To: Cyberspace Law Seminar participants

From: Nicholas Johnson

Re: Assignments; First Class Meeting

Please re-read the memo dated December 14, 1999, which was put in your law school mail folder. If you cannot find it get a copy from my assistant, Ms. Sharlee Feller, Room 433, 335-9091.

We will be using the Internet/Web and e-mail as well as studying them. For example, that’s where most to all of your assigned readings will be found. If you have not yet developed a Web-surfing skill see me immediately so that we can arrange for training or other options.

For our first session there are assigned readings. (There is less here than meets the eye. Each is pretty short, and all are quick and easy reads.) There will be a brief short-answer quiz over them at the beginning of the evening. The class should be fun for all of us, but that does not mean we will treat it casually.

The readings will be brought into a class discussion that will focus on (a) your background, experience, and insights regarding the Internet in general, and the legal issues it raises in particular, and (b) your expectations regarding this class, the questions you want it to answer, and the ways in which you see yourself using the experience in the future.

The significance of cyberlaw to your career – the first half of the 21st Century – is kind of obvious in a global information economy. But the subject does not, yet, have the kind of generally-agreed-upon content of courses like contracts and property, areas of the law that have evolved over prior centuries. It won’t be on the bar exam. So we have considerable flexibility in deciding what we want to study and why. Every week will bring news of innovations of significant impact on the relevant industries and the law governing them. There are dozens of ways of slicing the potentially relevant legal material.

We will, ultimately, develop a more conventional “syllabus” of precise assignments of cases, statutes and regulations. But I want you to play at least some role in its creation.

If you visited our Web page [http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/cls00] over break, and did the suggested reading, you’re pretty well prepared for our first class.  If not, go there to find, and read, the following:

“So You Want to be a Lawyer: A Play in Four Acts.” This gives you some insight as to the professional standards and attitudes I want you to develop and demonstrate. If you find that offensive or overwhelming this gives you an early opportunity to drop – thereby saving you the time of reading the other material before dropping. It’s found at http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/sywtbl/njsywtbl.html

“Law of Electronic Media: Concepts, Perspectives and Goals” (a link off of our Web page “Welcome”). Although prepared for another course a few years ago, this link will introduce you to concepts that will ease your understanding of cyberlaw.

“Assignments and Overview” (another link) is a memo to the CLS participants a year ago. If you are getting writing credit for this year’s seminar the entire memo is relevant for you. If not, read the following headings only: “Cyberspace Law Overview,” “Internet Familiarity,” “Aspects of Internet Understanding,” “Nicholas Johnson’s Coordinates” and “Attendance.” (Note that my assistant is now Ms. Sharlee Feller (rather than Rita Jansen): Room 433, 335-9091, sharlee-feller@uiowa.edu.)

David Loundy’s “E.-Law Locator” (also a link). Needless to say, you are not being assigned every case on this list for January 12! David Loundy was a Cyberspace Law Seminar student like you not that many years ago. He is now in Chicago and a leading lawyer in the field. He and I once put together a casebook on cyberlaw. To the extent our seminar will have assigned readings many will likely come from this list. At this point you should examine it merely to get a sense of the categories which at least this one lawyer finds useful and relevant.

One page only, the sub-heading “Convergence and Cyberspace,” fro“Regulating the Cyber-Journalist” (another link from our Web page “Welcome”).

Finally, from this month’s ABA Journal a collection of brief pieces describing a number of examples of ways in which lawyers are finding the Internet (as distinguished from Westlaw and Lexis) a useful tool in the practice of law. This will probably be copied and placed in your mail folder with this memo, or shortly thereafter.

See you Wednesday evening.