First Amendment in the Digital Age, Spring 2008
Time: Mon - 2-3:40
Prof. Noveck
email: bnoveck@nyls.edu
Office: 40 Worth St.
7th Floor, Room 706
The First Amendment in the Digital Age examines those forces that promote, regulate and hinder free speech. We start from the premise that in a global, interconnected, online world, the traditional First Amendment is only one of many forces, including technology, markets, institutions, standards and norms, that shape expression. In an age when the challenges to free speech come as much from corporations and code as from government, the First Amendment may, in fact, not even be the best mechanism. We inhabit an increasingly globalized society and can no longer rely only on American constitutional law but must also consider new ways to optimize expression that promote freedom while respecting local values. We will talk about traditional First Amendment jurisprudence throughout but will attempt to design complementary alternatives. The class will discuss such topics as: free expression and Internet filtering, indecency and obscenity online, virtual worlds and the right to protest, managing spam, open standards and open source, regulating speech in the professions, bloggers’ rights and the interplay between visual design and free expression. Some of the classes will be taught as a dialogue with two professors leading the discussion.
Requirements:
- Class attendance and participation are required.
- Students will prepare a 1-2 page weekly discussion paper about the readings each week and post prior to class.
- Students will write a final paper (some suggested topics are below) and
- Prepare a 5 minute video presentation about their paper for presentation to the class.
Grading:
- Weekly papers - 40%
- Final paper - 50%
- Presentation - 10%
Some First Amendment Websites
- ACLU Free Speech Resources: http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/index.html
- Boston College Library of Free Speech Decisions: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/decisions.html
- Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): http://www.eff.org/Censorship/
- Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) free speech and privacy resources: http://www.epic.org/free_speech/
- First Amendment Center: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org
- First Monday: http://www.firstmonday.org
- Free Expression Network: http://www.freeexpression.org
- Free Expression Policy Project: http://www.fepproject.org
- Free Speech Movement: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/FSM.html
- UCLA Top Internet-Related Cases: http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/tcs.html
Readings
Week 1 (Jan 14) - Theories and Values of Free Speech: What Forces Regulate Speech in the Digital Age (Noveck)
- Emerson, Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment, 72 YLJ 877, 877-918 (1963) (Hein On-Line).
- Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Chp. 4, Architectures of Control and Chp. 7, What Things Regulate, available at http://codebook.jot.com/Book
- Balkin, Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Free Expression for the Information Society
Week 2 (TUES, Jan 22; n.b. NYLS closed on Monday) - Constitutional and Legal Approaches: First Amendment Doctrine (Noveck)
- FCC v. Pacifica, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), at http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/pacifica.html
- Sable v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115 (1989), at http://www.oyez.org/cases/1980-1989/1988/1988_88_515/
- Renton v. Playtime Theatres, 475 US 31 (1986), available at http://supreme.justia.com/us/475/41/.
Week 3 (Jan 28) - Code or Regulating Speech with Software: The Filtering Debates (Noveck/Grimmelmann)
- James Grimmelmann, Regulation by Software, 114 YLJ 1719, 1719-1732 (2005), available at http://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/114-7/Grimmelmann.pdf
- David G. Post, Of Black Holes and Decentralized Law-Making in Cyberspace, available at http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/blackhole.html
- US v. ALA, 539 US 194 (2003), available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-361.ZO.html
- Browse:
- Balkin, Noveck et al., Filtering the Internet, A Best Practices Model, available at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/Filters0208.rtf.
- Free Expression Policy Project, Internet Filters Report (2006), available at http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/filteringreport.html
Week 4 (Feb 4) - Norms and Online Behavior (Noveck/Johnson)
- Ted Castronova, How Online Fun is Changing Reality
- 47 USC 230, available at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode47/usc_sec_47_00000230----000-.html
- Ken Myers, Wikimmunity, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=916529
- Eleanor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (excerpt)
- Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace, available at http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html
- Ann Branscomb Cyberspaces: Familiar Territory or Lawless Frontiers, available at http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol2/issue1/intro.html.
Week 5 (Feb 11) - Space, Place, Architecture and the Regulation of Speech: Death of the Public Forum (Boyd, Johnson)
- Hague v. CIO, 307 US 496 (1939), available at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=307&invol=496.
- Marsh v. Alabama, 326 US 501 (1946), available at http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0326_0501_ZS.html
- Lastowka and Hunter, The Laws of Virtual Worlds, A Virtual Worlds Primer, 92 Calif. Law Rev. 1, 14-29 (2004), available at http://tinyurl.com/tnoh7 (Lexis p/w required)
- Dan Hunter, Cyberspace as Place, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=306662.
- Dawn Nunziato, The Death of the Public Forum in Cyberspace, 20 Berk. Tech. L.J. 1115, available at http://btlj.boalt.org/data/articles/20-2_spring-2005_3-nunziato.pdf, PDF pgs 1-28
- Second Life Terms of Service, available at http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php
- Generic Names Supporting Organization Proposed Guidelines, available at http://gnso.icann.org/
no school Feb 18
Week 6 (Feb 25) - Professions or Sociology Regulating Speech (Stracher, Noveck)
- Robert Post, A First Amendment Analysis of Compelled Physician Speech, 2007 U. Ill. L. Rev 939 (2007)
- Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), available at http://www.oyez.org/cases/case/?case=1970-1979/1971/1971_70_85
- Randall Bezanson, How Free Can the Press Be? Chp. 5, Newsgathering and Press Conduct (reading packet);
- The Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:4:./temp/~c1107jv0JY:::
- David L. Hudson, Jr. Blogging and the First Amendment, at http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org//press/topic.aspx?topic=blogging&Search
- Reporters without Borders, Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissents, pgs. 29-end, available at http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542.
Week 7 (March 3) - Reputation and Group Speech (Johnson, Noveck
- Noveck/Johnson, Group reputation article;
- Benkler, Coase’s Penguin (excerpt);
- Speaker summaries from Reputation Economies conference, Yale Law School
Week 8 (March 10) - Standards (Grimmelmann, Noveck)
- Laura DeNardis and Eric Tam, Open Documents and Democracy: A Political Basis for Open Document Standards, available at SSRN.com;
- E-Government Act 2002, Title II, available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:H.R.2458.ENR:
NYLS Closed for Spring Break March
17-21
Week 9 (March 24) - Design and Graphical Speech: Defining Speech in an Era of Visual Technologies (Sherwin, Johnson)
- Sherwin, A Manifesto for Visual Legal Realism;
- Noveck, Johnson, Visualization and Community;
- Visualization examples:
- Sense.us
- Many Eyes Visualization Gallery
- Outfoxed
- History Flow
- ExploraTree
Week 10 (March 31) - Innovations and Ideas – Redesigning Institutions by Enabling More Speech: Peer Production, Crowdsourcing and Groups as a Check on Unaccountable Power (Noveck)
- Noveck, Book excerpt TBD
Week 11 (April 7) - Innovations and Ideas – Regulating Search or Controlling Abuse of Control over Access (Grimmelmann)
- James Grimmelmann, The Structure of Search Engine Law, at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=979568
- Hiding in Plain Sight, http://www.cdt.org/righttoknow/search/
Week 12 (April 14) - Innovations and Ideas – Access to Knowledge and Human Rights: Is there a Global First Amendment (Land)
- Land, "Protecting Rights Online: Access to Knowledge, Human Rights, and International Regulation of the Internet"
Week 13 (April 21) - Innovations and Ideas – Accountable Net: Accommodating Diverse Values (Johnson/Rubinstein)
- Johnson, Crawford, Palfrey, Accountable Net, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=529022
Week 14 (April 28) - Final Presentations
Final Papers Sample
Topics
Design a strategy to optimize the regulation of
speech and the empowerment of speakers in the context of one of the
following challenges. We will discuss these topics and you can pick from
amongst them or choose your own.
- Spam
- ISPs, China and local standards
- Hate speech, misogyny and defamation
- Speech by government workers
- Citizen participation in online government projects
- Academic standards, tenure and blogging
- High school students, blogging and speech rights
- Open source and government
- Free speech, eminent domain and IP rights
- Visual strategies for open access to law
- Regulating product placement and advertainment
- Privacy and reputation
- Speech rights of avatars
- The future of public protest
- Dispute resolution in virtual worlds
- Speech rights for groups
- Internet filtering, censorship and local values
