Internet Law Commons^™

Who Controls The Internet? A Review, Deborah J. Salons

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, Oxford University Press 2006.

Ms. Salons reviews Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World, Oxford University Press, 2006. Authored by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu, the book provides a history of the Internet and analyzes the nexus between globalization and government coercion. The book focuses on how these agents have shaped and developed the Internet as we are familiar with it today.

Globalization Of Legal Practice In The Internet Age, Leonard Bierman, Michael A. Hitt

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Internet's global reach has had a significant impact on the legal profession. This essay explains a few of the key developments in this area, including: competition fueled by outsourcing legal work to lower-wage earning lawyers around the world, "virtual work" changing client interaction and attorney work schedules, law firm reputation as a result of information availability on the Internet, work-product monitoring and the commoditization of legal services, and work force diversity spurred by the influence of international clients.

Globalization of The Legal Profession, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, April 6, 2006

The Legal Status Of Spyware, Daniel B. Garrie, Alan F. Blakley, Mathew J. Armstrong

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article examines the legal status of Spyware under federal and common law in the United States of America. The Authors begin with a technical overview of Spyware technology, which covers Spyware's functionality, methods of dispersion, and classification. The Authors then analyze the treatment of Spyware under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, the Wiretap Act, and under general tort claims of trespass to chattels, invasion of privacy, and intrusion upon seclusion. The Authors conclude that none of the aformentioned causes of action provide an adequate remedy at law for Spyware victims. Moreover, the Authors note …

A Technological Theory Of The Arms Race, Lee Kovarsky

Indiana Law Journal

Although the "technological arms race" has recently emerged as a vogue-ish piece of legal terminology, scholarship has quite conspicuously failed to explore the phenomenon systematically. What are "technological" arms races? Why do they happen? Does the recent spike in scholarly attention actually reflect their novelty? Are they always inefficient? How do they differ from military ones? What role can legal institutions play in slowing them down?

In this Article I seek to answer these questions. I argue that copyright enforcement and self-help represent substitutable tactics for regulating access to expressive assets, and that the efficacy of each tactic depends on …

Rivalrous Telecommunications Networks With And Without Mandatory Sharing, Thomas W. Hazlett

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Interconnection Policy And Technological Progress, Gerald W. Brock

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

'Wi-Fi'ght Them When You Can Join Them? How The Philadelphia Compromise May Have Saved Municipally-Owned Telecommunications Services, Adam Christensen

Federal Communications Law Journal

When the Mayor of Philadelphia announced his plan to provide municipally sponsored Wi-Fi Internet access, Verizon, the incumbent telecommunications service provider organized lobbyists to block the plan. The compromise eventually struck between Pennsylvania municipalities and Verizon, which allows municipalities to offer telecommunications services after giving Verizon a right of first refusal has resulted in a certain degree of uncertainty in the future of municipally sponsored Internet access. This Note examines this compromise and argues that it represents an optimistic future for municipally sponsored telecommunications services. The Note first discusses the history of Wi-Fi technology and the development of the law …

Toward A Unified Test Of Personal Jurisdiction In An Era Of Widely Diffused Wrongs: The Relevance Of Purpose And Effects, C. Douglas Floyd, Shima Baradaran-Robison

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Digital Crossroads, Kathleen Wallman

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age, Jonathan E. Nuechterlein & Philip J. Weiser, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005, 670 pages.

A review of Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age, by Jonathan E. Nuechterlein and Philip J. Weiser, MIT Press, 2005. Most practitioners of communications law are familiar with the necessity of teaching themselves enough economics, engineering, and politics to practice competently and comfortably in an area that is inherently interdisciplinary. Likewise, many professors who teach telecommunications from a variety of disciplinary perspectives are familiar with the frustration of locating a text that …

Looking Beyond The Digital Divide, Yolanda D. Edwards

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society, Anthony G. Wilhelm, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2004, 184 pages.

A review of Anthony G. Wilhelm's Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society, MIT Press, 2004. An important attempt to frame the debate about the importance of technological literacy, this book explores world-wide successes and failures to bring technology to the masses and provides a plan to accomplish it in the United States.

Discriminatory Filtering: Cipa's Effect On Our Nation's Youth And Why The Supreme Court Erred In Upholding The Constitutionality Of The Children's Internet Protection Act, Katherine A. Miltner

Federal Communications Law Journal

Congress introduced the Children's Internet Protection Act ("CIPA") in order to filter obscene and indecent material in response to a perceived threat to members of the public, specifically minors, who are exposed to pornographic material on the Internet. The provisions of CIPA have provoked tension between two competing interests: protecting minors from cyberpornography, and safeguarding First Amendment rights. This Note argues that the Supreme Court erred by upholding the constitutionality of CIPA. As a result of the Supreme Court's decision, the nation's youth will have restricted access to constitutionally protected information. The Court improperly relied on a provision of the …

An Introduction To Lessigian Thought, Russ Taylor

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, Lawrence Lessig, New York: Penguin Press, 2004, 306 pages.

A review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig. Lawrence Lessig is a frequent commentator and prolific writer on media and communications topics. His body of work touches copyright issues, radio spectrum policy, media ownership issues, and legal ownership and control of the physical platforms that deliver broadband content. In this 2004 publication, he focuses on copyright policy. …

An Architecture For Spam Regulation, David Dickinson

Federal Communications Law Journal

Junk email, commonly referred to as "spam," is the current scourge of the Internet. In late 2004, unwanted email messages were being delivered at a rate of 12.4 billion per day. The variety of tools used to combat spam have failed to make a significant impact. Legislative efforts, such as the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, met with substantial enforcement complications. The communications industry responded with a variety of technical advances, such as filters and blacklists, but those innovations are still unable to reliably distinguish between wanted and unwanted messages. Real coordination between legislative and technical spam control tactics has yet …

Staying Afloat In The Internet Stream: How To Keep Web Radio From Drowning In Digital Copyright Royalties, Emily D. Harwood

Federal Communications Law Journal

In the 1990's, the development of "streaming" technology allowed webcasters to begin broadcasting music on the Internet. The public took advantage of a plethora of free media players, and the number of web-based radio stations soared. However, a crippling dispute over broadcast rates left the viability of this technology in doubt. This Note criticizes current policies that curtail radio streaming by providing harsh financial restrictions on webcasters. In looking to the future, this Note argues that Congress should extend licensing exemptions to cover those Internet stations most like their AM/FM counterparts who do not have to pay additional fees.

Legislating The Tower Of Babel: International Restrictions On Internet Content And The Marketplace Of Ideas, Michael F. Sutton

Federal Communications Law Journal

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the expression of diverse viewpoints in virtually any medium. Nevertheless, the modern novelty of "borderless" communication via the Internet strains our ideal of keeping government out of the business of regulating speech. This Note reveals the conflict between the First Amendment's national protections and the Internet's lack of national boundaries, while also arguing for international intervention for the protection of free speech. This Author articulates the real danger of "watered-down speech" unless both the FCC and the international community provide regulations and harmonized international standards for online content that reflect First Amendment …

Prescriptive Jurisdiction Over Internet Activity: The Need To Define And Establish The Boundaries Of Cyberliberty, Samuel F. Miller

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Promoting Innovation To Prevent The Internet From Becoming A Wasteland, Zoe Baird

Federal Communications Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Encryption Regulation In The Wake Of September 11, 2001: Must We Protect National Security At The Expense Of The Economy?, Matthew Parker Voors

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note argues that although privacy and economic concerns have ruled the encryption debate during the past decade, the move toward increased privacy on the Internet and relaxed encryption regulation, designed to promote electronic commerce, comes at the expense of national security and the protection of Americans' safety. The Article begins with historical information about encryption and an examination of how businesses use encryption to secure their communications and financial transactions on the Internet. This Section also observes that this technology is employed by terrorist organizations to accomplish the same goal: to send private communications. The Author next details the …

What’S In A Name?, Jonathan Zittrain

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Ruling the Root, Milton L. Mueller, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002, 301 pages.

A review of Milton L. Mueller's Ruling the Root, The MIT Press, 2002. In the spring of 1998, the U.S. government told the Internet: Govern yourself. This unfocused order-a blandishment, really, expressed as an awkward "statement of policy" by the Department of Commerce, carrying no direct force of law-came about because the management of obscure but critical centralized Internet functions was at a political crossroads. In Ruling the Root, Mueller thoroughly documents the colorful history both before and after this moment of inflection, and gives …

The U.S. Supreme Court Addresses The Child Pornography Prevention Act And Child Online Protection Act In Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition And Ashcroft V. American Civil Liberties Union, Sue Ann Mota

Federal Communications Law Journal

Both the Child Pornography Prevention Act ("CPPA") and the Child Online Protection Act ("COPA") were intended by Congress to protect minors. The CPPA was intended to protect minors from the harmful effects of virtual child pornography. The COPA was intended to protect minors from pornography currently available commercially on the World Wide Web. However, in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of both statutes: The Court struck down sections of the CPPA as overbroad and unconstitutional in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. In Ashcroft v. ACLU, the Court upheld some sections of COPA as not unconstitutionally overbroad, but …

Carnivore, The Fbi’S E-Mail Surveillance System: Devouring Criminals, Not Privacy, Griffin S. Dunham

Federal Communications Law Journal

On July 11, 2000, the FBI intorduced Carnivore, an Internet monitoring system. It was designed, and is used exclusively, to carry out court-ordered surveillance of electronic communications. It is a tangible, portable device, tantamount to a phone tap, that allows the FBI to intercept and collect criminal suspects' e-mail without their knowledge or consent. This Note addresses competing and parallel interests between the government and society to determine the legitimacy and necessity of Carnivore. The purpose of this Note is twofold: first, to demonstrate the need for Carnivore to enable law enforcement to keep up with criminals who utilize cyberspace …

Protecting The E-Marketplace Of Ideas By Protecting Employers: Immunity For Employers Under Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act, Eric M.D. Zion

Federal Communications Law Journal

While we credit employers that provide employees with free Internet access, such access comes at a price to the public because employers are one of the traditional defendents in defamation suits. Complicating matters, Congress enacted the Communications Decency Act. Its section 230 provides broad federal immunity for ISPs when defamatory material of a third party is published using their services. With the passage of section 230, Congress rendered employers immune for the same tort which they are so closely associated. Some argue that employers should not be capable of invoking the immunity because it would allow employers to defame with …

Injunctive Relief In The Internet Age: The Battle Between Free Speech And Trade Secrets, Adam W. Johnson

Federal Communications Law Journal

The information revolution has led to technological innovations in the movement, storage, and dissemination of information. The Internet allows a person, with good or bad intent, to distribute information to millions of people. This ability raises serious implications when trade secret information is the subject of Internet postings. Once a trade secret becomes publicly available, it loses its legal secrecy, and special legal protection. Additionally, competitors and everyone else on the Internet can gain access to the information. For those who rely on trade secret protection to guard their inventions, this presents a growing concern.

This Note will illustrate the …

A Common Carrier Approach To Internet Interconnection, James B. Speta

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Article argues that some generalized interconnection rules are broadly appropriate. Specifically, some lessons learned from the ancient regime of common carrier regulation provide the appropriate regulatory foundation for the modern Internet. Since at least the middle ages, most significant carriers of communications and commerce have been regulated as common carriers. Common carrier rules have resolved the disputed issues of duty to serve, nondiscrimination, and interconnection. These were the problems of seventeenth-century ferry owners and innkeepers, eighteenth-century steamships, nineteenth-century railroads, and twentieth-century telephone networks. They are similar to the problems of the twenty-first-century Internet, and similar rules can govern its …

The Defamation Of Choice-Of-Law In Cyberspace: Countering The View That The Restatement (Second) Of Conflict Of Laws Is Inadequate To Navigate The Borderless Reaches Of The Intangible Frontier, Philip Adam Davis

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note examines the adequacy of the traditional choice-of-law rules, including the Restatement (Second), in interstate cyber-defamation disputes, and argues that there is nothing different or unique about cyberspace which warrants the modification or abandonment of traditional choice-of-law regimes for cyber-defamation disputes.

Indecent Exposures In An Electronic Regime, Natalie L. Regoli

Federal Communications Law Journal

As the topic of data privacy is vast and the subject of much scrutiny, this Comment focuses narrowly on commercial cyber-activities relating to the nonconsensual Internet acquisition of personally identifiable user data. Beginning with a brief examination of the technology that has exacerbated privacy law's inadequacies, it briefly discusses failed attempts to safeguard privacy rights through the market and federal agency management. It then addresses current U.S. privacy legislation and the 1995 European Privacy Directive. Finally, this Comment proposes the creation of a new legislative system to effectively combat the surreptitious collection, storage, use, and sale of personal data.

Does Internet Gambling Strengthen The U.S. Economy? Don't Bet On It, Ryan D. Hammer

Federal Communications Law Journal

Commercial gambling in the United States is a mammoth industry. In the past few decades, the United States developed from a country with few gambling options to one permitting some form of legalized gambling in almost every state. Presently, a new wave of technology affects this industry. Legislators and regulators must deal with the phenomenon of Internet gambling. This Note asserts that Internet gambling must be curbed to lessen its negative impact on the American economy. Many state and local governments are dependent on tax revenues associated with traditional forms of gambling. Internet gambling not only deprives the economy of …

An Uphill Battle: The Difficulty Of Deterring And Detecting Perpetrators Of Internet Stock Fraud, Byron D. Hittle

Federal Communications Law Journal

This Note argues that because of the limited resources of the SEC, the demanding requirements to prove misrepresentation, the current lack of cooperation between federal and state securities regulators, and a perverse admiration for fraud masterminds, illegal stock price manipulators will continue to profit from unsuspecting investors. Various measures to curb Internet fraud, however, are currently being pondered by industry experts. Among the most effective and realistic are, in order: increasing investor education and awareness, increasing the SEC's "firepower," increasing penalties and jail time for offenders, furthering coordination of federal and state efforts, and creating a "seal of approval" for …

The Best Laid Plans: How Unrestrained Arbitration Decisions Have Corrupted The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, Ian L. Stewart

Federal Communications Law Journal

In the rapidly changing Internet age, a sound dispute resolution policy is needed to address conflict where traditional rights intersect emerging technologies. This Note examines how unfettered arbitration decisions, even those made with the best of intentions, can corrupt a good dispute resolution policy, as is the case with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. The Note provides background information on ICANN, domain disputes regarding cybersquatting and reverse domain hijacking, and the Policy. It then explains how ICANN’s dispute resolution providers’ expansive decisions have weakened the Policy by removing the internal limitations that made it strong and effective. Finally, …

Slow And Steady Does Not Always Win The Race: The Nuremberg Files Web Site And What It Should Teach Us About Incitement And The Internet, Nadine E. Mcspadden

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.