In the 1990s, a number of influential writers suggested that the nature of the Internet would — or could — raise unique regulatory problems and opportunities. Here are five texts that every student of Internet law should be familiar with. (The Froomkin and Johnson & Post articles are long, so please read them only carefully enough to grasp the authors’ major arguments.)
Read: John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)
Skim: A Michael Froomkin, The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage, (1997)
Skim: David Johnson & David Post, Law and Borders - The Rise of Law in Cyberspace, 48 Stanford L. Rev. 1367 (1998) (click the "download this paper" link to download the pdf file)
Read: Larry Lessig, Chapter 4: Architectures of Control in Code v. 2.0 38-60 (2006)
Read: James Grimmelmann, Sealand, HavenCo and the Rule of Law, 2012 University of Illinois Law Review 405
Return to the syllabus.