Internet Law Commons^™

Artificial Intelligence, Finance, And The Law, Tom C.W. Lin

Fordham Law Review

Artificial intelligence is an existential component of modern finance. The progress and promise realized and presented by artificial intelligence in finance has been thus far remarkable. It has made finance cheaper, faster, larger, more accessible, more profitable, and more efficient in many ways. Yet for all the significant progress and promise made possible by financial artificial intelligence, it also presents serious risks and limitations. This Article offers a study of those risks and limitations—the ways artificial intelligence and misunderstandings of it can harm and hinder law, finance, and society. It provides a broad examination of inherent and structural risks and …

Prosecuting Dark Net Drug Marketplace Operators Under The Federal Crack House Statute, Thomas J. Nugent

Fordham Law Review

Over 70,000 Americans died as the result of a drug overdose in 2017, a record year following a record year. Amidst this crisis, the popularity of drug marketplaces on what has been called the “dark net” has exploded. Illicit substances are sold freely on such marketplaces, and the anonymity these marketplaces provide has proved troublesome for law enforcement. Law enforcement has responded by taking down several of these marketplaces and prosecuting their creators, such as Ross Ulbricht of the former Silk Road. Prosecutors have typically leveled conspiracy charges against the operators of these marketplaces—in Ulbricht’s case, alleging a single drug …

Gender Equality And The First Amendment: Foreword, Jeanmarie Fenrich, Benjamin C. Zipursky, Danielle Keats Citron

Fordham Law Review

Gender equality demands equal opportunity to speak and be heard. Yet, in recent years, the clash between equality and free speech in the context of gender has intensified—in the media, the workplace, college campuses, and the political arena, both online and offline. The internet has given rise to novel First Amendment issues that particularly affect women, such as nonconsensual pornography, online harassment, and online privacy. On November 1–2, 2018, the Fordham Law Review brought together scholars and practicing lawyers from around the nation to address many of the pressing challenges facing feminists and free speech advocates today. The Symposium was …

When Law Frees Us To Speak, Danielle Keats Citron, Jonathon W. Penney

Fordham Law Review

A central aim of online abuse is to silence victims. That effort is as regrettable as it is successful. In the face of cyberharassment and sexualprivacy invasions, women and marginalized groups retreat from online engagement. These documented chilling effects, however, are not inevitable. Beyond its deterrent function, the law has an equally important expressive role. In this Article, we highlight law’s capacity to shape social norms and behavior through education. We focus on a neglected dimension of law’s expressive role: its capacity to empower victims to express their truths and engage with others. Our argument is theoretical and empirical. We …

Fosta: A Hostile Law With A Human Cost, Lura Chamberlain

Fordham Law Review

The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 (“FOSTA”) rescinded legal immunity for websites that intentionally host user-generated advertisements for sex trafficking. However, Congress’s mechanism of choice to protect sex-trafficking victims has faced critique and backlash from advocates for those involved in commercial sex, who argue that FOSTA’s broad legislative language does far more to harm sex workers—a group distinct from sex-trafficking victims—than it does to end sex trafficking, chilling significant protected speech in the process. These critics posit that FOSTA’s results toward eradicating sex trafficking have been negligible and that its chief outcome has …

Don't Bring A Cad File To A Gun Fight: A Technological Solution To The Legal And Practical Challenges Of Enforcing Itar On The Internet, Catherine Tremble

Fordham Law Review Online

This Essay begins by outlining Cody Wilson’s motivation to found his organization, Defense Distributed, and the organization’s progress toward its goals. Then, Part II provides a brief overview of the protracted legal battle between Wilson and the State Department over the right to publish Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files on the internet that enable the 3D printing of guns and lower receivers. Part III.A takes a brief look at whether these CAD files are rightly considered speech at all and, if so, what level of protection they might receive. Part III.B then addresses the problem of even asking whether the files …

The Trouble With Tinker: An Examination Of Student Free Speech Rights In The Digital Age, Allison N. Sweeney

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

The boundaries of the schoolyard were once clearly delineated by the physical grounds of the school. In those days, it was relatively easy to determine what sort of student behavior fell within an educator’s purview, and what lay beyond the school’s control. Technological developments have all but erased these confines and extended the boundaries of the school environment somewhat infinitely, as the internet and social media allow students to interact seemingly everywhere and at all times. As these physical boundaries of the schoolyard have disappeared, so too has the certainty with which an educator might supervise a student’s behavior.

Because …

Forbidden Friending: A Framework For Assessing The Reasonableness Of Nonsolicitation Agreements And Determining What Constitutes A Breach On Social Media, Erin Brendel Mathews

Fordham Law Review

Social media has changed the way people conduct their day-to-day lives, both socially and professionally. Prior to the proliferation of social media, it was easier for people to keep their work lives and social lives separate if they so wished. What social media has caused people to do in recent years is to blend their personal and professional personas into one. People can choose to fill their LinkedIn connections with both their clients and their college classmates, they can be Facebook friends with their coworkers right along with their neighbors, and they can utilize social media sites to market themselves …

Race And Rights In The Digital Age, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“You Must Construct Additional Pylons”: Building A Better Framework For Esports Governance, Laura L. Chao

Fordham Law Review

The popularity of “esports,” also known as “electronic sports” or competitive video gaming, has exploded in recent years and captured the attention of cord-cutting millennials—often to the detriment of sports such as basketball, football, baseball, and hockey. In the United States, the commercial dominance of such traditional sports stems from decades of regulatory support. Consequently, while esports regulation is likely to emulate many aspects of traditional sports governance, the esports industry is fraught with challenges that inhibit sophisticated ownership and capital investment. Domestic regulation is complicated by underlying intellectual property ownership and ancillary considerations such as fluctuations in a video …

Reevaluating The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act: Amending The Statute To Explicitly Address The Cloud, Amanda B. Gottlieb

Fordham Law Review

Under the current interpretations of authorization, instances where an individual harmlessly accesses the cloud data of another user could be classified as hacking and a violation of this federal statute. As such, this Note demonstrates that all of the current interpretations of the CFAA are too broad because they could result in this nonsensical outcome. This Note accordingly proposes an amendment to the CFAA specifically addressing user access to data on the cloud. Such an amendment would eliminate the unusual result of innocuous cloud-computing users being deemed hackers under federal law.

Wild Westworld: Section 230 Of The Cda And Social Networks’ Use Of Machine-Learning Algorithms, Catherine Tremble

Fordham Law Review

This Note argues that Facebook’s services—specifically the personalization of content through machine-learning algorithms—constitute the “development” of content and as such do not qualify for § 230 immunity. This Note analyzes the evolution of § 230 jurisprudence to help inform the development of a revised framework. This framework is guided by congressional and public policy goals and creates brighter lines for technological immunity. It tailors immunity to account for user data mined by ISPs and the pervasive effect that the use of that data has on users—two issues that courts have yet to confront. This Note concludes that under the revised …

The Doxing Dilemma: Seeking A Remedy For The Malicious Publication Of Personal Information, Julia M. Macallister

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, malevolent actors have seized upon a new tool to harass, silence, threaten, and injure people online: doxing—the malicious publication of personal identifying information like a home address. Although doxing is an online tool, it causes concrete and serious harm to victims by moving harassment from the Internet to the physical world. Congress and state legislatures have begun to address different forms of cyberharassment. However, no effective and consistent legal remedy for doxing currently exists. This Note examines and critiques current federal and state schemes, and it ultimately proposes that lower federal courts should adopt a new intent …

The Doxing Dilemma: Seeking A Remedy For The Malicious Publication Of Personal Information, Julia M. Macallister

Fordham Law Review

In recent years, malevolent actors have seized upon a new tool to harass, silence, threaten, and injure people online: doxing—the malicious publication of personal identifying information like a home address. Although doxing is an online tool, it causes concrete and serious harm to victims by moving harassment from the Internet to the physical world. Congress and state legislatures have begun to address different forms of cyberharassment. However, no effective and consistent legal remedy for doxing currently exists. This Note examines and critiques current federal and state schemes, and it ultimately proposes that lower federal courts should adopt a new intent …

Updating The Social Network: How Outdated And Unclear State Legislation Violates Sex Offenders’ First Amendment Rights, Elizabeth Tolon

Fordham Law Review

Readily available on computers, phones, tablets, or television, social media has become a necessary platform of expression for many. But, for others, social media is an inaccessible tool whose very use has criminal repercussions. To protect innocent children, many states have enacted legislation restricting sex offenders’ access to social media. Unfortunately, this legislation is often outdated, overly restrictive, and unconstitutional under the First Amendment. North Carolina has recently attracted national attention, as its statute highlights the potential constitutional issues states face in drafting such legislation. To avoid the constitutional concerns that North Carolina faces, state legislators must draft statutes narrowly …

Public Transit Data Through An Intellectual Property Lens: Lessons About Open Data, Teresa Scassa

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article examines some of the challenges presented by the transition from ‘closed’ to open data within the municipal context, using municipal transit data as a case study. The particular lens through which this Article examines these challenges is intellectual property law. In a ‘closed data’ system, intellectual property law is an important means by which legal control over data is asserted by governments and their agencies. In an ‘open data’ context, the freedom to use and distribute content is a freedom from IP constraints. The evolution of approaches to open municipal transit data offers some interesting examples of the …

The Urban Microgrid: Smart Legal And Regulatory Policies To Support Electric Grid Resilienccy And Climate Mitigation, Kevin B. Jones, Sylvia J.S. Bartell, Daniel Nugent, Jonathan Hart

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"Smart Cities" Meet "Anchor Institutions": The Case For Broadband And The Public Library, Ellen P. Goodman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Sharing The Road: Smart Transportation Infrastructure, Dorothy J. Glancy

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Smart cities require smart transportation. Advanced Intelligent Transportation Systems provide ever-smarter transportation infrastructure for the United States and countries around the world. Among the most advance forms of ground transportation infrastructure is a group of technologies that connect vehicles invisibly to other vehicles through information exchanges. These advanced transportation technologies are of two types: On the one hand, Connected Vehicle Safety Systems use vehicle-to-vehicle dedicated short range communications technologies. On the other hand, Connected Vehicle Mobility Applicatoins use a muhc wider variety of mobile wireless technologies. These two types of technolofies that connect vehicles will increasingly make existing physical infrastructure …

Welcome To The Metropticon: Protecting Privacy In A Hyperconnected Town, Kelsey Finch, Omer Tene

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Democratic Deliberation In The Wild: The Mcgill Online Design Studio And The Regulation Room Project, Cynthia Farina, Hoi Kong, Cheryl Blake, Mary Newhart

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Although there is no single unified conception of deliberative democracy, the generally accepted core thesis is that democratic legitimacy comes from authentic deliberation on the part of those affected by a collective decision. This deliberation must occur under conditions of equality, broadmindedness, reasonableness, and inclusion. In exercises such as National Issue forums, citizen juries, and consensus conferences, deliberative practitioners have shown that careful attention to process design can enable ordinary citizens to engage in meaningful deliberation about difficult public policy issues. Typically, however, these are closed exercises—that is, they involve a limited number of participants, often selected to achieve a …

Smart Law For Smart Cities, Annie Decker

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Government-Provided Internet Access: Terms Of Service As Speech Rules, Enrique Armijo

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Securing The Smart Grid: Protecting National Security And Privacy Through Mandatory, Enforcable Interoperability Standards, Christopher Bosch

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Commercial Sexual Exploiutation Of Minors, The First Amendment, And Freedom: Why Backpage.Com Should Be Prevented From Selling America's Children For Sex, Anna Makatche

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Free And Open Source Software In Municipal Procurement:The Challenges And Benefits Of Cooperation, Justin C. Colannino

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The use of free and open source software by municipal governments is the exception rather than the rule. This is due to a variety of factors, including a failure of many municipal procurement policies to take into account the benefits of free software, free software vendors second-to-market status, and a lack of established free and open source software vendors in niche markets. With feasible policy shifts to improve city operations, including building upon open standards and engaging with free software communities, municipalities may be able to better leverage free and open source software to realize fully the advantages that stem …

Electronically Stored Information And The Ancient Documents Exception To The Hearsay Rule: Fix It Before People Find Out About It, Daniel J. Capra

Faculty Scholarship

The first website on the Internet was posted in 1991. While there is not much factual content on the earliest websites, it did not take long for factual assertions—easily retrievable today—to flood the Internet. Now, over one hundred billion emails are sent, and ten million static web pages are added to the Internet every day. In 2006 alone, the world produced electronic information that was equal to three million times the amount of information stored in every book ever written. The earliest innovations in electronic communication are now over twenty years old—meaning that the factual assertions made by way of …

Disagreeable Privacy Policies: Mismatches Between Meaning And Users’ Understanding, Joel R. Reidenberg, Travis Breaux, Lorrie F. Cranor, Brian M. French, Amanda Grannis, James T. Graves, Fei Liu, Aleecia Mcdonald, Thomas B. Norton, Rohan Ramanath, N. Cameron Russell, Norman Sadeh, Florian Schaub

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy policies are verbose, difficult to understand, take too long to read, and may be the least-read items on most websites even as users express growing concerns about information collection practices. For all their faults, though, privacy policies remain the single most important source of information for users to attempt to learn how companies collect, use, and share data. Likewise, these policies form the basis for the self-regulatory notice and choice framework that is designed and promoted as a replacement for regulation. The underlying value and legitimacy of notice and choice depends, however, on the ability of users to understand …

Legitimacy And Expertise In Global Internet Governance, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Over the course of the past decade or so, attention among Internet policymakers and scholars has shifted gradually from substantive design principles to the structure of Internet governance. The Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers in particular now faces a new skepticism about its legitimacy to administer the essential Internet Assigned Numbers Authority function. ICANN has responded to these doubts by proposing a series of major governance reforms that would bring nation-states more into the organization's decisionmaking. After all, transnational governance institutions in other substantive areas privilege nation-states as a matter of course. This Symposium Essay shows that these …

Stay Tuned: Whether Cloud-Based Service Providers Can Have Their Copyrighted Cake And Eat It Too, Amanda Asaro

Fordham Law Review

    Copyright owners have the exclusive right to perform their works publicly and the ability to license their work to others who want to share that right. Subsections 106(4) and (5) of the Copyright Act govern this exclusive public performance right, but neither subsection elaborates on what constitutes a performance made “to the public” versus one that remains private. This lack of clarity has made it difficult for courts to apply the Copyright Act consistently, especially in the face of changing technology.

    Companies like Aereo, Inc. and AereoKiller, Inc. developed novel ways to transmit content over the internet to be viewed …