Volume 2
The aim of this Note is to examine standards of First Amendment scrutiny as applied to the "Nuremburg Files." This Note argues that the "true threat" standard, as applied by the jury, is an improper standard of review. Although the jury ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, the verdict relied on an erroneously articulated "true threat" standard and thus stands in serious peril of being reversed on appeal. Instead, some have suggested that more appropriate review resides in the incitement standard. Yet, this Note concludes that the "Nuremburg Files" website still survives constitutional muster under the incitement standard.
Being the general counsel at Netscape was fascinating because Netscape has been involved in many of the most pressing issues concerning the Internet—contracts, copyright, encryption, and privacy, to name a few. The experiences of Netscape show how technology is once again forcing our leaders to deal with many complex issues that make us turn yet again to examine the first principles that have been debated since the founding of our country.
Whenever I tell people that I am involved in the area of law and science, they become perplexed. They ask, "What does science have to do with law? Where is there any science in the legal field?" I want to emphasize the fact that science is everywhere. There is no aspect of the law today, whether civil or criminal law, where an education in basic scientific methods would not greatly improve the effectiveness of legal advocacy and policymaking. I have three objectives for my talk today. First, I will outline the various uses of science in the law. Second, I will try to describe some of the fundamental challenges at the intersection of law and science. Specifically, I want to address the question of whether law and science as institutions or disciplines are simply too far apart intellectually to be integrated. Third, I want to present some solutions to give you a sense of why and how the law can integrate science to some extent into its decisionmaking.
There is a predominantly libertarian slant to political discussion on, and about, the Net. This libertarian slant comes, in part, from the notion that states are helpless to regulate the Net and, in part, from a set of assumptions that the Net is both naturally and structurally a hospitable place for libertarian ideals. Today I want to make the unorthodox claim that libertarianism on the Net is actually surprisingly blind to the potential exercise of state power. That is to say that the central Net libertarian ideas, which I shall call "The Internet Trinity," are actually incorrect because they assume too easily that the Net cannot be regulated. They assume there is no way for the state to control the Internet and thus no reason to fear regulation. So, whether we want it or not, libertarianism will be the regime, or at least there will be no regulation of any extensive kind. From there, the Internet prophets move to arguments about what our community should actually be doing. I am going to argue that the underlying assumptions of these beliefs are incomplete, and in some cases, just wrong.
In the first half of my talk, I will discuss the integration of the legal requirements that the patent system imposes on corporations, and I will contrast the traditional approach, or the approach that is adopted by most corporations, with the approach I deem the optimal approach, the "Walker Digital Approach." That approach evolves continually, so it is flexible and it adapts to the way things should be when you have patent law and patent procedures in mind. The second half of my talk will focus more on Walker Digital itself, and the policies that position Walker Digital as a good patentee. I will also discuss our specific inventions, our licensing policies, and our spin-off policies.