Lex 8256: The Law in Cyberspace Seminar-- Syllabus

9/17/06

Lex 8256: Seminar: The Law in Cyberspace

SYLLABUS

August 28: Organizational session

No class September 4 -- Labor Day

September 11: Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse

Go to Professor Michael Froomkin's Internet Skills Page and follow his instructions.
Read these excerpts from ACLU v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824 (E.D Pa. 1996), aff'd, 521 U.S. 844 (1997).
Read Larry Lessig, The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 501 (1999).
By noon on Sunday, September 10, post a comment on the class blog reflecting some of your thoughts after completing these assignments.

September 18: Sexually explicit speech and other "bad" speech

Read the following cases:

Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997). You can find the opinions on Lexis or Westlaw, or on the Web in a variety of locations including:

Ashcroft v. ACLU, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), online at, e.g.:

United States v. American Library Ass'n, 539 U.S. 194 (2003), online at, e.g.

Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656 (2004), online at, e.g.:

Now skim ACLU v. Gonzales, 2006 U.S Dist. LEXIS 47481 (2006), paying attention to the ACLU's proposed interrogatories.

Finally, what about speech that isn't sexually explicit? View one of the following sites (do not do this portion of the assignment on an employer's computer):

The Creativity Movement at www.creatorforum.com
The Whizzinator home page at www.whizzinator.com
The Holocaust Hoax at http://christianparty.net/holocaust.htm
Rethinking AIDS at www.virusmyth.net/aids/

Post a comment on the class blog reflecting your thoughts on the overall assignment.

September 25: Intermediary liability (JTW)
Whose law governs? (JTW)

Post a blog comment relating to one of the two assignments.

October 2:       class cancelled for Yom Kippur

October 9:       Domain names and Internet governance (JTW)
                       Voice over IP and related topics (JTW)

Post a blog comment relating to one of the two assignments.

October 16: Bloggers and the journalist's privilege (Nick)
Responses to the Internet in China (Brian)

               Post a blog comment relating to one of the two assignments.

October 23:      Privacy in electronic medical/health records (Anthony)
                      Data protection: conflicts between the EU and the US (Betina)

Post a blog comment relating to one of the two assignments.

October 30: The future of peer-to-peer file transfer networks (Apurva)
Webcasting (Bruce)

Post a blog comment, as always.

November 6: Music licensing in a digital environment (Brandon)
Digital rights management (Nicholas)

Post a blog comment.

November 13: Cybersquatting / trademark / UDRP (Anne)
Internet business method patents (Nadine)