Cyberlaw

LSLW 599/ LSLW 499

  1. All reading and written assignments must be completed prior to the class in which they are due.
  2. Attendance is encouraged but not mandatory. Students are responsible for keeping current with the assignments. The professor is not responsible for keeping students current.
  3. Class participation is encouraged and will be rewarded academically.
  4. Graduate students are required to complete additional coursework as a condition of the class.
  5. Readings will be from the text, cyberspace, or handouts.
 DATE  ASSIGNMENT  NOTES
 5.23.00  Introduction to the course and concepts. What are the Internet, WWW, FTP, Gopher etc.  Cyberspace, law and technology
 5.30.00  Intellectual property and changing landscapes - MP3, Piracy, Berne Convention, No Electronic Theft Act  What are the differences among copyright, trademark, and Patents? R:1-21
 6.06.00  Copyright The WIPO Copyright Treaty, US Copyright Act ,Phonogram Treaty MP3 Players  R:22-94
 6.13.00  Trademark Trademark Sites and Info  R:95-108; Start Snow Crask
 6.20.00  Midterm  List of Key Terms for Midterm
 6.27.00  Defamation online; Privacy Issues and Cases on Privacy: Internet Defamation; The Right Wing Speaks:; The Truth about EMail Viruses; Virus Information Center; How to Protect Against Computer Viruses  R:109-128; R:129-142; R:143-160
Parallel Questions: How does it feel to be biomass for Internet Commerce?
Are ideologies and religions viruses?
 7.11.00  Privacy continued; A tort is a tort of course of course: To Send or not to Send; Practical Joke is Defamatory; Name Calling in Cyberspace; Blasphemous Links:Zeran v America On-Line 1997 US Dist Lexis 3429 (E.D. Va. Mar.21 1997); Defamation online is worse  R:161-166; Paper Requirements; If ideologies are viruses and other information can innoculate people against such viruses, is the Internet the equivalent of putting vaccine in the water supply or of spreading a plague?
 7.18.00  Don't do the cybercrime if you can't do the time: J Dibbell 'A Rape in Cyberspace' in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, ed Peter Ludlow, Actual piece; The top ten ways to break the law on the Internet; True Threats; "If there were no laws, the Mafia would just be another franchise". - Hiro Protagonist.  R:167-192; R:193-226; State Criminal Laws in Cyberspace: Reconciling Freedom for Users with Effective Law Enforcement , Sean M. Thornto; Cyberspace, General Searches, and Digital Contraband; The Fourth Amendment and the Net-Wide Search, Michael Adler, 105 Yale L. J. 1093 (1996); Self Incrimination and Cryptographic Keys by Greg S. Sergienko
 7.25.00  Procedural Issues such as jurisdiction Internet Jurisdiction  R:227-236; Who? What? When? Where?: Personal Jurisdiction and the World Wide Web , Yvonne A. Tamayo; Compuserve v. Patterson: Creating Jurisdiction Through Internet Contacts: Cheryl L. Conner
 8.01.00  Electronic Contracts and Signatures;  R:237-248; Finish Snow Crash; Overreaching Provisions in Software License Agreements by Michael Liberman
 8.08.99  1st Amendment: RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, et al. v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION et al. Internet Filtering. Spamming. Taking Info without waiver or permission and use in litigation; Communication Decency  R:249-268; R:269-340; Free Speech in the College Community Robert M. O'Neil, Indiana University Press, 1997. ISBN: 0-253-33267-2 Reviewed by Rodney A. Smolla; Free Speech & The Internet: The Inevitable Move Toward Government Regulation, James J. Black; THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT: ABORTING THE FIRST AMENDMENT? BY Sheryl L. Herndon
 8.15.99 FINAL EXAM  List of Terms and Concepts the Final Exam