in technology have allowed lawyers to reach new and bigger audiences. As a result, the American Bar Association (ABA) modified the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to provide a guideline lawyers can follow regarding the propriety of marketing their legal services over the Internet. This article examines the changes in the Model Rules and the effects of these changes on lawyers advertising their legal services on the Internet. Also discussed are the issues of whether anti-spam laws are binding on lawyers and whether it is proper for lawyers to advertise over the Internet. The ban on chat room solicitation …

Spam And Beyond: Freedom, Efficiency, And The Regulation Of E-Mail Advertising, 22 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 141 (2003), Richard Warner

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Traditional forms of mailing advertisers bear the full cost of delivering advertisements to consumers. However, this is not true in the form of all e-mail advertisement, spam or not. E-mail users subsidize part of any e-mail advertisement, thereby splitting costs between advertiser and the consumer who receives the e-mail advertisement. This article takes the position that the subsidization that occurs in e-mail advertisement should be eliminated because it unjustifiably violates individual freedom. The article discusses why the delivery charges between sender and recipient are divided, why such cost-division violates freedom, and whether the violation is justified. The article also defines …