The Information Society

Professor Jack M. Balkin

N.Y.U. Law School

Syllabus

Note: All of the readings for the course are available on the Internet except for C. Edwin Baker, Media, Markets, and Democracy (2002), a copy of which you should purchase for the course.

After the assigned readings for each week I will sometimes also list a set of additional readings on related subjects if you have time.

Week One-- Introduction

1. Some Key Concepts (9/2/2005)

• Lawrence Lessig, The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach
  

• James Grimmelman, Regulation by Software

Week Two-- Virtual Worlds (9/6/2005 and 9/9/2005)

2. Game Owners and Game Players

• Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter, A Virtual Worlds Primer
  

• Julian Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace
  
• Richard Bartle, Virtual Worldliness
  
• Raph Koster, Declaring the Rights of Players
  
• Edward Castronova, The Right to Play
  
• Jack M. Balkin, Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds

3. Property in Virtual Worlds

• Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter, Virtual Crime
  

• Cory Ondrejka, Escaping the Gilded Cage
  
• Julian Dibbell, Owed!
  
• Yochai Benkler, There is No Spoon

Week Three: Democratic Culture (9/13/2005 and 9/16/2005)

4. Democratic Culture

• Jack M. Balkin, Digital Speech and Democratic Culture
  

• Yochai Benkler, Property, Commons, and the First Amendment: Towards a Core Common Infrastructure (Brennan Center White Paper, March 2001)

Week Four-- Media Regulation and Information Policy (9/20/2005 and 9/23/2005)

5. Audiences and Markets

• C. Edwin Baker, Media, Markets, and Democracy, pp. 1-121, 285-307

6. Democracy, Journalism and International Trade

• C. Edwin Baker, Media, Markets and Democracy, pp. 125-284

Week Five-- Media Concentration (9/27/2005 and 9/30/2005)

6. Media Concentration

• C. Edwin Baker, Media Concentration: Giving Up On Democracy
  

• FCC Media Ownership Documents (Read the news release summarizing the June 2nd and June 14th, 2003 FCC report and order, and the dissenting opinion of Commissioner Michael Copps. If you have time you can also read the individual statements of the other commissioners, Powell, Abernathy, Martin, and Adelstein., and if you have still more time you can read the entire Report and Order). Several aspects of the FCC rules were overturned and sent back to the FCC for reconsideration in Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC, 373 F.3d 372 (3rd Cir.2004).

Weeks Six and Seven -- Content Control over the Internet (10/11/2005 and 10/14/2005)

[N.B. There will be no class on Tuesday October 4th and Friday October 7th.]

7. Defamation and Collateral Censorship

• Jack M. Balkin, Free Speech and Hostile Environments
  

• Internet Service Provider Liability Exception 47 USC §230
  
• Summary of Digital Millennium Copyright Act Liability Provisions
  
• Zeran v. America Online (4th Cir. 1997) [Alternate version]
  
• Blumenthal v. Drudge, 992 F.Supp. 44 (D.D.C. 1998) [Alternate version]

8. Filtering and Rating Systems

• Reno v. ACLU (Reno I), 521 U.S. 844 (1997) (The CDA Case) [Additional version]
  

• ACLU v. Ashcroft (COPA case)(3d Circuit)
  
• Ashcroft v. ACLU (COPA case)(S. Ct.)
  
• CDT v. Pappert
  
• ACLU, Fahrenheit 451.2, Is Cyberspace Burning
  
• Jack M. Balkin et al., Filtering the Internet, a Best Practices Model
  
• COPA Commission Final Report
  
• United States v. ALA

Week Seven (10/18/2005)-- Copyright and Free Culture

9. Copyright and Free Culture

• Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture [here], [here], and [here]
  

• Lawrence Lessig, Copyrighting the President

Weeks Eight and Nine (10/21/2005; 10/25/2005 and 10/28/2005)-- Integrating Copyright and Freedom of Speech

10. Doctrinal Problems

• Eldred v. Ashcroft
  

• Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co.
  
• Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, Inc.
  
• Worldwide Church of God v. Philadelphia Church of God, Inc.
  
• Neil Netanel, Locating Copyright Within The First Amendment Skein

11. Theories of Free Speech and Copyright

• C. Edwin Baker, First Amendment Limits On Copyright
  

• David McGowan, Why The First Amendment Cannot Dictate Copyright Policy
  
• Jed Rubenfeld, The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright's Constitutionality
  
• Rebecca Tushnet, Copy this Essay

Additional Readings on Copyright and Freedom of Speech

• Benkler, Free As The Air To Common Use: First Amendment Constraints On Enclosure of The Public Domain
  

• Tushnet, Copyright As A Model For Free Speech Law [From B.C. L. Rev. Website]
  
• Constitutional Law Professor's Brief in Eldred v. Reno
  
• Landes and Posner, The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Law
  
• Hal Varian, Copying and Copyright
  
• Liebowitz and Margolis, Seventeen Famous Economists Weigh in on Copyright

 12. Copyright and the Music Industry

• MGM v. Grokster (Supreme Court opinion)
  

• Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios
  
• Terry Fisher, Promises To Keep (Chapter 6)
  
• Neil Weinstock Netanel, Impose a Noncommercial Use Levy to Allow Free Peer-to-Peer File
  
• Clay Shirky, File Sharing Goes Social
  
• Clay Shirky, Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content

Additional Readings

• Wu, Copyright's Communications Policy
  

• The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis
  
• Liebowitz, Will MP3 downloads Annihilate the Record Industry? The Evidence so Far
  
• A&M v. Napster
  
• In Re Aimster

Week Nine-- Privacy (11/1/2005)

13. Privacy and the First Amendment

• Vokokh, Freedom of Speech and Information Privacy
  

• Paul M. Schwartz, Free Speech versus Information Privacy
  
• C. Edwin Baker, Autonomy and Informational Privacy
  
• Neil M. Richards, Reconciling Data Privacy and the First Amendment
  
• Bartnicki v. Vopper

Week Ten -- Digital Control of Information (11/4/2005)

14. Digital Rights Management and Open Access

A. Basic Considerations

• Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas (selections)
  

• Niva Elkin-Koren, It's All About Control
  
• Yochai Benkler, From Consumers to Users: Shfiting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Towards Sustainable Commons and User Access

B. The DMCA

• Universal Studios v. Corley
  

• Chamberlain Group v. Skylink Technologies

C. Open Access

• National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X
  

• FCC Report and Order (September 23, 2005) (order eliminating mandated sharing requirements for DSL companies)

D. The Broadcast Flag

• CDT Primer on the Broadcast Flag
  

• EFF Primer on the Broadcast Flag
  
• Public Knowledge on the Broadcast Flag
  
• ALA v. FCC

Weeks Eleven and Twelve-- The Political Economy of Information Production (11/8/2005 and 11/11/2005; 11/15/2005)

[N.B. There will be no class on Friday, November 18th.]

15. The Political Economy of Information Production

• Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons, Ch. 2-5 (available on Blackboard)

• Steven Weber, The Political Economy of Open Source

Optional Readings

• Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral And The Bazaar
  

• The Open Source Definition
  
• GNU General Public License
  
• BSD Open Source License
  
• Hahn, ed., Government Policy Toward Open Source Sotware
  
• Apunam Chander and Madhavi Sunder, The Romance of the Public Domain
  
• Benkler, Freedom in the Commons: Toward a Political Economy of Information
  
• Benkler, Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm
  
• Benkler, Sharing Nicely: On shareable goods and the emergence of sharing as a modality of economic production

16. Access to Knowledge

• Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons, Ch. 9 (available on Blackboard)

Weeks Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen-- Journalism, Democracy and Politics (11/22/2005; 11/29/2005 and 12/2/2005; 12/6/2005 and 12/9/2005)

17. Participatory Journalism

• Dan Gilmore We the Media

18. The Blogosphere and Democracy

• Cass Sunstein, "The Daily We," from Republic.com
  

• Responses to Sunstein
  
• Jack M. Balkin, What I Learned About Blogging in a Year
  
• Jack M. Balkin, The Internet and Democratic Organization
  
• Clay Shirky, Powerlaws and the Web
  
• Clay Shirky, The FCC, Power Laws and Inequality
  
• Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell The Power and Politics of Blogs
  
• Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell, Web of Influence
  
• Lada Adamic and Natalie Glance, The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 Election: Divided They Blog

19. Information Aggregation and Problems of Deliberation

• Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons, Ch. 7 and 8 (available on Blackboard)
  

• Cass Sunstein, Masses and Mobs (available on Blackboard)
  
• Clay Shirky, A Group is its Own Worst Enemy
  
• Beth Simone Noveck, A Democracy of Groups

Optional Readings

• A. Michael Froomkin, Habermas@discourse.net: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace