Property Is a Two-Way Street: Personal Copyright Use and Implied Authorization

When we use the Internet, we know that copyright law limits our freedom. We know, for example, that downloading popular music is legally risky. Those who want to get moralistic about it argue that illegal downloading violates a property right of the copyright holder. But what about our property rights in our computers? Even if copyright is a form of property, it maintains a parallel existence as an intrusion upon property rights. This intrusion is increasingly a part of daily life, as copyright\u27s literal scope sweeps broadly enough to threaten a range of everyday activities that social norms rega rd as acceptable. These observations form the basis of a moral critique of copyright law, but they do not figure prominently in modern doctrine. This Article looks to the common law property rights of copyright users to develop a framework for limiting copyright\u27s reach. If we take seriously traditional rules governing the interplay between statutes and preexisting common law rights, courts have room to incorporate user property rights into copyright doctrine. First, the common law provides a baseline against which the Copyright Act should be construed. Courts should be reluctant to interpret the statute in a manner that negates longstanding expectations that personal property may be used in conjunction with copyrighted material for personal purposes. Second, the property rights of copyright users offer a new foundation for implied license doctrine. Instead of looking solely to the conduct of the licensor (i.e., the copyright holder) to determine whether an implied license to use copyrighted content exists, courts should appreciate the reasonable expectations of consumers in their control of personal property used to interact with the protected works. Expanding our conception of implied license in this manner would help address the uneasy status of personal uses of copyrighted work s under modern law

Rebooting Cybertort Law

Cyberspace provides an ideal legal environment for tortfeasors and online criminals because Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have no duty to mitigate harms caused by ongoing torts, crimes, and infringing acts. Courts have stretched Congress\u27s express language in § 230 of the Communications Decency Act from the narrow purpose of immunizing ISPs as publishers to the expanded purpose of shielding them from all tort liability. This Article proposes imposing a limited duty of care on ISPs to remove or block ongoing tortious activities on their services when they have been given actual notice. This reform will harmonize American ISP liability law with the European Union\u27s Electronic Commerce Directive, which imposes an affirmative duty on ISPs to take down objectionable materials. It also will unify U.S. law by creating procedures consistent with the takedown policy mandated by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Using Payment Gateways to Maintain Privacy in Secure Electronic Transactions

Because many current payment systems are poorly implemented, or of incompetence, private data of consumers such as payment details, addresses and their purchase history can be compromised. Furthermore, current payment systems do not offer any non-repudiable verification to a completed transaction, which poses risks to all the parties of the transaction -- the consumer, the merchant and the financial institution. One solution to this problem was SET, but it was never really a success because of its complexity and poor reception from consumers. In this paper, we introduce a third party payment system that aims to preserve privacy by severing the link between their purchase and payment records, while providing a traceable transaction that maintains its integrity and is non-repudiable. Our system also removes much of the responsibilities placed on the merchant with regards to securing sensitive data related to customer payment, thus increasing the potential of small businesses to take part in e-commerce without significant investments in computer security

The electronic monitoring of employees in the workplace.

Thesis - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.No abstract availabl