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Pathfinder: Topics in Internet Law

This pathfinder treats the law of or about the Internet, as opposed to law or legal-research sources available through the Internet.

"Internet Law" or "Cyberlaw" topics include (click on topic to zoom to it, or scroll down for general resources).

It is important to note that these areas have a strong tendency to overlap or blur together (perhaps this is both a strength of the Berkman Center style definition, below, and an argument that such a thing as "Cyberlaw" or "Internet Law" does exist)

Defining 'Internet Law'

In compiling this pathfinder, I have tried to avoid being overly topical in the sense of focusing on specific issues of the moment. For example, while I write Senator Fritz Holling's copy protection bill is a hot topic and the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear Eldred v. Ashcroft (formerly Eldred v. Reno), but because information on these types of things can be easily found from most or all of the sources in my Intellectual Property section, I have included no directreferences to current news articles or specific links to lower court cases. Obviously some specific legislation merits attention (e.g UCITA and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act) but even with these I have tried to avoid highly specific sources that are exceedingly likely to dissapear or to become outdated with near-term developments.

Also, because of the scope of this pathfinder, I have selected a lot of 'pathfinder' type resources for inclusion while deliberately avoiding the citation of many specific papers, cases, statutes, etc. It is my hope that this source can best serve as a sort of "pathfinder to pathfinders" in this exceedingly broad topic.

Sources on Internet Law

These are sources that cover 'Internet Law' generally, or as a coherent legal subject. Specific topical treatments are addressed in the sections below.

While it was once (even when this pathfinder was first created) much more helpful to talk about 'Internet law' in a general sense, the dilution of the Internet into many areas of public life has made it much easier to talk instead about several certain areas of law and regulation that are impacted by the Internet and related technologies. Nevertheless, some general treatments exist, and some scholars and others continue to focus on the Internet and Cyberspace as the unifying theme in their work.

Academic institutes

Activist and Professional/Trade Organizations Cyberlaw-focused Law Journals
There are a number of academic, scholarly, law journals that focus upon Internet or technology-related issues. Many (or even most) of these were founded around 1995, and a number continue in publication. While it may be difficult to locate specific articles without a journal index (for which you will need to consult a librarian) many of these journals present both articles and tables of contents online. A browse of some of the online tables of contents of current and recent issues of some of these journals can be useful for current awareness in the Internet-law area. I have included explanatory notes only where the journal is not a law-school published, student-edited journal from an American law school the name of which is clear from the title of the journal.

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Digital Intellectual Property (IP)

Digital technology and Internet communications have enabled almost cost-less duplication and dissemination of music, movies, text, or any other media that can be reduced to (and transmitted as) bits of computer code. The result is that intellectual property law, copyright in particular, has been placed under a great deal of pressure. The owners of IP rights in digital media want to prevent wholesale piracy -- yet many others fear a new regime in which the owners of IP can use technology itself to hard-code protections against copying, without the balances of traditional copyright law.

The IP issues overlap very strongly with the internet commerce issue, so you may want to browse the sources listed in both sections of this bibliography.

Copyright Licensing

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/hr2281.pdf

Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, and the Eldred case.

It will probably be most helpful to check for new links and sources on the general resources in the IP section (especially the organization home-pages), because of the news-heavy topic. Also see the IPL's U.S. Law pathfinder for information on searching federal court cases.

"Pathfinders" and Link Lists to Intellectual Property Law
Lists or finding aids especially strong on resources with Internet/technology-related focus have been selected.

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Commerce


The commercial law of the Internet. Because most property at stake in cyberspace is intellectual property, the overlap or tension between this area and IP Law is strong and challenging.

Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA)
UCITA is being promulgated as uniform state law, meaning that it (like the Uniform Commercial Code by which it was inspired) is designed to be state, not federal, law but to be uniform across as many states as possible. Because UCITA is percieved as strengthening the contract position of those who license software or other digital content, it has been very controversial. UCITA is basically commercial contract law to cover contracts in electronic commerce, although the subject matter of those contracts and commerce is very often intellectual property.

For other e-commerce issues (e.g. taxation and the Internet), see especially the UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy, at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/csth.html and the law reviews linked in the general section.

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Privacy

Privacy topics that are related to Internet technology range from: government surveillance of email, Web activity, or telecommunications; to marketer's monitoring or profiling of customers; to individual snooping; to identity theft and some forms of 'hacking'. Rather than comprehensively deal with the sources on any of these topics, I have attempted to include enough resources to provide second-tier links for most privacy topics.

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Free Expression

Issues of free expression and the Internet range from questions of the status and application of First Amendment concepts such as "obscenity" and "community standards" in cyberspace to the politically and technically difficult issues of internet 'filtering' technology.

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Jurisdiction in Cyberspace

Because the parties to any sort of online transaction online can be located, physically, in any location and are only brought together "virtually", the Internet has significantly challenged traditional notions of territorial jurisdiction. This is an important twist in many fields of Internet law (for example with free speech and censorship issues) but has also been treated as an important topic in its own right.

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Internet Governance

The last topic in this pathfinder, and one which perhaps spans across all of the others, is the topic of the "government" of the Internet itself - how the rules, protocals, and conventions that goven Cyberspace interact with the better-understood realms of law and policy.

This pathfinder created by Andrew Larrick, based on an existing structure by Gavin Fearey.

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Last updated Apr 18, 2002