Internet Law Commons^™

Agency Publicity In The Internet Era, Nathan Cortez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Report, prepared for the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), details how federal agencies use modern forms of publicity - including press releases, agency web sites, searchable online databases, and social media - to achieve regulatory ends. It evaluates the benefits and burdens of modern agency publicity practices, using three agencies as case studies: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); the Federal Trade Commission (FTC); and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Part V recommends a series of largely procedural reforms that balance the need for public disclosure with the need to protect those potentially injured by adverse …

Systematic Ict Surveillance By Employers: Are Your Personal Activities Private?, Arlene J. Nicholas

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

This paper reviews the various methods of information and communications technology (ICT) that is used by employers to peer into the work lives and, in some cases, private lives of employees. Some of the most common methods – such as computer and Internet monitoring, video surveillance, and global positioning systems (GPS) – have resulted in employee disciplines that have been challenged in courts. This paper provides background information on United States (U.S.) laws and court cases which, in this age of easily accessible information, mostly support the employer. Assessments regarding regulations and policies, which will need to be continually updated …

Privacy In Social Media: To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?, Tara M. Breslawski

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Policing The Social Media Water Cooler: Recent Nlrb Decisions Should Make Employers Think Twice Before Terminating An Employee For Comments Posted On Social Media Sites, Eric Raphan, Sean Kirby

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Legislating Our Reasonable Expectations: Making The Case For A Statutory Framework To Protect Workplace Privacy In The Age Of Social Media, David Miller

University of Miami Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Journalists, Social Media And Copyright: Demystifing Fair Use In The Emergent Digital Environment, Patricia Aufderheide

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Friends Of Justice: Does Social Media Impact The Public Perception Of The Justice System?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

Lawyers have long been recognized as being necessary in the effective functioning of an ordered society in roles as both officers of the court and, more broadly, as officers of the system of justice. In 2014, the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education report noted that "[s]ociety has a deep interest in the competence of lawyers, in their availability to serve society and clients, in the broad public role they can play, and in their professional values." Values such as those noted in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (advisor, counselor, and advocate) are instrumental in the …

Rape Shield Laws And The Social Media Revolution: Discoverability Of Social Media--It's Not Private, Seth I. Koslow

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Happens To Our Facebook Accounts When We Die?: Probate Versus Policy And The Fate Of Social-Media Assets Postmortem, Kristina Sherry

Pepperdine Law Review

More than 580,000 Facebook users in the U.S. will die this year, raising numerous legal questions as to the disposition of their Facebook pages and similar “digital assets” left in a state of legal limbo. While access to and ownership of decedents’ email accounts has been philosophized for nearly a decade, this Comment focuses on the additional legal uncertainties posed by “digital death” in the more amorphous realm of “social media.” Part II explores the implications of digital death by conceptualizing digital assets and surveying the underlying legal principles of contractual policies, probate, property, and privacy concerns. Part III surveys …

The “Friend”Ly Lawyer: Professionalism And Ethical Considerations Of The Use Of Social Networking During Litigation, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

Social media use has exploded around the world. The top social networking site (SNS), Facebook, reports that it has more than a billion members with approximately two million friend requests every twenty minutes. Coupled with the other top 15 social networking sites, including Linkedln, Google+, Twitter, and MySpace, the number of social networking users is estimated to exceed 2 billion. With billions of people producing and consuming media content through SNS, there has been a growing trend of law firms' use of SNS as a marketing tool and litigators' inclusion of discovery from SNS as a part of their discovery …

Public Forum 2.1: Public Higher Education Institutions And Social Media, Robert H. Jerry Ii, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

Like most of us, public colleges and universities increasingly are communicating via Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, Twitter and other social media. Unlike most of us, public colleges and universities are government actors, and their social media communications present complex administrative and First Amendment challenges. The authors of this article — one the dean of a major public university law school responsible for directing its social media strategies, the other a scholar of social media and the First Amendment — have combined their expertise to help public university officials address these challenges. To that end, this article first examines current and …

Managing The Impact Of New Media On The Employment Relationship, Susan A. O'Sullivan-Gavin, John H. Shannon

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Attention to privacy issues in the workplace has increased over the past two decades as use of electronic mail and text messages has made these means of communication commonplace. Beyond text messages and emails, employees can access the internet at their place of employment at many different entry points. This access can be through company issued desktops or laptops, mobile phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), Smartphone technology (photography; video and voice recording capabilities; file transfer and storage), off-site internet connections, Wi-Fi access or hot spots. Employees can access and/or post information on various sites including blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, instant …

Social Media In Sports: Can Professional Sports League Commissioners Punish 'Twackle Dummies'?, Daniel J. Friedman

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Daniel J. Friedman writes an article discussing the rise and popularity in social media use by professional athletes. He then discusses some of the new problems that have arisen due to social media misuse and the power of the Commissioner to restrict and punish the players for misuse. The article culminates with a case study hypothetical related to content based social media misuse and whether the Commissioners of professional sports league can punish a player for the content of their social media messages.

Viewer Discretion Is Advised: Disconnects Between The Marketplace Of Ideas And Social Media Used To Communicate Information During Emergencies And Public Health Crises, Peter Maggiore

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

In a sense, social media has become the ideal manifestation of the "Marketplace of Ideas" (hereinafter "Marketplace") that Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes articulated. The Marketplace concept will be discussed in greater detail below, but in brief, it is the theory that truth will surface over falsehoods when all opinions and ideas are freely expressed, because the value or worth of that opinion or idea will be determined on the market of public opinion. Part I of this Note will examine the Marketplace concept through the works of various legal and philosophical theorists. Chief among them is Frederick Schauer's work …

Enhancing Public Access To Online Rulemaking Information, Cary Coglianese

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

One of the most significant powers exercised by federal agencies is their power to make rules. Given the importance of agency rulemaking, the process by which agencies develop rules has long been subject to procedural requirements aiming to advance democratic values of openness and public participation. With the advent of the digital age, government agencies have engaged in increasing efforts to make rulemaking information available online as well as to elicit public participation via electronic means of communication. How successful are these efforts? How might they be improved? In this article, I investigate agencies’ efforts to make rulemaking information available …

Expectations Of Privacy In Social Media, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

This article, which largely tracks my remarks at Mississippi College’s Social Media Symposium, examines expectations of privacy in social media such as weblogs (blogs), Facebook pages, and Twitter tweets. Social media is diverse and ever-diversifying, and while I address some of that complexity, I focus on the core functionality, which provides the groundwork for further conversation as the technology and related social norms develop. As one would expect, just as with our offline communications and other online communications, in some we have an expectation of privacy that is recognized by current law, in some we have an expectation of privacy …

Incitement To Riot In The Age Of Flash Mobs, Margot E. Kaminski

Publications

As people increasingly use social media to organize both protests and robberies, government will try to regulate these calls to action. With an eye to this intensifying dynamic, this Article reviews First Amendment jurisprudence on incitement and applies it to existing statutes on incitement to riot at a common law, state, and federal level. The article suggests that First Amendment jurisprudence has a particularly tortuous relationship with regulating speech directed to crowds. It examines current crowd psychology to suggest which crowd behavior, if any, should as a matter of policy be subject to regulation. It concludes that many existing incitement-to-riot …

Respectful And Responsible Relationships: There’S No App For That (The Report Of The Nova Scotia Task Force On Bullying And Cyberbullying), A. Wayne Mackay

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Chairing this Task Force and producing this report has been both the most engaging and exhausting project that I have ever undertaken. Since my appointment in late May 2011, I have lived and breathed in the world of bullying and cyberbullying. I am sure my fellow Task Force members and members of the Working Group did the same. Born in the wake of tragic teen suicides it was easy for the members of the Task Force to be motivated. Indeed, few ventures have stirred my passions as much as this exercise has.

Bullying is a major social issue throughout the …

Beyond The Water Cooler: Speech And The Workplace In An Era Of Social Media, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Public Forum 2.0, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

Social media have the potential to revolutionize discourse between American citizens and their governments. At present, however, the U.S. Supreme Court's public forum jurisprudence frustrates rather than fosters that potential. This article navigates the notoriously complex body of public forum doctrine to provide guidance for those who must develop or administer government-sponsored social media or adjudicate First Amendment questions concerning them. Next, the article marks out a new path for public forum doctrine that will allow it to realize the potential of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance democratic discourse between the governors and the governed. Along the way, this article …

Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker, even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An …

Government Sponsored Social Media And Public Forum Doctrine Under The First Amendment: Perils And Pitfalls, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Between the extremes of no interactivity and complete interactivity, it is difficult to predict whether courts will label a government sponsored social media site a public forum or not. But it is precisely "in between" where government actors are likely to wish to engage citizens and where citizens are most likely to benefit from government social media initiatives. The goal of this article, therefore, is to provide guidance to lawyers trying to navigate the morass that is the U.S. Supreme Court's public forum jurisprudence in order to advise government actors wishing to establish social media forums.

Incendiary Speech And Social Media, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

Incidents illustrating the incendiary capacity of social media have rekindled concerns about the "mismatch" between existing doctrinal categories and new types of dangerous speech. This Essay examines two such incidents, one in which an offensive tweet and YouTube video led a hostile audience to riot and murder, and the other in which a blogger urged his nameless, faceless audience to murder federal judges. One incident resulted in liability for the speaker even though no violence occurred; the other did not lead to liability for the speaker even though at least thirty people died as a result of his words. An …

The Death Of Slander, Leslie Yalof Garfield

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Technology killed slander. Slander, the tort of defamation by spoken word, dates back to the ecclesiastical law of the Middle Ages and its determination that damning someone’s reputation in the village square was worthy of pecuniary damage. Communication in the Twitter Age has torn asunder the traditional notions of person-to-person communication. Text messaging, tweeting and other new channels of personal exchange have led one of our oldest torts to its historic demise.

At common law, slander was reserved for defamation by speech; libel was actionable for the printed word. This distinction between libel and slander, however, rests on a historical …

Tweeting To Topple Tyranny, Social Media And Corporate Social Responsibility: A Reply To Anupam Chander, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay offers critical reflections on the role of social media in social change and outlines how the obligation of corporations in the information communications technology sector to avoid complicity in rights violations may evolve over time. Part I explores the Internet's potential to further democratic discourse and inclusion or foster discrimination and exclusion. It also queries whether the Internet industry has an obligation to protect against hate propaganda. Part II examines whether other industry sectors can also be said to have special obligations based on the human rights consequences of their conduct. Part III explains the nature of the …

Adverse Publicity By Administrative Agencies In The Internet Era, Nathan Cortez

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Nearly forty years ago, Ernest Gellhorn documented the potentially devastating impact that can occur when federal agencies issue adverse publicity about private parties. Based on his article, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) recommended that courts, Congress, and agencies hold agencies to clear standards for issuing such publicity. In the decades since, some agencies have adopted standards, but most have not. And neither the courts nor Congress has intervened to impose standards. Today, agencies continue to use countless forms of publicity to pressure alleged regulatory violators and to amplify their overall enforcement powers — all without affording due …

Twittering Away The Right Of Publicity: Personality Rights And Celebrity Impersonation On Social Networking Websites, Andrew M. Jung

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Within the past couple of years, social networking websites have become an immensely popular destination for people from all walks of life. Websites like Facebook and Twitter now count tens of millions of worldwide users, including world leaders and a number of celebrities. Eventually, users realized that social networking websites lent themselves to the quick and easy impersonation of celebrities through the creation of fake social networking accounts, often as a form of parody. One subject of such impersonation was professional baseball manager Tony La Russa, who took the then-unprecedented step of suing his impersonators and Twitter over the incident. …

Fulfilling Government 2.0'S Promise With Robust Privacy Protections, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

The public can now “friend” the White House and scores of agencies on social networks, virtual worlds, and video-sharing sites. The Obama Administration sees this trend as crucial to enhancing governmental transparency, public participation, and collaboration. As the President has underscored, government needs to tap into the public’s expertise because it doesn’t have all of the answers.

To be sure, Government 2.0 might improve civic engagement. But it also might produce privacy vulnerabilities because agencies often gain access to individuals’ social network profiles, photographs, videos, and contact lists when interacting with individuals online. Little would prevent agencies from using and …

Fulfilling Government 2.0'S Promise With Robust Privacy Protections, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

The public can now “friend” the White House and scores of agencies on social networks, virtual worlds, and video-sharing sites. The Obama Administration sees this trend as crucial to enhancing governmental transparency, public participation, and collaboration. As the President has underscored, government needs to tap into the public’s expertise because it doesn’t have all of the answers. To be sure, Government 2.0 might improve civic engagement. But it also might produce privacy vulnerabilities because agencies often gain access to individuals’ social network profiles, photographs, videos, and contact lists when interacting with individuals online. Little would prevent agencies from using and …

Legal Implications Of The Use Of Social Media: Minimizing The Legal Risks For Employers And Employees, Damian R. Laplaca, Noah Winkeller

Proxy

No abstract provided.