Internet Law Commons^™

Cloud Computing, Clickwrap Agreements, And Limitation On Liability Clauses: A Perfect Storm?, Timothy J. Calloway

Duke Law & Technology Review

“To the cloud!” trumpets a commercial by Microsoft, whose aim is to herd customers, and their checkbooks, into the cloud computing fold. But Microsoft, and other cloud providers like Amazon and Google, might inadvertently be doing just the opposite. It is not for lack of security or even early adopter apprehension that potential customers might turn away. Nor is it a lack of fantastic, cost-saving applications of cloud technology.

Rather, the problem is buried deep within these tech giants’ clickwrap agreements—the ones that customers rarely read and to which they invariably click “I Agree.” Hidden in these agreements are limitation …

Dueling Values: The Clash Of Cyber Suicide Speech And The First Amendment, Thea E. Potanos

Chicago-Kent Law Review

On March 15, 2011, William Melchert-Dinkel, a Minnesota nurse, was convicted of two counts of assisted suicide, based solely on things he said in emails and online chat rooms. This note examines whether cyber speech encouraging suicide, such as Melchert-Dinkel's, should be protected by the First Amendment. States have compelling interests in preserving life, preventing suicide, and protecting vulnerable persons from abuse, and the majority of them have assisted suicide statutes that could be applied to cyber-suicide speech. However, because cyber- suicide speech does not fit neatly into recognized categories of "low-value" or unprotected speech, punishment may be foreclosed by …

The Regulation Of Online Gaming Across Jurisdictions: Success, Standards And Stability, Peter Nelson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

In 2005 the gaming market was worth an estimated six billion dollars, half of that represented by online gambling revenues. However not all jurisdictions (countries) regulate the industry the same. Some jurisdictions allow the industry to flourish while some go as far as banning the industry all together. I gather data on all 75 global jurisdictions that have some form of online gaming. I analyze which regulations allow the industry to prosper while maintaining quality standards, and which regulations do not work. Preliminary analysis shows that the amount of years a country has allowed online gambling, as well as the …

The Future Of Digital Lockers, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article discusses the legalissues and legitimacy of changing online data storage and delivery facilities.

An American Look At Zappers: A Paper For The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Revisionssicheres System Zur Aufzeichnung Von Kassenvorgängen Und Messinformationenthe, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The common observation in the U.S. is that enforcement against technology-facilitated sales suppression has fallen through an intra-jurisdictional crack. Neither federal nor state auditors systemically target this area. But this is changing, and the change is coming from the state side.

This paper has two main parts. First, it summarizes the current state of sales suppression enforcement in the U.S. Secondly, it reviews the international solutions that are attracting the most U.S. attention. A conclusion indicates likely directions for U.S. enforcement.

Georgia is the first state to take action. On May 3, 2011 Georgia added code section 16-9-62 to Georgia …

Ensuring An Impartial Jury In The Age Of Social Media, Amy J. St. Eve, Michael A. Zuckerman

Duke Law & Technology Review

The explosive growth of social networking has placed enormous pressure on one of the most fundamental of American institutions—the impartial jury. Through social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, jurors have committed significant and often high-profile acts of misconduct. Just recently, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed a death sentence because a juror Tweeted about the case during deliberations. In light of the significant risks to a fair trial that arise when jurors communicate through social media during trial, judges must be vigilant in monitoring for potential outside influences and in deterring misconduct.

In this Article, we present informal survey data …

Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panels And The Webcasting Controversy: The Antithesis Of Good Alternative Dispute Resolution, Jeremy Delibero

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Music is becoming increasingly synonymous with big business and corporate influence. The advent of Internet radio and streaming webcasts are simply one example of this shift. Organizations such as the Radio Industry Association of America ("RIAA") have discovered a new way to receive royalties from the performance of musical works, and have fought vigorously to obtain favorable rates to achieve the maximum profit. On the other hand, small webcasters have fought equally hard to avoid these large rates. Although arguments for each side are equally persuasive, neither is persuasive enough to force a compromise. In attempting to solve these disputes, …

Can Students Be Disciplined For Off-Campus Cyberspeech?: The Reach Of The First Amendment In The Age Of Technology, Allan G. Osborne Jr., Charles J. Russo

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Is It Time To Recreate The E-Rate Program?, Lynne Holt, Mary Galligan

Federal Communications Law Journal

The Schools and Libraries program, commonly known as the "E-rate" program, was created by the FCC in 1997, as authorized by the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996. The E-rate program provides eligible schools and libraries with discounts of 20 to 90 percent from the rates charged by providers of telecommunications services, Internet access, and internal network connections. These discounts are paid from the federal Universal Service Fund under the regulatory oversight of the FCC. The FCC has modified certain aspects of the program since its inception but has not modified its highest programmatic funding priorities-support for telecommunications and Internet access. …

Unwrapping Shrinkwraps, Clickwraps, And Browsewraps: How The Law Went Wrong From Horse Traders To The Law Of The Horse, Cheryl B. Preston, Eli W. Mccann

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

This Article starts with the famous "horse trades" (typically between A and B and for 10£) from early discussions of contract law, and proceeds through Judge Burrough's enduring "unruly horse" and Karl Llewellyn's Across Sales on Horseback and The First Struggle to Unhorse Wares, to provide background for a critique of the recent judicial liberality in enforcing online contracts. We then focus on role of Judge Frank Easterbrook, who has personally insulted the place of the horse in law, and his infamous opinion in ProCD v. Zeidenberg. This case fueled the enforcement of clickwrap and browsewrap contracts by decaying assent …

From Betamax To Youtube: How Sony Corporation Of America V. Universal City Studios, Inc. Could Still Be A Standard For New Technology, Veronica Corsaro

Federal Communications Law Journal

Internet technological innovations, particularly the development of Peer-to-Peer ("P2P") networks and the proliferation of user-generated content sites, have introduced considerable challenges for the application of copyright law and infringement liability. The response from the courts and Congress has been mixed, with severe legal curtails being applied to P2P technology while usergenerated content sites have been afforded a level of protection against infringement claims as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's section 512 "safe harbor" provisions. However, these provisions have raised concerns about the issue of secondary copyright liability, a matter that has still been left undefined. This Note will …

Wiretapping The Internet: The Expansion Of The Communications Assistance To Law Enforcement Act To Extend Government Surveillance, Christa M. Hibbard

Federal Communications Law Journal

Criminal use of the Internet to circumvent traditional government phone wiretaps has inspired the Obama Administration to create a proposal to expand the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act ("CALEA"). CALEA was passed in 1994 to regulate telephone and broadband companies to ensure compliance with standards to enable government wiretapping. The proposed amendment of CALEA would allow the government to require all communications service providers to meet technical standards necessary to comply with a wiretap order. The expansion of CALEA would likely widen its scope to social networking sites, instant messaging, gaming consoles that allow conversation among multiple players, and …

(Un)Reasonable Expectation Of Digital Privacy, Brandon T. Crowther

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cyberbullying: What's The "Status" In England?, Krupa A. Patel

San Diego International Law Journal

This comment will explore the growing concern of cyberbullying and will highlight the need for the English Parliament to create its own national anti-cyberbullying legislation, or to incorporate this activity into existing laws as a preventative measure. Part II will define cyberbullying, highlight the various ways in which cyberbullying differs from traditional forms of bullying, and explore specific forms and mediums of cyberbullying to underscore the difficulty in regulating such actions through the law. It will also include illustrative examples of cyberbullying incidents. Part III explores the current laws that English prosecutors are attempting to use to penalize those who …

Check-In, Attendees Of The Symposium

NJTIP Annual Symposium

Check-in for the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property's 7th Annual Symposium

The Future Of Free Expression In A Digital Age, Jack M. Balkin

Pepperdine Law Review

In the twenty-first century, at the very moment that our economic and social lives are increasingly dominated by information technology and information flows, the judge-made doctrines of the First Amendment seem increasingly irrelevant to the key free speech battles of the future. The most important decisions affecting the future of freedom of speech will not occur in constitutional law; they will be decisions about technological design, legislative and administrative regulations, the formation of new business models, and the collective activities of end-users. Moreover, the values of freedom of expression will become subsumed within a larger set of concerns that I …

Theorizing The Odds: The European Union, Online Gambling Regulation And Integration Theory, Alexis Spencer-Notabartolo

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

From Clay Tablets To Ajax: Replicating Writing And Documents In Internet Transactions, Eliza Mik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article addresses the absence of paper and the challenges of transposing the traditional legal concepts of “writing” and “document” into an environment consisting of interactive and interconnected files. Both “writing” and “documents” are concepts that rely on tangible carriers, such as paper. [FN1] Accordingly, legal principles involving either concept presume not only a certain durability, but also the stability and confinement of the information conveyed. What happens when writing is no longer contained on paper? Can writing exist without documents? Is it correct to speak of a “document” if its contents are transient and its scope is difficult to …

Antitrust Law And Virtual Worlds, Marques Tracy

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Much has been written about the law in virtual worlds, though the focus has been on the more obviously applicable areas of the law, namely property, copyright, and crime. Indeed, in the few instances when disputes involving virtual worlds have reached a federal court, the focus has usually been on contract or copyright claims. It is the purpose of this paper to argue for the use of the antitrust laws as set forth in sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, and possibly the Clayton Act, to forestall the anticompetitive behavior of virtual world developers. First, this paper will …

Transnational Copyright: Misalignments Between Regulation, Business Models And User Practice, Leonhard Dobusch, Sigrid Quack

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

In this paper we analyse discursive struggles over what is referred to as legal and illegal user practices in the internet as an outcome of regulatory uncertainty. The latter, in turn, is examined in the context of a multi-layered transnational copyright regime characterised by three features: the absence of an universally recognized single authority in charge of law-making, fragmented and partially contradicting forms of regulation of global, national and sectoral scope, and considerable indeterminacy of rule interpretation and application arising from the variety and distinctiveness of local usage contexts. We argue that notions of legality and illegality are used strategically …