Internet Law Commons^™

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Evidence Machine: Rethinking Admissibility And Privacy In India's Ai Surveillance State, Samyukta Ramaswamy

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

The proliferation of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) surveillance technologies that utilise machine learning (‘ML’) capabilities to gather and process information to derive insights about individuals has transformed the surveillance landscape by enabling governments and private entities to engage in increasingly pervasive monitoring and data-driven profiling. In India, this transformation is compounded by the presence of executive-controlled surveillance mechanisms under the legal framework of the Telecommunications Act 2023, the Telecommunications (Procedures and Safeguards for Lawful Interception of Messages) Rules 2024, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, amongst others, which authorises wide-ranging data interception and dragnet surveillance while exempting government agencies …

A Gap In The Cybertipline: Electronic Service Provider Liability And Child Safety, Brianna Evans-Sheehan

NYLS Law Review

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The online exploitation of children is a widespread problem that requires immediate action. This Note proposes that Congress …

Preserving Platform Innovation With A Narrow Exception: Section 230(C)(1) Immunity For Algorithmic Recommendations, John "Jack" Di Masi

American University Business Law Review

This Comment examines Section 230(c)(1)’s immunity for online platforms that use machine-learning algorithms to recommend third party content and proposes a narrow exception for truly “bad-actor” cases. It reviews Section 230’s text, as well as its early cases, showing that Congress intended broad protection for editorial functions such as content organization. It then traces how recommendation algorithms evolved and how courts treat algorithmic sorting as a neutral tool. This Comment addresses conflicting interpretations and defends broad immunity for routine curation. This Comment argues that immunity should be stripped only after a balancing test under a three-factor “bad-actor” framework—one that evaluates …

The Growing Divide: The Video Privacy Protection Act’S Inconsistent Subscriber Standard And The Need For Reform, Andrea Pacheco

American University Business Law Review

The Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (“VPPA”) has been brought into the twenty-first century due to a series of class action lawsuits surrounding consumer privacy rights in an increasingly digital world. A circuit split has emerged among the federal appellate courts on the meaning of the word “subscriber” under the VPPA and whether the statute’s protections should extend to casual users of goods and services provided by videotape service providers. The outcome of this debate carries significant implications for consumer privacy and business compliance obligations due to the escalation of business practices involving the collection of consumer data and …

Ai Procurement As Regulatory Reconnaissance, Sam Adler

Fordham Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a black box technology in a black box industry. Some view AI as a life-changing technology capable of advancing society and perhaps even saving the world, while others fear its capacity to harm. Like Dr. Frankenstein, developers fear the unpredictability of their own creations; deployers fear the unknown risks of third-party AI tools that market pressures drive them to assume; members of civil society fear AI’s capacity to oppress the already oppressed and degrade trust in institutions; and everyday users fear the undisclosed potential of AI to cause harm by means they cannot readily comprehend. These …

Tapping Out Of The Wiretap: Whether Consumers Have A Reasonable Expectation Of Privacy Against Internet Tracking Technology, Ashley Faranesh

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), a statute born in an era of rotary phones and analog surveillance, is now at the heart of a legal crisis over internet tracking and privacy. Plaintiffs have increasingly weaponized the CIPA against online businesses that use standard Web-tracking tools, triggering a wave of litigation that stretches the statute far beyond its intended purpose. This Note argues that such application misreads the legislative intent behind the CIPA and risks destablizing core structures of the internet economy and financially crippling online businesses. Courts applying literal interpretations are undermining the CIPA’s purpose by conflating commonplace …

Frankenstein Sinatra: The Argument For A Federal Postmortem Right Of Publicity In The Ai-Era, Ian Samide

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Artificial Intelligence has fundamentally revolutionized the way media is generated and presents new and unique threats to the right of publicity. By enabling users to create high-quality, realistic deep fakes of individuals’ voices, images, or likenesses, Artificial Intelligence has created novel risks to the right of publicity. Additionally, right of publicity is currently governed by state law. This system is proving to be flawed in the internet age, as content is rarely confined to a single jurisdiction, resulting in unpredictability and juridical disputes. This note argues that a federal right of publicity is necessary to regulate Artificial Intelligence effectively and …

Swiping Rights: Hidden Costs Of Hidden Laws, Rachel Landy

Articles

While many legal regimes have undergone fundamental shifts to account for the online economy, one lags behind: industry-specific mandatory contract rules. These rules, frequently buried in decades-old, nonintuitive statutes, are often overly prescriptive and come with draconian penalties, hampering the goals of entrepreneurship and impeding startup growth.

Much has been written about the intersection of regulation and entrepreneurship. But sparse attention has been paid to the unintended consequences on early-stage companies of more subtle regulatory interventions like contract rules — especially those with inconsistent or conflicting requirements among the states. This Article begins to fill that gap and uses as …

Living Property, Joseph William Singer

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court has increasingly defined property rights that are per se exempt from regulation in the absence of compensation, most recently in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) and Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023). The Court claims that it can identify property rights that are categorically protected from regulation by reference to history, tradition, and precedent. Yet this approach is oddly ahistorical; it is inconsistent with the fact that property law changed dramatically over U.S. history, as well as varying tremendously among the states. It is also inconsistent with the historical context of the Founding era. At that time, …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Roots Of Credit Inequality, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

Debt oppression began before the United States became a country. Settlers enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, treating them as property that they could buy and sell for their economic and personal benefit. When enslavement became illegal, new economic systems and laws that included sharecropping, Black Codes, and Jim Crow kept Black people in servitude. Laws that prohibited enslaved people from owning property or selling goods to white people evolved into restrictions on Black people’s occupations and market participation, both formal and informal. When Black entrepreneurs overcame these obstacles and built wealth within Black business enclaves, white people enforced their racist …

“A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Seattle University Law Review

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Mandating Fluoride: A Constitutional Exercise Of Police Power, Anita Jahangiri

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses the ongoing debate over fluoridation: the regulation of fluoride levels in public water systems. Extensive research indicates fluoridation, when regulated at the recommended concentration, is both safe and highly effective in preventing dental caries. Better known as cavities, dental caries is a preventable yet widespread health issue that disproportionately affects low-income populations. Reducing dental health disparities among economic classes is a pressing public health issue. Fluoridation is not merely a policy option, but a critical, proven tool to address such disparities and uphold the collective welfare of Washingtonians. This Note focuses on fluoridation as a public health …

Neurodiversity In The Courtroom: Expanding Jury Service Accessibility Beyond Physical Disability, Samantha L. Mabe

Seattle University Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act has required equal access to jury service for decades; however, efforts to accommodate jurors with disabilities have been slow to develop beyond some minor accommodations for physical disabilities. While neurodivergent people frequently struggle to navigate a world catered toward neurotypical people, jury service remains inaccessible for many neurodivergent people who need accommodations to attend trial and engage in jury deliberations. If courts and advocates do not consider how to develop accommodations to secure the service of neurodivergent jurors, they will miss out on the unique skillsets that neurodivergent people can bring to resolving disputes.

Disabled …

Redefining Section 230 Immunity, Lucas Dini

Seattle University Law Review

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has provided broad immunity to online platforms for third-party content which was the foundation for the internet's growth. However, the rise in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce algorithms to curate content to users of online services has blurred the line between being a passive host of third party content and active editorial control. This Note examines the legal, policy, and constitutional implications of applying Section 230 immunity to platforms that use AI to curate and promote third-party content. This analysis argues that algorithmic promotion of third-party content constitutes a platform's …

Overcrowding The System: Rethinking Juvenile Justice In Washington State, Mckenna White

Seattle University Law Review

The recent crisis at Green Hill School highlights the detrimental consequences of severe overcrowding in Washington State’s Juvenile Rehabilitation system—a problem exacerbated by the implementation of the JR to 25 legislation. This Note argues that the juvenile rehabilitation system, which is currently struggling to manage a wide age range of offenders, necessitates a fundamental rethinking of juvenile justice practices. By examining neurological research indicating continued brain development into the mid-twenties, along with the high prevalence of trauma among justice-involved youth, this Note proposes the creation of a dedicated third system of care within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families …

Addressing The Root Of Housing Insecurity: Washington Should Divest From “Crime-Free” Housing Programs, Sarah Cerdena

Seattle University Law Review

Crime-Free Rental Housing Properties (CFRHPs) have proven to be an ineffective and inequitable approach to public safety. Often, tenants in these properties are evicted—at times, extrajudicially—as a result of conduct that does not rise to violations of their lease provisions, much less criminal behavior. By placing extraordinary power in the hands of local law enforcement to carry out these ordinances, CFRHPs predictably pose significant harm to Black and Latinx communities, survivors of domestic violence, disabled tenants, and low-income tenants generally. Recently, the Washington State Supreme Court grappled with the tensions arising between CFRHPs and the enforcement of Washington landlord-tenant law. …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Esg Investing Breaches Erisa Fiduciary Duties? A Closer Look At Spence V. American Airlines, Inc., Eric Chin-Ru Chang

Seattle University Law Review

In Spence v. American Airlines, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas found that American Airlines breached its fiduciary duties due to BlackRock’s ESG investing practices. Contrary to some reports suggesting that the ruling prohibits ESG investing under ERISA, a closer look at the ruling shows that the court only targeted American Airlines’ failure to manage conflicts of interest appropriately, rather than the legality of ESG investing itself. In light of the intensifying ESG backlash in the United States, this Article cautions against further restrictive measures on ESG investing. Such measures would exacerbate the widening …

Is Your Data Good, Bad, Or Neutral?: Redefining Concreteness For Data Breach Harms, Jeeyoon Lim

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, the Supreme Court has tightened federal court standing requirements for intangible harms, including statutory harms. In TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, the Court held that a mere statutory violation, absent a common-law analogue, is not sufficiently concrete to grant standing. The Court did not provide clear guidance as to how stringent the common-law analogue analysis must be, other than that it does not require an “exact duplicate.” Because of the ever-evolving nature of digital data, data breach victims attempting to enforce their statutory right to privacy in federal court have struggled to rely on tradition and history …

Traditional And Computational Canons, Eric H. Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

As part of the rise of modern textualism, dictionaries and linguistic canons have become a ubiquitous part of legal interpretation. One longstanding question is whether judges citing these tools sincerely attempt to follow the meaning of a text, or if their invocation is merely window-dressing for a preferred outcome. The practical significance of this question extends across all major doctrinal areas, and with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Chevron deference, its importance is only to grow, as courts are now instructed to use every tool at their disposal to resolve ambiguity when interpreting a law. This Article is the first …

Show Me The Money: Approaches To Anti-Money Laundering Compliance For Digital Assets, Mollie Rouan

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (“MiCA”) created a harmonized framework to regulate digital asset issuance and services that were not already covered by existing regulations. Notably, MiCA requires virtual asset providers to adhere to the Financial Action Task Force Recommendation 16 (“FATF”), also known as the Travel Rule. Though the Travel Rule has existed for almost 20 years, its application to crypto asset transfers is entirely new. The purpose of the Travel Rule is to detect and prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, but its application to cryptocurrency wallet transactions is criticized for being overly burdensome and invasive …

Who Owns Your Adventure? A Need For Legislative Clarity For Streamed Performances Of Video Games, Harrison Busalacchi

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Video games contain copyrighted material that could easily be infringed upon by people streaming a performance of them playing the game. However, the streamers can protect themselves from infringement liability by transforming the content in some form or fashion such that their performance constitutes “fair use” of the copyrighted material. This is often accomplished by the streamer providing commentary while playing the game or adding a small video of themselves in the corner of the stream so that the viewers can see the streamers’ reactions to the content. With artificial intelligence seeing exponential growth in the past couple of years …

Volume 48 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Keynote Address: Community Over Constitution, Riddhi Mukhopadhyay

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, Riddhi Mukhopadhyay challenges the veneration of the U.S. Constitution by highlighting its origins in exclusion and its continued failure to protect marginalized communities. Drawing from her experience in civil legal aid and gender justice, she argues that the Constitution was drafted to consolidate power among white, wealthy men and continues to reflect that legacy through racial, gender, and class-based inequities. While acknowledging the significance of constitutional amendments and landmark cases, Mukhopadhyay emphasizes that meaningful change has always come from community-led action, not top-down reform. Additionally, Mukhopadhyay calls on lawyers and legal advocates to center community, practice …

The Lost Child: A Critique On Transracial Adoption Rhetoric, Hallie Conyers-Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

Transracial adoption in the United States reflects a deeply rooted history of colonialism, cultural assimilation, and racial hierarchy, masked by rhetoric focused on the “best interest of the child.” The author critiques that rhetoric and traces how adoption practices and policies, both domestic and international, have evolved to reinforce systemic inequities. Through historical analysis of the forced adoption of Native American, Black, and Asian children, it reveals how the best interest standard has been wielded not to protect children but to uphold political and racial ideologies. The author argues that the prevailing adoption framework relies on child-saving and color-blind narratives …