Solove on Tech: The Audacity: Big Tech and the Battle for Privacy

 Daniel Solove on the tv series The Audacity, technology, and privacy. 

Emerging Normativities: Hybrid Public Lecture Series on Law, Governance, and Digital Technologies, University of Westminster Law School

From Daniela Gandorfer, Legal Scholar//Co-Director of LoPh//Founder of Code-X-Diagrams//Blockchain Gov Consultant Westminster University School of Law

I am writing to invite you to 'Emerging Normativities,’ a hybrid Public Lecture Series on Law, Governance, and Digital Technologies, at University of Westminster L:aw School and in collaboration with LoPH+.

 

In a nutshell, we ask: What happens at the new governmental frontier and who is drafting the social digital contract?

 

THE SERIES As climate change is shifting the material and social conditions of existence on planet Earth, skepticism towards representative governmental structures and a desire for alternative economic models rise. This transformative shift unfolds amidst the ascendancy of authoritarian regimes and a surge in global conflicts. Concurrently, cutting-edge technologies like distributed ledgers, IoT, robotics, AI, and mixed reality are dismantling traditional political and legal paradigms. This series dissect this intricate interplay shaping a novel governance frontier, both online and offline, often overlooked in mainstream discourse. It focuses on emerging tech-driven governance models - whether public or private, centralized or decentralized- driving fundamental shifts in legal and political theories through jurisdictional design, legal experimentation, and tech-democratization.

 

FIRST SESSION: FEB 8th Our first session, “Ground-Level Narratives: Digital Democracy (Taiwan) and Web3-City Prototyping (Zanzibar)," will take place on THU, Feb 8th, 2024, 2pm-4pm GMT, UG04 University of Westminster (Regent Street Campus)

 

DETAILS: You find the Zoom link on the poster. More information and posters also here. 

 

PLEA I would be grateful if you could share the invite with your network, friends, and colleagues, siblings, political opponents, unbearable neighbor, beloved critics, and tech-enthusiasts, perhaps your your digital pets.

 

Best wishes, Daniela

Hurst on Technology and the Law: The Automobile (edited by Ard and Novak) @bj_ard @WisLRev

James Willard Hurst, University of Wisconsin Law School (deceased), BJ Ard, University of Wisconsin Law School, and William J. Novak, University of Michigan Law School, have published Chapter Eight - Technology and the Law: The Automobile at 2022 Wisconsin Law Review 714. Here is the abstract.

In this chapter we are going to talk about some of the effects that the automobile has had upon the law and some of the effects that the law had upon the automobile. We could undoubtedly open up some worthwhile lines of thought if we talked about the automobile in relation to certain broader problems of which it is a part: for example, the effects of the internal combustion engine or the growth of all types of communication. But we shall have enough on our hands if we stick to the automobile, and even so in the limits of this chapter we can discuss at any length only the relation of the law and the passenger car. This is not merely an arbitrary limitation, however. Of the 32 million registered motor vehicles in the United States in 1940, substantially over 27 million were passenger cars, and a little under four and one-half million were motor trucks. Until the middle 1920s the proportion of trucks to passenger cars was much lower than this. Not only was the passenger car the center of the auto problem as a matter of gross figures; it was likewise the main aspect of the problem that men saw and reacted to. We may properly focus on it when we try to retrace the unplanned paths of the law’s responses to the motor vehicle.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

Call For Expressions of Interest: Digital Vulnerability in European Private Law (DiVE)

 

 

CALL FOR INTEREST

 

 

 

 

Digital Vulnerability in European Private Law

(DiVE)

 

 

 

In recent years, vulnerability has emerged in legal discourse, in dialogue with other disciplines, as a useful concept to capture the fluid and multilayered nature of the human condition and to question the adequacy of some foundational legal and policy norms. Yet, despite the potential of the notion of vulnerability as a key tool to overcome the limits of legal formalism and paternalism and to foster substantive equality, the legal status and effects of the notion under domestic and European laws are is still quite unclear. In particular, the notion of people’s vulnerability has only seldom been applied to the specific forms of exposure to harm that might arise from interaction with digital technologies. In our current and pervasively digitalized world, we believe it is increasingly important to analyze how digital technologies impact preexisting forms of vulnerability or create new ones, and to understand how the law can prevent or address unequal experiences of technology.

This is what we plan to do with our project ‘Digital Vulnerability in European Private Law’ (DiVE), financed by the Italian Ministry of University and Research from June 2022 to May 2025. The project aims to investigate the notion of digital vulnerability by exploring how this notion stands vis-à-vis traditional paradigms of protection of weaker parties (such as rules on incapacity, consumer protection, data protection, anti-discrimination, equality before the law) and to what extent it might properly capture risks and harms stemming from digital technologies.

Throughout the project, three international conferences will be organized.

·      A first conference will be held in April/May 2023 in Ferrara, to inquiry the very boundaries of the notion of digital vulnerability.

·      A second conference will be held in April 2024 in Rome, to examine how digital vulnerability matters in access to, identity construction and protection of health in the digital sphere.

·      A third conference will be held in March 2025 in Trieste, to scrutinize the impact of digital vulnerability on contractual and tortious remedies.

 

 

 

We are particularly interested in identifying the factual conditions in which digital technology – from the web to social media, from platforms to Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technologies – might prove disruptive and challenging for people, and in assessing under what conditions, how and to what extent the notion of digital vulnerability might be translated into claims for special legal protection.

The conferences will be held in person and in English. A few speakers will be invited; the majority of contributors will be selected through calls for papers. In line with the scope of each conference, proposals might explore how digital technologies exacerbate pre-existing vulnerabilities or create new ones, and how the notion of digital vulnerability could be translated in legal terms. Our main field of the research is domestic and European private law, but proposals can come from a variety of disciplines (including political science, sociology, linguistics, philosophy, economics) and can be theoretical or empirical, descriptive or prescriptive, quantitative or qualitative, mono-jurisdictional, comparative or pan-European, or combine methods of analysis. Contributions dealing with areas other than Europe might be accepted as well, on a case-by-case basis.

Proposals for contribution will be evaluated by the project’s scientific committee, which is currently under construction. Besides members of the DiVE team, confirmed members of the Scientific Committee currently include Danielle K. Citron (University of Virginia), Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz (European University Institute), Frank Pasquale (Brooklyn Law School), Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell (University Carlos III of Madrid), Giovanni Sartor (European University Institute), Reiner Schulze (University of Münster), Gunther Teubner (Frankfurt University), Yingqin Zheng (University of London). The organizers of each conference will bear the cost of accommodation and meals for the participants whose proposals have been accepted. Selected conference papers will be published following successful peer review.

Each conference will be preceded by an autonomous call for papers; the call for papers for the Ferrara conference in May 2023 will be distributed soon.

Please feel free to share and spread the word about this call for interest. The project will soon have its own website, but for the time being, should you have any doubt or question or suggestion, please feel free to contact the Project Officer Giacomo Capuzzo at digital.vulnerability@gmail.com.

 

The DiVE Team

 

Claudia Amodio

(Ferrara University)

Amalia Diurni

(Rome Tor Vergata University),

 

 

 

 

 

Camilla Crea

(Sannio University)

Marta Infantino

(Trieste University)

Loredana Tullio

(Molise University)

 

 

Alberto de Franceschi

(Ferrara University)

Luca Perriello

(Marche Polytechnic University)

Call for Papers: Law, Technology and Humans Volume 2, Issue 2 @CrimeJusticeQUT

Law, Technology and Humans (ISSN 2652-4074) is an innovative open access, double blind reviewed journal that encourages research and scholarship on the human and humanity of law and technology. Sponsored by the Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, Law, Technology and Humans is advised by a leading International Editorial Board. More about the journal, submission and accessing published articles is available at https://lthj.qut.edu.au/

Papers for consideration in volume 2(2) are invited. Volume 2(2) will be published in November 2020. Preference will be given to research and scholarship that:

· Challenges and critically examines the promises and perils of emergent technologies;

· Engages with the futures (and pasts) of law, technology and humans;

· Involves critical, philosophical or theoretically informed work on law and technology;

Uses humanities, social science or other approaches to study law and technology;

· Examines law and technology from non-Western locations and perspectives; or

· Locates law and technology in wider concerns about the Anthropocene, pandemics, climate change or relations with non-humans.

Interested contributors may discuss their research and scholarship with the General Editor, Professor Kieran Tranter: lawtechhum@qut.edu.au

Deadline for submissions for Volume 2, Issue 2: Monday 15 June 2020.  Submissions: https://lthj.qut.edu.au/about/submissions

CFP: Law, Technology, and Humans, Workshop and Symposium, QUT, December 9, 2019 @QUT_IP

Call for Papers: Law, Technology, and Humans, Workshop and Symposium

What is Real About Law and Technology.  The Workshop will be held December 9, 2019 at the Gardens Point Campus of the Queensland University of Technology. The keynote presenter is Professor David Caudill, Villanova Law School. The Symposium will be published in volume 2 of the Law, Technology and Humans, in 2020.

More information is available here.  

ICYMI: Gary T. Marx, Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology (University of Chicago Press, 2016)

ICYMI:



Gary T. Marx, Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology (University of Chicago Press, 2016).

Grant and Moses on Technology and the Trajectory of Myth @lyria1 @ElgarPublishing

New from Elgar Publishing: David Grant, University of Melbourne Law School, and Lyria Bennett Moses, UNSW Sydney, have published Technology and the Trajectory of Myth (2017).

This book presents an entirely new way of understanding technology, as the successor to the dominant ideologies that have underpinned the thought and practices of the Western world. Like the preceding ideologies of Deity, State and Market, technology displays the features of a modern myth, promising to deal with our existential concerns on condition of our subjection to them. Utilising robust empirical evidence, David Grant and Lyria Bennett Moses argue that the pathway out of this mythological maze is the production of means to establish a new sense of political, corporate and personal self-responsibility.

 

Gill on Law, Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine @citizenlab

Lex Gill, University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs, Citizen Lab, has published Law, Metaphor and the Encrypted Machine. Here is the abstract.

The metaphors we use to imagine, describe and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This paper offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology in particular, and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices. Part I provides a basic description of encryption as a mathematical and technical process. At the heart of this paper is a question about what encryption is to the law. It is therefore fundamental that readers have a shared understanding of the basic scientific concepts at stake. This technical description will then serve to illustrate the host of legal and political problems arising from encryption technology, the most important of which are addressed in Part II. That section also provides a brief history of various legislative and judicial responses to the encryption “problem,” mapping out some of the major challenges still faced by jurists, policymakers and activists. While this paper draws largely upon common law sources from the United States and Canada, metaphor provides a core form of cognitive scaffolding across legal traditions. Part III explores the relationship between metaphor and the law, demonstrating the ways in which it may shape, distort or transform the structure of legal reasoning. Part IV demonstrates that the function served by legal metaphor is particularly determinative wherever the law seeks to integrate novel technologies into old legal frameworks. Strong, ubiquitous commercial encryption has created a range of legal problems for which the appropriate metaphors remain unfixed. Part V establishes a loose framework for thinking about how encryption has been described by courts and lawmakers—and how it could be. What does it mean to describe the encrypted machine as a locked container or building? As a combination safe? As a form of speech? As an untranslatable library or an unsolvable puzzle? What is captured by each of these cognitive models, and what is lost? This section explores both the technological accuracy and the legal implications of each choice. Finally, the paper offers a few concluding thoughts about the utility and risk of metaphor in the law, reaffirming the need for a critical, transparent and lucid appreciation of language and the power it wields.

Notes: DISCUSSION DRAFT ONLY As this document is a discussion draft, please do not cite or reproduce this work without the author’s written permission.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Katyal on Technoheritage @SoniaKatyal @BerkeleyLawBCLT

Sonia Katyal, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, is publishing Technoheritage in the California Law Review. Here is the abstract.

This Article explores the legal revolution that is swiftly unfolding regarding the relationship between technology, user interactivity, and cultural institutions, both inside and outside of the law. At the same time that cultural properties are facing destruction from war and environmental change, we are also living in an age of unprecedented interactivity and reproduction — everywhere, museums are offering their collections for open access, 3-D printing, and new projects involving virtual and augmented reality. With the advent of other sophisticated forms of digital technology, the preservation and replication of antiquities have never been easier. Today’s archaeological moment demonstrates both the possibilities and limitations behind “technoheritage” — the marriage of technology and cultural heritage. Toward that end, this Article argues that, in order to understand the relationship between technology and cultural heritage, it might be helpful to study the theoretical dimensions behind interactivity itself. Just as technology has the power to preserve and protect ancient artifacts, it also invites a dizzying array of legal conflicts over their digitization and replication, particularly with regards to the intersection of copyright law with cultural identity. Unpacking this further, this Article offers a tripartite taxonomy of interactivity: the first, described as extractive (drawing upon the accumulation and selection of data); the second, immersive (drawing upon new forms of user participation through virtual and augmented reality); and the third, derivative (drawing upon new possibilities of user creation). Normatively, I argue that these models of interactivity provide us with an important framework with which to examine the importance of copyright protection for cultural heritage. In the concluding section, I suggest a potential way of rethinking the museum by drawing on the logic and legal protection extended to databases and archives in an age of unprecedented user interactivity.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Swanson on "Great Men," Law, and the Social Construction of Technology @KaraWSwanson

Kara W. Swanson, Northeastern University School of Law, is publishing 'Great Men,' Law, and the Social Construction of Technology in Law and Social Inquiry. Here is the abstract.

Alexander Graham Bell is famous as the inventor of the telephone. Is his fame owing to law and lawyers? Two recent histories argue that some popular tales of invention originated with lawyers and judges as part of patent litigation battles. (Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain (2013); Christopher Beauchamp, Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent that Changed America (2015)). Bringing law into the historical project of understanding the social construction of technology, the authors unsettle great man narratives of invention. A tale of a recent patent war, however, is a case study in the persistence of such narratives, highlighting the uses of legal storytelling. (Ronald K. Fierstein, A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War (2015)). Together, these works invite consideration of the cultural power possessed by invention origin stories, the role of narratives in law and history, and the judicial performance of truth-finding in Anglo-American law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stefan Larsson's New Book: Conceptions in the Code: How Metaphors Explain Legal Challenges In Digital Times @lastsys

Via @maksdelmar

Stefan Larsson, Associate Professor in Technology and Social Change, Lund University Internet Institute (LUii), Sweden, is publishing Conceptions in the Code: How Metaphors Explain Legal Challenges in Digital Times (Oxford, 2017) (Oxford Studies in Language and Law). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Stefan Larsson's Conceptions in the Code makes a significant contribution to sociolegal analysis, representing a valuable contribution to conceptual metaphor theory. By utilising the case of copyright in a digital context it explains the role that metaphor plays when the law is dealing with technological change, displaying both conceptual path-dependence as well as what is called non-legislative developments in the law. The overall analysis draws from conceptual studies of "property" in intellectual property. By using Karl Renner's account of property, Larsson demonstrates how the property regime of copyright is the projection of an older regime of control onto a new set of digital social relations. Further, through an analysis of the concept of "copy" in copyright as well as the metaphorical battle of defining the BitTorrent site "The Pirate Bay" in the Swedish court case with its founders, Larsson shows the historical and embodied dependence of digital phenomena in law, and thereby how normative aspects of the source concept also stains the target domain. The book also draws from empirical studies on file sharing and historical expressions of the conceptualisation of law, revealing both the cultural bias of both file sharing and law. Also law is thereby shown to be largely depending on metaphors and embodiment to be reified and understood. The contribution is relevant for the conceptual and regulatory struggles of a multitude of contemporary socio-digital phenomena in addition to copyright and file sharing, including big data and the oft-praised "openness" of digital innovation.

 

James On Law and Paper Clips

Robert A. James, Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman, LLP, has published The Jurisprudence of Paper Clips at 19 Green Bag 2d 249 (2016). Here is the abstract.

To transfer rights in a check or promissory note, the holder may sign (or "indorse") the document. If there is no space for another signature, one may use an "allonge" -- a second piece of paper that is "attached" to the first piece. 33 years ago, the author surveyed the court cases that considered how firmly the pieces of paper must be attached to each other -- requiring judges to evaluate paper clips, staples and other instances of humble technology. His decades-old draft article is newly published, both for its content and as a spur to other authors to unearth and reveal their own incomplete efforts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Incomplete efforts. Well, that's why I love paper clips, staples, that sticky note paper product, Liquid Paper...

Law, Tech, and Star Trek

The ABA For Law Students Blog has posted Searching for the Mr. Spock in You, a piece about the importance of being knowledgeable both about technology and the ethics of its use. A nice mind meld among law, tech, and pop culture (can one mind meld three things at once?)

Twitter thanks to Rick Peltz-Steele @RJPeltzSteele.

Cronin on 3D Printing, Public Domain Cultural Artifacts, and Copyright

Charles Patrick Desmond Cronin, USC School of Law, has published Possession is 99% of the Law: 3D Printing, Public Domain Cultural Artifacts & Copyright. Here is the abstract.

Since time immemorial there has been an uneasy rapport between those who own tangible cultural artifacts, and those who wish to examine them, and record, analyze, and reproduce the information they embody. Owners of physical objects - museums, libraries, individuals, etc. - are caught between a desire to enhance the prestige and renown of these artifacts through public display, and a fear that non-owners might capitalize without their authorization, or any apparent benefit to them, upon their access to these works. Tangible cultural artifacts are akin to trade secrets in that once they are revealed it is difficult to control, by law or other means, further dissemination of their information. Just as one can legally reverse engineer and reproduce the secret formula of a fragrance or an unpatented pharmaceutical, one may legitimately copy and reproduce for virtually any purpose public domain old master paintings, classical sculptures, etc., that are owned by another. Owners of public domain artifacts attempt to overcome their inability to rely upon copyright to capitalize financially on reproductions through physical, technological and legal measures. As digital capture and reproduction technologies have advanced, and become so prevalent, some owners have resorted to restrictive physical and technological measures like smartphone prohibitions and watermarks. Increasingly, however, owners rely on contracts, and specifically licensing agreements, to suppress unauthorized replication of public domain works that they have displayed publically. Until recently, owners have been concerned mainly about unauthorized - and more pointedly, uncompensated - copying and reproduction of essentially two-dimensional works: prints, drawings, paintings, photographs, etc. Since the advent of photography one can legally and inexpensively create copies of public domain works that convey most of the information contained in the originals. Using digital technologies - laser scanning and additive printing and subtractive manufacture - today one can create copies that most observers would find indistinguishable from the originals. 3D scanning and printing technologies also make it possible to replicate sculptural works and myriad other three-dimensional artifacts. Hitherto, these works had been relatively immune to unauthorized reproduction. A reproduction of a statue, for instance, involved a laborious process demanding direct physical contact with the original work. A 3D scan of the same statue might be obtained in less than an hour, and could be used to produce an infinite number of replicas of it. It is even possible to create 3D scans using still photographs of a work taken from various angles - an encouraging possibility, for example, to those endeavoring to restore the Buddhas of Bamiyan that the Taliban destroyed. The potential loss of control over the replication of public domain artifacts posed by 3D replication has disconcerted the owners of these objects, and led to arguably overreaching efforts to suppress the unauthorized use of this technology in connection with these objects. Stanford University, for instance, has permitted a former faculty member to arrogate sole control over access to the 3D data of a University-sponsored project to scan Michelangelo’s David. Access the data is given only to those whose credentials and objectives this former faculty member condones. Prohibitions on “tasteless” and commercial uses by those given access purportedly stem from an agreement struck between the former faculty member and Italian authorities. The Getty recently sponsored Power & Pathos, an exhibition of Hellenic Era bronzes that included The Getty’s Victorious Athlete. The Getty permits visitors to photograph Victorious Athlete and other public domain works that it exhibits in its museums. While this work was included in Power & Pathos, however, The Getty forbade visitors from photographing the work. This prohibition accommodated the demand of European museums that had loaned works included in the exhibition, to suppress activity that they feared might dilute the profits generated by their own reproductions and images of these physical objects. 3D technologies hold remarkable potential for the dissemination of increasingly accurate and enhanced information about tangible cultural artifacts. This article argues that those who apply these technologies to these works should not be inhibited by contractual limitations that establish copying limitations beyond those provided under US copyright law. Three-dimensional cultural artifacts in the public domain, which attract the interest and investment of those working with 3D print technologies, tend to be objects best identified as the cultural legacy of humanity - not that of a particular geographical or political entity. By facilitating the widespread and inexpensive reproduction and distribution of such public domain cultural artifacts, 3D printing technologies, therefore not only promote more democratic access to geographically disperse cultural works, but also advance the dissolution of divisive cultural, political, and geographic boundaries.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Moses and Gollan on the Importance of History in Understanding the Impact of New Technologies on Law

Lyria Bennett Moses and Nicola Jane Gollan, both of the University of New South Wales, have published The Illusion of Newness: The Importance of History in Understanding the Law-Technology Interface as UNSW Law Research Paper No. 2015-71. Here is the abstract.

Despite law being a field known for its backward-looking focus on precedent, legal scholarship addressing issues associated with technology too often only looks forward. It is where legal scholarship focuses closely on a particular technology that the risk of ignoring history and the broader context is greatest. The problem, where it arises, is caused by undue focus on the newness of new technologies, and is not unique to law. There is a problematic tendency to exaggerate the newness of issues arising from technological developments. While some legal issues are truly new in that they arise for the first time as a result of a new technological activity or entity, others are simply new manifestations of issues that have arisen previously in other contexts. Even where particular issues are new in this sense, they are not necessarily limited to the particular technological context in which they first arise. Undue focus on socio-technical circumstances narrows the terms of debate. It is argued that the analysis of legal dilemmas associated with particular technologies requires a broad historical perspective that looks beyond the particular circumstances in which they arise. The paper explores three cases: social media, intellectual property, and reproductive technologies. Each case highlights the need for greater scepticism about which issues are truly new, and demonstrate some of the dangers of “over-hyping” the impact of new technologies on law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Sexuality, Criminal Law, the Internet, and the First Amendment

Thea Johnson and Andrew Gilden, both of Stanford Law School, have published Common Sense and the Cannibal Cop at 11 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 313 (2015). Here is the abstract.

The Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for individuals to explore a wide range of unfamiliar and often-marginalized desires, and in doing so has also created unprecedented opportunities for the criminal justice system to monitor and punish these sexual desires. An important example of this dynamic is the recent trial of Gilberto Valle, New York City’s so-called “Cannibal Cop.” Valle, an NYPD officer, was convicted for conspiracy to kidnap several women based on a series of highly fictionalized conversations on a “dark fetish” fantasy website. Although these conversations revealed Valle’s fantasies involving kidnapping, torturing, and cannibalizing women, he had made no effort to kidnap, kill, or eat anyone, and there was no evidence that his online discussions went beyond graphic exchanges and digital role-playing. The “Cannibal Cop” case provides a useful template for examining the ethical boundaries of applying criminal laws to the precarious realm of Internet-mediated sexuality. This Essay highlights some of the important questions raised by the prosecution of the Cannibal Cop, and it emphasizes the need to carefully approach the important, yet inherently blurry line between “fantasy” and “reality.” We caution against overreliance on "common sense" in cases like this, given the incomplete lay understandings of how people use the Internet to explore sexual desires and the risk that legal decisions will be driven by disapproval of these desires.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Internet as a Catalyst For Change In the Search for Legal Information

Amy E. Sloan, University of Baltimore School of Law, has published The 95 Theses: Legal Research in the Internet Age at 20 Legal Writing Journal 45 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Martin Luther is largely credited with starting the Protestant Reformation in 1517 with The 95 Theses, his work challenging the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences. The Reformation had many causes, but the invention of the printing press was a primary catalyst for change. The printing press made the Bible and other forms of religious literature available to a much wider audience than had previously had access to this information. Legal research does not rise to the level of a religious experience. With apologies to Luther, however, I offer the following thesis about legal research today: The availability of legal information on the Internet has led to the law’s equivalent of the Protestant Reformation. As legal information has become available to more people, legal research and the roles of lawyers have been transforming as well.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

"Mr. Robot", Technology, Privacy, and Security

Corey Nachreiner reviews every episode of Mr. Robot at Geekwire; his take on the latest episode is here.  Dan Solove gives his view of the series, complete with analysis of privacy and security issues, here.

Measuring a Supreme Court Justice's "Tweetability" Quotient

Jack Metzler has published Most Tweetable Justice: An Empirical Study. Here is the abstract.

Twitter has profoundly changed how people communicate with one another and learn about the world. In less than a decade since it first launched, Twitter has become the place where all news breaks first, where political revolutions are launched, and where presidential campaigns are conducted. The service has more than half a billion users, who use Twitter to talk about the news, follow celebrities, support sports teams, conduct business, and learn about one another. Twitter has touched every area of human interaction, and the law is no exception. Thus, although no member of the Supreme Court uses Twitter officially (yet), the world needs to know which Justice is most “tweetable.” The paper uses data from the SCOTUS Search database to rank the Justices by whether their oral argument statements are fit to be tweeted.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.