Internet Law Commons^™

Ai, Antitrust, And The Marketplace Of Ideas, Maurice E. Stucke

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Emotionally Unstable: Addressing Emotional Distress As A Concrete Injury In Data Breach Cases Post-Transunion, Anna P. Cox

Fordham Law Review

Data breaches and data breach litigation are exponentially on the rise. Plaintiffs whose information is stolen in a data breach often claim emotional distress for fear of future harm the data breach may cause. However, plaintiffs who bring suit in federal court must show that they have suffered an injury in fact for purposes of Article III standing before a federal court will exercise jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez requires that plaintiffs who seek money damages under a theory of risk of future harm show that they have suffered a present concrete injury to …

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 …

The Illusion Of Inclusion: The False Promise Of The New Governance Project For Content Moderation, Brenda Dvoskin

Fordham Law Review

Because private companies now control the most prominent communication platforms, the most pressing question in the field of content moderation is how to ensure that the governance of public discourse responds to public values. The prevailing approach, given that the state cannot regulate speech directly, is that state regulation can be substituted with audited self-regulation, broad stakeholder participation, and negotiated rulemaking. In this model, which this Article refers to as the “new governance model for content moderation,” companies include advocates as representatives of the public in their processes to govern online speech. Ideally, they negotiate policy goals and share responsibility …

Chronically Online: Apportioning Liability In Social Media Litigation Based On User Engagement, Rebecca Vangelos

Fordham Law Review

The average American teenager spends nearly five hours on social media every day. This result is by design: social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok deploy persuasive technologies—including infinite scroll, personalized content recommendation feeds, and dark patterns—to capture and retain teen attention. These intentional design features exploit adolescent vulnerabilities to foster social media dependency. Accordingly, a growing body of scientific evidence links the extensive use of social media to the teen mental health crisis in the United States.

Despite these negative effects, social media companies have largely evaded accountability for the harm they have caused to teens. Recent lawsuits …

Like It Or Not: Recognizing A Special Relationship Between Social Media Companies And Their Users, Alexandra Tran

Fordham Law Review

When the internet plays a role in a plaintiff’s injury, there can be considerable roadblocks barring recovery. At the heart of the dispute over how social media should be legally addressed is the balance between maintaining freedom of expression on the open internet and imposing regulations on social media companies to ensure online safety. When plaintiffs allege that a social media company had a duty to warn them about dangers on its site, courts are generally reluctant to extend the special relationship doctrine to encompass the social media-user relationship. In addition to the high bar set by courts, different jurisdictions …

Ai, Algorithms, And Awful Humans, Daniel J. Solove, Hideyuki Matsumi

Fordham Law Review

A profound shift is occurring in the way many decisions are made, with machines taking greater roles in the decision-making process. Two arguments are often advanced to justify the increasing use of automation and algorithms in decisions. The “Awful Human Argument” asserts that human decision-making is often awful and that machines can decide better than humans. Another argument, the “Better Together Argument,” posits that machines can augment and improve human decision-making. These arguments exert a powerful influence on law and policy.

In this Essay, we contend that in the context of making decisions about humans, these arguments are far too …

Chatgpt, Large Language Models, And Law, Harry Surden

Fordham Law Review

This Essay explores Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT/GPT-4, detailing the advances and challenges in applying AI to law. It first explains how these AI technologies work at an understandable level. It then examines the significant evolution of LLMs since 2022 and their improved capabilities in understanding and generating complex documents, such as legal texts. Finally, this Essay discusses the limitations of these technologies, offering a balanced view of their potential role in legal work.

Tele-Induction Of Buprenorphine For Opioid Use Disorder: Regulatory Flux And Public Confusion, Stacey A. Tovino

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Looks Matter On Social Media: How Should Courts Determine Whether A Public Official Operates Their Social Media Account Under Color Of State Law?, John B. Tsimis

Fordham Law Review

The widespread use of social media has presented a novel legal landscape for the application of constitutionally protected rights—particularly the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. The First Amendment prohibits the government from excluding citizens from a public forum on the basis of their viewpoints. Public officials acting under color of state law similarly may not use the authority of their offices to deprive citizens of their First Amendment rights.

However, the application of this protection in the context of social media has been inconsistent across federal circuit courts. Although these courts agree that viewpoint discrimination by the government on …

Now On Display: In-Line Linking In The Age Of The Server Test, Sonia Autret

Fordham Law Review

In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit adopted a new interpretation of 17 U.S.C. § 106(5), which codifies the display right of the Copyright Act of 1976. In Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, the Ninth Circuit read § 106(5) to mean that creative works made visible on web pages through in-line linking, an architectural pillar of modern web design, would not infringe on a copyright owner’s display right if the work was not actually copied onto the website’s server. Since its adoption, this approach—known as the Server Test—has been lauded by search engine providers and web …

“Can I Post This?”: A Call For Nuanced Interpretation Of Dmca Enforcement In The Age Of Social Media, Erin E. Bronner

Fordham Law Review

This Note advances recent scholarship critiquing the notice-and-takedown procedures used by online service providers (OSPs) under the safe-harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)—specifically in the context of user-generated content (UGC) posted by end users on social media. Rights holders have increasingly put legal pressure on technology platforms to fortify their copyright protection mechanisms. Over the past decade, this imperative has manifested through an increased use of automated content recognition (ACR) technology to remove allegedly infringing UGC. ACR technology has gradually overtaken the manual, human review of UGC that the DMCA envisioned.

However, reliance on mass automated takedowns …

The Digital First Sale Doctrine In A Blockchain World: Nfts And The Temporary Reproduction Exception, Chelsea Lim

Fordham Law Review

In 2021, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) exploded in popularity. Representing over sixty million dollars in sales, NFTs are currently being bought and sold in almost every industry, in the form of exclusive videos in the sports industry and digital paintings in the art industry. NFTs are digital certificates that use blockchain technology to verify authenticity and proof of ownership. Through NFTs’ non-fungible and immutable characteristics, owners are able to create scarcity for and authenticity in digital copies of their works, replicating the tangible experience of owning a physical, limited-edition item. NFTs have also been able to promote a unique secondary marketplace, …

Beyond Window Dressing: Public Participation For Marginalized Communities In The Datafied Society, Michele Estrin Gilman

Fordham Law Review

We live in a datafied society in which our personal data is being constantly harvested, analyzed, and sold by public and private entities, and yet we have little control over our data and little voice in how it is used. In light of the impacts of algorithmic decision-making systems—including those that run on machine learning and artificial intelligence—there are increasing calls to integrate public participation into the adoption, design, and oversight of these tech tools. Stakeholder input is particularly crucial for members of marginalized groups, who bear the disproportionate harms of data-centric technologies. Yet, recent calls for public participation have …

How To Regulate Online Platforms: Why Common Carrier Doctrine Is Inappropriate To Regulate Social Networks And Alternate Approaches To Protect Rights, Edward W. Mclaughlin

Fordham Law Review Online

Concerns about the “concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties” and their ability to suppress some user speech have led to calls to regulate online platforms like common carriers or public accommodations. Advocates of that regulation theorize that social media platforms host today’s public forum and are open to all comers and so should have a responsibility to be content neutral and allow all voices to be heard. Traditionally, the argument that private players, as opposed to only government actors, can violate individuals’ free speech rights was a progressive cause, but recently conservative …

The Glocal Net: Standing On Joel Reidenberg’S Shoulders, Michael Birnhack

Fordham Law Review

Information technology and digital networks are global, and information can easily cross borders. Laws, however, are territorial, local, and specific. This is the meeting of the global and the local. Imposing local laws on global technology can result in a conflict, but it may give birth to a new condition, the “glocal net”: the fusion of the global and the local. Under the condition of the glocal net, as a matter of practice, people experience the internet differently in different places around the globe. As an ideal, the glocal net would strive to enable both the global and the local …

Serious Notice: A Celebration, Discussion, And Recognition Of Joel Reidenberg’S Work On Privacy Notices And Disclosures, Tal Z. Zarsky

Fordham Law Review

This Essay pays tribute to Professor Joel Reidenberg’s rich academic career and, specifically, to his contributions to the study of privacy policies. In doing so, this Essay takes a close look at privacy policies and possible ways to effectively intermediate their content through various labeling schemes. While severely flawed, privacy policies are here to stay. Therefore, an in-depth analysis of ways to enhance their efficiency is merited. This Essay thus examines key strategies for privacy-related intermediation, obstacles, and problems arising in the process, as well as possible solutions. The analysis weaves together theoretical and empirical privacy law scholarship (much of …

On The Propertization Of Data And The Harmonization Imperative, Luis Miguel M. Del Rosario

Fordham Law Review

The digital age has paved the way for unforeseen and unconscionable harms. Recent experiences with security breaches, surveillance programs, and mass disinformation campaigns have taught us that unchecked data collection, use, retention, and transfer have the potential to affect everything from health-care access to national security. And they have shown the growing need for a solution that addresses this proliferation of intangible collective harms. This Note champions data propertization—the process of establishing a bundle of rights in data comparable to those that comprise property interests—as the proper method for preventing and redressing data harms. More specifically, this Note analyzes Illinois’s …

Copyright’S Techno-Pessimist Creep, Xiyin Tang

Fordham Law Review

Government investigations and public scrutiny of Big Tech are at an all-time high. While current legal scholarship and government focus have centered overwhelmingly on whether and how antitrust law and § 230 of the Communications Decency Act can be revised to address platform dominance, scant attention has been paid to another, almost unseen attempt to regulate Big Tech: copyright law. The recent adoption in Europe of Article 17 of the Copyright Directive, which holds internet platforms liable for user-generated creative content unless they obtain costly content licenses, is the most direct example of such regulation—and may serve as precedent for …

Schrems's Slippery Slope: Strengthening Governance Mechanisms To Rehabilitate Eu-U.S. Cross-Border Data Transfers After Schrems Ii, Edward W. Mclaughlin

Fordham Law Review

In July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the Privacy Shield Framework, the central data governance mechanism that once governed cross-border data transfers from the European Union (EU) to the United States. For the second time in five years, Europe’s top court invalidated the primary method of cross-border data transfers. Both times the CJEU found that the United States’s surveillance laws were, and remain, overbroad and fail to provide EU citizens with protections that are essentially equivalent to those guaranteed under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in light of the Charter of Fundamental …

Copyright Fair Use And The Digital Carnivalesque: Towards A New Lexicon Of Transformative Internet Memes, David Tan, Angus J. Wilson

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The influence of social media in the 21st century has led to new social norms of behavior with individuals presenting themselves to others, whether physically or virtually, on various social media platforms. As a result, these new trends have led recent society to be characterized as a “presentational cultural regime” and a “specular economy.” In a Bakhtinian digital carnivalesque, internet memes present a feast of challenges to exceptions and limitations in copyright law. Memes encompass a wide range of expression about the human experience, while also existing as a playful mode of culturally permissible expression in online social communications rather …

Ocularcentrism And Deepfakes: Should Seeing Be Believing?, Katrina G. Geddes

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The pernicious effects of misinformation were starkly exposed on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob of protestors stormed the nation’s capital, fueled by false claims of election fraud. As policymakers wrestle with various proposals to curb misinformation online, this Article highlights one of the root causes of our vulnerability to misinformation, specifically, the epistemological prioritization of sight above all other senses (“ocularcentrism”). The increasing ubiquity of so-called “deepfakes”—hyperrealistic, digitally altered videos of events that never occurred—has further exposed the vulnerabilities of an ocularcentric society, in which technology-mediated sight is synonymous with knowledge. This Article traces the evolution of visual …

The German Netzdg As Role Model Or Cautionary Tale? Implications For The Debate On Social Media Liability, Patrick Zurth

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

What can be done against discrimination, bullying, insults, and the spread of dangerous fake news on social media platforms? While platforms in the United States enjoy broad discretion on how to approach that issue, there are both legal and political debates regarding social media regulation. Germany, by contrast, advances the opposite approach: requiring social media providers to block or remove illegal content. The Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (“NetzDG,” “Network Enforcement Act,” the “Act”) of 2017 outlines a specific procedure for implementing such a claim. The Act is the first of its kind in the western democratic states. Other countries have invoked or discussed …

Is There A Right To Tweet At Your President?, Nick Reade

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court has developed the public forum doctrine to protect the First Amendment rights of speakers in places of assembly and expression. The doctrine facilitates free expression by restricting the government’s ability to discriminate against or regulate speech in state- controlled public forums. In 2019, two federal courts of appeals extended the doctrine to protect speakers who express themselves in the interactive spaces that elected politicians control on their personal social media accounts. In Davison v. Randall, the Fourth Circuit held that a local official’s Facebook page was a public forum and, therefore, the official could neither …

Monopolizing Free Speech, Gregory Day

Fordham Law Review

The First Amendment prevents the government from suppressing speech, though individuals can ban, chill, or abridge free expression without offending the Constitution. Hardly an unintended consequence, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously likened free speech to a marketplace where the responsibility of rejecting dangerous, repugnant, or worthless speech lies with the people. This supposedly maximizes social welfare on the theory that the market promotes good ideas and condemns bad ones better than the state can. Nevertheless, there is a concern that large technology corporations exercise unreasonable power in the marketplace of ideas. Because “big tech’s” ability to abridge speech lacks constitutional …

Access To Algorithms, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Fordham Law Review

Federal, state, and local governments increasingly depend on automated systems—often procured from the private sector—to make key decisions about civil rights and liberties. When individuals affected by these decisions seek access to information about the algorithmic methodologies that produced them, governments frequently assert that this information is proprietary and cannot be disclosed. Recognizing that opaque algorithmic governance poses a threat to civil rights and liberties, scholars have called for a renewed focus on transparency and accountability for automated decision-making. But scholars have neglected a critical avenue for promoting public accountability and transparency for automated decision-making: the law of access to …

Pornographic Deepfakes: The Case For Federal Criminalization Of Revenge Porn’S Next Tragic Act, Rebecca A. Delfino

Fordham Law Review

This could happen to you. Like millions of people worldwide, you have uploaded digital photographs of yourself to the internet through social media platforms. Your pictures aren’t sexually explicit or revealing—they depict your daily life, spending time with friends or taking “selfies” on vacation. But then someone decides they don’t like you. Using an app available on any smartphone, this antagonist clips digital images of your face from your innocuous pictures and pastes them seamlessly onto the body of a person engaged in sexually explicit acts. Without your knowledge or consent, you become the “star” of a realistic, pornographic “deepfake.” …

Cda 230 For A Smart Internet, Madeline Byrd, Katherine J. Strandburg

Fordham Law Review

This Article analyzes CDA 230 liability in light of the evolution of smart services employing data-driven personalized models of user behavior. As an illustrative case study, we discuss discrimination claims against Facebook’s ad-targeting platform, relying on recent empirical studies5 and litigation documents for factual background.

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, And Bias In Finance: Toward Responsible Innovation, Kristin Johnson, Frank Pasquale, Jennifer Chapman

Fordham Law Review

According to some futurists, financial markets’ automation will substitute increasingly sophisticated, objective, analytical, model-based assessments of, for example, a borrower’s creditworthiness for direct human evaluations irrevocably tainted by bias and subject to the cognitive limits of the human brain. However, even if they do occur, such advances may violate other legal principles.