The Information Society

Professor Jack M. Balkin

Yale 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

1. Introduction: Some Key Concepts (1/24/2005 and 1/25/2005)

A. Regulation of the Internet

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

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

B. Democratic Culture

• Balkin, Digital Speech and Democratic Culture

Week Two-- Media Regulation (1/31/2005 and 2/1/2005)

2. Audiences and Markets

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

3. Democracy, Journalism and International Trade

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

Week Three-- Media Concentration (2/7/2005 and 2/8/2005)

4. Media Concentration

• FCC Report and Order on Media Concentration, July 2d and July 14th, 2003 (Read report and order, and individual statements of the commissioners, Powell, Abernathy, Copps, Martin and Adelstein)
  

• Baker, Media Concentration: Giving Up On Democracy
  
• Curtis, Democratic Ideals and Media Realities: A Puzzling Free Press Paradox

Week Four -- Content Control over the Internet (2/14/2005 and 2/15/2005)

A. Defamation and Collateral Censorship

• 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]

B. 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
  
• Balkin et al., Filtering the Internet, a Best Practices Model
  
• COPA Commission Final Report
  
• United States v. ALA

Weeks Five and Six (2/21/2005 and 2/22/2005; 2/28/2005 and 3/1/2005)

7. Copyright and Free Culture

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

• Lawrence Lessig, Copyrighting the President

Cases

• 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.

8. Integrating Copyright and Freedom of Speech

Commentary

• Netanel, Locating Copyright Within The First Amendment Skein
  

• Landes and Posner, The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Law
  
• Rubenfeld, The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright's Constitutionality
  
• Tushnet, Copy this Essay
  
• BeVeir, Copyright, Trespass, and the First Amendment
  
• Baker, First Amendment Limits On Copyright
  
• McGowan, Why The First Amendment Cannot Dictate Copyright Policy

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
  
• Hal Varian, Copying and Copyright
  
• Liebowitz and Margolis, Seventeen Famous Economists Weigh in on Copyright

 9. Copyright and the Music Industry

• A&M v. Napster
  

• In Re Aimster
  
• MGM v. Grokster
  
• 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
  
• 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

Week Seven-- Privacy (3/8/2005 and 3/9/2005)

13. Privacy and the First Amendment

• Vokokh, Freedom of Speech and Information Privacy
  

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

Week Eight-- Spring Break

Week Nine -- Digital Control of Information (3/22/2005 and 3/23/2005)

10. Digital Rights Management

• Lessig, The Future of Ideas (selections)
  

• Elkin-Koren, It's All About Control
  
• Benkler, From Consumers to Users: Shfiting the Deeper Structures of Regulation Towards Sustainable Commons and User Access
  
• Universal Studios v. Corley
  
• Chamberlain Group v. Skylink Technologies

11. The Broadcast Flag

• CDT Primer on the Broadcast Flag
  

• EFF Primer on the Broadcast Flag
  
• FCC Decision on the Broadcast Flag
  
• Susan Crawford, the Biology of the Broadcast Flag
  
• Public Knowledge on the Broadcast Flag

Weeks Ten and Eleven (3/28/2005 and 3/29/2005; 4/4/2005 and 4/5/2005)

14. The Political Economy of Information Production

• Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons, Ch. 1-5, 7 (these files are available on Blackboard)

Optional Readings

• Weber, The Political Economy of Open Source
  

• 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

Weeks Twelve and Thirteen and Fourteen (4/11/2005 and 4/12/2005; 4/18/2005 and 4/19/2005; 4/25/2005 and 4/26/2005)

15. Journalism, Democracy and Politics

A. Participatory Journalism

• Dan Gilmore We the Media

B. Internet Speech and Democracy

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

• Responses to Sunstein
  
• Balkin, What I Learned About Blogging in a Year
  
• Balkin, The Internet and Democratic Organization
  
• Clay Shirky, Powerlaws and the Web
  
• Clay Shirky, The FCC, Power Laws and Inequality
  
• Drezner and Farrell The Power and Politics of Blogs
  
• Drezner and Farrell, Web of Influence
  
• Glance and Adamic, The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 Election: Divided They Blog
  
• Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons, Ch. 6, 8 (these files are available on Blackboard)

C. Politics and Group Formation

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

• Beth Simone Noveck, A Democracy of Groups
  
• Clay Shirky, A Group is its Own Worst Enemy
  
• Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons, Ch. 9-11 (these files are available on Blackboard)

16. Cybercrime

• Nimrod Kozlovski, Online Policing

Week Fifteen (5/2/2005 and 5/3/2005)

17. Virtual Worlds

A. Game Owners and Game Players

• Lastowka and Hunter, A Virtual Worlds Primer
  

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

B. Property in Virtual Worlds

• Lastowka and Hunter, Virtual Crime
  

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