Course Background

With the emergence of a global communications network, we can access, store, and transmit vast amounts of digital information, at low cost and without regard for geographic boundaries. This digital revolution raises fundamental questions about how, if at all, existing legal rules should apply to new technologies. This course explores various legal and policy problems that arise in cyberspace, including issues of sovereignty and jurisdiction; regulation of online speech; issues of privacy, security, and commercial control; and ownership and protection ofintellectual property embodied in digital form.  The course does not, however, approach these issues from traditional doctrinal categories.  Rather, the course seeks to emphasize the broad conceptual debates that cut across the specific areas of doctrine touched by cyberspace. As we explore questions of jurisprudence and policy that are common to various areas of online legal regulation, we will aim not only to gain a broad-based and sophisticated training in internet-related legal issues, but also to explore the ways in which the study of cyberlaw issues forces us to question some of the premises that underlie our thinking about the law and the way the law operates.