I am a Professor of Law at Temple University Law School in
Philadelphia, PA; I'm also a Senior Fellow at the Tech Center at George Mason University Law
School in Arlington, VA, and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, the Co-Director of ICANNWatch.org , Disputes.org , and the Cyberspace Law Institute , and a member of the
band "Bad Dog ." I'm also an occasional
contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog
, and I write a monthly column (with Brad Brown) called "On The
Horizon" for Inforrmation Week
magazine.
If you're interested in more details, here's
a brief bio, and my
complete CV. , and some write-ups about my work from Wired,
the NY Times Cybertimes , Inter@ctive
Week , and The Temple Times.
For Students: [A
copy of Acrobat reader, required for PDF files, is available here ].
Some Recent Writing
A Summary of Copyright Law. I prepared this PowerPoint presentation for a
talk on copyright issues that I gave recently to the Health Sciences faculty at
Temple.
"Copyright, Scientific Research, and the Public
Access to Science Act ." [draft] This is part of
the work I've been doing with some of the folks at the Public Library of Science and is intended as a
response to some of the arguments put forward by opponents of the
recently-introduced "Public Access to Science Act."
Thomas Jefferson and Cyberspace.
I
have begun working on a book, tentatively entitled Mr. Jefferson's
Cyberspace , setting out a "Jeffersonian perspective" on events
in the online world. Here is a draft of the Prologue and the
first two substantive chapters ("Notes on the State of Cyberspace").
Some other pieces that will eventually make their way into
the book are:
[If you want to read some
interesting stuff about the nature of intellectual property, you could do worse
than reading Thomas Jefferson's letter to Isaac
McPherson , dated August 13, 1813.]
Some of My Other (Sort-of) Recent Writings
· Against 'Against Cyberanarchy ' -- a reply to Jack
Goldsmith (17 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1363 (2002))
· His Napster's Voice (20 Temple Env. & Tech. L.J. 35 (2002), reprinted in Copy
Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age (W.
Crews and A. Thierer, eds (Cato Institute, 2002)) and Mots Pluriels
, special edition No 18 (August 2001) [ MS Word
version here ]
· The Free Use of our Faculties": Jefferson,
Cyberspace, and the Languages of Social Life, 49 Drake L. Rev. 407 (2001).
Some Law Review Articles on Cyberspace
Governance
- What Larry Doesn't Get: A Libertarian Response to
Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (52 Stanford Law
Review 1439 (2000)). A review (sort of) of Larry Lessig's book Code and
Other Laws of Cyberspace.
- How Long is the Coastline of the Law: Thoughts
on the Fractal Nature of Legal Systems (co-authored with Michael B.
Eisen) (29 Journal of Legal Studies 545 (2000)
- Anarchy, State, and the Internet: An Essay on
Law_Making in Cyberspace (J. Online Law, 1995) An early attempt
to grapple with some of the new features of cyberspace "law"
and, in particular, the relationship between the software that defines
this new place and traditional rules and rule-making institutions).
- Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace
(co-authored with David R. Johnson) (48 Stanford L. Rev. 1367
(1996)) (developing in a (hopefully) more coherent way the argument
that irrelevance of physical location on the net strengthens the argument
for decentralized 'self-governing' institutions in cyberspace).
- And How Shall the Net Be
Governed? A Meditation on the Relative Virtues of Decentralized,
Emergent Law ,” (co-authored with David Johnson) (in
Coordinating the Internet, Brian Kahin and James Keller (eds.), MIT Press,
1997)
- The 'Unsettled Paradox': The Internet, the State, and the
Consent of the Governed (5 Indiana J. Global Legal Studies 521, 1998)
(describing some of the ways that the a-geographical character of
cyberspace might affect our thinking about the relative advantages of
State and non-State institutions in regulating activity there)
- Governing Cyberspace (43 Wayne Law Review 155 1997) (describing the
contrast between centralized and de-centralized law-making institutions as
a battle between "Hamiltonian" centralizers and
"Jeffersonian" de-centralizers for control over the relevant
law-making institutions).
- Of Horses, Black Holes, and Decentralized Law-Making
in Cyberspace (Yale Private Censorship/Perfect Choice
Conference, March 1999) (focusing on the dramatically different ways that
one might attempt to control the problem of "spam" on the
Internet).
- The New Civic Virtue of the Net: A Complex
Systems Model for the Governance of Cyberspace (co-authored
with David Johnson) (in The Emerging Internet, 1998 Annual Review of the
Institute for Information Studies, (C. Firestone, ed.)
- Chaos Prevailing on Every Continent": Towards
a New Theory of Decentralized Decision-making in Complex Systems (73
Chicago-Kent Law Review 1055 (1998)
- Pooling Intellectual Capital: Some thoughts on
Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Limited Liability in Cyberspace .
1996 U. Chi. L. Forum 139. A longish piece, arguing that
pseudonymity is a kind of "limited liability" (in cyberspace, as
elsewhere), and that attempts to regulate "anonymity" in
cyberspace must take into account the sometimes profound benefits that
pseudonymous communications can afford.
-
Miscellany . I'm also in a band --
"Bad Dog." We do mostly original acoustic rock and roll. Craig
Jenkins (of the Washington DC Citypaper) wrote that we have an "earnest,
seemingly artless American folk sound . . twisting the genre in interesting,
albeit gentle ways {and} a gift for timeless, ungimmicky
songwriting." Click
here to hear some of the songs we have recorded (.mp3 format). Email me if you'd like a copy of the whole
CD.
Older Stuff
- Juries and the Common Law of Cyberspace (Sept.
2000 "Plugging In") We're building legal institutions, and
making law, in cyberspace -- what happened to the institution of the jury?
- Testimony before the Commission on
Child Online Protection (June 8, 2000), discussing ways that the Domain Name System
might be used for the purpose of "zoning" adult-oriented material
on the Internet.
- Napster, Jefferson's Moose, and the Law of
Cyberspace (June, 2000 "Plugging In") What does Jefferson have to say about the law of cyberspace, anyway?
- Jefferson's Moose (a talk given at Stanford Law School, February 2000)
- Governing Cyberspace, or Where is
James Madison When We Need Him? (ICANN Watch, May 1999)
- Jefferson's Moose (a talk given at Stanford Law School, February 2000)
- Governing Cyberspace, or Where is
James Madison When We Need Him? (ICANN Watch, May 1999)
- The State of Nature and the First Internet War:
Scientology, its Critics, Anarchy, and Law in Cyberspace (Reason,
April 1996)
- Sex, Lies, and the Internet:
Some New, and Some Not-So-New, Questions about Free Speech in Cyberspace
(The Daniel W. Kops Freedom of the Press Lecture, Cornell University,
February 1996)
- The Cyberspace Revolution
(keynote address, Cornell Conference on Policy on Law in 1997).
- Jefferson Ascendant More on Hamilton vs Jefferson in
cyberspace
- How Shall the Net be Governed?
(American Lawyer, October 1996)
- Betting on Cyberspace (American
Lawyer, June 1997) and The State of the
States (September 1998) (dealing with the question of the
regulation of Internet gambling)
- Engineering a "Virtual Magistrate"
(1996)
- The Domain Name System and Internet Governance