Internet Law Commons^™

"Transformative" User-Generated Content In Copyright Law: Infringing Derivative Works Or Fair Use?, Mary W.S. Wong

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In the United States, the line between the type and level of transformation required for a copyrightable derivative work and that required to constitute fair use has not been drawn clearly. With the rise of user-generated content, this question (which arises in two distinct copyright contexts) has become even more important. At the same time, copyright law has generally shied away from defining authorship as a legal concept, preferring instead to develop and rely on the related (but not identical) concept of originality. This has resulted in a low copyrightability threshold that does not adequately account for the fact that …

"Myspace Mom" Asks Court Not To Stretch Federal Crime Beyond Congress' Intent, William Tasch

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Illinois Schools Face Up To Facebook: Mandating Internet Safety Instructions In Illinois Public Schools, Lauren Rafferty

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

New Illinois Internet Grooming Law: When Individual Rights Collide With Public Policy, Jeremy Moorehouse

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

U.S. To Aid In Fight Against Iran's Internet Censorship, Brian Patient

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

The Oldest Profession Finds A New Medium: Craigslist And The Sex Industry, Jeff Mcdonald

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Now You See It Now You Don't: Addressing The Issue Of Websites Which Are "Lost In Space", Patricia A. Broussard

Journal Publications

This article asks the following question: should the average law professor, who works mightily to churn out a large journal article every two years or so, be penalized for relying heavily on Internet citations provided full and accurate credit is given to all sources? I believe that in order to attempt to answer this question, it is important to first examine the roots of scholarship in academia and revisit its original purpose and second, to discuss the rise of technology and the impact it has had on the academy. This article will eventually set out some guidelines for the use …

Thinking Like A Research Expert: Schemata For Teaching Complex Problem-Solving Skills, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

The difference between expert and novice problem solvers is that experts have organized their thinking into schemata or mental constructs to both see and solve problems. This article demonstrates why schemata are important, arguing that they need to be made explicit in the classroom. It illustrates the use of schemata to understand and categorize complex research problems, map the terrain of legal research resources, match appropriate resources to types of problems, and work through the legal research process. The article concludes by calling upon librarians and research instructors to produce additional schemata and develop a common hierarchical taxonomy of skills, …

Introduction: Contains Cover, Table Of Contents, Letter From The Editor, And Masthead, Robert Michaux

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present the second issue of the 2009–2010 academic year.

Students’ Free Speech Rights Shed At The Cyber Gate, Vivian Lei

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Education is one of the most important functions of the government. Because public schools are under the control of state and local authorities, the administrators and teachers of these schools are subject to requirements established in the United States Constitution. For example, for more than thirty years, the Supreme Court has supported the due process rights of students facing a deprivation of liberty and property interests in education.

Ebay's Second Life: When Should Virtual Earnings Bear Real Taxes?, Leandra Lederman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Millions of people participate in virtual worlds. The popular virtual world Second Life is designed to be a platform for commerce. This essay argues that profits received in the form of Linden dollars (Second Life's currency) should be taxed in much the same way profits received via PayPal, a widely used electronic-payment system, are. Although Second Life profits could instead be taxed once the taxpayer cashes out, that would create a special exception for Second Life that does not exist for platforms such as eBay, which would facilitate abuse and distort economic activity.

Law In The Virtual World: Should The Surreal World Of Online Communities Be Brought Back To Earth By Real World Laws, David Assalone

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Copyright, Trademark And Secondary Liability After Grokster, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

Even though secondary infringement doctrine in both copyright and trademark stems from the same common law starting points, the doctrines have moved in very different directions, particularly in the last decade. As copyright litigants expanded their litigation strategy to include online intermediaries, secondary copyright liability was stretched to encompass a wider array of defendants with increasingly tangential relationships to the direct infringer. Meanwhile, even though similar online threats jeopardized the ability of trademark holders to safeguard their brands' goodwill, courts refused to implement a similar expansion for secondary trademark liability. Although courts are aware of this doctrinal double standard, they …

Introduction: Contains Cover, Table Of Contents, Letter From The Editor, And Masthead, Bridget Murray

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present the fourth issue of the 2008–2009 academic school year. Our authors analyze a variety of controversial legal topics that are at the forefront of debates regarding the intersection of technology and law.

Introduction: Contains Cover, Table Of Contents, Letter From The Editor, And Masthead, Robert Michaux

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

The Richmond Journal of Law and Technology is proud to present the first issue of the 2009–2010 academic year.

Federalization In Information Privacy Law, Patricia L. Bellia

Journal Articles

In Preemption and Privacy, Professor Paul Schwartz argues that it would be unwise for Congress to adopt a unitary federal information privacy statute that both eliminates the sector-specific distinctions in federal information privacy law and blocks the development of stronger state regulation. That conclusion, though narrow, rests on descriptive and normative claims with broad implications for the state-federal balance in information privacy law. Descriptively, Professor Schwartz sees the current information privacy law landscape as the product of successful experimentation at the state level. That account, in turn, fuels his normative claims, and in particular his sympathy with theories of competitive …

Rethinking Consideration In The Electronic Age, Robert A. Hillman, Maureen A. O'Rourke

Faculty Scholarship

Our fast-paced age of electronic agreements that ostensibly govern transactions as diverse as downloading software, ordering goods, and engaging in collaborative development projects raises questions regarding thesuitability of contract law as the appropriate legal framework. While this question arises in many settings, we focus here on the free and open source software (FOSS) movement because of the maturity and success of its model and the ubiquity of its software. We explore in particular whether open source licenses are supported by consideration, and argue that they are, and that open source licenses are contracts. We further argue that a contractual framework …

Microfinance Managers Consider Online Funding: Is It Finance, Marketing, Or Something Else?, Deborah Burand

Articles

Online platforms are changing the way we engage with the world. Facebook links, eBay auctions, ePal chats, even Second Life avatars—these are all online platforms that connect people, ideas, products, and markets. These platforms shape who we connect with as well as how we connect. This concept extends to philanthropy: Online philanthropy is changing the nature of how and where people give.1 An outgrowth of online philanthropy is online social investing. Kiva.org is one of the best known online lending and investment platforms. Since its launch in 2005, Kiva has grabbed the attention (and wallets) of over 350,000 online lenders, …

A Proposed Restriction On The First Amendment: Protecting Children From Internet Pedophiles, Jennifer L. Pass

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Anti-Slapp Law Make Benefit For Glorious Entertainment Industry Of America: Borat, Reality Bites, And The Construction Of An Anti-Slapp Fence Around The First Amendment, Jonathan Segal

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Taking Chances: The United States' Policy On Internet Gambling And Its International Implications, Yevgeniya Roysen

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Cybercrimes Vs. Cyberliberties, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

Cybercrimes vs. Cyberliberties, Chapter 8 in Internet Policy and Economics: Challenges and Perspectives 2nd ed. at 110-127 ( W.H. Lehr & L.M. Pupillo, eds. Springer, 2009).

The Google Dilemma, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Web search is critical to our ability to use the Internet. Whoever controls search engines has enormous influence on all of us; whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself. This short essay (based on talks given in January and April 2008) uses the stories of five famous search queries to illustrate the conflicts over search and the enormous power Google wields in choosing whose voices are heard on the Internet.

Code, Crash, And Open Source: The Outsourcing Of Financial Regulation To Risk Models And The Global Financial Crisis, Erik F. Gerding

Publications

The widespread use of computer-based risk models in the financial industry during the last two decades enabled the marketing of more complex financial products to consumers, the growth of securitization and derivatives, and the development of sophisticated risk-management strategies by financial institutions. Over this same period, regulators increasingly delegated or outsourced vast responsibility for regulating risk in both consumer finance and financial markets to these privately owned industry models. Proprietary risk models of financial institutions thus came to serve as a "new financial code" that regulated transfers of risk among consumers, financial institutions, and investors.

The spectacular failure of financial-industry …

The Future Of Internet Regulation, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

Policymakers are at a precipice with regard to Internet regulation. The Federal Communications Commission's ("FCC") self-styled adjudication of a complaint that Comcast violated the agency's Internet policy principles (requiring reasonable network management, among other things) clarified that the era of the non-regulation of the Internet is over. Equally clear is that the agency has yet to develop a model of regulation for a new era. As explained in this Article, the old models of regulation - reliance on command-and-control regulation or market forces subject only to antitrust law - are doomed to fail in a dynamic environment where cooperation is …

The Internet's Public Domain: Access To Government Information On The Internet, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

This article surveys the types and amounts of information that have been removed from the Internet since September 11th. Information has been removed in the name of national security as well as for reasons of seeming political expediency. After discussing the bases of some of the rationales for removing the information, and the legal underpinnings of continued access, the article suggests several forms of advocacy that could be used to return the information to the public's domain.

Internet Retailers And Intertype Competition: How The Supreme Court's Incomplete Analysis In Leegin V. Psks Leaves Lower Courts Improperly Equipped To Consider Modern Resale Price Maintenance Agreements, Daniel B. Nixa

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

In Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court held that resale price maintenance (RPM) agreements are to be judged under the rule of reason. An RPM agreement is an agreement between a manufacturer and retailers stipulating that retailers will charge a certain price for the manufacturer's products. This Note argues that the Supreme Court should have instructed lower courts to consider intertype competition in addition to interbrand and intrabrand competition when evaluating RPM agreements under the rule of reason. Two reasons lead to this conclusion. First, the Internet has invigorated intertype competition and has made …

We're Friends, Right? Client List Misappropriation And Online Social Networking In The Workplace, Brian V. Wyk

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Social networks, such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have grown tremendously over the past decade, and today they claim over 200 million users between the three services. A great number of smaller social networks have also appeared, and new services are constantly being created. With the vast growth of social networking has come the use of social networking in business. As businesses have sought to exploit the wealth of information that social network users share over these networks, businesses have encountered the problem of protecting the compilations of information they have produced. The problem became clear in 2008 when a …

The Magic Circle, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

This Article examines the concept of the "magic circle," the metaphorical barrier that supposedly excludes real-world law from virtual worlds. The Article argues that this metaphor fails because there is no "real" world as distinguished from "virtual" worlds. Instead of a magic circle, this Article advocates a rule of consent: actions in a virtual world give rise to legal liability if they exceed the scope of consent given by other players within the game. The Article concludes that although real-world law cannot reasonably be excluded from virtual worlds, game gods and players can control the interface between law and virtual …

Mass Culture And The Culture Of The Masses: A Manifesto For User-Generated Rights, Debora Halbert

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

User-generated content is a term used to describe the division between culture produced as a commodity for consumption and the culture that is generated by people acting as creative beings without any market incentive. While under current copyright law all types of creativity are protected, the laws of copyright exist primarily to protect commercial forms of expression, not the non-commercial ones that form the foundation of user-generated content. The disconnect between what current copyright law protects and how most people create generates tensions that must be addressed. This Article presents an argument for broader protection of all creative work, including …