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

From: Nicholas Johnson

Re: CLS/Reading Assignments for April 12, 2000

Note: Newly assigned material (i.e., that which is in addition to the "Digital Divide" material assigned for April 5), as always, will be the subject of a brief quiz. Page numbers are indicated to give a rough sense of length of material and are taken from my printed copies.

As you know from last week's class, and the e-mails since:

1. It was class preference to schedule our "make-up class" by extending the hours on the two remaining classes from two hours to three hours each rather than an additional evening. Thus, we will be meeting from 6:30 until 9:30, plus whatever break you all want somewhere in the middle of that.

2. We have two presenters, whose papers have been posted to the Web as links from our main class page. Since a question was raised about them, papers to be presented are assigned reading and subject to quiz questions. Actually, I think you'll find them both quite interesting. First (alphabetically) will be Kerrie Larson's "The Domain Name Maze:  What is it and Why Should we be Worried?"  (13 pages plus endnotes). That will be followed by Nikki Meer's "Putting the Byte Into Crime: The Who, What, When, Where and Why of MP3 Liability" (14 pages plus endnotes). In addition to reading the papers, you are to think of questions for the presenters -- as they are to think of questions for you.

3. We will continue discussing the "Digital Divide" material assigned for last week. Rather than repeat that assignment here, I'll just refer you to last week's assignment.

4. As indicated in the e-mail, we need a little additional reading assignment. On April 3 of this year, less than two weeks ago, Judge Jackson handed down his Conclusions of Law in United States v. Microsoft Corp. (my HTML printout is 20 pages plus). This is one of the most significant cyberspace law developments this semester. Now that we have an opinion to look at we should give the controversy some attention. The opinion is well written -- but that doesn't make it an easy read if you've never before addressed antitrust questions. On the other hand, it's not a bad introduction to the subject the way the judge walks through the issues. So have a go at it, and we'll discuss the extent to which Bill Gates really is a bad guy -- or whether he's just being punished for his own success and consumers' enthusiasm for his products.

You are not required to read anything other than the opinion, but if you'd like to probe the issues more, either now or in the future, the FindLaw Microsoft Web page has hundreds of links to documents filed in the case and commentary from a variety of sources. There is, of course, a lot of material from Microsoft and its apologists defending its action. If you'd like to see something from another point of view -- in addition to that of the Department of Justice and Judge Jackson -- you might want to check out the site created by Ralph Nader and Jamie Love through their Consumer Project on Technology.

5. Finally, Dan has a video tape for us, and I may bring one, too.