-= H A C K E R S =- Issue #8, File #3 of 9 Checks and Balances Courtesy of Voters Telecommunications Watch =========================================================================== VTW BillWatch #62 VTW BillWatch: A newsletter tracking US Federal legislation affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is out of session) BillWatch is produced and published by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) Issue #62, Date: Tue Oct 22 02:32:41 EDT 1996 Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end. ___________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS New feature at VTW: CaseWatch About VTW Center's CaseWatch Subscription Information and donation policy (unchanged 2/18/96) ___________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION BY SHABBIR J. SAFDAR I'm still not quite sure how we've done this, but I'm proud to say that we still don't have any money and we're about to announce a brand new Web publication. Today, our nonprofit organization, the VTW Center for Internet Education, unveils a new publication dedicated to following important legal disputes that affect the net. Our new publication, CaseWatch (http://www.vtwctr.org/casewatch/), focuses on the evolving common law of the Internet. Small, often private disputes between individuals and organizations are today creating the common law of the Internet, in at least as much as they are a sign of society's continuing discourse on how to integrate the Internet into our lives. The disputes we cover in CaseWatch today may continue to be obscure, but more than likely, we'll look back at them many years from now with the benefit of perspective and see their importance. CaseWatch isn't for the faint of heart. It assumes a knowledge of both Internet technology and a not insignificant legal background. However it should still be accessible to most everyone reading this list, as you are already better educated on these issues than most of the public. CaseWatch is researched and produced by Diana Jarvis (daj@vtw.org). Diana graduated from Harvard in 1986, and Yale Law School in 1992. She clerked for Justice Robert W. Sweet, a Federal District Judge in the southern district of New York. She has been with VTW since 1994 and is currently VTW Center's Staff Counsel. Please take a moment and visit CaseWatch at VTW Center's new home page at http://www.vtwctr.org Most of all, take a moment to send a note of congratulations to Diana for her first VTW publication, as well as starting work as VTW Center's first full time staff member. She can be reached at daj@vtw.org. Here is this month's CaseWatch synopsis: What community standards should determine the obscenity of images loaded onto a Californian BBS and downloaded into Tennessee? We still don't know, thanks to the fact that Robert Thomas' habit of collecting addresses from all his customers enabled the Sixth Circuit to decide that the mere presence of a computer BBS did not make his operation any different from the traditional pornographer who sends magazines or videotapes through the mail. The Supreme Court apparently agrees, having denied certioriari on October 7th. Don't forget! On Sunday November 3, 1996 will be the seminar on the New York State Internet Censorship legislation. Be a part of it by showing up, or show up online through RealAudio and participate in the trivia contest to win valuable prizes (including VTW tshirts!). For more information on the seminar, see http://www.vtw.org/speech/ ___________________________________________________________________________ ABOUT CASEWATCH [The following information is taken from http://www.vtwctr.org/casewatch/about/] The legislation tracked by VTW is not the only law in cyberspace. As the Internet becomes more prevalent, it will inevitably become the subject of disputes, some of which will be settled in court. Because the law laid down by judges in their opinions resolving these disputes -- the common law -- is just as much law as legislation passed by Congress, CaseWatch will try to track court opinions on issues affecting the online community much as BillWatch tracks legislation. Chicago Law School professor Lawrence Lessig has argued for a chance to allow the common law of cyberspace to developed unhindered by unnecessary and premature legislation: "[W]hat the system of cyberspace regulation will need is a way to pace any process of regulation -- a way to let the experience catch up with the technology .... This is the practice of the common law. [It] is democratic not because many people get to vote together on what the law should mean, but because many people get to say what the common law should mean, each ofter the other, in a temporally spaced dialogue of cases and jurisdiction. Unlike other lawmaking, what defines the process of the common law is small change, upon which much large change gets built; small understandings with which new understandings get made. What counsels it here is the way this process will function to create in an as yet uninhabited, unconstructed, world. What will be new are the communities that this space will allow, the constructive ... possibilities that these communities will bring. People meet, and talk, and live in cyberspace in ways not possible in real space. They build and define themselves in cyberspace in ways not possible in real space. And before they get cut apart by regulation, we should know something about their form, and more about their potential." The Path of Cyberlaw, 104 Yale L.J. 1743, 1743-46 (1995). Every new issue of Casewatch will try to bring you a new, usually quite recent case that will reflect the development of Lessig's common law of cyberspace and highlight the ways in which the Internet is quickly being drawn into our legal lexicon. ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION AND DONATION POLICY We do not accept unsolicited donations at this time. If you want to help, for heaven's sakes, register to vote at http://netvote96.mci.com/register.html. You can receive BillWatch via email or WWW: To subscribe via email, send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "subscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe from BillWatch send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "unsubscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. BillWatch can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/ ___________________________________________________________________________ End VTW BillWatch Issue #62, Date: Tue Oct 22 02:32:41 EDT 1996 ___________________________________________________________________________ This file provided by: Voters Telecommunications Watch *** Watching out for your civil liberties *** Email: vtw@vtw.org (preferred) Gopher: gopher -p1/vtw gopher.panix.com URL: http://www.vtw.org/ Telephone: (718) 596-2851 (last resort) =========================================================================== VTW BillWatch #63 VTW BillWatch: A newsletter tracking US Federal legislation affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is out of session) BillWatch is produced and published by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) Issue #63, Date: Tue Oct 29 00:18:48 EST 1996 Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end. ___________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS CaseWatch: Jurisdiction in cyberspace Subscription Information and donation policy (unchanged 2/18/96) ___________________________________________________________________________ CASEWATCH: JURISDICTION IN CYBERSPACE [Here is a summary of this week's CaseWatch, http://www.vtwctr.org/casewatch/] Dennis Toeppen is the guy who registered "Panavision.com" (and then posted aerial photographs of Pana, Ill, on the site until NSI put it on hold) along with approximately 240 other domain names, at least some of them 'bitchin' corporate names'; as Josh Quittner put it in his Wired column about mcdonalds.com. By now at least four of the companies which have discovered their companyname.com registered to Toeppen have now sued for assorted trademark violations -- one of them being Panavision, of course -- and although the real question is whether Panavision has a right to Panavision.com simply because it has trademarked the name, the first question, as it turns out, is whether Panavision (which is based in California) can sue Toeppen in a court in the state of California, when the guy by his own admission rarely goes there and maintains his web page in Illinois. The court's analysis is this: it's not just having a web page -- it's what you're doing with your web page which dictates where you can get sued (and if you're infringing a trademark, you've had an effect in the trademark owner's home town). But the details haven't all been worked out yet. .... [Read the whole story for free in this week's CaseWatch, http://www.vtwctr.org/casewatch/] ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION AND DONATION POLICY We do not accept unsolicited donations at this time. If you want to help, for heaven's sakes, register to vote at http://netvote96.mci.com/register.html. You can receive BillWatch via email or WWW: To subscribe via email, send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "subscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe from BillWatch send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "unsubscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. BillWatch can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/ ___________________________________________________________________________ End VTW BillWatch Issue #63, Date: Tue Oct 29 00:18:48 EST 1996 ___________________________________________________________________________ This file provided by: Voters Telecommunications Watch *** Watching out for your civil liberties *** Email: vtw@vtw.org (preferred) Gopher: gopher -p1/vtw gopher.panix.com URL: http://www.vtw.org/ Telephone: (718) 596-2851 (last resort) Copyright 1994-1996 (commercial use without permission prohibited) =========================================================================== Copyright 1994-1996 (commercial use without permission prohibited) =========================================================================== * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *