Amicus Brief: MGM vs. Grokster (Supreme Court Case No. 04-480)

In Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), this Court held that the manufacture and distribution of technology that is sometimes used to engage in copyright infringement does not give rise to secondary liability so long as the technology in question is “capable of substantial noninfringing uses.”

Internet Law (forthcoming, Foundation Press) Chapter 17: Cybercrime (preliminary version)

“Cybercrime” is an amorphous field. It refers broadly to any criminal activity that pertains to or is committed through the use of the Internet.

The Torts Game

Defending Mean Joe Greene

Use this short secondary text with any torts casebook to give your students a demonstration of the practical dimensions to tort law alongside the doctrine they are already learning. The Torts Game is ingeniously designed to engage student interest as it reviews key topics.

Amicus Brief: Capitol et al v. Noor Alaujan

For the foregoing reasons, amici suggest that the Court to exercise caution in regard to any aggregate treatment of Defendants and to consider reduced awards in light of the difficulty of assessing actual and legal harm to the Plaintiffs

Normative Principles for Evaluating Free and Proprietary Software

This article explains the ways in which free and proprietary software are at odds, and offers a framework by which to assess their value - a prerequisite to determining the extent to which the legal system should take more than a passing, mechanical interest in the doctrinal claims now being pressed against GNU/Linux specifically and free software generally.

Be Careful What You Ask For: Reconciling a Global Internet and Local Law

As the Internet becomes part of daily living rather than a place to visit, its rough edges are smoothed and its extremes tamed by sovereigns wanting to protect consumers, prevent network resource abuse, and eliminate speech deemed harmful. The tools are now within reach to permit sovereigns with competing rulesets to play down their differences - whether by countenancing global privatization of some Internet governance issues through organizations like ICANN, coming to new international agreements on substance and procedure to reduce the friction caused by transborder data flows, or by a "live and let live" set of localization technologies to shape the Internet to suit the respective societies it touches.

Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China

Data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet access through Chinese networks.

Internet Points of Control

The online availability of pornography and unauthorized intellectual property has driven Internet growth while giving rise to efforts to make the Net more regulable. Early efforts to control the Internet have targeted the endpoints of the network - the sources and recipients of objectionable material - and to some extent the intermediaries who host others' content. Recently attention has shifted to intermediaries near would-be recipients of content. The U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania permits its attorney general to obtain a court order requiring Internet service providers to block Pennsylvanians' access to Internet locations designated as containing illegal pornography. If successful, this approach could be employed for other regulatory purposes, such as controlling the online distribution of copyright-infringing materials. While the Pennsylvania law suffers from a number of technical limitations and Constitutional vulnerabilities, with some adjustments to Internet architecture and data carriage practices, this approach could become a comprehensive scheme for widespread content control that overcomes a number of enforcement barriers and jurisdiction-related objections. (March, 2003)

What the Publisher Can Teach the Patient: Intellectual Property and Privacy in an Era of Trusted Privication

Individuals have long had the desire but little ability to control the dissemination of personal information about their health.... Technology has so far only made exploitation of personal information easier. The danger this era portends is that what is gained in efficiency of health care provision may be lost in erosion of privacy. Privacy advocates could learn a new approach to this problem from an unlikely teacher: publishers of intellectual property - specifically, the American music industry. (February, 2000)

The Un-Microsoft Un-Remedy: Law Can Prevent the Problem That It Can’t Patch Later

What is the key issue in the Microsoft case?