Internet Law Commons^™

Measuring Compliance With The California Consumer Privacy Act Over Space And Time, Jens Frankenreiter, Van Tran, Aarushi Mehrotra, Marshini Chetty, Nick Feamster, Lior Strahilevitz

Scholarship@WashULaw

The widespread sharing of consumers personal information with third parties raises significant privacy concerns. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) mandates that online businesses offer consumers the option to opt out of the sale and sharing of personal information. Our study automatically tracks the presence of the opt-out link longitudinally across multiple states after the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) went into effect. We categorize websites based on whether they are subject to CCPA and investigate cases of potential non-compliance. We find a number of websites that implement the opt-out link early and across all examined states but also find …

Provisioning Digital Tools And Systems For Government Use, Brenda Dvoskin, Julie E. Cohen, Paul Ohm, Meg Leta Jones, Smitha Krishna Prasad, Nina-Simone Edwards

Scholarship@WashULaw

This document is part of a larger project aimed at reinventing the administrative state for effective governance of the digital, information-driven economy. It explores how the administrative state can more effectively equip itself with digital tools and systems that align with and improve government’s ability to serve public values. Established approaches to digital provisioning fail in many important respects. Among others, they introduce thorny coordination problems while doing little to ensure design for broader public values; they cause obsolete and/or poorly conceived requirements to cascade through the development process for new tools and systems; they magnify the potential for technology-driven …

Speaking Back To Sexual Privacy Invasions, Brenda Dvoskin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Many big players in the internet ecosystem do not like hosting sexual expression. They often justify these bans as a protection of sexual privacy. For example, Meta states that it removes sexual imagery to prevent the nonconsensual distribution of sexual images. In response, this Article argues that banning digital sexual expression is counterproductive if the aim is to alleviate the harms inflicted by sexual privacy losses.

Contemporary sexual privacy theory, however, lacks analytical tools to explain why nudity bans harm the interests they intend to protect. This Article aims at building those tools. The main contribution is an invitation to …

The Game-Changer: Legal Issues Surrounding Wearable Technology In Sports, Jack Vande Berg

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Athletes and teams are always seeking to gain a competitive edge, and the emergence of wearable technology has provided them with biometric data that provides new insights into performance. The market for wearable technology has been growing at a rapid pace in recent years and is projected to continue on an upward trajectory through the end of the decade. Governing bodies of sport at a professional and amateur level have adapted regulations for the use of this new technology and the data it produces. This article provides an overview of these current regulations, and then discusses three pressing legal issues. …

Unveiling The Dark Side Of Innovation: Sustainability, Cobalt Mining, And Modern-Day Slavery, Kaitlin Schleich

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

As the need and demand for sustainability come to the forefront of innovative efforts by technology companies, the use of rechargeable batteries has only become more prominent. A critical mineral in the manufacture of such batteries is cobalt. Looking deeper into how manufacturers get their hands on cobalt exposes the troubling cobalt-mining practices largely taking place within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This article dives into the underbelly of the cobalt-mining industry, revealing the egregious human-rights abuses occurring in the DRC and examining the current legal and ethical landscape surrounding cobalt mining around the world. In both small-scale artisanal …

A Hard Pill To Swallow: Privacy Implications Of Direct-To-Consumer Prescription Drug Services, Varsha Challapally

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

This case note discusses the emergence and popularity of direct-to-consumer prescription drug services and evaluates their privacy implications on consumers. Minimal regulation exists regarding direct-to-consumer prescription drug services, and patient privacy and data protection laws are also limited. Proponents of these services claim that they allow certain prescription drugs to be available to consumers without the hassle and logistics of health insurance and making and attending medical appointments, effectively empowering individuals to take control of their own health. Alternatively, critics claim that direct-to-consumer prescription drug services are operated by private companies that are not always required to be compliant with …

A Tale Of Two Sams: Effective Altruism’S Threat To The Security Of Emerging Technology, Mackenzie Young

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Since the onset of scientific innovation, the character and charisma of the inventors and scientists behind emerging technologies have been a centerpiece of focus. However, in light of the driving forces behind innovation—especially the global need to “get ahead” of competitors—few are willing to inquire into the sincerity of held belief. From the ouster of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI to the criminal conviction of cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, the philosophy of “effective altruism” has taken over the minds, hearts, and pocketbooks of Silicon Valley.

This Comment evaluates the origins of the Effective Altruism movement and argues that its …

Tailoring Biometric Innovation To Privacy Law In The Retail Industry, Bailey White

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Biometric data technology is trending in retail. Retailers utilize biometric data to improve their bottom line through virtual try-on technology (VTOT), contactless payment methods, fingerprint scanners, and more—albeit at potentially steep prices. Many types of biometric technology used in retail fall under strict U.S. state privacy laws, exposing businesses to serious legal and financial consequences. This Comment provides an analysis of the current state of biometric data privacy law in the U.S., focusing on Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), and more. This Comment also identifies proposed legislation, relevant case law, …

If Held Holds: Held V. Montana And The Future Of Constitutional Environmental Litigation, Leonora Owsley

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

The State of Montana is one of three states whose constitutions presently contain a “green amendment[.]” These amendments, enshrined in their respective Bills of Rights, protect a citizen’s fundamental right to a clean and healthy environment, ideally ensuring that the state’s government cannot infringe upon that right. However, following the green amendment’s adoption in 1972, Montana’s law still prioritized its extractive energy and hard rock mining industries over its citizens’ environmental rights. Now, that landscape is beginning to change. In 2011, Montana adopted an amended State Energy Policy Act, which expressly forbade its agencies from considering the effects of climate …

Provisioning Digital Tools And Systems For Government Use [“Govtech”], Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

The project’s second concept paper recommends a series of changes to the current policy landscape for govtech provisioning. The suggestions include rethinking the traditional “make vs. buy” dichotomy in public procurement, mandating interoperability and transparency of govtech tools and systems, and reenvisioning accountability requirements to avoid the problem of “waterfall” development.

To support these policy changes, the paper first recommends improved support and coordination for five important govtech-related functions. Next, it proposes some corresponding changes to institutional structure and organization. Finally, it emphasizes the need to bolster technical capacity within government by developing a pipeline of specialized, govtech-related training programs, …

Protecting The Innocent: How To Prevent The Consequences Of Misidentification And Doxing By Volunteers Helping With Open Source Investigations, Leigh M. Dannhauser

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Individuals performing open source investigations can misidentify alleged perpetrators and dox innocent parties online, which can subsequently lead to threats and harassment against innocent parties and their loved ones. For example, threats were made against Sunil Tripathi’s family after he was wrongly identified as one of the Boston Marathon bombers and doxed on Reddit and Twitter. In 2020, the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations was published as a guide, and it includes a set of principles to govern open source investigations. However, the Berkeley Protocol is limited to open source investigations performed by those working for organizations. It …

Individualized Ideological Enclosures: The Generative Ai Crisis And How Consumers Can Reclaim Their Feeds, Sydney Rose

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Artificially Intelligent Innovation And Justice, Carla L. Reyes

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Scales Project: Making Federal Court Records Free, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

Federal court records have been available online for nearly a quarter century, yet they remain frustratingly inaccessible to the public. This is due to two primary barriers: (1) the federal government’s prohibitively high fees to access the records at scale and (2) the unwieldy state of the records themselves, which are mostly text documents scattered across numerous systems. Official datasets produced by the judiciary, as well as third-party data collection efforts, are incomplete, inaccurate, and similarly inaccessible to the public. The result is a de facto data blackout that leaves an entire branch of the federal government shielded from empirical …

The Meme Stock Fenzy: Origins And Implications, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, Yoon-Ho Alex Lee

Articles

In 2021, several publicly traded companies, such as GameStop, Bed Bath & Beyond, and AMC, became “meme stocks,” experiencing a sharp rise in their stock prices through a dramatic influx of retail investors into their shareholder base. Analyses of the meme stock surge and its implications for corporate governance have focused on the idiosyncratic creation of online communities around particular stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Article, we argue that the emergence of meme stocks is part of longer-running and more structural digital transformations in trading, investing, and governance. On the trading front, the abolition of commissions by major …

Research Access To Social Media Data: Lessons From Clinical Trial Data Sharing, Christopher J. Morten, Gabriel Nicholas, Salomé Vilgoen

Articles

For years, social media companies have sparred with lawmakers over how much independent access to platform data they should provide researchers. Sharing data with researchers allows the public to better understand the risks and harms associated with social media, including areas such as misinformation, child safety, and political polarization. Yet researcher access is controversial. Privacy advocates and companies raise the potential privacy threats of researchers using such data irresponsibly. In addition, social media companies raise concerns over trade secrecy: the data these companies hold and the algorithms powered by that data are secretive sources of competitive advantage. This Article shows …

Regulatory Monitoring In The Information Economy, Brenda Dvoskin

Scholarship@WashULaw

The administrative state is inadequately structured to define and implement public values related to the design and operation of digital architectures, systems, and processes. The Reimagining the Governance Stack Project at Georgetown Law is a long-term, full-stack effort to reinvent the administrative state so that it is capable of governing the information economy in accordance with public priorities. This first concept paper focuses on regulatory monitoring capacities. Agencies need new tools to monitor compliance with existing public mandates and understand the information economy in order to develop new and more effective regulation.

The Very Interstate Nature Of The Internet? Establishing Uniform Requirements For Internet Transmissions Within Interstate And Foreign Commerce, Catherine Beal

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

This Comment argues that federal statutes, including the jurisdictional nexus of “transmission in interstate or foreign commerce,” should require evidence that a transmission actually traveled through interstate commerce to establish the required federal nexus. Part II of this article describes what threatening internet speech is, the development of the circuit split, and the statutory criteria at issue. Part III analyzes each side of the split and examines when statutory language permits an assumption of interstate or foreign transmission. Part III also proposes adopting a strict definition of “transmission in interstate and foreign commerce” for Internet-based speech and requiring evidence that …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Law In The Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism, Mariana Pargendler

Seattle University Law Review

How do the corporate laws of Global South jurisdictions differ from their Global North counterparts? Prevailing stereotypes depict the corporate laws of developing countries as either antiquated or plagued by problems of enforcement and misfit despite formal convergence. This Article offers a different view by showing how Global South jurisdictions have pioneered heterodox stakeholder approaches in corporate law, such as the erosion of limited liability for purposes of stakeholder protection in Brazil and India, the adoption of mandatory corporate social responsibility in Indonesia and India, and the large-scale program of Black corporate ownership and empowerment in South Africa, among many …

Stakeholder Capitalism’S Greatest Challenge: Reshaping A Public Consensus To Govern A Global Economy, Leo E. Strine Jr., Michael Klain

Seattle University Law Review

The Berle XIV: Developing a 21st Century Corporate Governance Model Conference asks whether there is a viable 21st Century Stakeholder Governance model. In our conference keynote article, we argue that to answer that question yes requires restoring—to use Berle’s term—a “public consensus” throughout the global economy in favor of the balanced model of New Deal capitalism, within which corporations could operate in a way good for all their stakeholders and society, that Berle himself supported.

The world now faces problems caused in large part by the enormous international power of corporations and the institutional investors who dominate their governance. These …

Stakeholder Governance As Governance By Stakeholders, Brett Mcdonnell

Seattle University Law Review

Much debate within corporate governance today centers on the proper role of corporate stakeholders, such as employees, customers, creditors, suppliers, and local communities. Scholars and reformers advocate for greater attention to stakeholder interests under a variety of banners, including ESG, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and stakeholder governance. So far, that advocacy focuses almost entirely on arguing for an expanded understanding of corporate purpose. It argues that corporate governance should be for various stakeholders, not shareholders alone.

This Article examines and approves of that broadened understanding of corporate purpose. However, it argues that we should understand stakeholder governance as extending well …

Stakeholder Governance On The Ground (And In The Sky), Stephen Johnson, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

Professor Frank Partnoy: This is a marvelous gathering, and it is all due to Chuck O’Kelley and the special gentleness, openness, and creativity that he brings to this symposium. For more than a decade, he has been open to new and creative ways to discuss important issues surrounding business law and Adolf Berle’s legacy. We also are grateful to Dorothy Lund for co-organizing this gathering.

In introducing Stephen Johnson, I am reminded of a previous Berle, where Chuck allowed me some time to present the initial thoughts that led to my book, WAIT: The Art and Science of Delay. Part …

The Structure Of Corporate Law Revolutions, William Savitt

Seattle University Law Review

Since, call it 1970, corporate law has operated under a dominant conception of governance that identifies profit-maximization for stockholder benefit as the purpose of the corporation. Milton Friedman’s essay The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits, published in September of that year, provides a handy, if admittedly imprecise, marker for the coronation of the shareholder-primacy paradigm. In the decades that followed, corporate law scholars pursued an ever-narrowing research agenda with the purpose and effect of confirming the shareholder-primacy paradigm. Corporate jurisprudence followed a similar path, slowly at first and later accelerating, to discover in the precedents and …

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

How To Interpret The Securities Laws?, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In discussions of the federal securities laws, the SEC usually gets most of the attention. This makes some sense. After all, it is the agency charged with administrating the securities laws and regulating the industry as a whole. It makes the majority of the laws; it engages in enforcement actions; it reacts to crises; and it, or sometimes even its individual commissioners, intervene publicly in policy debates. Often overlooked in such discussion, however, is the role of the Supreme Court in shaping securities law, and a new book by Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson demonstrates why this is an oversight. …

After Affirmative Action, Meera E. Deo

Seattle University Law Review

This is a time of crisis in legal education. In truth, we are in the midst of several crises. We are emerging from the COVID pandemic, a period of unprecedented upheaval where law students and law faculty alike struggled through physical challenges, mental health burdens, and decreased academic and professional success. The past few years also have seen a precipitous drop in applications to and enrollment in legal education. Simultaneously, students have been burdened with the skyrocketing costs of attending law school, taking on unmanageable levels of debt. And with the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard, we are …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

The Sffa V. Harvard Trojan Horse Admissions Lawsuit, Kimberly West-Faulcon

Seattle University Law Review

Affirmative-action-hostile admissions lawsuits are modern Trojan horses. The SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case—Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, et. al., decided jointly—is the most effective Trojan horse admissions lawsuit to date. Constructed to have the distractingly appealing exterior façade of a lawsuit seeking greater fairness in college admissions, the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case is best understood as a deception-driven battle tactic used by forces waging a multi-decade war against the major legislative victories of America’s Civil Rights Movement, specifically Title VI and Title VII …