Internet Law Commons^™

Esica: Securing—Not Compelling—Speech On The “Vast Democratic Forums” Of The Internet, Philip Primeau

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Q: Can Booking.Com Be Trademarked? A: Booking.Yeah, Samantha Favela

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

By choosing a generic Internet domain as a brand name, that brand can hit the Internet jackpot. But the popularity and use of a generic domain name creates tension with trademark law. While companies want to be easily found on the Internet, they also want to protect themselves from competitors. This Case Note argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States Patent & Trademark Office v. Booking.com B.V. is the best possible outcome in protecting brand’s rights and balancing trademark law principles. Through the analysis of past cases, the Supreme Court decision in Booking.com itself, and trademark law principles, …

The Art Of Dodging Bullets: How Covid-19 Drug Manufacturers And Providers Plan To Escape Tort Liability, Ruan Meintjes

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Fifth Circuit, Fourth Amendment, And The Third-Party Doctrine: Two Takeaways From The Court’S First Ruling On Bitcoin Privacy, Daniel Penn

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Uncovering The “Realness” Of Cgi Influencers, Samantha Favela

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Covid-19: Legal Framework For Vaccine Distributions And Mandates, Dana B. Taschner, Ashley Atwood

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has created heightened turmoil for at-risk populations, solidified laws allowing the use of mask mandates, raised legal issues surrounding vaccine mandates, and presented the new issue of a vaccine passport. As a nation, we have failed to implement vaccination schemes that properly protect vulnerable populations. Specifically, the homeless population has been overlooked, creating an additional layer of hardship, and contributing to greater community spread. This article contemplates the various methods by which an equitable vaccination scheme could have been achieved and the division of powers that created complications.

Additionally, the legality of vaccine mandates is discussed, and …

Signed, Sealed, Patented?: A Look At The United States Postal Service’S Patent Application For Implementing Blockchain Technology In Mobile Voting Systems, Ethan Todd

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

No abstract provided.

Copyright, Pandemics, And Emergencies: When Desperate Times Dictate Contextual Responses, Caroline L. Osborne

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

This article explores fair use, the library exception, the first sale doctrine, and controlled digital lending as responses to copyright in the context of permitting libraries to digitize materials existing exclusively in print in their collection for use in teaching, research, and scholarship by students, faculty, and other patrons. Also included is a decision matrix to be employed as a tool for analysis in making the decisions as to digitization of print resources in response to instances of emergencies.

Abolishing The Communications Decency Act Might Sanitize “Politically Biased,” “Digitally Polluted” And “Dangerously Toxic” Social Media? ― Judicial And Statistical Guidance From Federal-Preemption, Safe-Harbor And Rights-Preservation Decisions, Willy E. Rice

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Sitting and former U.S. Presidents as well as members of the general public, financial, political and educational institutions use social media. Yet, an overwhelming majority of users, content creators, parents, “conservatives,” “progressives,” Democrats and Republicans distrust social-media owners. Some critics allege that owners “digitally pollute” platforms by encouraging users to post “corrosive, dangerous, toxic and illegal content.” Other critics assert that service providers’ purportedly objective content-moderation algorithms are biased ― discriminating irrationally on the basis of users’ political association, ideology, socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity. Republicans and Democrats have crafted roughly twenty bills. In theory, the enacted proposals would “sanitize” …

Bertillonage In An Age Of Surveillance: Fourth Amendment Regulation Of Facial Recognition Technologies, David C. Gray

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

The Fourth Amendment is a closed hydraulic system. As a general rule, if government conduct is deemed a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, then agents must secure a warrant from a detached and neutral magistrate before engaging in that conduct. There are exceptions, of course, but they just shift the pressure into another valve. Officers who conduct searches based on their own initiative must show not only probable cause, but also good reasons why, in their circumstances, they were not required to get a warrant.

One consequence of these Fourth Amendment hydraulics is a reluctance on the part of the …

Developments In The Laws Affecting Electronic Payments And Financial Services, Sarah Jane Hughes, Steve Middlebrook, Tom Kierner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This survey year offered developments too numerous to cover, as often is the case. We debated which developments to include and decided to showcase different types of products and services, different providers, and different regulators. Part II views issues related to stimulus payments arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Part III reports on litigation over whether retailers must offer gift cards printed in Braille. Part IV looks at recent actions of the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") related to payment processors and others. Part V describes amendments to the "remittance" regulation promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB"). Part VI focuses …

Technological Transformation Of The Public Square: Government Officials Use Of Social Media And The First Amendment, Patricia Beety, Joline Zepcevski

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Regulating Data Breaches: A Data Superfund Statute, Kyle Mckibbin

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Collecting and processing large amounts of personal data has become a fundamental feature of the modern economy. Personal data, combined with good data analytics, are valuable to businesses as they can provide highly detailed information about individual preferences and behaviors. This data collection can also be valuable to the consumer as it generates innovative products and digital platforms. The era of big data promises great rewards, but it is not without its costs. Data breaches, or the release of personal data into unwanted hands, are pervasive and increasingly massive in scale. Despite the personal privacy harm caused by data breaches, …

'Playola' And Fraud On Digital Music Platforms: Why Legislative Action Is Required To Save The Music Streaming Market, Christine Smith Burton

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Artificial Intelligence And Trade, Anupam Chander

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Artificial Intelligence is already powering trade today. It is crossing borders, learning, making decisions, and operating cyber-physical systems. It underlies many of the services that are offered today – from customer service chatbots to customer relations software to business processes. The chapter considers AI regulation from the perspective of international trade law. It argues that foreign AI should be regulated by governments – indeed that AI must be ‘locally responsible’. The chapter refutes arguments that trade law should not apply to AI and shows how the WTO agreements might apply to AI using two hypothetical cases . The analysis reveals …

What's In Your Box? Removing The Tiffany Standard Of Knowledge In Online Marketplaces, Hayley Dunn

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Online shopping is a quintessential component of modern life. Millions of products from trusted brands are conveniently available at single-stop online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba with the click of a button from the comfort of home. But is the product delivered to the consumer’s front door actually the same as the one found on a store shelf? Pervasive trademark infringement in online marketplaces makes the answer to this question difficult, that is, until the consumer experiences negative consequences from a counterfeited product.

Under Tiffany (NJ) Inc. v. eBay, Inc., online marketplaces face almost no liability …

Free Speech And Democracy: A Primer For Twenty-First Century Reformers, Toni M. Massaro, Helen Norton

Publications

Left unfettered, the twenty-first-century speech environment threatens to undermine critical pieces of the democratic project. Speech operates today in ways unimaginable not only to the First Amendment’s eighteenth-century writers but also to its twentieth-century champions. Key among these changes is that speech is cheaper and more abundant than ever before, and can be exploited — by both government and powerful private actors alike — as a tool for controlling others’ speech and frustrating meaningful public discourse and democratic outcomes.

The Court’s longstanding First Amendment doctrine rests on a model of how speech works that is no longer accurate. This invites …

The Easterbrook Theorem: An Application To Digital Markets, Joshua D. Wright, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of large firms in the digital economy, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, has rekindled the debate about monopolization law. There are proposals to make finding liability easier against alleged digital monopolists by relaxing substantive standards; to flip burdens of proof; and to overturn broad swaths of existing Supreme Court precedent, and even to condemn a law review article. Frank Easterbrook’s seminal 1984 article, The Limits of Antitrust, theorizes that Type I error costs are greater than Type II error costs in the antitrust context, a proposition that has been woven deeply into antitrust law by the Supreme …

Beyond Algorithms: Toward A Normative Theory Of Automated Regulation, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

The proliferation of artificial intelligence in our daily lives has spawned a burgeoning literature on the dawn of dehumanized, algorithmic governance. Remarkably, the scholarly discourse overwhelmingly fails to acknowledge that automated, non-human governance has long been a reality. For more than a century, policymakers have relied on regulations that automatically adjust to changing circumstances, without the need for human intervention. This article surveys the track record of self-adjusting governance mechanisms to propose a normative theory of automated regulation.

Effective policymaking frequently requires anticipation of future developments, from technology innovation to geopolitical change. Self-adjusting regulation offers an insurance policy against the …

Beyond Transparency And Accountability: Three Additional Features Algorithm Designers Should Build Into Intelligent Platforms, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

In the age of artificial intelligence, innovative businesses are eager to deploy intelligent platforms to detect and recognize patterns, predict customer choices and shape user preferences. Yet such deployment has brought along the widely documented problems of automated systems, including coding errors, corrupt data, algorithmic biases, accountability deficits and dehumanizing tendencies. In response to these problems, policymakers, commentators and consumer advocates have increasingly called on businesses seeking to ride the artificial intelligence wave to build transparency and accountability into algorithmic designs.

While acknowledging these calls for action and appreciating the benefits and urgency of building transparency and accountability into algorithmic …

The First Amendment Has Entered The Chat: Oklahoma’S Cyberharassment Law, Trae Havens

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Take The Airwaves And Run: How A Loophole In The Copyright Laws Is Helping Competitors Gain An Advantage In The Name Of Public Interest, Mario Romero

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Publish, Share, Re-Tweet, And Repeat, Michal Lavi

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

New technologies allow users to communicate ideas to a broad audience easily and quickly, affecting the way ideas are interpreted and their credibility. Each and every social network user can simply click “share” or “retweet” and automatically republish an existing post and expose a new message to a wide audience. The dissemination of ideas can raise public awareness about important issues and bring about social, political, and economic change.

Yet, digital sharing also provides vast opportunities to spread false rumors, defamation, and Fake News stories at the thoughtless click of a button. The spreading of falsehoods can severely harm the …

Storming Zuckerberg’S Castle, Anupam Chander

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A company’s server is its castle, Richard Epstein once declared. Because of this, anyone sending an email to that server needs permission to enter. Within its own logic, this seems incontrovertible, but it depends on a few logical steps worth unpacking. It begins with the premise that a man’s home is his castle. (The masculine pronoun in the early formulation seems relevant.) Let us accept that premise for the purpose of argument. Combining this premise with the investiture of legal personhood on a corporation, we might then deduce that a company’s home must be its castle. Finally, combining that …

The New "Web-Stream" Of Commerce: Amazon And The Necessity Of Strict Products Liability For Online Marketplaces, Margaret E. Dillaway

Vanderbilt Law Review

Technology company Amazon has actively transformed into an e-commerce giant over the last two decades. Once a simple online bookstore, Amazon now boasts an ever-expanding identity as global cloud computing provider, major player in artificial intelligence, brick-and-mortar grocery store, and producer of original video content. At its roots, the company remains focused on e-commerce—its multibillion-dollar online marketplace hosts a massive digital space for commerce worldwide where customers can order “anything, with a capital A.”

Amazon derives many of its sales from third-party vendors who list products on the company’s website, Amazon.com. In this broadening chain of distribution for online retail, …

Circuit Courts Split: Victim Of A Data Breach? Can You “Stand” And Sue In Federal Court?, Darlyn De La Rosa

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deplatformed: Social Network Censorship, The First Amendment, And The Argument To Amend Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act, John A. Lonigro

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Eu Directive On Copyright In The Digital Single Market: An Outlier In Intermediary Liability And The Death Of Safe Harbor Protections, Marisa N. Sanchez

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.