Internet Law Commons^™

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

A Monopoly Of Thought—How Growing Anticompetitive Practices On The Internet Affect Creative Work, Laurel Brown

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will address how dominant Internet companies detrimentally impact creative work and how legal solutions might be employed to combat the damage inflicted by online monopolies. Part I will focus on how certain Internet companies became dominant, showing an evolution from egalitarian ideals to the consolidated control of the World Wide Web (the web) by companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. In Part II, this Note will focus on how two particular companies—Google and Facebook—affect creative endeavors in their control of access to audiences and by determining the economics of content production on the Internet. Part III details what …

The Small-Er Screen: Youtube Vlogging And The Unequipped Child Entertainment Labor Laws, Amanda G. Riggio

Seattle University Law Review

Family vloggers are among the millions of content creators on YouTube. In general, vloggers frequently upload recorded videos of their daily lives. Family vloggers are unique because they focus their content around their familial relationships and the lives of their children. One set of family vloggers, the Ace Family, has recorded their children’s lives from the day they were born and continue to upload videos of each milestone, including “Elle Cries on Her First Rollercoaster Ride” and “Elle and Alaïa Get Caught Doing What!! **Hidden Camera**.” Another vlogging couple, Cole and Savannah LaBrant, post similar content, including videos titled “Baby …

Do It Yourself Legal Services? Domestic Violence Victims May Depend On It, Sabrina Marquez

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will address how encouraging nonlawyer Internet programs to engage in limited areas frequently considered the “practice of law” will increase the ability of vulnerable groups, especially victims of domestic violence, to receive crucial—and potentially lifesaving—legal assistance.

Part I will outline the rise of Internet legal service providers (ILSPs), who have innovated software programs that help clients fill out and file a wide assortment of legal documents, as well as the negative response these services have received from state bar associations and the wider legal community. Part II will discuss why a different method of providing legal assistance is …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Government Tweets, Government Speech: The First Amendment Implications Of Government Trolling, Douglas B. Mckechnie

Seattle University Law Review

President Trump has been accused of using @realDonaldTrump to troll his critics. While the President’s tweets are often attributed to his personal views, they raise important Constitutional questions. This article posits that @realDonaldTrump tweets are government speech and, where they troll government critics, they violate the Free Speech Clause. I begin the article with an exploration of President Trump’s use of @realDonaldTrump from his time as a private citizen to President. The article then chronicles the development of the government speech doctrine and the Supreme Court’s factors that differentiate private speech from government speech. I argue that, based on the …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Preservation Requests And The Fourth Amendment, Armin Tadayon

Seattle University Law Review

Every day, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, ridesharing companies, and numerous other service providers copy users’ account information upon receiving a preservation request from the government. These requests are authorized under a relatively obscure subsection of the Stored Communications Act (SCA). The SCA is the federal statute that governs the disclosure of communications stored by third party service providers. Section 2703(f) of this statute authorizes the use of “f” or “preservation” letters, which enable the government to request that a service provider “take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession” while investigators seek valid legal process. …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Revisiting The Enforceability Of Online Contracts: The Need For Unambiguous Assent To Inconspicuous Terms, Tom Mozingo

Seattle University Law Review

In determining the enforceability of online contracts, namely those formed from the use of smartphone applications, courts typically look to whether the contract terms were reasonably conspicuous or communicated to the consumer. With the rise of “browse-wrap” contracts, where terms are not directly communicated to the consumer or where the consumer is not required to click the equivalent of an “I agree” button clearly manifesting assent to the terms, courts have inconsistently applied the reasonable communicativeness standard to the detriment of consumers and application developers alike. This Comment will explore the development of browse-wrap contracting jurisprudence and the need to …

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

The Internet Never Forgets: A Federal Solution To The Dissemination Of Nonconsensual Pornography, Alexis Santiago

Seattle University Law Review

As technology evolves, new outlets for interpersonal conflict and crime evolve with it. The law is notorious for its inability to keep pace with this evolution. This Comment focuses on one area that the law urgently needs to regulate—the dissemination of “revenge porn,” otherwise known as nonconsensual pornography. Currently, no federal law exists in the U.S. that criminalizes the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography. Most U.S. states have criminalized the offense, but with vastly different degrees of severity, resulting in legal inconsistencies and jurisdictional conflicts. This Comment proposes a federal solution to the dissemination of nonconsensual pornography that carefully balances the …

A Dangerous Inheritance: A Child’S Digital Identity, Kate Hamming

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment begins with one family’s story of its experience with social media that many others can relate to in today’s ever-growing world of technology and the Internet. Technology has made it possible for a person’s online presence to grow exponentially through continuous sharing by other Internet users. This ability to communicate and share information amongst family, friends, and strangers all over the world, while beneficial in some regard, comes with its privacy downfalls. The risks to privacy are elevated when children’s information is being revealed, which often stems from a child’s own parents conduct online. Parents all over the …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Gdpr: It Came, We Saw, But Did It Conquer?, Leila Javanshir

Seattle University Law Review

On February 1, 2019, the Seattle University Law Review held its annual symposium at the Seattle University School of Law. Each year, the Law Review hosts its symposium on a topic that is timely and meaningful. This year, privacy and data security professionals from around the globe gathered to discuss the current and future effects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was implemented on May 25, 2018. The articles and essays that follow this Foreword are the product of this year’s symposium.

Regulating The Gdpr: Perspectives From The United Kingdom, Hannah Mccausland

Seattle University Law Review

Hannah McCausland leads the international group at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s International Engagement functions as the gateway to other data protection and privacy authorities on international matters. She’s involved in the work of the EU European Data Protection Board advising the commissioner and the deputy commissioner on international positioning of the ICO, and she has played a key role over the past six years in the ICO’s strategy on navigating the EU’s data protection framework. Hannah has also played a major role at the global level and advancing the practical tools that data protection and privacy …

Privacy, Freedom, And Technology—Or “How Did We Get Into This Mess?”, Alex Alben

Seattle University Law Review

Can we live in a free society without personal privacy? The question is worth pondering, not only in light of the ongoing debate about government surveillance of private communications, but also because new technologies continue to erode the boundaries of our personal space. This Article examines our loss of freedom in a variety of disparate contexts, all connected by the thread of erosion of personal privacy. In the scenarios explored here, privacy reducing activities vary from government surveillance, personal stalking conducted by individuals, and profiling by data-driven corporations, to political actors manipulating social media platforms. In each case, new technologies …

Confiding In Con Men: U.S. Privacy Law, The Gdpr, And Information Fiduciaries, Lindsey Barrett

Seattle University Law Review

In scope, ambition, and animating philosophy, U.S. privacy law and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation are almost diametric opposites. The GDPR’s ambitious individual rights, significant prohibitions, substantive enforcement regime, and broad applicability contrast vividly with a scattershot U.S. regime that generally prioritizes facilitating commerce over protecting individuals, and which has created perverse incentives for industry through anemic enforcement of the few meaningful limitations that do exist. A privacy law that characterizes data collectors as information fiduciaries could coalesce with the commercial focus of U.S. law, while emulating the GDPR’s laudable normative objectives and fortifying U.S. consumer privacy law with a …

General Data Protection Regulation (Gdpr): Prioritizing Resources, Jennifer Dumas

Seattle University Law Review

This Article will discuss and analyze the years of preparation for the GDPR and provide recommendations for dealing with the GDPR forevermore. It will assess whether the preparation and panic were worth it. In other words, was the time, expense, and distraction my peers and I expended and experienced over the past years proportionate to the requirements and impact of the GDPR? Further, was the high level of preparation and panic many legal departments in countless companies undertook and experienced appropriate now that we have had a chance to see the initial impact of the GDPR?

Privacy Statements Under The Gdpr, Mike Hintze

Seattle University Law Review

The need to include specific types of information in a privacy statement is a GDPR compliance obligation that does not get as much attention as some other GDPR requirements. Perhaps that is because privacy statements have been much maligned in recent years. They are too long and full of legalese. Nobody reads them. They are part of a notice and consent approach to privacy that puts an unrealistic burden on consumers to make informed choices. But despite these well-known criticisms, the GDPR doubles down on privacy statements. In fact, gauging by the roughly fourfold increase in privacy statement requirements compared …

Requiem For Cyberspace: The Effect Of The European General Privacy Regulation On The Global Internet, Steven Tapia

Seattle University Law Review

The dream of a perpetual, limitless, non-dimensional space is an idea that has transfixed clergy, philosophers, and poets for ages. Whether it is called “heaven,” “the afterlife,” “nirvana,” or another linguistic stand-in, the dream of a dimension beyond the bounds of time, space, and the laws of nature seems as universal as any concept ever. From its initial development in the 1970s (as a military, academic, and governmental experiment in creating a wholly alternative means of communication capable of surviving catastrophic failures of any parts of the communications conduits) until essentially now, the Internet seemed to be the closest incarnate …

Gdpr Compliance—It Takes A Village, Susy Mendoza

Seattle University Law Review

When the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect in May of 2018, many legal departments were confronted with the gravity of just how they were going to comply with such a wide-reaching law. If you have international customers (both direct to consumer or business to business), it is not hard to convince your general counsel that compliance with the GDPR is a must. You may even be able to get the chief technical officer (CTO) or chief operating officer (COO) onboard just by mentioning the steep fines—two to four percent of worldwide gross revenue. But how does the …

Footprints: Privacy For Enterprises, Processors, And Custodians…Oh My!, Blair Witzel, Carrie Mount

Seattle University Law Review

Americans’ interest in privacy—as evidenced by increasing news coverage, online searches, and new legislation—has grown over the past decade. After the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), technologists and legal professionals have focused on primary collectors of data—known under various legal regimes as the “controller” or “custodian.” Thanks to advances in computing, many of these data collectors offload the processing of data to third parties providing data-related cloud services like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In addition to the data they have already collected about the data subjects themselves, these companies now “hold” that data on behalf of …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address, Ryan Calo

Seattle University Law Review

Transcript of the keynote address at the 2018 Seattle University School of Law symposium “Singularity: AI and the Law.” The keynote address is presented by Ryan Calo and discusses the current status of artificial intelligence learning, and how this current status is moving toward robotic singularity.

Robotic Speakers And Human Listeners, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

This article discusses protected First Amendment speech and how this protection should be applied to robotic speech. Robotic speech is that created by automated means, currently “bots” but the producers of automated speech are evolving. The article further differentiates between rights of the producers of this speech and listeners or consumers of the speech, and the impact of First Amendment protections on each group.

Panel 2: Accountability For The Actions Of Robots, Ryan Calo, Howard Jay Chizeck, Elizabeth Joh, Blake Hannaford

Seattle University Law Review

Transcript of the panel discussion at the 2018 Seattle University School of Law symposium “Singularity: AI and the Law” discussing human control and Artificial Intellegence learning. The panel participants are Ryan Calo, Howard Jay Chizeck, Elizabeth Joh, and Blake Hannaford.

Ethical Machines?, Ariela Tubert

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the possibility of having ethical artificial intelligence. It argues that we face a dilemma in trying to develop artificial intelligence that is ethical: either we have to be able to codify ethics as a set of rules or we have to value a machine’s ability to make ethical mistakes so that it can learn ethics like children do. Neither path seems very promising, though perhaps by thinking about the difficulties with each we may come to a better understanding of artificial intelligence and ourselves.

Panel 1: Robotic Speech And The First Amendment, Bruce E. H. Johnson, Helen Norton, David Skover

Seattle University Law Review

Transcript of the panel discussion at the 2018 Seattle University School of Law symposium “Singularity: AI and the Law.” The panel is moderated by Seattle University School of Law Professor Gregory Silverman, and discusses the forthcoming book Robotica, by David M. Skover and Ronald K. L. Collins. The panelists are Bruce E. H. Johnson, Helen Norton, and David M. Skover.