A tale of two rights: mediating between P2P owners and digital copyright holders.

The emergence of peer-to-peer file sharing technology revolutionises the discourse around copyright infringement. This new pirate of digital technology poses challenges not only to legal structures but it redefines tensions among various stakeholders: artists and creators genuine users of copyrighted works, content industries and technologists. They threaten cultural production turning users to consumers without effort to become producers. Conversely, it is contended that such software increase collaborative interactions and change the way we perceive social and communicative structures. A caveat is that the response of law when juxtapose with technological changes in the internet itself, has heavily increased the effective regulation of creativity. This paper examines the early debate around the regulation of p2p software. Can there be a middle ground

Physicians and Safe Harbor Legal Immunity

Professor Sandra Johnson has identified what she calls physician’s “bad law” claims. In some circumstances, physicians perceive that there is significant legal risk in doing what they think is clinically appropriate. In response, physicians sometimes take a medically inappropriate course of action, because it appears safer. For example, physicians might feel intimidated by aggressively enforced drug control laws. In response, they may under-treat patients’ pain to avoid perceived (and real) threats of investigation, discipline, or criminal prosecution. In short, well-meaning laws sometimes have the unintended side-effect of incentivizing physicians to do “bad” things. Johnson identifies three responses to physicians’ “bad law” claims. Each of these is aimed at “relieving [physicians’] fears and reducing or managing the legal risk, real or perceived, so that doctors can freely engage in the socially desirable behaviors threatened by the operation of the putative bad law.” First, to the extent that physicians’ fears of the law are based on misinformation or misunderstanding, it might seem that they could be educated about the actual (often low or virtually non-existent) legal risk. Second, if physicians perceive a particular desirable course of action as too risky, asymmetrical incentives might be eliminated by making inappropriate alternatives equally risky. But Johnson explains that these two responses are typically unlikely to be effective. The third response to “bad law” claims is safe harbor legal immunity. Johnson observes that this is one of “the more familiar legislative responses to physician-reported fears of legal risks.” Indeed, it would seem to be the strongest legal weapon in quelling physicians’ fears of legal risk. Immunity, after all, is a classic mechanism for encouraging legally fearful individuals to do their job. But Johnson concludes that “the evidence seems to indicate otherwise.” When does legal safe harbor immunity work to dispel physicians’ legal fears? When does it fail? What are the essential attributes of an effective safe harbor? What are the limitations? These are the question that I will address in this Article. In Section I, I provide a brief taxonomy of medical safe harbors. In Section II, I outline the essential attributes of an effective safe harbor. Finally, in Section III, I discuss three key limitations of medical safe harbors. Notwithstanding these limitations, I conclude that safe harbors can be an efficacious mechanism for addressing physicians’ “bad law” claims

Peer-to-Peering beyond the Horizon: Can a P2P Network Avoid Liability by Adapting Its Technological Structure?

Peer-to-peer networks are often used to infringe copyrights, but they also serve some legitimate purposes consistent with copyright law. In attempting to find a satisfactor solution, this note develops and analyzes two models that future peer-to-peer networks could employ to attempt to avoid liability for copyright infringement. The note then analyzes the law, applies the two models to the relevant legal tests, and analyzes whether a peer-to-peer network operating on each model could avoid liability for copyright infringement. It concludes that modifying their technological structure may help peer-to-peer networks avoid liability, but that some risks remain

The practical difficulties of applying the tort Private International Law rules to the internet using online copyright infringement as the primary research component

PhD ThesisThe objective of this thesis is to analyse the very real and practical difficulties faced by lawyers in applying the tort private international law (PIL) rules to the internet and to investigate which factors, technology-related or otherwise, either assist or hinder the application of the PIL rules to the internet. These practical difficulties arise from the fact that many of the basic provisions of PIL relate to physical world (or offline) elements such as domicile, nationality and place of damage or harmful event (locus delicti). Effective application of PIL rules is dependent on sovereign competence operating within clear jurisdictional borders. As a consequence, difficulties arise for conflicts lawyers as the internet often disregards borders. Ubiquitous torts, such as unauthorised peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing affecting copyright works and online defamation have become commonplace in the online world