Ch. 03: "Law" Online

A. Local Control: Life Among the Netizens

Notes

1. Assuming you don't already think there are, do you think there should be real world laws forbidding the virtual crime described in Dibble's article? Why or why not?

2. Assess the legal weight of the various rules described in today's reading. Whom, if anyone, do they bind? What, if anything, follows from violating them?

3. Does Chapman University's Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP") cover this webpage? Does it cover our use of this webpage in class? Does it cover your use of the law school's computer lab? Had you read that AUP prior to this assignment? What does your notice--or lack of it--imply?

4. Compare Chapman's AUP with the Earthlink Acceptable Use Policy, which Chapman's AUP incorporates by reference. In particular, consider the potential impact of paragraph j of Mindspring's AUP on academic research.

5. In addition to informal social sanctions and rules adopted by private entities, the internet also offers sophisticated and formal alternate dispute resolution mechanisms. For an interesting and apparently popular one, see SquareTrade.
   
   

Bell's Class #2: Please read Ch. 03.A.

B. Global Control: Battle of the Acronyms

Notes

1. Of the organizations listed above, ICANN rates as the most recent and by far the most controversial. For a critical view of ICANN, visit ICANNWatch.org. For information about a competitor to ICANN, see the homepage of New.net, which offers various alternatives to ICANN-authorized upper-level domain names.

2. Why do you suppose that the IETF's homepage links to the ISOC and the IANA--but not to ICANN? Or that ISOC similarly includes, in the related organizations listed on its homepage, the IETF but not ICANN? Note that these organizations do have ties; ICANN lists the IETF as one of the organizations that created its Protocol Supporting Organization, for instance.

3. How much of a voice (a "vote," if you will) does the average, individual internet user (or "netizen") have in these or other organizations that affect the internet's global architecture? Compare the influence of a well-known network engineer, or of a large telecommunications or software corporation, or of a high-ranking bureaucrat at a national or international government organization.
   
   
   

Useful Resources and Optional Reading

• The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was originally responsible for the oversight of IP address allocation, the coordination of the assignment of protocol parameters provided for in internet technical standards, and the management of the DNS. In 2000, it transferred to ICANN authority to manage registration of the .COM, .NET, and .ORG generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

• The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) provides a forum through which state and private sector organizations coordinate global telecom networks and services.
  
  

Bell's Class #3: Familiarize yourself with the origins and missions of the institutions listed in Ch. 03.B, as well as their relationships. Also, read Ch. 03.C.

C. Coercive Control?

Notes

1. Following the distrct court decision we read above in Yahoo! Inc. v. LICRA, LICRA appealed to the Ninth Circuit and won a reversal; see 379 F.3d 1120 (9th Cir. 2004). Therein, the three judge panel held that the district court had lacked personal jurisdiction over the French defendants. The Ninth Circuit vacated that decision, however, and announced plans to rehear the case en banc, at 399 F.3d 1010 (9th Cir. 2005)

2. Recall that the court in Reno I, at ¶¶ 117-19, found it legally significant that internet communications pass over national boundaries with very few constraints. That may have changed, however. Yahoo!, Inc. admitted in its Complaint, at ¶ 28, that roughly 70% of the time it can identify users who access its web site from France--so long as they do not try to conceal that information. What do you suppose has driven the trend toward improving the indentification of internet users' geographic location? What do you predict will result if that trend continues to its limit?

3. Theorists such as Friedrich A. Hayek have described spontaneous orders--like languages and markets--as the result of human action but not of human design. To what extent does that same description apply to the internet and, to the extent that it does, what does that tell us about regulating the internet?

4. The English language arguably shapes our verbal world at least as much as computer codes shape the virtual one (a point made in Post's commentary on Lessig, cited below). What, if anything, do you think Lessig would propose we do to keep the "code" of English from subverting our freedom?
   
   
   

Useful Resources and Optional Reading

• For an edited version of the complaint giving rise to the Yahoo! Inc. litigation described above, see Complaint for Declaratory Relief, Yahoo!, Inc. v. LICRA, No. C 00-21275 (PVT) (N.D. Cal. Dec. 21, 2000). For the full version, together with supporting documents, see this alternate source (PDF format).

• David G. Post, What Larry Doesn't Get: A Libertarian Response to Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, 52 Stan. L. Rev. 1439 (2000) (critiquing Lessig's view of internet regulation), __, Anarchy, State and the Internet: An Essay on Law-Making in Cyberspace, 1995 J. Online L. art. 3 (summarizing and classifying the means of regulating internet behavior)

• Corey Grice and Jim Hu, Excite@Home Usenet death penalty lifted, CNET News.com, January 18, 2000 (reporting on UDP activity and offering interesting ruminations on the continuing vitality of Usenet)

• Tom W. Bell, Usenet Death Penalty Coalition PICS a Fight with Spam, Telecom. & Elect. Media News, Fall 1997, at 1, 4 (describing UDP as a voluntary and beneficial mode of internet self-regulation)

• Andrew Leonard, Bots Are Hot! 4.04 Wired 114 (April 1996) (describing how bots extend and thwart human control of the internet).