Ciaccio Legal Blog

Looks like this exercise is more than mere convenience and vanity. Our assignment this week:

We will be asking you to write a Feedback Journal on your experience of editing the wiki. This will encompass your collaborative editing experience of the Weeks Page as well as the rest of the course wiki. We encourage you to begin keeping notes or a journal for yourself about this since it will be a long-term experience over the course of the semester. We will be asking for Feedback Journals on each of the technologies we use in the course. The purpose of these journals will be to evaluate the characteristics of the particular technology as a medium of expression. Is it easy to use? What kind of expression does it encourage? What kind of expression does it discourage? Is it a useful tool for education? That sort of question and whatever else you find interesting about it.

Considering the nature of the course, it is likely that the url for this blog will suffice. I have come a long way since undergrad.

I won’t have time in the immediate future to write an entry for day two; I am smack in the middle of the rush of my other classes. Perhaps surprisingly, the subjects discussed in the first week have a bearing on my constitutional law class.

We are studying the federal-state division of power, namely Congress’ ability to legislate via the commerce clause and the extent of that power. The Courts’ interpretation of the commerce clause’s reach has morphed over the years. It suffices to say for the purposes of the Moot Court case we’ll be playing with tomorrow that intrastate activity must have a substantial impact on interstate commerce to be within Congress’ jurisdiction. Certain non-economic activity can be within it’s jurisdiction, as can activity that only has an effect in the aggregate if that activity is economic.

The moot case (Sullivan) regards the possession of child pornography downloaded via the internet from other state’s or countries. The fact that the statute in question is constitutional only insofar as it affect the market directly bears on this week’s readings. The precedents on point regard the cultivation of marijuana for private use and the growing of wheat for home use over the federal-mandated quota.

Can porn be exempt by it’s existence as an information good? It is, when downloaded, mere data. In many cases, it’s production and distribution can arguably be motivated by nonmarket incentives, just as the other information goods discussed (open source software, etc) as discussed in Benkler’s book.

I would argue that it is more of a market good than the other examples used, in that most porn operates from direct sale (not the case here) or from the revenue generated by advertisements on high-traffic sites. In that case, although the activity would fall outside the scope of ‘trade’ ‘production’ and ‘purchase’, it would nonetheless be an integral part of commerce. Without this conclusion, much of the information goods that generate profit on his revenue model, which is a considerable amount, would arguably be outside the scope of Congress’ regulation. I don’t think that is a sustainable position.

I just sat in on my first session of Cyber One: Law in the Court of Public Opinion. Many of the projects and assignments of the course will use internet technology, such as blogs, wikis, Second Life, and possible webcasts. Were are encouraged to participate in the Class Wiki and indeed are assigned to create a blog? wiki? for one week of the course in collaboration with other students.

I thought this would be an ideal medium to keep track of the course in my own personal way, to keep an account of my thoughts and to use as a sandbox for possible contributions to the materials. Of course, there will be much that I will want to post here that will be of little use to the class as a whole, so I saw a need, apart from perhaps a userpage on the wiki, to have my own little space.

Possible topics include reflections on the course materials, collections of links to them and other useful sources, and my own thoughts on the matter.

Today we covered very broad, philosophical topics. The emergence of self is directly keyed to the recognition of and interaction with others; it is through our thoughts on their own views of us that we are able to develop a sense of self. The riddle explains it, and it will be tied into the course through a similar version of that interaction on the internet.

The reading was quite thought-provoking. The internet is unique in that it encourages collaboration without formal or structured relationships and develops the good of information without incentives. So we have a non-market production, previously rare or unheard of. I saw a lot of myself in it, thinking of the countless wikipedia articles I had helped edit, only a handful now contain links to my website (and those only when on-topic). Indeed my website and my news blog are information goods I created without incentive. Well, perhaps the small incentive of links to my CafePress store. Still, that is a lot of work for a mere $70 in t-shirt commissions.

The course reflects back on itself, and on this theme in two ways. The book used for the site was not assigned and stocked in the bookstore, but links to the pertinent sections are available from several sources online for free. By providing his book without royalty, the author has at once demonstrated his theory, established and information good (although this one of less questionable value) without a market incentive. Additionally, Prof. Nesson is planning to lobby to offer the course pass-fail, so our contributions will likewise be less incentive-based.

That being said, embarassment and pride are the most traditional forms of incentive used here; grades are determined in many courses by a single exam and class participation is elicited by random cold-calling in the infamous Socratic Method. Students who showed up to a single session of one class (and to zero of the other courses) are still strutting around campus, implying they at least accomplished passing grades without participation. The incentive of grades is therefore not sufficient to explain participation, (from the vast majority who do show up) especially when mediocre grades are no bar to sucess afterwards.

Yet this is a community, and although many classes contain 80+ students, there is still a sense of accountability, of identity that is not found in the internet. Therefore, the motive behind less obviously incentivised behavior there is not so easily explained.

You see, I am semi-unique in that I was an early individual user (as opposed to university and government user) of the internet. Back in those days, (1993) most home users were restricted to dial-up accounts; although my friend would beta test a cable modem for his dad’s cable company less than two years later, and universities and businesses had T1 lines. Downloading photos was a major committment on a 2400 baud, and indeed the world of BBSs is distinct in many ways from the internet today. At that connection rate, chat, MUDS and other text-based enterprises populated the internet, and dial-ups were often local affairs. (Although AOL did have nation-wide dial-ins, it sucked even worse then than it did today, it being early on in the days of hours of busy signals)

This aspect of BBSs made them truely unique. Although we did have users from other parts of the countries telnet in occasionally, most screenames you saw in the main chat were local. Regular “meets” in real life transformed the medium into a sort-of virtual version of an actual reality, a way to stay in touch with those who you had run into Nathans, or Fuddruckers, or Donuts.

Several people I met on my first BBS are still close friends today; at least 5 were at my wedding. Two started their own internet database programming company, and by a combination of genius, hard work, talent, and being early adopters were able to secure Sam Ash as a client. Building on this, they now have Wall Street offices and a dozen employees, and clients such as the US Navy and Douglass Elliman. It was quite a bit more fun to eat lunch at their offices, under giant murals of my friend’s face made from dozens of printed sheets, than in the stuffy, redwell-filled law office I worked in.