Cyberlaw

LSLW 545

  • Professor: Jack Baldwin LeClair M.A., Ed.S., J.D.
  • Office Hours: by appointment and posted on office door.
  • Office Phone: 973.655.7953
  • Email: leclairj@mail.montclair.edu (put LSLW 545 in the subject line)
  • Text 1: KN = Kain and Nessen, Borders in Cyberspace. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, Latest Edition).
  • Text 2: L = Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, (New York: Basic Books, 1999)
  • Additional Reading: S=Stephenson, Neal, Snow Crash (Bantam: New York, 1992). Buy @ Amazon.com.

purpose of this course:

  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.

 

Midterm Examination 40%
Final Examination 40%
Classroom Participation 10%
Assigments 10%

 

DATE ASSIGNMENT NOTES
09.08.04 Code Code and Code:  Introduction to the course and concepts Cyberspace, law and technology; L:Preface; KN: Preface,
09.15.04 What is Cyberlaw now and later. L:3-62; L:63-110; KN: 3-47
09.22.04 The New Frontier; Sovereignty; Rule-Making in Cyberspace. KN:48-128
09.29.04 Procedural Issues such as Jurisdiction; Internet Jurisdiction L:188-212; KN 164-204 Who? What? When? Where?: Personal Jurisdiction & the WWW, Yvonne A. Tamayo; Compuserve v. Patterson: Creating Jurisdiction Through Internet Contacts: Cheryl L. Conner
10.06.02

IP : Intellectual Property and changing landscapes

Start Snow Crash; L:122-141; KN: 106-128; MP3, Piracy, Berne Convention, No Electronic Theft Act ; Trademark Trademark Info;  Copyright The WIPO Copyright Treaty, US Copyright Act, Court Ok's MP3 Players Electronic Communications Privacy Act
10.13.04 Defamation online; Privacy Issues and Cases on Privacy: Internet Defamation; The Right Wing Speaks

L:142-163;
10.20.04

MIDTERM EXAMINATION

This is a takehome examination. There will be no in class exercise. Your answers are due on 10.27.04.


List of Key Terms for Midterm

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?
10.27.04 Privacy continued; A tort is a tort of course of course:

KN:255-282. Parallel Questions: How does it feel to be biomass for Internet Commerce?
Are ideologies and religions viruses?

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

11.03.04 Cybercommerce and  Electronic Contracts and Signatures; Finish Snow Crash; Overreaching Provisions in Software License Agreements by Michael Liberman; KN:205-234, 300-354.
11.10.04

Freedom of speech and association: 1st Amendment: Reno, et al. v. ACLU, et al. Internet Filtering. Spamming. Taking Info without waiver or permission and use in litigation; Communication Decency

 L:164-185; KN:235-254; 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
11.17.04 Freedom of love and lust  
11.24.04 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. L:111-121.;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
12.01.04

 

 

 
12.08.04

Final Thoughts on Cyberspace`

L:213-234
12.15.04 FINAL EXAM

List of Terms for Final Exam