Send Law Students, Idealists and Grant Proposals. Was: Re: Lawyers, Guns, and Money

[Tim May]

On Thursday, August 23, 2001, at 04:43 PM, r.duke at freedom.net wrote:

> I would have thought that new interpretations of things like federal 
> and state jurisdictions would be needed. Given the arguments over the 
> recent decision on Yahoo from France, I'd say there are questions to be 
> answered. Is a company under your jurisdiction as soon as you can see 
> its servers? Are ISPs carriers, or providers? What about their 
> webservers, which store and provide, as opposed to simply carrying?

In the Yahoo case, how does U.S. law affect what France claims is true 
under their law?

Apropos of what Greg said, in which recent cases actually going to trial 
in the U.S. is "new law" involved? Not the Bell case, not the Parker 
case, not even the Adobe case.
>
> Tell me if I'm wildly off base - I don't mind, but it seems to me that 
> at the moment, these issues are not obvious and written in stone.

Oh, I agree there are interesting issues...it's one reason I joined the 
Cyberia list of lawyers and professors and wannabees back around 1994-5. 
And back then, many of these issues were new to a lot of us all, even to 
the law professors (Volokh, Froomkin, Post, Lessig, that sort).

But there just aren't a lot of these cases moving through the courts. 
The Napster case was the biggest recent such case, and yet it is hard to 
argue that there is any new law at issue.

("But, your honor, my client is not just setting up a flea market for 
trading stolen goods...he's using COMPUTERS to do it! That makes it 
different, you see...")

Eventually there may be some new law, as some cases eventually reach the 
Supreme Court or as legislatures pass various laws.

But is there "new law" for beginning lawyers to work on? Do the math.


Cf. the Amateur Action case of the mid-90s for some insights into how 
Kentucky, IIRC, decided its laws applied to a site based in California. 
A junior lawyer in this case would not have been doing "Internet law."

Technology will push the law more than lawyers will push the law.


--Tim May