Internet Law 2001

St. John's University School of Law

Welcome to Internet Law

The rise of the Internet brings with it a host of new legal challenges. The globally connected information network at once opens opportunities for communication and commerce and threatens existing practices. As lawyers, we are often asked to mediate these encounters between old and new, to apply "old" rules to new activities and to adapt those rules to the new environment of cyberspace.

This course will survey some of the current debates raging over law on the Internet: jurisdiction and overlapping sovereignties; regulation of e-commerce; freedom of speech and its interfaces with anonymity, privacy, and defamation; protection of intellectual property rights; security and government enforcement; and more. We will consider both law and policy, the "is" and the "ought" of cyberspace. As the field develops, persuasive arguments can make yesterday's "ought" into tomorrow's "is."

Important Course Information

Attendance and participation: Internet Law meets once a week. You are expected to attend each class prepared to discuss the assigned reading. After the second week, students will be assigned to panels to prepare particular issues for discussion in greater depth. While I will call first on panel members, I will still expect students not on panel to participate.

Paper: You are each expected to write a 20-25 page research paper on a topic of your choice (relating to the subject matter of the course, of course). If you wish to use this course paper to satisfy the school's advanced writing requirement, your paper must be 30 pages in length. During the semester, I will give you the opportunity to submit abstracts and drafts and to discuss those with me and your classmates. I will add paper suggestions to the website as the semester progresses. Please discuss your proposed topic with me before spending too much time with it.

The Bot: An unseen member of the teaching staff is the course Bot, which will ask you questions by email prior to each class. Some of the Bot's questions will be simple polls, while others will ask for paragraph-long responses to a question raised by the readings. On longer questions, your responses will be circulated to a classmate for further discussion. The Bot enforces a rigid time schedule -- responses are due by midnight Wednesday before class -- but you may skip five questions without penalty.
Follow this link to reset your password if you've forgotten it.

Grading: The course grade will be based 75% on the final paper, 25% on the quality of your classroom and online participation.

Syllabus

The course syllabus is posted here. Later weeks will be filled in as they approach, to give us flexibility to add late-breaking news and developments.