Internet Law Commons^™

Hart V Finnis: How Will Positivism And Natural Law Account For The Socio-Legal Paradigm In Wikipedia, Siyuan Chen

Siyuan CHEN

There is little doubt that Wikipedia is one of the world’s most influential websites today – and its sphere of influence is set to grow in days to come. The evidence for this is strong. As of December 2010, Wikipedia is the Internet’s 6th most popular website (by virtue of the Alexa Traffic Rank), and it is also the most popular "general reference" site in cyberspace, with almost 4 million articles in the English language edition. It has been and will continue to be the flagship of Web 2.0, with every single edit being potentially scrutinised by a global audience, …

Satellites And Municipalities: One Town’S Use Of Google Earth For Residential Surveillance, Edward Knoedler

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Networking And Land Use Planning And Regulation: Practical Benefits, Pitfalls And Ethical Considerations, Patricia E. Salkin

Patricia E. Salkin

This article explores how social networking sites have been used or might be used in the land use context. Part I focuses on the use of social networking for land use planning and zoning. It includes a discussion of the pros and cons of the use of social networking sites to present public information and to gather public input and invite general participation in the process, as well as to provide notice to the public of forthcoming government decision-making. This section offers concrete examples of how this technology is currently being used in the land use context. Part II focuses …

Quantifying The Economic Benefits Of Effective Redress: Large E-Commerce Data Sets And The Cost-Benefit Case For Investing In Dispute Resolution, Colin Rule

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

Demonstrating the economic benefit of investments in fair and effective redress systems has been one of the greatest challenges for dispute resolution. This article uses results from large e-commerce data sets to demonstrate the quantifiable benefit in of investments in effective dispute resolution processes. Specifically, the data is based not on user-reported satisfaction, which can be unreliable, but instead on an analysis of the actual behavior of users before and after a dispute event. The result is hard evidence of the economic benefits from the deployment of effective redress processes, which is relevant to e-commerce service providers, as well as …

Walled Gardens Of Privacy Or “Binding Corporate Rules?”: A Critical Look At International Protection Of Online Privacy, Joanna Kulesza

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

A growing concern in the era of cloud computing is protecting Internet users' privacy. This concern is compounded by the fact that there are no effective international solutions. This article considers the latest European Union (EU) proposed development in this area – a regulatory model based on amended Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) – as introduced by the EU Justice Commissioner. These planned changes would have worldwide effects on international companies' online activities in transboundary cyberspace.

After providing a background on the concept of defining privacy in general, the article describes the BCR proposal, and proceeds to consider the likelihood of …

The Value Of Government Mandated Location-Based Services In Emergencies In Australia, Anas Aloudat, Katina Michael, Roba Abbas, Mutaz Al-Debei

Associate Professor Katina Michael

The adoption of mobile technologies for emergency management has the capacity to save lives. In Australia in February 2009, the Victorian Bushfires claimed 173 lives, the worst peace-time disaster in the nation’s history. The Australian government responded swiftly to the tragedy by going to tender for mobile applications that could be used during emergencies, such as mobile alerts and location services. These applications, which are becoming increasingly accurate with the evolution of positioning techniques, have the ability to deliver personalized information direct to the citizen during crises, complementing traditional broadcasting mediums like television and radio. Indeed governments have a responsibility …

Who Are You? Difficulties In Obtaining Trademark Protection For Domain Names, Luke M. Rona

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Three appellate decisions illustrate the difficulty of acquiring trademark protection for domain names that include a top-level domain (“TLD”), such as “.com.” Courts have characterized these marks as generic or merely descriptive, which carries implications for the party seeking registration: generic marks cannot be protected, while descriptive marks can, assuming they possess a secondary meaning that makes the mark distinctive. Generic and descriptive domain names often indicate the services a company provides, with the addition of the “.com” TLD to indicate online services. One key test of genericness is whether the public identifies the mark with a service generally or …

Defamation Via Hyperlinks: More Than Meets The Eye, Gary Kok Yew Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Hyperlinks make the World Wide Web go round. They find and connect information and content from a wealth of sources on the web including, from time to time, defamatory material. Newton, the owner and operator of a website in British Columbia, posted an article entitled “Free Speech in Canada”. The article itself was not alleged to be defamatory of Crookes, a politician. However, it incorporated hyperlinks to other internet websites that contained defamatory material. Notwithstanding requests from Crookes and his lawyer, Newton refused to remove the hyperlinks. Did Newton’s act of hyperlinking to internet websites constitute “publication” of the defamatory …

When Antitrust Met Facebook, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Social networks are among the hottest phenomena on the Internet. Facebook eclipsed Google as the most visited website in both 2010 and 2011. Moreover, according to Nielsen estimates, as of the end of 2011 the average American spent nearly seven hours per month on Facebook, which is more time than they spent on Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Microsoft, and Wikipedia combined. LinkedIn’s May 19, 2011 initial public offering (“IPO”) surpassed expectations, placing the value of the company at nearly $9 billion, and approximately a year later, its stock price had risen another 20 percent. Facebook followed suit a year later with …

Building Bridges To Remedies For Consumers In International Conflicts, Amy J. Schmitz

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

This essay addresses the lack of consumer remedy mechanism, and attempts to open consideration of expanded use of online processes for resolving business-to-consumer (B2C) eConflicts. Specifically, the essay attempts to highlight the problems created by problematic and uncertain enforcement of B2C arbitration, and proposes the use of the Internet to create fair and globally enforceable Online Dispute Resolution and Online Arbitration (OArb) mechanisms. These mechanisms would capitalize on the growth and efficiency of the Internet while protecting consumers from burdensome and/or expensive procedures that render existing remedies meaningless.

The essay begins by discussing the importance of fair and accepted B2C …

Book Review Of Hacking: The Next Generation (Written By Nitesh Dhanjani, Billy Rios & Brett Hardin), Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Hacking: The Next Generation demonstrates just how hackers continue to exploit “back doors”. New ways of working and new ways of communicating have meant that the number of attack vectors continue to rise rapidly. This provides hackers with a greater number of opportunities to penetrate systems using blended approaches while organizations struggle to come up to speed with the latest technology developments and commensurate security capabilities. Dealing with anticipated threats is a lot harder than dealing with known threats.

New Technologies And Constitutional Law, Thomas Fetzer, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Proposal For An International Convention On Online Gambling, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

The proposal, which will be published as a chapter in a volume from the Internet Gaming Regulation Symposium co-organized by the William S. Boyd School of Law of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in May 2012, presents the outline of an international convention ('Convention') that will facilitate cooperation among countries in enforcement of their online gambling regulations while allowing the countries to maintain their individual legal approaches to online gambling. Countries continue to vary in their approaches - some permit and regulate, and others prohibit online gambling, and even countries that permit and regulate online gambling approach the issue …

Converging And Coexisting Systems Towards Smart Surveillance, Katina Michael, Mg Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Tracking and monitoring people as they operate within their personal networks benefits service providers and their constituents but involves hidden risks and costs.

Automatic identification technologies, CCTV cameras, pervasive and mobile networks, wearable computing, location-based services and social networks have traditionally served distinct purposes. However, we have observed patterns of integration, convergence and coexistence among all these innovations within the information and communication technology industry.1For example, ‘location-based social networking’ can draw on a smart phone's capacity to identify a user uniquely, locate him within 1–2m and share this information across his social network in real time. The resulting ability to …

Internet Policy Going Forward: Does One Size Still Fit All?, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Much of the current debate over Internet policy is framed by the belief that there has always been a single Internet that was open to everyone. Closer inspection reveals a number of important ways in which the architecture has deviated from this commitment. Providers frequently deploy Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) over hybrid networks that reserve bandwidth or employ technologies such as MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) that are not fully accessible to the public Internet. At the same time, the increasing value in variety and decreasing returns to scale is mitigating the value of being …

Gaming The System: A Critique Of Minors’ Privilege To Disaffirm Online Contracts, James Chang

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of The Magic Circle: Rejecting A Single Governance Model, Trey Hickman

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Griefing, Massacres, Discrimination, And Art: The Limits Of Overlapping Rule Sets In Online Games, Sal Humphreys

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dubious Autonomy Of Virtual Worlds , Mark A. Lemley

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Online User Account Termination And 47 U.S.C. § 230(C)(2), Eric Goldman

UC Irvine Law Review

No abstract provided.