This seminar will take a detailed and critical look at some of the unique challenges to existing antitrust doctrine and enforcement efforts raised by these industries.
This course examines current legal, political, and technical struggles for control/ownership of the global Internet and its content.
We study the process and law of proof in American jury trial. Within that frame, we explore the nature of truth, perception, memory, credibility, clarity, relevance, prejudice, hearsay, confrontation and privilege. Our approach is conceptual and rhetorical, with focus on the principles from which the rules of evidence arise rather than upon the rules themselves.
This seminar will ask the ultimately unanswerable questions about the nature of freedom and how we handle it.
This course examines current legal, political, social, and technical struggles for control of the global Internet—and the content and relationships it conveys.
What prompts people to do what they do? A rapidly growing literature in several disciplines -- psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and economics -- casts new light on this age-old question. We will read deeply in that literature and then consider its implications for the design of legal, political, and economic institutions.
This course will explore patent law in depth.
This course will examine the claim of Internet exceptionalism and the implications of this claim in the context of the law and society.
This course focuses on the legal and business aspects of technology start-ups, with an emphasis on matters relating to intellectual property.
Using a variety of cyberlaw-related case studies drawn from recent, actual controversies, along with targeted readings, court filings, real-life testimony, deposition videotapes and other actual demonstrative materials, the seminar covers the practical lawyering skills essential for the successful and effective representation of clients in a wide variety of disputes in the field of Internet law.
This course introduces students trained as lawyers outside of the United States to the U.S. legal system, helping to supplement and put into context what they learn in their other courses at HLS.
The principal features of U.S. copyright law include: what is (and is not) copyrightable subject matter, the originality and fixation requirements for copyright protection, ownership and transfer of rights issues, the scope of protection that copyright law affords to works of authorship, limiting principles, exceptions, and defenses to infringement, standards for judging direct and indirect infringement, and remedies available in copyright lawsuits. Both statutory and common law developments will be considered, as well as neighboring rights such as anti-circumvention rules. Current controversies about the contours of and theoretical underpinnings of copyright and the public domain will be discussed. Comparative copyright law and international treaties affecting copyright law will also be given some attention.
This seminar will consider whether the current U.S. copyright law should be reformed and how such a reform might be come about and what some of its features might be.
This year's Cyberone will begin with empathic argument and programming from scratch, then segue immediately to projects.
Today virtual worlds like Second Life are an exciting new frontier. Second Life has a flourishing economy and millions of users doing everything from teaching and taking Harvard courses to shopping at virtual American Apparel and Nike to running a night club. In the future, virtual environments promise to become a substantial part of our online existence. This course is your chance to get on the inside track.
This seminar will consider how some of the most important and intriguing collisions of interests in the online space have played out or are playing out now in lawsuits in the courts or in proposals before legislatures, both in the US and abroad.
By talking to people in communities, observing how spaces are currently used, and using new technologies to aid in the process of imagining how spaces could be used, students will arrive at proposals to redesign their neighborhoods.
The course will offer an introduction to the basic institutional systems that regulate information production and exchange through the definition and allocation of exclusive rights. We will emphasize copyrights and patents, but also explore other regulatory frameworks, like trademarks and trade secrets.
In this seminar we will do mock trials in Second Life.
This course will consider some of the most intriguing of the political and legal issues to which the advent of the Internet gives rise. The course will seek to frame these questions in the context of political theory. The course has no prerequisites. The only requirement is a willingness to experiment with new technologies.
This course examines current legal, political, and technical struggles for control/ownership of the global Internet and its content. Course themes include the interaction between emerging Internet self-governance regimes and rule by traditional sovereigns; the expression of conflicting interests of commercial and individual Internet speakers/broadcasters; new modes of control over widely distributed intellectual property; and the potential for market giants and other architects of Internet technologies to constrain behavior online in ways governments find difficult to assimilate. Classroom discussion of these topics may be augmented by online discussion software through which students will have one-on-one exchanges about issues in the course.
Evidence--the law, logic, philosophy and practice of argument and proof as instruments of dispute resolution. What are the functions and limitations of trial? How does our trial system generate (and sometimes fail to generate) morally and politically acceptable conclusions to factual disputes? How and why do judges shape the evidence juries consider? How do media and digital technologies affect the process of proof? What ethical issues do lawyers face in producing and presenting evidence? You will learn 'the rules' but as an end point, not the starting point for understanding the trial process.
This year's Cyberone will begin with empathic argument and programming from scratch, then segue immediately to projects. Projects will include furthering work already ongoing, as well as new inspirations expressing our growing ability to use the tools of cyberspace to connect ourselves in creativity and peace. Pending approval by appropriate committees, independent credit may be arranged.
Urs and I are interested in identifying and discussing both analytical and constructive principles that might be derived fro+m various bodies of knowledge, including knowledge accumulated in the 10+ schools of thoughts starting with 'law & ...' --ranging from law & economics, law & literature, law & technology, ... to law & emotion.
This seminar will consider some of the most intriguing of the issues to which the advent of the internet has given and continues to give rise. It will focus on a cluster of topics about which any computer user likely knows a good deal already: spam, spyware, peer-to-peer file sharing, personal privacy, and e-commerce.
Using a variety of cyberlaw-related case studies drawn from recent, actual controversies, along with targeted readings, court filings, real-life testimony, deposition videotapes and other actual demonstrative materials, the seminar covers the practical lawyering skills essential for the successful and effective representation of clients in a wide variety of disputes in the field of Internet law. The seminar's subject matter will cover issues including intellectual property, speech, privacy, competition and other core Internet law themes.
Using a variety of Internet-related case studies drawn from recent, actual controversies, along with targeted readings, court filings, real-life testimony, deposition videotapes and other actual demonstrative materials, the seminar covers the practical lawyering skills essential for the successful and effective representation of clients in a wide variety of disputes in the field of Internet law.
This seminar will focus on recent developments in cyberlaw with impact on commercial and cross-border transactions. The course is not exclusively an international or comparative law class, but rather looks at problems of Internet law within a global framework.
Over the past 15 years, digital information and communication networks have spread rapidly across the globe, bringing with them hopes for, and claims of, fundamental change in the dynamics of power and influence across a range of political, economic, social, and semiotic dimensions. With a global scope, this course will take a close look at the possibilities, achievements, and failures of digital technology to decentralize and democratize.
The Internet is maturing. With it, the laws and the norms that surround the use of Internet technologies have less of an edgy feel than they did just a few years ago. Yet much of the promise of the technology and the uncertainty of the legal environment remain. This continued promise and this uncertainty keep things interesting. This week-long "second period" PIL course will draw you into five core areas of Internet law, each of which continues to evolve. The globalization of both the Internet and the law lie at the core of what's interesting about these five themes and enable them to hang together.
Mowser