Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Monday March 20, 2006
12:30-1:30 PM
Room 280A
Stanford Law School
Open to All
Lunch Served

Starting in June 2003, Julian Dibbell spent 9 months trying to make a living buying and selling virtual items (swords, castles, gold pieces) from the online fairytale world Ultima Online, a massively multiplayer role-playing game. His experience illuminates a strange new parallel world and the changing relationship between value and reality in the postpostmodern economy.About the Speaker: Julian Dibbell is the author of two books on virtual worlds, My Tiny Life (Henry Holt, 1999) and the forthcoming Play Money (Basic, 2006), and has written essays and articles on hackers, computer viruses, online communities, encryption technologies, music pirates, and other digital-age phenomena together.

Monday March 13, 2006
12:30-1:30 PM
Room 280A
Stanford Law School
Open to All
Lunch Served

The talk will outline Benkler's argument that social production is reshaping the production of information and culture, offering new challenges and opportunities to market actors in the networked environment, while creating opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. These results are by no means inevitable, however. A systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.

Joe Gratz is blogging CIS's Cultural Environmentalism at 10 conference this weekend.

As I predicted, Congress has caved to the White House. Instead of investigating the President's illegal warrentless wiretaps, they have instead imposed new oversight but will allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

Congress' concern about oversight missed the point-- do we want the President to have this power? And now that Congress has caved, what message does that send-- Act illegally and authorization will follow?

This is amazing. When I saw this headline I was stumped as to how there was video of Bush being briefed? There was a reporter in the room? This is a next-gen Nixon scandel: They video tape Bush's briefings the way Nixon audiotaped his office conversations?

Then I realized after watching the BBC piece that the technology used to perform the video briefing (while Bush was vacationing in Texas and Nat'l weather service people were getting worried in DC) also created a record of the briefing. It may have been a secure connection, but since nobody bothered to store the file securely, or encrypt it, a whistleblower (?) was able to leak it to the press.

In its response to the DOJ's motion to compel compliance with the subpoena requesting URLs and search queries, Google argued briefly that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act prevents it from turning over this information without a warrant. ECPA is a complicated statute, and the court's answer will significantly impact future cases. We filed a brief (.pdf) asking the court to allow additional briefing on this question if it plans to rule based on the ECPA issue. The hearing is March 13.

If you are a civil libertarian I strongly urge you to drop everything and read David Luban's essay "Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb" from the October 2005 Virginia Law Review. Harper's published an excerpt in the March 2006 issue, which is where I first found it.

This is an amazing piece. Luban eloquently dissects liberal reliance on the so-called ticking-time-bomb scenario, used to justify torture despite centuries of liberal disgust with dehumanization tactics.

NOTE NEW DATE

Monday February 27, 2006
12:30-1:30 PM
Room 280A
Stanford Law School
Open to All
Lunch Served

In recent years we've seen the emergence of new grassroots media forms: text blogging, podcasting, Webcasting, video blogging, and digital photography as social media. What happens when the cultures and values of these vibrant new media forms bump up the realities of copyright law and outdated business practices? One of the most striking examples of this disconnect occurs in the world of mash-ups, a new artform that combines elements of existing video and audio to create startling new works. How should website operators deal with such cutting-edge creations that may or may not fall under the

In a recent decision, a U.S. District Court set standards that would indicate what on-line activities would and would not constitute racketeering under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c). The United States District Court for the District of Maine held on a motion for summary judgment that a group of individuals who published allegedly defamatory criticism of plaintiff The Gentle Wind Project (“GWP”) on-line did not qualify as an “association-in-fact” under RICO. Having dismissed the RICO-related federal claims over which it had original jurisdiction, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the plaintiff’s state claims and dismissed them without prejudice.GWP is a non-profit organization “dedicated to education and research aimed at alleviated [sic] emotional and mental human suffering and trauma.” As part of GWP’s mission, its members manufacture objects which they describe as “healing instruments that are designed to restore human beings to a natural state of existence.” GWP then sells these objects to the public in return for a “donation.”

The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, in a case of apparent first impression, held that an email sent from the domain name of a company was not enough, standing alone, to cloak an agent in apparent authority that would allow him to bind that company to a contract. In the case, defendant Recovery Express, Inc. (Revovery Express) moved for summary judgment after plaintiff CSX Transportation, Inc. (CSX), a seller of out-of-service railcars and parts, brought an action alleging breach of contract, account stated, unjust enrichment, and quantum meruit. The claims arose from an arrangement CSX had entered into with Albert Arillotta (Arillotta), a partner at Interstate Demolition and Environmental Corp. (IDEC). Arillotta sent an email to CSX from the Recovery domain, recoveryexpress.com, in which he claimed to be from IDEC and Recovery Express and offered to buy rail cars. IDEC and Recovery Express shared offices and email services but were distinct companies. Recovery denies that Arillotta ever worked for them. Based on the email and subsequent telephone conversations, CSX agreed to sell the rail cars to Arillotta. After delivery of the goods and a bounced check from Arillotta in the amount of $115,757.36, Recovery refused to pay CSX, who subsequently brought suit against Recovery Express and IDEC.