Computer Law Commons^™

Cyber Plungers: Colonial Pipeline And The Case For An Omnibus Cybersecurity Legislation, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The May 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline was a wake-up call for a federal administration slow to realize the dangers that cybersecurity threats pose to our critical national infrastructure. The attack forced hundreds of thousands of Americans along the east coast to stand in endless lines for gas, spiking both prices and public fears. These stressors on our economy and supply chains triggered emergency proclamations in four states, including Georgia. That a single cyberattack could lead to a national emergency of this magnitude was seen by many as proof of even more crippling threats to come. Executive Director of …

The U.S. Election Hacks, Cybersecurity, And International Law, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Transforming Election Cybersecurity, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Big Data, Bigger Dilemmas: A Critical Review, Hamid Ekbia, Michael Mattioli, Inna Koupe, G. Arave, Ali Ghazinejad, Timothy Bowman, Venkatq R. Suri, Tsou Andrew, Scott Weingart, Cassidy R. Sugimoto

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The recent interest in Big Data has generated a broad range of new academic, corporate, and policy practices along with an evolving debate among its proponents, detractors, and skeptics. While the practices draw on a common set of tools, techniques, and technologies, most contributions to the debate come either from a particular disciplinary perspective or with a focus on a domain-specific issue. A close examination of these contributions reveals a set of common problematics that arise in various guises and in different places. It also demonstrates the need for a critical synthesis of the conceptual and practical dilemmas surrounding Big …

Hacking The Wealth Of Nations: Managing Markets Amid Malware, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Countering Islamic State Exploitation Of The Internet, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Whither The Web?: International Law, Cybersecurity, And Critical Infrastructure Protection, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Cybersecurity And The Administrative National Security State: Framing The Issues For Federal Legislation, David G. Delaney

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the digital age, every part of federal government has critical cybersecurity interests. Many of those issues are brought into sharp focus by Edward Snowden's disclosure of sensitive government cyber intelligence programs conducted by the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Courts are reviewing various constitutional and statutory challenges to those programs, two government review groups have reported on related legal and policy issues, and Congress is considering cyber intelligence reform proposals. All of this action comes on the heels of significant efforts by successive administrations to restructure government and pass comprehensive cybersecurity …

Le Cyberspace, C'Est Moi?: Authoritarian Leaders, The Internet, And International Politics, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Mind The Gap: Explaining Problems With International Law Where Cybersecurity And Critical Infrastructure Protection Meet, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Leap-Ahead Privacy As A Government Responsibility In The Digital Age, David G. Delaney, Ivan K. Fong

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Business Of Privacy, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Face-To-Data -- Another Developing Privacy Threat?, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Nato, Cyber Defense, And International Law, David P. Fidler, Richard Pregent, Alex Vandurme

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Cybersecurity threats pose challenges to individuals, corporations, states, and intergovernmental organizations. The emergence of these threats also presents international cooperation on security with difficult tasks. This essay analyzes how cybersecurity threats affect the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is arguably the most important collective defense alliance in the world.1 NATO has responded to the cyber threat in policy and operational terms (Part I), but approaches and shifts in cybersecurity policies create problems for NATO— problems that NATO principles, practices, and politics exacerbate in ways that will force NATO to address cyber threats more aggressively than it has done so …

The Challenge Of "Big Data" For Data Protection, Fred H. Cate, Christopher Kuner, Christopher Millard, Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Dos And Don'ts Of Data Breach And Information Security Policy, Fred H. Cate, Martin E. Abrams, Paula J. Bruening, Orson Swindle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Updating Data Protection: Part I -- Identifying The Objectives, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Information Security Breaches: Looking Back & Thinking Ahead, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Search Interest In Contract, Joshua Fairfield

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Parties often do not negotiate for contract terms. Instead, parties search for the products, terms, and contractual counterparties they desire. The traditional negotiation-centered view of contract leads courts to try to determine the meaning of the parties where no meaning was negotiated and to waste time determining the benefits of bargains that were never struck. Further, while courts have ample tools to validate specifically negotiated contract terms, they lack the tools to respond to searched-for terms. Although the law and literature have long recognized that there is a disconnect between the legal fictions of negotiation and the reality of contracting …

Database Protection In The United States Is Alive And Well: Comments On Davison, Marshall A. Leaffer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

"Stranger Than Fiction": Taxing Virtual Worlds, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Virtual worlds, including massive multi-player on-line role-playing games (game worlds), such as City of Heroes, Everquest, and World of Warcraft, have become popular sources of entertainment. Game worlds provide scripted contexts for events such as quests. Other virtual worlds, such as Second Life, are unstructured virtual environments that lack specific goals but allow participants to socialize and engage virtually in such activities as shopping or attending a concert. Many of these worlds have become commodified, with millions of dollars of real-world trade in virtual items taking place every year. Most game worlds prohibit these real market transactions, but some worlds …

Cybertrespass And Trespass To Documents, Kevin Emerson Collins

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Information Security Breaches And The Threat To Consumers, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Legal Restrictions On Transborder Data Flows To Prevent Government Access To Personal Data: Lessons From British Columbia, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Virtual Property, Joshua Fairfield

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article explores three new concepts in property law. First, the article defines an emerging property form - virtual property - that is not intellectual property, but that more efficiently governs rivalrous, persistent, and interconnected online resources. Second, the article demonstrates that the threat to high-value uses of internet resources is not the traditional tragedy of the commons that results in overuse. Rather, the naturally layered nature of the internet leads to overlapping rights of exclusion that cause underuse of internet resources: a tragedy of the anticommons. And finally, the article shows that the common law of property can act …

Cracks In The Foundation: The New Internet Legislation's Hidden Threat To Privacy And Commerce, Joshua Fairfield

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Scholarship to date has focused on the legal significance of the novelty of the Internet. This scholarship does not describe or predict actual Internet legislation. Instead of asking whether the Internet is so new as to merit new law, legislators and academics should re-evaluate the role of government in orchestrating collective action and change the relative weight of enforcement, deterrence, and incentives in Internet regulations.

A perfect example of the need for this new approach is the recent CANSPAM Act of 2003, which was intended to protect personal privacy and legitimate businesses. However, the law threatens both of these interests, …

Constitutional Issues In Information Privacy, Fred H. Cate, Robert E. Litan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The U.S. Constitution has been largely ignored in the recent flurry of privacy laws and regulations designed to protect personal information from incursion by the private sector, despite the fact that many of these enactments and efforts to enforce them significantly implicate the First Amendment. Questions about the role of the Constitution have assumed new importance in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Efforts to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators and to protect against future terrorist attacks, while threatening to weaken constitutional protections against government intrusions into personal …

Book Review. Cyberethics: Morality And Law In Cyberspace By R. A. Spinello, Elizabeth Larson Goldberg

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Uncertain Future Of Fair Use In A Global Information Marketplace, Marshall Leaffer

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The author of this article forecasts an increasingly troubled future, if not the demise of the doctrine of fair use in copyright law. Legal developments, both at home and abroad, driven by technological change, and the push toward the international harmonization of legal norms, threaten the very survival of fair use. Given these realities the doctrine will, of necessity, be reconceptualized Although fair use values will always be inscribed in copyright law, these values will have their practical manifestation in decentralized form, and effectuated, in large part, through industry agreement. They will exist in conjunction with certain bright line exceptions …

Principles Of Internet Privacy, Fred H. Cate

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The definition of privacy developed by Brandeis and Warren and Prosser, and effectively codified by Alan Westin in 1967 - the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others - worked well in a world in which most privacy concerns involved physical intrusions (usually by the government) or public disclosures (usually by the media), which, by their very nature, were comparatively rare and usually discovered.

But that definition's exclusive focus on individual control has grown incomplete in a world in which most privacy concerns involve …