Internet Law Commons^™

Planet Netsweeper, Jakub Dalek, Lex Gill, Bill Marczak, Sarah Mckune, Naser Noor, Joshua Oliver, Jonathon Penney, Adam Senft, Ronald Deibert

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Internet filtering technologies play a critical role in shaping access to information online. Whether we are connecting to the Internet from our homes, coffee shops, libraries, or places of work, software that inspects, manages, and/or blocks our communications has become commonplace. When used at the level of large, consumer-facing Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet filtering technologies can have significant human rights impacts. A growing number of governments employ Internet filtering systems at this scale in order to undertake national-level censorship of the Internet. Filtered content ranges from pornography, hate speech, and speech promoting or inciting violence, to political opposition websites, …

The Evolution Of E-Commerce In Virginia Real Property Transactions, Ronald D. Wiley Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Digital Technology And Analog Law: Cellular Location Data, The Third-Party Doctrine, And The Law's Need To Evolve, Justin Hill

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Old Spice To The Texas Law Hawk: How Inbound Marketing, Content Leadership And Social Media Can Level The Playing Field For Solo Practitioners, J. Mark Phillips, Kyle A. Huggins, Lora Mitchell Harding

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The advent of technological tools such as social media present the legal industry with the potential for both perilous liability and unparalleled rainmaking. However, the full potential of social media remains untapped in the legal field because the topic has yet to be fully integrated into a broader understanding of inbound marketing and content leadership. The current treatment of social media in the legal literature is uneven-it tends to disproportionately emphasize the potential liabilities over the benefits, and it fails to provide a thorough framework to guide its optimal use. This article aims to rectify this uneven treatment by situating …

Making Civilian Drones Safe: Performance Standards, Self-Certification, And Post-Sale Data Collection, Henry Perritt, Albert Plawinski

All Faculty Scholarship

With millions of small drones in private hands, the FAA continues its struggle to develop an effective regulatory regime to comply with Congress’s mandate to integrate them into the national airspace system. Thousands of individuals and small businesses have obtained authorization from the FAA—"section 333 exemptions"—allowing them to fly their drones commercially. Farmers, TV stations, surveyors, construction-site supervisors, real estate agents, people selling their properties, and managers seeking cheaper and safer ways to inspect their facilities, want to hire the exemption holders, but many are holding back until the FAA clarifies the groundrules.The FAA understands that its traditional approach for …

Authorized Investigation: A Temperate Alternative To Cyber Insecurity, Casey M. Bruner

Seattle University Law Review

This Note aims to show that legal structures created to protect the Internet in its original form are completely insufficient to protect what the Internet has become. This antiquated legal framework is exacerbating the problem. The breadth of activity that the current law restricts severely limits the remedies that cyberattack victims can pursue, and it must be updated. While full hack-back may prove necessary in the long run, I argue for a more temperate initial response to the problem—I call this response “authorized investigation.” Specifically, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should be amended to allow victims access to their …

Trading Privacy For Angry Birds: A Call For Courts To Reevaluate Privacy Expectations In Modern Smartphones, Jeremy Andrew Ciarabellini

Seattle University Law Review

Of all the smartphone uses, the calling function is probably used the least. Rather, individuals more commonly use their smartphone for surfing the web, checking Facebook, and playing games. Highlighting the “smart” in smartphone, these phones often know more about their users’ daily activities than the users. Without requiring any sort of input, smartphones can tell the user how many steps they walk each day, when it is time to leave for work (also, of course, determining the traveling time with the most up-to-date traffic reports), and when an item recently ordered on Amazon will be delivered. Smartphone users may …

Towards An Internet Bill Of Rights, Giovanna De Minico

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Leveraging Mining Demand For Internet And Telecommunications Infrastructure For Broad Economic Development: Models, Opportunities And Challenges, Perrine Toledano, Clara Roorda

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The initial phase of the Leveraging Mining-Related Infrastructure Investments for Development project consisted of a worldwide survey of regulatory, commercial and operating case studies of shared use of mining-related infrastructure. This Policy Paper delivers the findings for internet and telecommunications.

Real Masks And Real Name Policies: Applying Anti-Mask Case Law To Anonymous Online Speech, Margot E. Kaminski

Publications

The First Amendment protects anonymous speech, but the scope of that protection has been the subject of much debate. This Article adds to the discussion of anonymous speech by examining anti-mask statutes and cases as an analogue for the regulation of anonymous speech online. Anti-mask case law answers a number of questions left open by the Supreme Court. It shows that courts have used the First Amendment to protect anonymity beyond core political speech, when mask-wearing is expressive conduct or shows a nexus with free expression. This Article explores what the anti-mask cases teach us about anonymity online, including proposed …

Who's In Charge Here? Information Privacy In A Social Networking World, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Benefit Of Adopting Comprehensive Standards Of Monitoring Employee Technology Use In The Workplace, Karin M. Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This article will examine issues as they relate to the privacy of employees’ lives given that nearly everything can be discovered by some form of electronic monitoring. It will posit that most laws as they exist today do little to apprise either the employer or the employee as to what type of electronic monitoring of personal communications is acceptable. It will further propose that most employer policies related to scrutinizing employee electronic communications are vague and unsuitable. The article will conclude that, given the leeway employers tend to be given (often justifiably so) in monitoring employees there is little chance …

The Evolution Of Copyright Law In The Arts, Kevin Liftig

Honors Scholar Theses

As digital storage of intellectual goods such as literature and music has become widespread, the duplication and unlicensed distribution of these goods has become a frequent source of legal contention. When technology for production and replication of intellectual goods advanced, there were disputes concerning the rights to produce and duplicate these works. As new technologies have made copies of intellectual goods more accessible, legal institutions have largely moved to protect the rights of ownership of ideas through copyright laws. This paper will examine key changes in the technology that affect intellectual property, and the responses that legal institutions have made …

The Networked Electorate: The Internet And The Quiet Democratic Revolution In Malaysia And Singapore, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper is intended to be a contribution to the literature on claims of the democratising effect of the Internet. The paper begins by setting out the arguments and also critiques of claims of the democratising power of the Internet. In order to test the validity of these arguments, the author will undertake a comparative study of the impact of the Internet on recent general elections in Malaysia and Singapore. The study will demonstrate that in the case of Singapore, the Internet has merely exerted some pressure on the pre-existing laws and state-imposed norms governing free speech; in contrast, in …

Just One Click: The Reality Of Internet Retail Contracting, Ronald J. Mann, Travis Siebeneicher

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the enforceability and presence of pro-seller contract terms in internet retail contracts. Analyzing case law on internet contract enforceability and a survey of 500 firms'websites, it demonstrates that even the enforceability of many internet contracts is questionable. It then presents new data that suggest that the prevalence of pro-seller contract terms is far less than usually assumed. It suggests that the benefit of making these terms enforceable is outweighed by the loss of user friendliness required for the necessary interface changes. Finally, it uses fresh statistical analyses to determine what relationship, if any, exists between enforceability, pro-seller …

Some Peer-To-Peer, Democratically And Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About 'The Wealth Of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets And Freedom,' By Yochai Benkler, Ann Bartow

Law Faculty Scholarship

In this review essay, Bartow concludes that The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom by Yochai Benkler is a book well worth reading, but that Benkler still has a bit more work to do before his Grand Unifying Theory of Life, The Internet, and Everything is satisfactorily complete. It isn't enough to concede that the Internet won't benefit everyone. He needs to more thoroughly consider the ways in which the lives of poor people actually worsen when previously accessible information, goods and services are rendered less convenient or completely unattainable by their migration online. Additionally, the …

Creative Sanctions For Online Investment Fraud, Jayne W. Barnard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A New Weapon Against Piracy: Patent Protection As An Alternative Strategy For Enforcement Of Digital Rights, Dennis S. Fernandez, Matthew Chivvis, Mengfei Huang

ExpressO

This article illustrates how patents and copyrights complement each other to provide a better defense for creative works. Copyrights protect expression, and patents protect underlying functions. Currently, the one-time strengths of copyrights are being eroded as courts allow new technologies to flourish which enable digital reproduction and piracy. This has encouraged companies and industries to move increasingly to patent protection and any company that fails to pursue this trend may be left behind. In sum, patents are a worthwhile strategy because they assist copyright owners in controlling the technology that enables infringement while copyrights alone would leave a company vulnerable …

Law And Neuroscience, Atahualpa Fernandez

ExpressO

Localizing the brain correlates related to moral judgments, using neuroimage techniques (and also studies on brain lesions), seems to be, without doubt, one of the big events in the history of the normative social sciences.The best neuroscientific model of normative judgment available today establishes that the ethical-cerebral law operator counts on, in his neural evaluative-affective systems, a permanent presence of requirements, obligations and strategies, with a “should be” that incorporates internally rational and emotional reasons, that are constitutively integrated in all the activities at the practical, theoretical and normal levels of every process of exercising the law.

Using Architectural Constraints And Game Theory To Regulate International Cyberspace Behavior, Van N. Nguy

San Diego International Law Journal

The debate over whether cyberspace can or should be regulated is essentially dead. This is the conclusion being taught in law schools today. The battle between Judge Frank Easterbrook and Professor Lawrence Lessig over "laws" and "horses", infamous among cyberspace legal scholars, became irrelevant when geographically-based governments began regulating Internet related activities. However, debate over how the Internet should be regulated continues. One way of framing this debate is in terms of deciding how to regulate behavior in cyberspace. Professor Lessig postulated four kinds of constraints regulate behavior: (1) social norms, (2) markets, (3) law, and (4) architecture. This comment …

The Right To Play, Edward Castronova

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virtual Worlds As Comparative Law, James Grimmelmann

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The International Privacy Regime, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy has joined one of many areas of law understandable only by reference to the results of overlapping and conflicting national agendas. What has emerged as the de facto international regime is complex. Yet based on a few simplifying principles, we can nonetheless do much to understand it and predict its operation.

First, the idea that self-regulation by the internet community will be the driving force in privacy protection must be laid to rest. The experience of the last decade shows that nation-states, powerful nation-states in particular, drive the system of international privacy. The final mix of privacy protection that …

Annotating The News: Mitigating The Effects Of Media Convergence And Consolidation, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay is a personal inquiry into the nature of media technology, law, and ethics in an era marked by the convergence of media that have been largely separate-print, broadcast, cable, satellite, and the Internet-and by the consolidation of ownership in all of these media. What inventions, practices, and norms must emerge to enable us to take advantage of this vast new information-based world, while preserving such important professional values as diversity, objectivity, reliability, and independence?

The right to know belongs not only to individuals, but to the public at large, it can (or, perhaps, must) be vindicated by government …

Electronic Communications And The Law: Help Or Hindrance To Telecommuting?, Jennifer C. Dombrow

Federal Communications Law Journal

During 1997, an estimated 11.1 million workers preformed some portion of their work by telecommuting. This number is expected to grow as employers continue to discover the benefits that can result from instituting a telecommuting policy. This growth may be hindered, however, by controversy concerning employee privacy rights. Although the use of electronic communications in the workplace is common, the laws addressing employee privacy rights and employer monitoring rights concerning these communications are ambiguous. New legislation is necessary to specifically define the respective rights of employers and employees. Without this new legislation, the benefits of electronic communications in the workplace, …

Sovereign Indignity? Values, Borders And The Internet: A Case Study, Eric Easton

All Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the publication ban issued by a Canadian court in a notorious murder trial, and the popular reaction to the publication ban, as a case study of the new global communications environment. Part I reconstructs the factual circumstances that provoked the ban, as well as the responses of the media, the legal establishment, and the public. Part II examines the ban itself, the constitutional challenge mounted by the media, and the landmark Dagenais decision. Part III reflects on the meaning of the entire episode for law, journalism, and national sovereignty.

The Dagenais decision demonstrates the continued independence …

Law, Lawyers, And Legal Practice In Silicon Valley: A Preliminary Report, Lawrence M. Friedman, Robert W. Gordon, Sophie Pirie, Edwin Whatley

Indiana Law Journal

The Growth of Large Law Firms and Its Effect on the Legal Profession and Legal Education, Symposium