Internet Law Commons^™

Judgment On Unfair Competition Dispute Between Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Ltd. Co. And Beijing 3721 Technology Ltd. Co., Pengyue Li

Washington International Law Journal

On October 20, 2003, Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Ltd., Co. (“Baidu”), a Nasdaq-listed company known as the “Google of China,” filed a suit against its competitor Beijing 3721 Technology Ltd. Co. (“3721”) in Beijing Chaoyang District Court for copyright infringement and unfair competition. The case is regarded as China’s first copyright-infringement dispute involving website search-engine technology. Legal experts, the Chinese media, and the Supreme Court of China have paid close attention to the case, especially as it is related to China’s ongoing legislative effort to improve protection of intellectual property. The translation below is the appellate opinion in this …

Don't Send That E-Mail To A Minor!: Compliance With State Child Protection Registry Statutes, Laura Dunlop

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In July of 2004, Michigan and Utah enacted child protection registry laws that prohibit businesses from sending e-mail advertisements for certain types of goods and services to “contact points” (e.g. individual or school e-mail domains) listed on registries maintained by each state. The prohibited goods and services include alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and illegal drugs. This Article summarizes these statutes and provides guidance to businesses concerning statutory compliance. The Article also highlights certain concerns about the scope and ambiguities in the statutory language. Despite ongoing debate surrounding these statutes, companies that choose to market via the Internet must understand their statutory …

Applying The Wiretap Act To Online Communications After United States V. Councilman, Jessica Belskis

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

This article examines the federal Wiretap Act and its application to online communications in light of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s recent decision in United States v. Councilman. The federal Wiretap Act places legal limits on the surveillance of electronic communications, but courts struggle to make sense of its application to online communications. Formerly, courts held that the Wiretap Act did not apply to the retrieval of communications from places of electronic storage. However, in United States v. Councilman, the First Circuit suggests that retrieval of emails from temporary places of electronic storage …

The Fight To Save America's Inbox: State Legislation And Litigation In The Wake Of Can-Spam, Emma Scanlan

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The fight to curb the ever-increasing amount of unsolicited commercial email or “spam” showing up in the inboxes of American businesses has generated both state and federal legislation. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was enacted to create a bright-line between spam and legal commercial email. The Act preempted many state spam laws but also left significant enforcement abilities to the individual states. States that elect to create large civil damages for spam without criminalizing the transmission of unsolicited commercial email run the risk of winning cases where the damage awards are largely unenforceable and not effective deterrents to big-time spammers. …

Liability Under The Americans With Disabilities Act For Private Web Site Operators, Evgenia Fkiaras

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA”) is silent on the specific question of whether privately owned websites fall within its provisions. There is a circuit split on the issue, although the only case directly on point makes mandatory website compliance the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless, given the direction that the law will probably head and the relative ease of making websites accessible to the group most in need—those who require the use of assistive technologies—it behooves businesses to construct or alter their websites to accommodate these individuals.

Rebooting Cybertort Law, Michael L. Rustad, Thomas H. Koenig

Washington Law Review

Cyberspace provides an ideal legal environment for tortfeasors and online criminals because Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have no duty to mitigate harms caused by ongoing torts, crimes, and infringing acts. Courts have stretched Congress's express language in § 230 of the Communications Decency Act from the narrow purpose of immunizing ISPs as publishers to the expanded purpose of shielding them from all tort liability. This Article proposes imposing a limited duty of care on ISPs to remove or block ongoing tortious activities on their services when they have been given actual notice. This reform will harmonize American ISP liability law …

Where The Netcom Yardstick Comes Up Short: Courts Should Not Apply The Facts Of Netcom As An Example Of Intermediate And Transient Storage Under § 512(A) Of The Dmca, Sean Croman

Washington Law Review

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) risk substantial liability for passively contributing to subscriber-initiated acts of online copyright infringement. Cognizant of this problem, courts and Congress have taken differing approaches to limiting ISP liability. The Netcom court established that ISPs could store infringing material for eleven days without incurring liability for direct infringement, but did not similarly rule out liability for other forms of infringement. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subsequently advanced the law of copyright by strengthening the protections enjoyed by copyright holders whose works face exploitation online, subject to four activity-specific "safe harbor" limitations on liability. For example, § …

Crafting A License To Know From A Privilege To Access, Jane K. Winn

Washington Law Review

Recognizing a defense to a claim of trespass in Internet cases based on a finding of constructive consent provides a doctrinal basis for privileging some forms of access while acknowledging a right to exclude certain other forms of access. Focusing attention on the public character of the Internet and assigning a clear legal significance to the equipment owner's deliberate choice to participate in that arena provide a more secure legal foundation for such a privilege to access than the "functional impairment" standard offered by the California Supreme Court. The contours of such a doctrine of constructive consent to Internet access …

Rise Of The Machines: Justice Information Systems And The Question Of Public Access To Court Records Over The Internet, Gregory M. Silverman

Washington Law Review

In the first half of the present Article, I introduce the reader to this technology (Part II) and its likely role in evolving justice information systems (Parts I and III). In the second half of the Article, I enter the debate over whether the public should be permitted access to court records over the Internet. After explaining the origins, history, and principal sides of this debate (Part IV), I argue, first, that when used properly, XML permits the public to have access to court records over the Internet while promoting public safety and protecting personal security (Part V) and, second, …

Dow Jones & Co. V. Gutnick: Will Australia's Long Jurisdictional Reach Chill Internet Speech World-Wide?, Nathan W. Garnett

Washington International Law Journal

In December of 2002, the High Court of Australia issued its decision in Dow Jones & Co. v. Gutnick, holding that Dow Jones could be haled into court in Australia for the publication of defamatory material on the Internet. This decision was surprising because the material in question was published in the United States on Dow Jones's New Jersey web servers. This decision makes Australia the only country that allows an action against a foreign defendant based solely on an Internet download in that country. However, the structure of the Gutnick opinion may open the door for other countries …

Crafting A License To Know From A Privilege To Access, Jane K. Winn

Articles

Should the doctrine of trespass to chattels apply to unauthorized access to Internet facilities? If it does, then the property rights of the owners of computers connected to the Internet may be vindicated, but at a cost of diminished public access to information posted on the Internet. If it does not, then incentives to invest in the kind of commercial facilities that now largely constitute the Internet may be undermined, but the public interest in knowledge gleaned from information posted on the Internet will be protected.

Although trespass to chattels has been derided as an anachronism ill-suited to the Internet, …

Use "The Filter You Were Born With": The Unconstitutionality Of Mandatory Internet Filtering For The Adult Patrons Of Public Libraries, Richard J. Peltz

Washington Law Review

The only federal court (at the time of this writing) to consider the question ruled unconstitutional the mandatory filtering of Internet access for the adult patrons of public libraries. That 1998 decision helped the American Library Association and other free speech advocates fend off mandatory filtering for two years at the state and federal level, against the vigorous efforts of filtering proponents. Then, in 2000, the U.S. Congress conditioned federal funding of libraries on filter use, forcing the question into the courts as the latest colossal struggle over Internet regulation. This Article contends that the federal court in 1998 was …

Social Networks And Electronic Commerce In China, Jane K. Winn

Articles

Communication technologies that make up the emerging global information infrastructure have the power to regulate online behavior. Social networks in Chinese society have survived the growth of formal legal institutions and liberalization of China's economy, but it is not clear whether they can survive the regulatory pressures created by global information technology networks.

The spread of electronic commerce technologies in China may strengthen legal institutions and open local markets to international competition, but is likely to be resisted by all the same interests that resist those changes in other contexts. The Chinese response to the spread of electronic commerce might …

Emerging Issues In Electronic Contracting, Technical Standards And Law Reform, Jane K. Winn

Articles

The explosive growth of electronic commerce transactions in recent years has added fuel to efforts to harmonize international commercial law. Organizations such as the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the Hague Conference on Private International Law are all participating in an emerging global debate concerning the changes that should be made to the form or substance of international commercial law to accommodate innovation in the technology of international trade.

Many of the important legal issues raised by cross-border electronic commerce in the 1970s and 1980s have …

The Emperor's New Clothes: The Shocking Truth About Digital Signatures And Internet Commerce, Jane K. Winn

Articles

This Article critiques a specific set of assumptions about specific application of digital signature technology: that contracts will be formed over the Internet among parties with no prior relationships through reliance on digital signature certificates issued by trusted third parties to establish the identity of the parties. This application for digital signature technology was once seen as both its most ambitious and most promising application because, for parties with no prior knowledge of each other, there is not yet a reliable system of online identities in Internet commerce.

Parties with an ongoing commercial relationship can absorb the cost of offline …

Doctoring Prescriptions: Federal Barriers To Combating Prescription Drug Fraud Against On-Line Pharmacies In Washington, Eric M. Peterson

Washington Law Review

Prescription drug abuse represents a significant portion of drg abuse in the United States. Drug-seeking individuals alter, steal, or forge prescriptions to sustain their own dependence on prescription medications or to divert the drugs to sell to others at inflated rates. On-line pharmacies are a relatively new source for prescription medications and a potential target for prescription drug fraud. The federal government recently enacted the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN), which governs electronic signatures and preempts inconsistent provisions of state laws, such as the Washington Electronic Authentication Act (WEAA). WEAA is a legal framework that could …

Catalytic Impact Of Information Technology On The New International Financial Architecture, Jane K. Winn

Articles

The sudden emergence of the Internet as a global network threatens to eclipse the importance of the global information infrastructure painstakingly built by financial institutions and their regulators over the past three decades. The open public nature of the Internet threatens the value of the closed proprietary networks developed by financial institutions that now face serious problems in integrating their legacy systems and new Internet systems.

Information system security, once a dreary back office matter, is now central to the success of e-commerce business plans. Before financial institutions can capitalize on their expertise in information system security, they will have …

Electronic Records And Signatures Under The Federal E-Sign Legislation And The Ueta, Robert A. Wittie, Jane K. Winn

Articles

Federal legislation establishing legal parity between electronic records and signatures and their paper and ink counterparts was signed into law June 30, 2000, and became effective, at least for most purposes, on October 1. The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN or the Act) effectively sweeps away a myriad of anachronistic and inconsistent state and federal requirements for paper and ink documents and signatures. In so doing, E-SIGN eliminates many of the legal uncertainties that have surrounded the use of electronic media in commerce and should enable businesses and consumers alike to more fully realize the cost …

Are You My Mommy, Or My Big Brother? Comparing Internet Censorship In Singapore And The United States, Lewis S. Malakoff

Washington International Law Journal

Governments across the globe are grappling to find an appropriate and effective way to regulate Internet activity. Singapore's experience with Internet regulation is particularly instructive, illustrating the inherent tension when a government simultaneously champions the Net's commercial, educational, and social potential while attempting to protect its population from material that offends the community's normative sensibility. Singapore has enacted regulations that require Internet Service Providers to filter content at the network level through the use of proxy servers. In addition, Singapore has issued an Internet Code of Practice that establishes the framework for acceptable speech in cyberspace. In the United States, …

The Hedgehog And The Fox: Distinguishing Public And Private Sector Approaches To Managing Risk For Internet Transactions, Jane Kaufman Winn

Articles

In his essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, Isaiah Berlin used an ancient Greek proverb comparing these animals as a metaphor to express a deep division among thinkers and writers in their understanding of the human condition. In this essay, I extend the metaphor to contrast the differing approaches to risk management taken by the public sector in the exercise of its sovereign functions and that taken by members of the private sector in the conduct of commercial transactions. In light of the differences in these basic approaches to questions of risk management, I will evaluate some widely discussed …

Regulating The Use Of The Internet In Securities Markets, Jane Kaufman Winn

Articles

As use of the Internet and other new technologies in securities continues to expand, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and self-regulatory organizations (SROs) within the securities industry have continued their efforts to adapt their existing regulations to these developments. Although regulators in the United States have provided guidance to market participants on many issues, many other important questions under U.S. securities law remain unanswered.

Guidance regard to securities law in other jurisdictions is almost non-existent, though transnational organizations, such as the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), are working to remedy this situation. I

n 1997 and 1998, the …

Open Systems, Free Markets, And Regulation Of Internet Commerce, Jane Kaufman Winn

Articles

Can commercial transactions conducted over the Internet be regulated by existing commercial law doctrines? Many promoters of Internet commerce argue that business done over open computer networks such as the Internet will require a new regulatory framework In fact, many issues raised by Internet commerce have already been considered at length in the context of electronic commerce conducted over closed computer networks, such as those used in financial markets.

One of the most hotly debated issues regarding the regulation of Internet commerce is the question of what would be the online equivalent of a signature. Some have argued that, because …

Regulations Restricting Internet Access: Attempted Repair Of Rupture In China's Great Wall Restraining The Free Exercise Of Ideas, Scott E. Feir

Washington International Law Journal

The People's Republic of China is in a paradox: While China needs computer networks to assist its plans for modernization, the government fears the uncontrolled exchange of information between China and the rest of the world. Therefore, the People's Republic of China enacted restrictive regulations controlling Internet usage. This comment examines China's attempt to control Internet use in light of these regulations and current censoring technology viewing China as a test case for other countries. Ifa combination of an authoritarian government, restrictive regulations, and physical network controls cannot prevent users in China from accessing and supplying prohibited information, then similar …