January 15, 2000

To: CLS Participants (Web only; e-mail alert)

From: Nicholas Johnson

Re: CLS/Reading Assignments for January 19, 2000


Note: (a) There will be a brief, short answer quiz at the beginning of the hour over this material. (b) All of the assigned readings are available as links off of the David Loundy "E-Law Locator" page. However, I have also provided direct links to each item from this memo as well (to save you looking for them on David's page). (c) I refer to "pages" to give you some sense of how long these reading assignments are. But because printing differs from one computer to another the assigned sections of documents are identified by their intra-document headings.

1. What is "The Internet"? (a) To make sure we're all on the same page, (b) as introductory information for those who are new to the Internet/Web, and (c) as a review for all of us, one of the best statements is found in the Findings of Fact from a judicial opinion. The case, ACLU v. Reno, is one we may look at for its holding and legal analysis later on in the semester. (It deals with a Congressional effort to restrict obscenity and indecency on the Internet: the "Communications Decency Act.") For now, we just want to read a small portion of the opinion, Findings of Fact 1-48. (It printed out to about 7-1/2 pages for me. If you print the entire opinion it (for me) will take 60 pages.) The opinion is available from this direct link to the eff (electronic frontier foundation) site.

2. What is "privacy" and what protections are already in place for information privacy? "Privacy" is the subject of entire casebooks, a portion of my "Law of Electronic Media" course, the Restatement of Torts, and other volumes and articles, legislation, regulations, and case decisions. So we're not going to attain great expertise in the course of one evening's discussion. I'll review a little that night.

A useful overview of the implications and issues regarding electronic/information age privacy is contained in a government document. It is a "white paper" prepared for public comment by the National Information Infrastructure Task Force in 1997 called, "Options for Promoting Privacy on the National Information Infrastructure." (There is an earlier, 1995, publication called Privacy and the NII: Safeguarding Telecommunications-Related Personal Information. ("NII" is short for "National Information Infrastructure." "GII" refers to "global" information infrastructure.) If this is a subject of special interest to you, or you are writing a paper that involves privacy issues, you will want to look at it as well.) However, it is not assigned reading for Wednesday evening.

What is assigned are selected sections from the 1997 "Options" paper, see link above. (My copy of the entire paper prints out to 49 pages.) Read: (a) I (3) "The EU Privacy Directive" (half-page); (b) II "Privacy Defined" (one page); (c) III "Information Privacy in the Electronic Age" (one page-plus); (d) IV "Privacy Protection in Four Economic Sectors" (18 pages) -- an excellent overview of what protections are already in place. (You are, of course, not forbidden to read more; it's useful and insightful brainstorming about how to proceed with public policy. But "as a concession to the shortness of life," if not our class period, it's not required.)

3. What cases have there been so far involving the privacy of, say, e-mail? Read the following:

(a) Andersen Consulting v. UOP (my copy is three pages)

(b) Bourke v. Nissan Motor Corp. (my copy is five pages)

(c) McVeigh v. Cohen (my copy is six pages)

(d) Quad/Graphics v. Southern Adirondack Library System  (my copy is three pages)

(e) State ex rel. Wilson-Simmons v. Lake Cty. Sheriff's Dept. (my copy is five pages)

(f) Stern v. Delphi Internet Services Corp. (my copy is six pages)

(g) Steve Jackson Games v. U.S. Secret Service (my copy is nine pages)