January 28, 2000

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

From: Nicholas Johnson

Re: CLS/Reading Assignments for February 9, 2000


Note: (a) There will be a brief, short answer quiz at the beginning of the hour over such of this material as was not assigned for January 26. (b) All of the assigned readings are available as links off of the David Loundy "E-Law Locator" site (and the carry-over item is from EPIC). However, I have also provided direct links to each item from this memo as well (to save you looking for them). (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.

Our primary focus this evening is on tort liability and the Internet. However . . .

We did not get a chance to engage in our debate about the EPIC document, cited below. In addition to the positions potentially available for your choice (also indicated below), if you want to do some more research/reading you also have the option of joining Dan in providing supporting data for his position that the document is incredibly biased.

1. EPIC.

[This is from the January 26 assignment.] Read EPIC's "Critical Infrastructure Protection and the Endangerment of Civil Liberties" up to the section headed "Bibliography." (On my copy that is 19 pages-plus.) You may also want to read "Appendix A: White Paper on PDD-63." (It runs from page 22 through 34 on my copy.) It's the Clinton Administration's official "Policy on Critical Infrastructure Protection" referred to in the EPIC document.

This document reads like a Tom Clancy novel, so it's not as daunting as the pages may suggest.

NOTE: Come prepared to represent some group's position on these issues, such as (1) the NSA/CIA/DIA/FBI needs/interests, (2) commercial database providers (e.g., Nexis/Lexis), (3) private sector employers, (4) union representative of employees, (5) ACLU, or (6) anything I've forgotten that you think should be represented. [And, as suggested above, the option of helping Dan make his case of "bias."] We will have a debate/discussion of the various positions and see if we can evolve a class policy. It should be fun.

2. We will also want to discuss the excite.com "Privacy Policy" mentioned in the January 25th e-mail to you.

3. And we may want to share some of the Web sites you found as a part of the assignment for February 2.

4. Finally, we will get to the assignment for the evening: Tort Liability and the Internet

United States v. Baker

Rindos v. Hardwick

Cubby v. Compuserve

Stratton-Oakmont v. Prodigy Services (this is an alternative URL to David's, at eff, which was busy at the time I put this together)

See you February 9th.