Computer Law Commons^™

Meatspace, The Internet, And The Cloud: How Changes In Document Storage And Transfer Can Affect Ip Rights, Sharon Sandeen

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the intellectual property issues from "meatspace" to online services and the Internet. It further explores intellectual property issues from the Internet to the Cloud. Finally, it discusses the implications of cloud computing for trade secret protection.

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

When The Classroom Is Not In The Schoolhouse: Applying Tinker To Student Speech At Online Schools, Brett T. Macintyre

Seattle University Law Review

Despite the overwhelming increase in students’ Internet use and the growing popularity of online public schools, the United States Supreme Court has never addressed how, or if, schools can discipline students for disruptive online speech without violating the students’ First Amendment rights. What the Supreme Court has addressed is how school administrators can constitutionally discipline students within traditional schools. In a landmark decision, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, the Supreme Court announced the now famous principle that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Still, the Court …

Net Neutrality: Preparing For The Future, Jennifer Wong

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

The Looming Threat Of Cyberterrorism

Maryland Carey Law

Technology has the ability to make gray what was once the black letter of the law.

Emerging Technologies And Dwindling Speech, Jorge Roig

Scholarly Works

Inspired in part by the recent holding in Bland v. Roberts that the use of the “Like” feature in Facebook is not covered by the Free Speech Clause, this article makes a brief foray into the approach that courts have taken in the recent past towards questions of First Amendment coverage in the context of emerging technologies. Specifically, this article will take a closer look at how courts have dealt with the issue of functionality in the context of First Amendment coverage of computer source code. The analysis of this and other recent experiences, when put in a larger context, …

From Peer-To-Peer Networks To Cloud Computing: How Technology Is Redefining Child Pornography Laws, Audrey Rogers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article traces the history of the child pornography laws and sentencing policy in Part I. Part II explains the technologies that have caused some of the current controversies, and then Part III describes how these technologies have blurred the offenses. Finally, Part IV makes suggestions as to how the law could better reflect technology and comport with a refined harm rationale. Courts, legal scholars, and medical experts have explained the harm includes the sexual abuse captured in the images and the psychological injury the victim endures knowing the images are being viewed. This Article further develops the harm rationale …

The Internet And How The Government Has Impacted Its Usage Today, Jonathan Hulse

Senior Seminars

No abstract provided.

Beware Of The Highwayman On The Information Superhighway: A Balanced Proposal To Protect Copyrights Within The National Information Infrastructure, Chandra Gehri Spencer

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Wet Footprints? Digital Watermarks: A Trail To The Copyright Infringer On The Internet, Rosemarie F. Jones

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Commercial Access Contracts And The Internet: Does The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act Clear The Air With Regard To Liabilities When An On-Line Access System Fails?, Morgan Stewart

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Internet-Based Fans: Why The Entertainment Industries Cannot Depend On Traditional Copyright Protections , Thomas C. Inkel

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels And The Webcasting Controversy: The Antithesis Of Good Alternative Dispute Resolution, Jeremy Delibero

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Music is becoming increasingly synonymous with big business and corporate influence. The advent of Internet radio and streaming webcasts are simply one example of this shift. Organizations such as the Radio Industry Association of America ("RIAA") have discovered a new way to receive royalties from the performance of musical works, and have fought vigorously to obtain favorable rates to achieve the maximum profit. On the other hand, small webcasters have fought equally hard to avoid these large rates. Although arguments for each side are equally persuasive, neither is persuasive enough to force a compromise. In attempting to solve these disputes, …

Patent Litigation And The Internet, John R. Allison, Emerson H. Tiller, Samantha Zyontz, Tristan Bligh

Faculty Scholarship

Patent infringement litigation has not only increased dramatically in frequency over the past few decades,¹ but also has also seen striking growth in both stakes and cost.² Although a relatively rich literature has added much to our understanding of the nature, causes, and consequences of patent litigation during the past two decades,³ many interesting questions remain inadequately addressed. The nuances of and trends in patent litigation in different technology fields and industries, for example, are still understudied.⁴ Litigation of patents on new technologies has likewise received a dearth of attention. Here we seek to help begin …

Decoding First Amendment Coverage Of Computer Source Code In The Age Of Youtube, Facebook And The Arab Spring, Jorge Roig

Scholarly Works

Computer source code is the lifeblood of the Internet. It is also the brick and mortar of cyberspace. As such, it has been argued that the degree of control that a government can wield over code can be a powerful tool for controlling new technologies. With the advent and proliferation in the Internet of social networking media and platforms for the publication and sharing of user-generated content, the ability of individuals across the world to communicate with each other has reached truly revolutionary dimensions. The influence of Facebook in the popular revolutions of the Arab Spring has been well documented. …

Search Neutrality As An Antitrust Principle, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Given the Internet's designation as "the great equalizer,"' it is unsurprising that nondiscrimination has emerged as a central aspiration of web governance.2 But, of course, bias, discrimination, and neutrality are among the slipperiest of regulatory principles. One person's bias is another person's prioritization. Fresh on the heels of its initial success in advocating a net neutrality principle,' Google is in the uncomfortable position of trying to stave off a corollary principle of search neutrality.' Search neutrality has not yet coalesced into a generally understood principle, but at its heart is some idea that Internet search engines ought not to prefer …

Name Calling On The Internet: The Problems Faced By Victims Of Defamatory Content In Cyberspace, Sarudzai Chitsa

Cornell Law School Inter-University Graduate Student Conference Papers

In the past decade or so, internet libel has become one of the hot topics in internet law. Internationally, courts have dealt with an enormous amount of cases brought by both the suppliers and consumers of the internet services. Although the advent of the World Wide Web has come with many legal problems; this paper will only focus at the problems that are being faced by the victims of defamatory speech on the internet in trying to seek compensation through the courts. These problems include, inter alia, the reluctance of the courts in unmasking the identity of the authors of …

Internet Contracting And E-Commerce Disputes: International And U. S. Personal Jurisdiction , Anne Mccafferty

Global Business Law Review

In cases involving international defendants, a variety of bases have been deemed appropriate for a U.S. court to assert personal jurisdiction, including nationality, domicile, “purposeful availment,” and a number of federal statutes. With the explosion of the Internet and the resulting expansion of international business transactions via the Web, courts have struggled to adapt traditional modes of adjudication consistent with established common, statutory and international law. Internet transactions—now known as e-commerce—involve the “practice of buying and selling goods and services through online consumer services on the Internet.” In a sphere of commerce apparently limitless in its reach, this article explores …

Make Your Life Easier: Free Online Productivity Tools And Resources, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

CiteGenie works primarily for caselaw and Internet resource research but is experimenting with the ability to add citations for statutes and regulations. CiteGenie provides a number of formatting options and allows you to choose citation rules for a particular state, use parallel citations, remove star-pagination marks from quoted texts, and personalize abbreviations. This tool is easy to use; when researching in Firefox, select CiteGenie from the right-click menu and a pop-up displays the copied text and citation to be pasted.

Defending Disclosure In Software Licensing, Robert A. Hillman, Maureen O'Rourke

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article surveys prominent kinds of disclosures in contract law-of facts, contract terms, and performance intentions. We show why the disclosure tool, although subject to substantial criticism, promotes important social values and goals, including efficiency, autonomy, corrective justice, fairness, and the legitimacy of the contract process. Further, proposals to replace disclosure with other alternatives are unrealistic because they are too expensive or complex. Our working example is the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Software Contracts.

Virtual Intermediaries In The Lodging Industry: Consumption Tax Problems In The U.S. And Japan, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Marketplace technology is (inadvertently) chipping away at the effectiveness of consumption taxes – the Japanese Consumption Tax (CT), the European value added tax (VAT), and the American sales tax (ST) are all affected. Frequently a technology-patch or a law change can repair the tax-damage, but sometimes even though a patch or a change is known the design of the levy (or the politics behind the design) impedes application. This paper assesses these consumption taxes by considering the impact that virtual travel agents have had on revenue yields. The paper draws specific conclusions for the Japanese CT, because this consumption tax …

A Portrait Of The Internet As A Young Man, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In brief, the core theory of Jonathan Zittrain’s1 2008 book The Future of the Internet - and How to Stop It is this: good laws, norms, and code are needed to regulate the Internet, to prevent bad laws, norms, and code from compromising its creative capabilities and fettering its fecund flexibility. A far snarkier if less alliterative summary would be “We have to regulate the Internet to preserve its open, unregulated nature.” Zittrain posits that either a substantive series of unfortunate Internet events or one catastrophic one will motivate governments to try to regulate cyberspace in a way that promotes …

Making The Punishment Fit The (Computer) Crime: Rebooting Notions Of Possession For The Federal Sentencing Of Child Pornography Offenses, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Sexual exploitation of children is a real and disturbing problem. However, when it comes to the sentencing of child pornography possessors, the U.S. federal system has a problem, as well. This Article adds to the current, heated discussion on what is happening in the sentencing of federal child pornography possession offenses, why nobody is satisfied, and how much the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are to blame. At the heart of this Article are the forgotten players in the discussion—computers and the Internet—and their role in changing the realities of child pornography possession. This Article argues that computers and the Internet …

Coding Privacy, Lilian Edwards

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Lawrence Lessig famously and usefully argues that cyberspace is regulated not just by law but also by norms, markets and architecture or "code." His insightful work might also lead the unwary to conclude, however, that code is inherently anti-privacy, and thus that an increasingly digital world must therefore also be increasingly devoid of privacy. This paper argues briefly that since technology is a neutral tool, code can be designed as much to fight for privacy as against it, and that what matters now is to look at what incentivizes the creation of pro- rather than anti-privacy code in the mainstream …

Protecting Children On The Internet: Mission Impossible?, Audrey Rogers

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article posits that the Williams Court properly upheld Congress' shift in focus from the images to the speech pandering them. The majority ruled that the inability to complete a crime because of a factual error is not a defense. Its reasoning should lay to rest lingering claims that child protection statutes require an actual child. Nevertheless, the Article explains that the Williams dissent essentially relied on legal impossibility in its finding that the PROTECT Act's pandering provision was unconstitutionally overbroad. In so doing, the dissent reflects the reluctance of many to accept the extent to which adults are seeking …

Technology And Intellectual Property: New Rules For An Old Game?, Elizabeth A. Rowe

UF Law Faculty Publications

This foreword to the first issue of 2009 for the Journal of Technology Law and Policy discusses the questions presented by the merger of technology and intellectual property and considers how best the two areas should co-exist.

The "Scope Of A Student": How To Analyze Student Speech In The Age Of The Internet, Erin Reeves

Georgia Law Review

In three seminal cases dating from 1969-1988, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that students have a more limited right to free speech while within the confines of a public school building. In recent years, however, more and more cases have arisenin which it is not so clear whether a student speaker is "on-campus,"due in large part to the rapid increase in speech communicated over the Internet. This Note explores the possibility of how far the "confines of a public school building" should be extended in this age of the Internet. After analyzing the current confusion regarding what amount of restriction …

Data Security Measures In The It Service Industry: A Balance Between Knowledge & Action, N. Mlitwa, Y. Kachala

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

That “knowledge is power” is fast becoming a cliché within the intelligentsia. Such power however, depends largely on how knowledge itself is exchanged and used, which says a lot about the tools of its transmission, exchange, and storage. Information and communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in this respect. As a networked tool, it enables efficient exchanges of video, audio and text data beyond geographical and time constraints. Since this data is exchanged over the worldwide web (www), it can be accessible by anyone in the world using the internet. The risk of unauthorised access, interception, modification, or even …

Internet 3.0: Identifying Problems And Solutions To The Network Neutrality Debate , Robert M. Frieden

ExpressO

What Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) can and cannot do to diversify services lies at the core of the debate over network neutrality. In prior generations ISPs had little incentive or technological capability to deviate from plain vanilla best efforts routing for content providers and from standard “all you can eat” subscription terms for consumer access to the World Wide Web. The next generation Internet has the technological capability and ISPs have the commercial motivation to offer “better than best efforts” routing and premium services for both content providers and consumers seeking higher quality of service and more reliable traffic delivery. …

Surfing Past The Pall Of Orthodoxy: Why The First Amendment Virtually Guarantees Online Law School Graduates Will Breach The Aba Accreditation Barrier, Nicholas C. Dranias

ExpressO

The impact of the constitutional dilemma created by the ABA’s aversion to Internet schooling is widespread. Currently, 18 states and 2 U.S. territories restrict bar exam eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools. Additionally, 29 states and 1 U.S. territory restrict admission to practice on motion to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools.

Although numerous lawsuits have been filed in ultimately failed efforts to strike down bar admission rules that restrict eligibility to graduates of ABA-accredited law schools, none has challenged the ABA-accreditation requirement based on the First Amendment’s prohibition on media discrimination. This Article makes that case.

Despite accelerating technological …