Internet Law Commons^™

Some Questions For The Barrier Theory, Alan Rubel

San Diego Law Review

Having set out the basics, Rickless considers several questions one might pose for the Barrier Theory. For example, must the barrier be solid? No. Must the barrier be erected by, rather than merely used by, the rightholder? No. Must the barrier be morally permissible in the first instance? No. While Rickless's answers seem correct, I think that they raise some concerns about the Barrier Theory.

Toward Informational Privacy Rights, Adam D. Moore

San Diego Law Review

In this paper I will offer several arguments in support of the view that individuals have moral claims to control personal information. Coupled with rights to control access to one's body, capacities, and powers, or physical privacy rights, we will have taken important steps toward a general right to privacy. In Part I, a definition of privacy is offered along with an account of the value of privacy. Simply put, privacy - defined as control over access to locations and information - is necessary for human well-being. In Part II, an attempt to move beyond claims of value to claims …

Separation, Risk, And The Necessity Of Privacy To Well-Being: A Comment On Adam Moore's Toward Informational Privacy Rights, Kenneth Einar Himma

San Diego Law Review

In this Article, I want to raise doubts about certain of Moore's premises in his argument defending information privacy rights. As always and I say this as a continuing admirer of his skill as a philosopher, information theorist, and legal theorist his argument is well thought out and persuasively written. But, as we will see, there are serious problems with each major plank of his schema for justifying privacy rights.

Introduction To The 2007 Editors’ Symposium: Informational Privacy: Philosophical Foundations And Legal Implications, Larry Alexander

San Diego Law Review

The outstanding collection of articles and comments thereon that follows this Introduction constitutes the 2007 Editors' Symposium of the San Diego Law Review. This year's theme is: "Informational Privacy: Philosophical Foundations and Legal Implications."

Does Warrantless Wiretapping Violate Moral Rights?, Evan Tsen Lee

San Diego Law Review

The controversy over the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program will not disappear any time soon. Legislators, policymakers, and academics should be thinking about whether and under what circumstances such surveillance should be illegal. A major factor in that decision is the moral status of such wiretapping. This essay, written for a symposium on moral rights to informational privacy, argues that two key determinants in the morality of warrantless wiretapping are (1) whether the subjects of the surveillance are known terrorists; and (2) whether the wiretapping is part of a pre-emptive surveillance program, or instead whether government operatives actually know of …

"I'Ve Got Nothing To Hide" And Other Misunderstandings Of Privacy, Daniel J. Solove

San Diego Law Review

In this short Article, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: "I've got nothing to hide." According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide …

Privacy Versus Security: Why Privacy Is Not An Absolute Value Or Right, Kenneth Einar Himma

San Diego Law Review

In this Article, I consider the scope of this right to informational privacy relative to our interests in security and argue, in particular, that the right to privacy must yield to these interests in the case of a direct conflict. I offer arguments from a number of different perspectives. I will, for example, begin with a case directly rooted in what I take to be ordinary case intuitions and then continue with an argument grounded in the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value, which is thought to serve as a rough mark between what is important from a moral point …

Claims To Privacy And The Distributed Value View, Alan Rubel

San Diego Law Review

This Article is organized as follows. In Part II, I briefly explain my view of what privacy is - the particularized judgment account. I then turn to the question of privacy - value in Part III, where I examine several views prominent in the literature. In Part IV, I outline my view of privacy's value. I argue that, at its strongest, privacy has constitutive value, which is to say that privacy is a constituent part of intrinsically valuable states of affairs. However, in many cases, privacy's value is not morally weighty. Unlike other goods to which privacy is compared, I …

Electronic Records As Documentary Evidence, Ken Chasse

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The new electronic record provisions that are now part of almost all of the Evidence Acts in Canada are as important as any statutory law or common law concerning the use of records as evidence. They bring six important improvements to the evidentiary law of business records. It is argued, however, that their most serious defects are that they: (1) perpetuate the best evidence rule — a rule rendered redundant by electronic records and information management (RIM); (2) do not deal with hearsay issues; (3) do not cure the defects of the business record provisions in regard to electronic records; …

The Adverse Economic Effects Of Spectrum Set-Asides, Robert W. Crandall, Allan T. Ingrahm

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In February 2007, Industry Canada released a consultation that outlined a proposed auction design for spectrum Ifor Advanced Wireless Services. As part of its consultation, Industry Canada contemplated a spectrum set-aside in the AWS auction to facilitate the entry of a new wireless service provider in Canada; however, it noted that a potential drawback of a spectrum set-aside is that it can induce uneconomic entry into the market. In this paper, we show that a set-aside for AWS spectrum in Canada is more likely to result in uneconomic entry than in a viable domestic entrant into the Canadian wireless industry. …

You Must Remember This: The Copyright Conundrum Of "Translation Memory" Databases, Francie Gow

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Translation memory databases (compilations of texts linked with their translations) can be valuable resources in the process of translating subsequent texts. This article explores the circumstances under which such compilations might be considered sufficiently original to attract copyright protection that is independent of any copyright already subsisting in the underlying translations and source texts. Various characteristics of the tools and the translation industry in general make the analysis highly fact-specific; whether particular translation memory databases attract protection, and, if so, who can claim to be their ‘‘authors’’, must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Any protection that is granted may …

Network Neutrality: Justifiable Discrimination, Unjustifiable Discrimination, And The Bright Line Between Them, Noel Semple

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper proposes a bright line test to guide the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (‘‘CRTC’’) in regulating ‘‘network neutrality’’. When Internet service providers seek to discriminate between uses and users in administering their networks, the CRTC should ask whether the proposed discrimination is a reasonable effort to make the price paid by each user commensurate to the demands which his or her use places on the network. Discrimination which meets this description should be tolerated if not actively encouraged, because it encourages the economically efficient allocation of scarce bandwidth. All other forms of ISP discrimination — including discrimination based …

Virtual Property, Real Law: The Regulation Of Property In Video Games, Susan H. Abramovitch, David L. Cummings

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article considers property created and used in the virtual realm of video games, which is often given real- T world value. From the unauthorized copying of designer clothes sold on Second Life for in-game cash, to real court damages awarded against game operators’ deletion of player-earned swords on Mir 3, a bridge has been taking shape from video gaming’s virtual economies to real-world economies. However, virtual property created in virtual worlds has yet to be formally recognized by North American courts or legislatures. This article attempts to touch on some of the legal considerations paramount in determining how such …

Authorizing Copyright Infringement And The Control Requirement: A Look At P2p File-Sharing And Distribution Of New Technology In The U.K., Australia, Canada, And Singapore, Jeffrey C.J. Lee

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The doctrine of authorizing copyright infringement has been used to deal with the marketing of new Ttechnology that might be employed by a user to infringe copyright, from the distribution of blank cassette tapes and double-cassette tape recorders to photocopiers. It is being tested yet again with the distribution of peer-to-peer file-sharing software that enables the online exchange of MP3 music and other copyrighted files. This article looks at the different positions adopted in several Commonwealth jurisdictions, and examines the policy considerations behind these positions. It looks at, in particular, the recent Australian case of Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd. …

L'Affaire Xm Satellite Radio: La Légalité Des Appareils Qui Enregistrent La Radio Par Satellite, René Pépin

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Aux Etats-Unis, la radio par satellite existe depuis le nouveau millénaire. Mais les compagnies qui œuvrent dans ce domaine font face depuis 2006 a des poursuites devant les tribunaux par les grandes compagnies de disques. Elles paient pourtant les tarifs convenus avec les entreprises qui s’occupent de gestion collective des droits d’auteur sur les disques. Le probleme vient du fait que depuis leur entrée en ondes, des progrès technologiques leur permettent d’offrir à leurs abonnés des appareils qui sont bien plus polyvalents qu’un simple appareil radio récepteur. Les nouveaux modèles peuvent enregistrer plusieurs heures d'émissions, et ils peuvent transmettre à …

Reservoirs Of Danger: The Evolution Of Public And Private Law At The Dawn Of The Information Age, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

A defining problem at the dawn of the Information Age will be securing computer databases of ultra-sensitive personal information. These reservoirs of data fuel our Internet economy but endanger individuals when their information escapes into the hands of cyber-criminals. This juxtaposition of opportunities for rapid economic growth and novel dangers recalls similar challenges society and law faced at the outset of the Industrial Age. Then, reservoirs collected water to power textile mills: the water was harmless in repose but wrought havoc when it escaped. After initially resisting Rylands v. Fletcher’s strict liability standard as undermining economic development, American courts …

The Structure Of Search Engine Law, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides a road map to issues of search engine law. It indicates what questions we must consider when thinking about search engines, and it indicates the interconnections among those questions. It does not endorse any particular normative framework for search. Nor does it recommend who should regulate search. Instead, it provides the necessary foundation for informed decision-making, by whatever regulator and whatever its normative approach.

Part I will explain how modern search engines function and describe the business environment within which they operate. Search engine operations can be understood in terms of the information flows among four principal …

Ict And Employer-Employee Power Dynamics: A Comparative Perspective Of United States' And Netherlands' Workplace Privacy In Light Of Information And Computer Technology Monitoring And Positioning Of Employees, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 37 (2007), Colette Cuijpers

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Employees can cause harm to their employers through Information and Computer Technology (ICT) in employment relationships; for example, through surfing for adult material on the Internet or leaking company secrets via a mobile phone. Employers have responded to this development by introducing various surveillance systems. Besides well-known forms of Internet and e-mail surveillance, positioning systems are becoming a new trend. The influence these systems have on the employment relationship can be far-reaching, as they offer the employer an insight into the employee’s whereabouts, outside the company premises as well as outside company hours. As a consequence, the boundaries between the …

From Taylorism To The Omnipticon: Expanding Employee Surveillance Beyond The Workplace, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 1 (2007), Robert D. Sprague

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

No abstract provided.

Application Service Providing, Copyright, And Licensing, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 79 (2007), Michael P. Widmer

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

Application Service Providing ("ASP"), where a vendor hosts a software application on her server and grants customers access to the application over a network -- without the software application itself being installed on the user’s computer -- is used by many, e.g. in the form of Web based e-mail services, and grows ever more important. This article argues that although ASP mainly raises questions (i) that come up in the context of traditional use of computer programs; or (ii) that have been addressed in the context of online use of works other than software, ASP has significantly different copyright implications …

The Fda And The Future Of The Brain-Computer Interface: Adapting Fda Device Law To The Challenges Of Human-Machine Enhancement, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 117 (2007), Eric Chan

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

No abstract provided.

Angling For A Fair Standard: A Recommendation For A Narrowly Tailored Non-Profit Exemption To The Closed Captioning Requirements, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 165 (2007), Joshua Pila

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

In late 2006, the FCC’s Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau (“CGB”) issued the Anglers Order, providing a wholesale exemption for non-profit entities seeking to avoid the strictures of the Commission’s closed captioning rules. Disability advocates quickly criticized the Anglers Order on administrative law and communications law grounds. This paper avoids administrative law and communications law issues, but instead criticizes the Anglers Order on non-profit law and policy grounds. The paper then recommends and supports a post-application, narrowly-tailored financial test, automatically exempting A) non-profit organizations, with B) less than $25,000 in annual revenue, who C) receive no financial compensation for airing …

Slingbox: Copyright, Fair Use, And Access To Television Programming Anywhere In The World, 25 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 187 (2007), Shekar Sathyanarayana

UIC John Marshall Journal of Information Technology & Privacy Law

No abstract provided.

Identity Theft: Plugging The Massive Data Leaks With A Stricter Nationwide Breach-Notification Law, 40 J. Marshall L. Rev. 681 (2007), Amanda Draper

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fostering Creativity In Virtual Worlds: Easing The Restrictiveness Of Copyright For User-Created Content, Todd David Marcus

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reservoirs Of Danger: The Evolution Of Public And Private Law At The Dawn Of The Information Age, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

A defining problem at the dawn of the Information Age will be securing computer databases of ultra-sensitive personal information. These reservoirs of data fuel our Internet economy but endanger individuals when their information escapes into the hands of cyber-criminals. This juxtaposition of opportunities for rapid economic growth and novel dangers recalls similar challenges society and law faced at the outset of the Industrial Age. Then, reservoirs collected water to power textile mills: the water was harmless in repose but wrought havoc when it escaped. After initially resisting Rylands v. Fletcher's strict liability standard as undermining economic development, American courts and …

Layered Rights: Robertson V. Thomson, Gregory R. Hagen

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In Robertson v. Thomson Corp., the Supreme Court of Canada (‘‘ the Court ’’) considered ‘‘ whether newspaper publishers are entitled as a matter of law to republish in electronic databases freelance articles they have acquired for publication in their newspapers — without compensation to the authors and without their consent’’. Curiously, while deciding that publishers are not entitled to reproduce the individual articles without the consent of the freelancers, it also held that the publishers do have a right to reproduce the articles in a CD- ROM database ‘‘as a part of those collective works — their newspapers . …

Should Scientific Research In The Lead-Up To Invention Vitiate Obviousness Under The Patented Medicines (Notice Of Compliance) Regulations: To Test Or Not To Test?, Ron A. Bouchard

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

This article is an analysis of case law pertaining to whether scientific research in the lead-up to invention should vitiate a finding of obviousness in pharmaceutical litigation under the Patented Medicines (Notice of Compliance) Regulations (the ‘‘NOC Regulations’’). The NOC Regulations belong to a class of legal instruments referred to as ‘‘linkage regulations’’ that tie patent protection for marketed pharmaceuticals to the Canadian drug approval process. Therefore, the NOC Regulations control entry of generic drugs into the market and access by the public to affordable medication. The issue of testing arises out of the complex and inverse relationship between inventiveness …

Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction In The Age Of Globalization, Stephen Coughlan, Robert Currie, Hugh Kindred, Teresa Scassa

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The reach of national law is often greater than its grasp. Although Canada has effective legal power over its territory and all within it, Canadian interests are no longer confined exclusively within Canadian borders. Canada thus finds it increasingly necessary to consider asserting its legal jurisdiction beyond its frontiers. Such extraterritorial assertion of Canadian legal authority may run into strong opposition from other countries, who might view Canada as attempting to intervene in their own national territories and domestic affairs. Likewise, other states, under the same pressures of globalization, may try to extend their legal reach into Canadian territory, where …

Privacy, Crime And Terror: Legal Rights And Security In A Time Of Peril By Stanley A. Cohen (Markham: Lexisnexis Butterworths, 2005), Teresa Scassa

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

It is now trite to say that the events of September 11, 2001 have had a profound impact on our national security, in terms of its institutional and normative dimensions, and also in terms of a more general public anxiety. The hastily enacted Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 brought about significant changes to a wide range of statutes including, among others, the Criminal Code, the Official Secrets Act, the Canada Evidence Act, and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act. An early conference and resultant book on the Anti-terrorism Act raised serious concerns about the potential impact of the changes on …