Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Monday April 28, 2003
1:00-2:00 PM
Room 290
Stanford Law School
Open to All!
Background:

September 16, 2002
Imagine a law that had two parts—a labeling part and a bounty part. Part A says that any unsolicited commercial e-mail must include in its subject line the tag [ADV:]. Part B says that the first person to track down a spammer violating the labeling requirement will, upon providing proof to the Federal Trade Commission, be entitled to $10,000 to be paid by the spammer.”
–Larry Lessig CIO Insight Magazine

January 1, 2003
Here goes: So (a) if a law like the one I propose is passed on a national level, and (b) it does not substantially reduce the level of spam, then (c) I will resign my job. I get to decide whether (a) is true; Declan can decide whether (b) is true. If (a) and (b) are both true, then I’ll do (c) at the end of the following academic year

Rick Alber practiced law briefly in San Francisco before embarking on a Silicon Valley tech career. He will recount how he applied his business and law school training and legal knowledge in several software startup organizations, including Ansa, Borland and Slate. Rick will also discuss issues he believes will become important in the near future and describe some of the opportunities he sees for young attorneys, MBAs, and entrepreneurs interested in the tech world. Tuesday, April 22, 2003
4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Room 80 (Moot Courtroom)
Stanford Law School
Reception to Follow
Open to all!

About the Speaker:

New, extraordinary royalty rates threaten the diversity and the existence of Internet radio. Learn about the underlying copyright legislation, how it was implemented, and what CIS’s Cyberlaw Clinic and Collegiate Broadcasters are doing about it in the Courts, in Congress and in the Copyright Office.

Monday, April 7, 2003
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Room 80 (Moot Courtroom)
Free and Open to all!
Lunch Served

Monday, March 31, 2003
12:30-1:30 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Lunch will be provided
All Welcome

about the speaker

Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU project, launched in 1984
to develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for "GNU's Not
Unix"), and thereby give computer users the freedom that most of them
have lost. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it
and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small.
The GNU/Linux system, basically GNU with Linux added as the kernel, is
used on tens of millions of computers today. See www.gnu.org for more

The human population isn't doubling every 18 months, but the ability of computers to keep track of us is. Until recently, the biggest threat to privacy was Moore's law, a blind force carrying us to a dystopian future. Since 9/11, this force is guided and accelerated by deliberate policy. How do we get out of this mess?Monday, March 10, 2003
12:30-1:30 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Lunch will be provided
All Welcome

About the Speaker

Philip R. Zimmermann is the creator of Pretty Good Privacy. For that, he was the target of a three-year criminal investigation, because the government held that US export restrictions for cryptographic software were violated when PGP spread all around the world following its 1991 publication as freeware. Despite the lack of funding, the lack of any paid staff, the lack of a company to stand behind it, and despite government persecution, PGP nonetheless became the most widely used email encryption software in the world. After the government dropped its case in early 1996, Zimmermann founded PGP Inc. That company was acquired by Network Associates Inc (NAI) in December 1997, where he stayed on for three years as Senior Fellow. In August 2002 PGP was acquired from NAI by a new company called PGP Corporation, where Zimmermann now serves as special advisor and consultant. Zimmermann currently is consulting for a number of companies and industry organizations on matters cryptographic.

Dr. Mark Cooper will discuss threats to the dynamically innovative Internet posed by the anticompetitive practices of advanced telecommunications network owners. Cooper’s new book, CABLE MERGERS AND MONOPOLIES: MARKET POWER IN DIGITAL MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS, combines “new economy” concepts of communications platforms with traditional industrial organization concepts. He argues that two forms of market power ignored by antitrust practice in the latter part of the 20th century – vertical leverage and monopsony (buyer market power) – are critical challenges to open communications in the digital information age. Refusal to interconnect and withholding of network functionalities directly contribute to the disappointing market performance of the high-speed Internet. These should be seen as violations of antitrust and communications law and remedied by public policy.Monday, March 3, 2003

This talk will present a roadmap of emerging legal problems in the area of Digital Rights Management (DRM) that are less frequently discussed in legal and policy circles. The talk will cover issues such as

• the implications of DRM for competition in the DRM technology market itself and in downstream markets (using examples from antitrust and patent law as well as from various technology platforms)
• the relationship between DRM, fair use, and innovation (using rights locker architectures, dynamic DRM systems and DRM technology license agreements as examples)
• the alleged dichotomy between DRM and copyright levy systems which is currently a fiercely debated issue in Europe, and
• recent efforts by the private sector and by legislators to standardize and mandate DRM technology (TCPA, Palladium, "Hollings bill")

Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 8 of the Constitution reads: "Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." The Clause is typically known as the Copyright Clause, the Patent Clause, or the Intellectual Property Clause, but the power granted to Congress encompasses more than just authority regarding patents and copyrights. A more accurate descriptor is the Science and Useful Arts Clause.

Legal historian Ed Walterscheid will discuss the Clause from an historical perspective, seeking to delineate which language of the Clause constitutes a grant of power to Congress, what the scope of the grant is, and what limitations, if any, exist on this congressional power. He will suggest that the copyright power of Congress is not nearly as plenary as Congress and the Solicitor General of the United States seem to believe it is.

In the past dozen years, we have witnessed an accelerating set of changes in
the ways in which music and movies are made and distributed. Enormous
social and economic benefits could be reaped through full exploitation of
the new technologies. Sadly, the legal system has thus far frustrated
rather than facilitated realization of those benefits. This talk will
explain how and why things went awry and then explore three alternative ways
in which the legal system might be reformed.

Monday, January 13, 2003
3:30-5:00 pm
Moot Court Room
Stanford University Law School
Directions

Julian Dibbell will discuss real-world legal issues rooted in virtual-world
economies. In the last five years, virtual worlds like the massively
multiplayer role-playing games EverQuest and Ultima Online have become
sources of genuine wealth for their inhabitants. Scarce in-game items and
well-developed player accounts sell on eBay for hundreds of dollars, with
assets accruing to players at a rate that dwarfs the GNP per capita of major
economies like India's and China's. But who actually owns this wealth? The
companies that create the virtual worlds, or the players who generate the
virtual economies? At least one lawsuit has sought to resolve this question,