Professor Wendy Seltzer, email wendy.seltzer@brooklaw.edu
Office: 250 Joralemon, Rm. 701 Class: Tuesday evening, 6:00-7:55 p.m. |
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The expansion of Internet use 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 dig for core principles that will survive the rush of "Internet time," as we survey some of the current debates raging over law online: filesharing; 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."
Attendance and participation: Internet Law meets once a week. You are expected to attend each class prepared to discuss the assigned reading. After the first 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. Engaged participation will help you to retain class material; excellent participation can also boost your grade.
Exam: The course will culminate in a final exam, which will ask you to draw on course readings to respond to hypothetical situations. You should expect both legal and policy questions. The exam will be similar in style to Paul Schwartz's Fall 1999 Internet Law Exam. The exam will be an 8-hour take-home, available at any time between 9 AM December 12 and 5 PM December 19. To be fair to all students, I will be able to answer questions about the exam only before Dec. 12.
You may pick up and return the exam via ExamSoft or in person. If you pick up and return in-person, "The exam will be available from room 833a on the 8th floor of 250 Joralemon Street. The room will be open from 9am-9pm. Before 9am and after 9pm the exam will be available from the security desk of 250 Joralemon Street."
I do not expect you to spend eight hours typing. The aim of the eight-hour exam is to give you time to organize your thinking at the beginning and proofread your paper for logic and coherence afterwards. I hope that you'll have time to reflect, write, and revise in that period. Note that I do not want you to do additional research during the exam (and specifically prohibit it).
The course syllabus is posted here. Each week's readings will be linked on a "current" page listed right below the week header, which will include excerpted cases, questions and additional information about the topic, and links to off-site materials. This page is the authoritative source of the week's assignment. Most weeks will also list optional material For further reading, not required but useful sources if you want to pursue a subject further. Any required reading from those pieces will be excerpted or specifically identified.
The slides or websites shown in class (or those that would have been
shown if the technology cooperated) will be added to the syllabus
after class.
Week 2 Slides: PPT or PDF; additional slides linked from syllabus.
Looking for past reading assignments? They're linked from the syllabus, just under each week's header.
A collection of all reading assignments and powerpoint slides from class is available as the zipped folder InternetLaw05.zip.