Intellectual Property Law

Summary: Human Autonomy, Technology and Law

Posted on March 10, 2009
I?d like to thank our bloggers for their many thought-provoking posts: Frank Pasquale, Jennifer Chandler, Kieran Tranter, Gaia Bernstein, Lyria Bennett-Moses, Lisa Austin, and Samuel Trosow (also thanks to Jennifer for suggesting the blog topic). Many thanks as well to Jim Chen for administrating the techtheory blog, and for helping out with technical glitches...

Bringing in some economic analysis (2)

Posted on March 05, 2009

Bringing in some economic analysis

Posted on March 03, 2009

Introducing Samuel Trosow

Posted on March 02, 2009

To access blog feed reader register for free. (You will also learn about new ways to read and access the freshest law blogs.)

Control yourself, or at least your ?core? self

Posted on February 28, 2009

Are We All Control Freaks Now?

Posted on February 26, 2009
Earlier this month, Facebook quietly changed its terms of service and waded into what I will call the ?control wars? over personal information. Facebook?s changes would enhance its control over users posted information, including material that had been deleted...

Introducing Lisa Austin

Posted on February 25, 2009
Thanks to Lyria and all of the previous bloggers for their many thought-provoking posts. We're now in the home stretch with two bloggers left to go.Our next blogger, Lisa Austin from the University of Toronto, conducts research in areas that include privacy law and the ethical and social justice issues raised by emerging technologies...

Technology bias

Posted on February 23, 2009
In her comment on my previous post, Gaia Bernstein asks an important question:The question is should the autonomy of scholars be constrained and their efforts be directed to areas of law where their insights would be most effective?Actually, I agree with Gaia, that the answer is "no...

Turning the lenses inward

Posted on February 22, 2009
With my posts, I am going to do a different blend of the concepts autonomy, law, technology and explore the reasons why legal scholars use their autonomy to focus on issues surrounding new technologies. By ?issues surrounding new technologies? I don?t mean why are we here discussing law and technology theory (there are, after all, relatively few of us, and many justifications we could offer for our choice of scholarship, some of which were collected in the MJLST symposium)...

Introducing Lyria Bennett Moses

Posted on February 21, 2009
Our next blogger, Lyria Bennett Moses, hails from the University of New South Wales.An earlier paper by Lyria discussed how the law deals with 'recurring dilemmas' when confronted with new technologies as well as the ways that technology change differs from other social changes that challenge traditional legal interests...

Two Technological Tales: Email and Minitel

Posted on February 20, 2009
We tend to think that a technology which failed to diffuse must have been a bad idea. But, there are technologies, which undergo long social adoption processes and eventually achieve mainstream adoption. These long social adoption processes, if at all acknowledged, are usually attributed off-handedly to technical issues...

The User as a Resister of New Technologies (or Hail the Couch Potato)

Posted on February 18, 2009
Legal scholars have recently discovered the user of new technologies. But, we tend to concentrate on a specific type of user ? the user as an innovator. We look at the user who designs, who changes a technology to reflect his needs. For example, much has been written about users innovating with open source software...

Introducing Gaia Bernstein

Posted on February 17, 2009
Our next blogger is Gaia Bernstein from Seton Hall Law School.Gaia, along with Frank Pasquale, organized and hosted our earlier law and technology theory blog.Gaia also organized the first symposium issue on works that considered the development of a general theory of law and technology...

Stories of Autonomy, Technology and Law II

Posted on February 15, 2009
The Autonomy StoryFreedom has exercised particular attraction to the modern imagination. The technology story saw the tool using human as freeing humanity from the constraints of a fickle and oppressive nature. The legal story saw contract and government as freeing human from too much freedom in the state of nature...

Stories of Autonomy, Technology and Law

Posted on February 13, 2009
I?ll address the most important topic raised in Art?s introduction. Re: Galactica. I am planning to do some more writing on Galactica later in the year and that might answer the question whether I am ?enjoying? Season 4. The enjoyment has morphed into a compulsion...

Introducing Kieran Tranter

Posted on February 13, 2009
We will hear next from Kieran Tranter of Griffith University.I first came across Kieran's law and technology work in an article where he studied the complex historical processes that influenced the regulation of automobiles in early 20th Century Australia...

Does technology make "an offer you cannot refuse"? Some thoughts on human autonomy and technology.

Posted on February 12, 2009
Autonomy is the state of freedom from external control and constraint one one?s decisions and actions. We are constrained by many things such as, for example, the earth?s gravity. Interestingly, many of our technologies increase our autonomy in the face of some of these constraints...

One of the slogans of the 1933

Posted on February 10, 2009
One of the slogans of the 1933 Chicago Worlds? Fair was the following: ?Science discovers, genius invents, industry applies, and man adapts himself to, or is molded by, new things...Individuals, groups, entire races of men fall into step with science and industry...

Introducing Jennifer Chandler

Posted on February 09, 2009
Up to bat next is Jennifer Chandler from the University of Ottawa.Jennifer writes in the areas of tort law, health law and cyberlaw, including discussions of network and software security. She also teaches an interesting course on 'technoprudence: legal theory in the information age...

More on the Tech-Driven Rat Race: From Professors to Police

Posted on February 08, 2009
I hope to get a chance to address the great comments on my last post soon. I'm going to do this second post now so I can get my contribution to this online symposium in the right ordering.In a recent discussion of the Nature Editorial I mentioned in my last post, one of its authors came under serious criticism for several flaws in its reasoning...

Cognition-Enhancing Drugs: Can We Say No?

Posted on February 06, 2009
A recent book on health care rationing in the US, Can We Say No?, worries that political pressures for health spending will ultimately bankrupt the US economy. This idea of a spending ratchet is a commonplace of the health care finance literature. Less well-covered has been a creep toward performance-enhancing drugs...

Introducing Frank Pasquale

Posted on February 05, 2009
Next up, we will hear from Frank Pasquale, currently visiting at Yale Law School.A serial blogger at Concurring Opinions and madisonian.net, Frank researches and writes in the areas of health law and intellectual property law. One of Frank's interesting law and technology papers 'Technology, Competition, and Values' reviews the role of law in promoting or inhibiting the diffusion of new technologies, and how this process affects social values...

Privacy and State Investigations Using New Technologies

Posted on February 03, 2009
Part of my research focuses on trying to understand how privacy laws and interests are challenged by technological change in the context of post-9/11 government surveillance.Countries such as Canada have constitutional protections against unreasonable state searches...

Instrumental and Substantive Theories of Technology

Posted on February 02, 2009
In my first post, I'll set out some background on different views on the relationship between human autonomy and technology. Technology thinkers are sometimes broken down into two groups: instrumental and substantive theorists (for discussion, see, for example, Andrew Feenberg, Transforming Technology: A Critical Theory Revisited (Oxford University Press, 2002)...

Introduction: Human Autonomy, Technology and Law

Posted on February 02, 2009
Do machines control us or do we control machines? Do we live in a Matrix-like environment oblivious to the fact that technologies structure our individual lives as well as the societies in which we live? Or are we in charge of these technologies?How one thinks about the relationship between individual autonomy (sometimes referred to as individual willpower or human agency) and technology can influence the way legal thinkers develop policy at the intersection of law and technology...

From Theory to Method

Posted on February 14, 2007
In this, my final post, I would like to move from theory to method.So far I have argued for the following propositions.This forum has set out Law, Technology and Society Studies (LTSS) an interdisciplinary project that uses social scientific material to generate some specific generalizations about law and technology...

Sovereignty, Heidegger, Haraway

Posted on February 13, 2007
In the last post I concluded with the observation that LTSS embodies an understanding of law as technology. In this post I want to interrogate this claim from within two theoretical traditions; legal theory and technology theory. I want to emphasis that my purpose is not to trash LTSS in a 1970s CLS style...

FRANKENSTEIN AND LAW AS TECHNOLOGY

Posted on February 09, 2007
In my last entry I finished on three points. First the contributions to this symposium seemed to be establishing a field of ?Law, Technology and Society Studies? (LTSS), but not providing a theoretical account of law and technology (LaTT).Second, while LTSS is a significant, worthwhile project which I strongly support, it is characterized by two absences...

Theory or Theorizing

Posted on February 08, 2007
Law and Technology TheoryI would like to extend a warm thank-you to Gaia for her introduction and also to Gaia, Frank and Jim for organising this forum. I would also like to thank my virtual colleagues who have contributed. In preparing for my posts I have had the pleasure reviewing earlier contributions and have again been struck with the thoughtfulness and thought provoking nature of what has gone before...

Introducing Kieran Tranter

Posted on February 07, 2007
First, I would like to extend many thanks to Peter Yu for his interesting posts and for instigating a great discussion.It is now my pleasure to introduce Kieran Tranter who is a Senior Lecturer at Griffith Law School in Australia. Kieran worked in museums and poverty law practice, before beginning teaching at the College of Law, University of Notre Dame Australia as a Lecturer and Social Justice Coordinator...

Three Observations on a General Theory of Law and Technology

Posted on February 05, 2007
This final post will offer some of my thoughts about what a general theory of law and technology should (and should not) be about. "Taking the technology out" seems to be a point that the symposium participants have raised repeatedly in both their posts and comments...

Why Was the Internet Different?

Posted on February 03, 2007
In this second post, I will discuss why the Court treated the Internet differently from motion pictures? As Michael Risch pointed out, there are at least two responses. First, the Internet is a "different animal." Second, the First Amendment landscape in the mid-1990s was very different from what it was at the turn of the twentieth century...

New Media at the Turn of the Century

Posted on January 31, 2007
Thank you, Frank, for the very kind introduction, and Gaia, for inviting me to participate in this symposium. In an earlier article, I discussed how the encounter of the Church, medieval scribes and Venetian printers with the Gutenberg press had provided interesting insights into our current response to the "digital dilemma" created by the Internet and new media technologies...

Introducing Peter Yu

Posted on January 29, 2007
Thanks very much for those fascinating posts, Arthur. I look forward to offering some comments once the infamous "March window" of American law review publication passes.This week, I'm honored to welcome Peter K. Yu (???) to Law and Technology Theory...

A Synthetic Theory of Law and Technology

Posted on January 25, 2007
I?d like to start my last post by thanking Gaia, Frank and Jim for putting this blog together. I also now see my link to ?digital biosphere? in yesterday's post was wrong, should be okay now.Today?s post will discuss a forthcoming co-authored work (with Jason Pridmore) ?A Synthetic Theory of Law and Technology, Minnesota Journal of Science and Technology (forthcoming 2007)? where we discuss how a synthetic theory of law and technology could inform law and tech analysis?I don?t have a copy posted anywhere but I?d be happy to email you a copy of the draft, if interested...

Promoting Conversations among Different Tech Law Analysts

Posted on January 24, 2007
Can the regulation of cars tell us something about proposed Internet laws? Can the approval process for new biotech drugs help us to understand copyright law? Does legal analysis share common attributes when faced with situations involving technological change? Is it worth studying technology change and its broad interplay with law? If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? The hope is that working toward a law and technology theory could help us to answer at least some of these questions (although the last one is tricky)...

On The Potential for a Law and Technology Theory

Posted on January 22, 2007
Thanks for the kind introduction Gaia. I thought I?d start off with a boosterish post on the potential for a law and technology theory.What could such a theory accomplish? Could it ensure world peace? Solve ongoing scientific attempts to generate a unified field theory? Provide every hungry child with a bowl of steaming porridge? Well, maybe or maybe not ?Here?s the real potential: law and technology theory could help us to organize and make sense of the various areas of law with law and technology themes (copyright, biotech, cyberlaw, new media, etc...

Introducing Arthur Cockfield

Posted on January 22, 2007
Thank you to Greg Mandel for a week of very interesting posts! It is my great pleasure to introduce Arthur Cockfield. Art is Associate Dean and Associate Professor at Queen?s University Faculty of Law in Canada. He received his J.S.D. and J.S.M. from Stanford Law School, his LL...

Guideline III: The Types of New Technology Disputes are Unforeseeable

Posted on January 19, 2007
The final guideline that I offer here for a general theory of law and technology is that decision-makers must remain cognizant of the limits of their knowledge about new technology and the unforeseeability of what new issues will arise in the future. Particularly in initial stages of technological development, it is inevitable that legal disputes concerning a new technology will be handled under preexisting legal schemes...

Guideline II: Do Not be Blinded by the Technology

Posted on January 18, 2007
A second guideline for law and technology is that decision-makers must look through the technology involved in a dispute to focus on the legal issues in question. Sometimes decision-makers have a tendency to be blinded by spectacular technological achievement...

Guideline I: Examine the Basis for Legal Constructs

Posted on January 17, 2007
The first guideline for a general theory of law and technology I propose is that one must examine the basis for preexisting existing legal categories before extending them to new technology issues. Examples of the invention of the telegraph 150 years ago and the development of the Internet today help to elucidate this point...

History Lessons for a General Theory of Law and Technology

Posted on January 16, 2007
Thank you for the introduction Frank, and thank you Gaia and Frank for organizing this discussion. I am excited to take part in it.I want to elaborate on a theme that has been touched on in several posts and comments: whether certain legal issues that arise as a result of technological change are recurring...

Welcome Gregory Mandel

Posted on January 16, 2007
It is my great pleasure to introduce Professor Gregory Mandel to Law & Technology Theory. I found Mandel's Technology Wars: The Failure of Democratic Discourse to be one of those rare monographs indispensable to understanding current technology policy...

Many Thanks to Andrea Matwyshyn

Posted on January 16, 2007
Thanks very much to Andrea for a week of fascinating posts. I'm afraid I was in the midst of writing a technology self-study for my law school, so didn't have much time to comment at the time, but hope to later. One of the nice things about this format is that the opportunity for comment that disappears at the end of "real-space" conference panels is always available in cyberspace.

Casestudy in Legal Linearity: The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

Posted on January 12, 2007
As discussed previously, developmental psychology has moved toward a nonlinear paradigm driven by studying individuals in social context. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act framework, however, presents a static framework that does not take into account the nonlinear nature of development...

Crafting Nonlinear Technology Regulation

Posted on January 12, 2007
Nonlinear developmental theory offers five concrete lessons for crafting successful technology regulation.First, nonlinear developmental theory instructs us that human development and learning is always situated; the proximate zone of development varies across individuals...

Humans + Technology = Emergent Behaviors, part II

Posted on January 10, 2007
Albert Bandura?s Social Learning Theory presents an analysis consonant with Vygotsky and Bronfenbrenner. Bandura's theory views the person-environment interaction as a three way exchange in which the person, an entity with unique characteristics, performs a behavior in an environment which responds to the person and the behavior in a process of reciprocal determinism; it is an idiosyncratic interaction...

Humans + Technology = Emergent Behaviors, part I

Posted on January 10, 2007
A group of other developmental theorists, however, developed decidedly nonlinear approaches that hold important contrary insights to the approach of Piaget and other linear developmental theorists. The works of these theorists argues that development and identity are inherently dialectical and interactionist joint constructions...

Humans + Technology = A Straight Line?

Posted on January 10, 2007
Linear and nonlinear developmental psychology differ in key assumptions about the manner humans interact with the world around them, in particular with "tools" like technology.Linear developmental psychology theory, as demonstrated by the work of Jean Piaget, creates an age-contingent, lock-step trajectory for human development...

The Most Volatile Technology: The User

Posted on January 09, 2007
Thank you for the introduction and for including me in this project.Perhaps the first steps in generating a successful broader theory of technology and law include identifying defining characteristics of such a theory. One of these defining characteristics is the ability of the theory to co-evolve with the particular incarnations of technologies we seek to govern...