In The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Yochai Benkler discusses his vision of the role of technology in social change. He rejects an overly deterministic vision of technology (which he connects with Lewis Mumford and Marshall McLuhan), but also rejects a view of technology as immaterial to a society's direction:
A view of technologies as "tools that happen, more or less, to be there, and are employed in any given society in a pattern that depends only on what that society and culture makes of them is too constrained. A society that has no wheel and no writing has certain limits on what it can do." (17)
Original Article
In "Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society," Jack Balkin (of the blog Balkinization) writes about what he sees as the appropriation of free speech ideals by media corporations in an effort to maximize their capital investments:
Thus, in the digital age, media corporations have interpreted the free speech principle broadly to combat regulation of digital networks and narrowly in order to protect and expand their intellectual property rights. ... Invoking a property-based theory of free expression, they have rejected arguments that public regulation is necessary to keep conduits open and freely available to a wide variety of speakers. (22)
Original Article
In 1968, William B. Stoebeck published "On the Reception of English Common Law in the American Colonies," a discussion of how and when England's common law came into use in the American colonies. In the article, he first discusses three "standard theories":
- that English common law was in force in the colonies from the time of the first English settlement;
- that, quoting Paul S. Reinsch, the colonies "underwent 'a period of rude, untechnical popular law, followed, as lawyers became numerous and the study of law prominent, by the gradual reception of most of the rules of English common law'";
- or instead, citing Julius Goebel, that the colonists instead adopted the "customary law of the local courts the colonists had known in England" and not the common law "of the king's courts at Westminster."
Before discussing the historical record, Stoebeck first bookends the problem by noting that, first, "there was no common law in America on 12 May 1607" and, second, there are case reports and so on available post-Revolution that provide solid insight on where "common-law reception ... must have stood on Independence Day" (395-96).
Original Article
When it comes to my personal Internet presence, I am an inveterate tinkerer. I like to experiment and I like to run things my way. (This is in contrast to my professional recommendations as a consultant, where I like conservative and tested.)
As such, despite having no problems with my previous host (Laughing Squid, which I still recommend), I decided to switch to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) so that I could have more flexibility and control over my server environment. I selected VM Storm based on a review of  "low-end" VPS providers (since this is my personal tinkering platform I don't need to pay extra for a high-end name). I then added Nginx as my Web server, Varnish as a front-end cache, WordPress for blogging, and W3TC as a WordPress performance enhancer.
Original Article
In Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States, Thomas Streeter writes:
Copyright law is often approached in terms of debates over competing interpretations of the law: should copyright be used to protect the author's freedom, or to encourage the public distribution of culture and information, or to turn intellectual products into marketplace commodities, or to serve the interests of corporate publishers and distributors?
He then explains that, at least in the Western--and perhaps especially in the American--tradition, "copyright is the enactment of the dream that the disparate goals and values of individual creative freedom, commerce, and informational dissemination can be reconciled in law."
Original Article
In "Reconciling Data Privacy and the First Amendment," argues that privacy regulation is not speech regulation at all, and, additionally, that in commercial contexts at least, "speech restrictions ... have never triggered heightened First Amendment scrutiny." In other words, either the data being protected isn't "speech" in the legal sense, or "because they are legitimate speech regulations under existing doctrine." Read more at in propria persona.
Robert Horwitz's "The Irony of Regulatory Reform: The Deregulation of American Telecommunications," published in 1989, explores in depth the issue of telecommunications regulation at a time when telecommunications was once again in transition. Read more at in propria persona.
This article is about Eugene Volokh's points about free speech and privacy in relation to Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis's 1890 law review article, "The Right to Privacy." This highly influential piece advocated for "the fundamental right to be let alone." But does is it impossible to reconcile such a right with an equally compelling right to free speech? Read more at in propria persona.
Balancing strong First Amendment ("free speech") speech protections with the desire to protect the delicate sensibilities of America's youth is always a complex task. Two seminal Supreme Court cases--Cohen v. California and FCC v. Pacifica Foundation--illustrate the struggle the Court has had to find the right path. Read more at in propria persona.
The Roman civil law tradition (which prevails in Europe) has had a larger impact on American jurisprudence than is generally acknowledged. Indeed, although the United States considers itself a common-law country, we in fact use a system that combines common (judge-made, customary, adversarial, precedent-focused) with civil (usually statute-based and inquisitorial) law, but which in England focused on "equity" or fairness and justice. Read more at in propria persona.
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