Communications Law Commons^™

The Stop Online Piracy Act: The Latest Manifestation Of A Conflict Ripe For Alternative Dispute Resolution, Steven Tremblay

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note examines how arbitration and mediation can be injected into the online copyright debate to better serve the interests of all parties. First, this Note addresses past litigation models to compare the benefits and costs of using the courts to resolve piracy issues. The history of litigation against mass peer-to-peer file sharers and individual downloaders is an important aspect to this story. Next, this Note describes the current state of copyright laws and how SOPA and PIPA would alter copyright protection against foreign piracy. Copyright holders, predominately represented by the Recording Industry Association of America, and content hosts, such …

We Are Not Who We Pretend To Be: Odr Alternatives To Online Impersonation Statutes, Kori Clanton

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note focuses on how online dispute resolution ("ODR") processes, as opposed to litigation, offer a more efficient and effective legal solution to resolving online impersonation disputes. The purpose of this Note is to analyze the measures state legislatures and social media websites have implemented to combat online impersonation cases, and to propose a practical ODR solution that will eliminate the burdens of litigation and provide a cost-efficient and time-effective remedy. Section I provides an introduction to the current relevance and rising incidents of online impersonation via social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Section II explores the historical …

Hanging Up Too Early: Remedies To Reduce Robocalls, Maria G. Hibbard

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Panel Ii: Balancing National Security And Transparency In Government Data Collection, Nate Cardozo, Mariko Hirose, Jonathan Manes, Ira Rubinstein, Christopher Wolf

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Chaperoning Love Online: Online Dating Liability And The Wavering Application Of Cda § 230, Lindsey A. Datte

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that the online dating industry's voluntary adoption of screening initiatives, while well-intentioned, is legally misguided. Such practices may expose platforms to increased liability and undermine the protections afforded by the Communications Decency Act (CDA) 230, which shields interactive computer services from liability for third-party content. The analysis contends that these efforts to self-regulate, though driven by legislative and societal pressure, may inadvertently erode the industry's immunity under CDA 230 and create new legal vulnerabilities.

Kill Switches, Forum Doctrine, And The First Amendment's Digital Future, Enrique Armijo

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Governments play a growing role in providing access to digital speech spaces. This development has important consequences for free expression. Communication's migration from physical public spaces to virtual ones has increased the State's capacity for ex ante interference with speech, from targeted blocking of users, websites, and applications on its communications networks to shutting off access to those networks altogether. Contrary to the conclusions of most Speech Clause scholars, the First Amendment's public forum doctrine is ill equipped to solve these problems, in part because the doctrine under-protects speech that is not expressed in shared physical space. Accordingly, this Article …

Pinterest And Copyright's Safe Harbors For Internet Providers, Michael W. Carroll

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Has the time come to substantially revise the Copyright Act to better adapt the law to the ever-evolving digital environment? A number of influential sources appear to think so. If their initiatives gain momentum, it will be important to consider lessons learned from the first such effort fifteen years ago when Congress made far-reaching changes to copyright law by extending the term of copyright for twenty years and by enacting a package of reform proposals known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). This Article intertwines the story of one important provision of the DMCA - safe harbors for Internet …

College Students’ Online Speech: Searching For The Appropriate Standards Within First Amendment Case Principles, Jeffrey C. Sun, Neal H. Hutchens

Cardozo Law Review de•novo

College student free speech cases, particularly as applied to student online speech challenges, suffer from conflicting legal principles. This paper highlights empirically noted problems in resolving disputes between a college student’s free speech rights and a public college’s authority to maintain order and campus safety. In Part I of this paper, the authors present the established legal principles from two foundational cases addressing issues of student speech in the educational context. In Part II, the authors demonstrate how courts have used PK12 education cases and public employment cases as sources that address legal principles for college student speech cases—particularly to …

Zombies Among Us: Injunctions In Defamation Cases Come Back From The Dead, Jim Stewart, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

Here's a scary thought: an individual, unhappy with negative statements that have been made about him, sues for defamation and persuades the trial court to issue an injunction prohibiting the speaker from engaging in that speech again. An appellate court reviews the injunction and, in large measure, upholds it. This creepy scenario brings shudders to free speech and media advocates, who have long viewed such injunctions as prior restraints that the First Amendment forbids in all but the most extreme and extraordinary cases. As a recent decision from the Michigan Court of Appeals demonstrates, however, decades of United States Supreme …

Communications Privacy For And By Whom?, Ryan Calo

Articles

A response to Professor Orin Kerr's The Next Generation Communications Privacy Act, which makes a series of quiet assumptions, however, that readers may find controversial.

First, the Article reads as though ECPA exists only to protect citizens from public officials. According to its text and to case law, however, ECPA also protects private citizens from one another in ways any new act should revisit.

Second, the Article assumes that society should address communications privacy with a statute, whereas specific experiences with ECPA suggest that the courts may be better suited to address communications privacy—for reasons Professor Kerr himself offers. …

Artificial Meaning, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay investigates the concept of artificial meaning, meanings produced by entities other than individual natural persons. That investigation begins in Part I with a preliminary inquiry into the meaning of “meaning,” in which the concept of meaning is disambiguated. The relevant sense of “meaning” for the purpose of this inquiry is captured by the idea of communicative content, although the phrase “linguistic meaning” is also a rough equivalent. Part II presents a thought experiment, The Chinese Intersection, which investigates the creation of artificial meaning produced by an AI that creates legal rules for the regulation of a hyper-complex conflux …

Give Me Internet Or Give Me Death: Analyzing The Constitutionality Of Internet Restrictions As A Condition Of Supervised Release For Child Pornography Offenders, Laura Tatelman

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that blanket bans on internet and internet-capable devices as a condition of supervised release for child pornography offenders are unconstitutional under the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions. These bans infringe on fundamental liberties such as speech, association, and access to information, disproportionately affecting offenders’ ability to reintegrate into society. The analysis advocates for a balanced approach that prioritizes public safety while respecting constitutional rights, suggesting alternatives like supervised release rather than outright internet prohibition.

Sender Side Transmission Rules For The Internet, Tejas N. Narechania, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1966, the Federal Communications Commission has, one way or another, protected businesses that deliver services over the nation’s communications infrastructure. But in January 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the FCC’s net neutrality rules contained in its 2010 Open Internet Order. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has since indicated that he will take up the D.C. Circuit’s invitation to implement rules that, consistent with historic practice, “will meet the court’s test for preventing improper blocking of and discrimination among Internet traffic.”

Chairman Wheeler’s statement invites an obvious question: presuming that the FCC wants …

Material Falsity In Defamation Cases: The Supreme Court's Call For Contextual Analysis, Charles D. Tobin, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

In the book The Phantom Tollbooth, one of the characters, Milo, declares that he comes from a faraway land called Context. After a circuitous journey through many strange cities, bearing names that have meanings Milo struggles to understand, he finds himself back at home in his bedroom.

Context, by and large, is the home base for courts in defining the boundaries between actionable and nonactionable speech. Often, after circuitous travels through precedent and logic, courts meander back to the simple notion that the meaning and legal significance of words are determined by their context.

Privacy And Cloud Computing In Public Schools, Joel Reidenberg, N. Cameron Russell, Jordan Kovnot, Thomas B. Norton, Ryan Cloutier, Daniela Alvarado

Center on Law and Information Policy

Today, data driven decision-making is at the center of educational policy debates in the United States. School districts are increasingly turning to rapidly evolving technologies and cloud computing to satisfy their educational objectives and take advantage of new opportunities for cost savings, flexibility, and always-available service among others. As public schools in the United States rapidly adopt cloud-computing services, and consequently transfer increasing quantities of student information to third-party providers, privacy issues become more salient and contentious. The protection of student privacy in the context of cloud computing is generally unknown both to the public and to policy-makers. This study …

Wireless Localism: Beyond The Shroud Of Objectivity In Federal Spectrum Administration, Olivier Sylvain

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Recent innovations in mobile wireless technology have instigated a debate between two camps of legal scholars about federal administration of the electromagnetic spectrum. The first camp argues that the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) should define spectrum use rights more clearly and give spectrum licensees broad property rights in frequencies. The second camp argues that, rather than award exclusive licenses to the highest bidder, the FCC ought to open much, if not most, of the spectrum to unlicensed use by smartphones and tablets equipped with the newest spectrum administration technology. First, this Article shows that both of these camps comprise a …

From Temporary Incentive To Perpetual Entitlement: Historical Perspective On The Evolving Nature Of Copyright In America, Evan Boyd Billingsley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The original purpose of copyright legislation was to grant a temporary economic monopoly to an author of a creative work. This monopoly is meant to incentivize authors to contribute to the public good with works that promote progress in science and art. However, increases in the scope and duration of copyright terms grant overly broad protections and controls for copyright owners, while advances in technology have provided the public with the potential for near-limitless access to information. This creates a conflict between proprietary interest in creative works versus the public's right and ability to access same. Efforts to balance these …

Curbing Overzealous Prosecution Of The Espionage Act: Thomas Andrews Drake And The Case For Judicial Intervention At Sentencing, Pamela Takefman

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Contextual Expectations Of Privacy, Andrew D. Selbst

Cardozo Law Review

Fourth Amendment search jurisprudence is nominally based on a "reasonable expectation of privacy," but actual doctrine is disconnected from society's conception of privacy. Courts rely on various binary distinctions: Is a piece of information secret or not? Was the observed conduct inside or outside? While often convenient, none of these binary distinctions can adequately capture the complicated range of ideas encompassed by "privacy." Privacy theorists have begun to understand that a consideration of social context is essential to a full understanding of privacy. Helen Nissenbaum's theory of contextual integrity, which characterizes a right to privacy as the preservation of expected …

Mania: The Lives, Literature, And Law Of The Beats, Ronald K.L. Collins, David M. Skover

Seattle University Law Review

The Beats introduced the counter-culture to twentieth century America. They were the first to break away from Eisenhower conformity, from the era of the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. With them came an infusion of rebel spirit—a spirit that hearkened back to Walt Whitman—in their lives, literature, and law. Their literature spawned a remarkable chapter in American obscenity law. The prosecution of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, Howl, was the last of its kind in this nation; and the prosecution of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch is one of the last times that a novel was charged as obscene. The First …

Defining Privacy And Utility In Data Sets, Felix T. Wu

Articles

Is it possible to release useful data while preserving the privacy of the individuals whose information is in the database? This question has been the subject of considerable controversy, particularly in the wake of well-publicized instances in which researchers showed how to re-identify individuals in supposedly anonymous data. Some have argued that privacy and utility are fundamentally incompatible, while others have suggested that simple steps can be taken to achieve both simultaneously. Both sides have looked to the computer science literature for support.

What the existing debate has overlooked, however, is that the relationship between privacy and utility depends crucially …

Can You Hear Me Now? The Race To Provide America With Universal, High-Speed Wireless Coverage, Dina Neda Rezvani

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

As the United States becomes increasingly dependent on universal, high-speed wireless services, infrastructural limitations are producing tension. The interests of consumers, telecommunications companies, state and local authorities, and businesses, as well as national security, are all at stake. Yet legal uncertainty stemming from a split among federal circuit courts hampers the development of solutions. The courts diverge on the interpretation of a key provision of the Telecommunications Act (TCA), 47 U.S.C. § 332(c)(7)(B), that regulates wireless service providers’ ability to erect new towers. There is great need for a national standard to give mobile providers a uniform means of accommodating …

Acum V. Emi, Daphne Barak-Erez, Zvi Zylbertal, Elyakim Rubinstein

Translated Opinions

[This abstract is not part of the Court's opinion and is provided for the reader's convenience. It has been translated from a Hebrew version prepared by Nevo Press Ltd. and is used with its kind permission.]

In 2004 the Director-General of the Antitrust Authority determined that the activity of ACUM (a corporation that operates to manage its members’ copyrights in musical works in Israel) constitutes a monopoly on managing copyright over musical works. In 2011 the Antitrust Tribunal (“the Tribunal”) approved the activity of ACUM as a cartel, subject to a series of requirements (“the permanent requirements”), which would be …

Re-Establishing Distributor Liability On The Internet: Recognizing The Applicability Of Traditional Defamation Law To Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act Of 1996, William E. Buelow Iii

West Virginia Law Review

Plaintiffs whose reputations have suffered irreparable injury from the distribution of defamatory statements have generally been permitted by law to recover damages from the enterprises that distributed the publications known to contain the defamatory material. However, when the enterprise that knowingly distributed the injurious content is an Internet service provider ("ISP"), present law denies that same plaintiff recovery. This perception of ISP immunity flows from a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Zeran v. America Online, Inc., where the Court extended certain immunities offered by the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (the "CDA"). …

The Collision Of Social Media And Social Unrest: Why Shutting Down Social Media Is The Wrong Response, Mirae Yang

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

With the growing availability of Internet access across the globe, social media has transformed the traditional relationship between government authority and its citizens by providing the people with an innovative and powerful means to harmonize their efforts in expressing their political and social concerns. The importance of safeguarding Internet availability is more critical than ever before as access to the Internet is now the means by which the world communicates, stays informed, and engages in daily tasks. In the face of potential social unrest fueled by social media, the United States must take a preventative approach, one that matches our …

International Cryptography Regulation And The Global Information Economy, Nathan Saper

Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property

With the meteoric rise of the Internet and e-commerce in the 1990s came great attention to the problems and opportunities associated with cryptography. Throughout that decade, the United States and many foreign countries debated and experimented with various forms of cryptography regulation, and attempts were made at international harmonization. Since then, however, policy-making activity around cryptography has slowed, if not halted altogether, leaving individuals and companies to face a bewildering array of regulations—or, in many cases, to face regulations that are extraordinarily unclear and haphazardly applied.

This Note seeks to introduce the reader to the issue of international cryptography regulation …

Deconstructing And Reconstructing Hot News: Toward A Functional Approach, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Robyn Shelton

UF Law Faculty Publications

Hot news is factual, time-sensitive information ranging from baseball scores to the outbreak of war. In recent years, hot news has found its own niche among legal scholars and courts. When deconstructed, though, hot news is simply information and, like most information, it has a public good character. The problem ultimately is that news is non-excludable and non-rivalrous – discoverers or creators of hot news cannot exclude others from using the news and hot news is not destroyed when used. This means it may be produced at levels that are less than optimal.

The critical element in hot news is …

Political Campaigning And The Airways, Harrop Freeman, Stewart Edelstein

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Reporter's Privilege, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Michigan Law Review

Forty years ago, in Branzburg v. Hayes, the Supreme Court made its first and only inquiry into the constitutional protection of the relationship between a reporter and a confidential source. This case - decided at a moment in American history in which the role of an investigative press, and of information provided by confidential sources, was coming to the forefront of public consciousness in a new and significant way - produced a reporter-focused "privilege" that is now widely regarded to be both doctrinally questionable and deeply inconsistent in application. Although the post-Branzburg privilege has been recognized as flawed in a …

De-Regulation As The New Regulation: Telecom's Philosophy Turnabout And The Story Of A Forward-Looking Formula That Brought Back Competition , Christia Crocker

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.