Search and the First Amendment

Jane and I are in Arlington, Virginia, for a conference on Competition Policy in Search and Social Media at George Mason University. Jane, Neil Richards, Dawn Nunziato, and Stuart Benjamin will discuss the interplay of the First Amendment, regulation, and search / social media. I expect an entertaining fight over whether search results are speech, [...]

Smoke If You Got ‘Em

I’m here in rainy, lovely Eugene, Oregon watching the Oregon Law Review symposium, A Step Forward: Creating a Just Drug Policy for the United States. (You can watch it live.) Jane is presenting her paper Defending the Dog – here’s the conclusion: The narcotics dog doesn’t deserve the bad reputation it has received among scholars. The [...]

Is Data Speech?

Jane Yakowitz Bambauer has a new article forthcoming in 66 Stanford Law Review __ (forthcoming 2014), titled “Is Data Speech?” Here’s the abstract: Privacy laws rely on the unexamined assumption that the collection of data is not speech. That assumption is incorrect. Privacy scholars, recognizing an imminent clash between this long-held assumption and First Amendment [...]

Fairmont Fail

Jane and I had a fantastic time at Eric Goldman’s Internet Law Works-In-Progress conference, but we’re facing an early flight, and our room at the Fairmont shaking with the noise from the ballroom level (one level down). It’s supposed to quiet down… at some point. Apparently Fairmont hasn’t figured out that conference folks might have [...]

Cyberwar and Cyberespionage

My paper “Ghost in the Network” is available from SSRN. It’s forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. I’m appending the abstract and (weirdly, but I hope it will become apparent why) the conclusion below. Comments welcomed. Abstract Cyberattacks are inevitable and widespread. Existing scholarship on cyberespionage and cyberwar is undermined by its futile [...]

The Illegal Process and Orwell’s Metaphors

James Grimmelmann and David Post have responses to Orwell’s Armchair up at the University of Chicago Law Review’s Dialogue site. I’m grateful and flattered to have them as partners in the discussion, and I am very excited to read their articles!

Become a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona

About the Position The University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law welcomes applications for the position of Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) beginning July 1, 2013. VAPs will enjoy a two-year appointment to the faculty of the College of Law. They will teach one course per semester, with institutional and financial support for scholarly research and [...]

Privacy, Security, and Cybercrime

In a forthcoming paper, I argue that security and privacy issues differ in important ways that are typically neglected by both scholars and courts. If you’re in Chicago at the end of the week, you can hear me drone on about the piece on a panel on cybercrime at a symposium at Northwestern University School [...]

Beating Revenge Porn with Copyright

The lawsuit against scumbag Web site Texxxan.com has generated attention to the problem of revenge porn, and to the paucity of legal remedies available to victims of it. Danielle Citron has two excellent posts over at Concurring Opinions analyzing the relevant statutory block, 47 U.S.C. 230, and the few cases that cut through its immunity. [...]

Copyright Greenwashing

The Center for Individual Freedom has just published a paper by three RIAA lawyers that purports to develop a natural rights theory and history of copyright. The paper is short (6 pages long), which appears to be its only valuable quality. I’ll set out a brief critique below, but first I want to note that [...]