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Abstract: This article takes a critical look at the developing body of cases that address the threshold issue in Internet contracting: the issue of assent. While the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act and the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act remove barriers to Internet contracting by providing that a contract shall not be denied legal effect solely because it is in electronic form, the statutes leave the substantive law of contracts intact. Therefore, it is up to the courts to define the extent to which the rules of assent should be modified to adapt to electronic transactions. While the Internet is new, the challenges presented by Internet contracts are not. Traditional contract rules, based on the paradigm of two individuals meeting face-to-face to negotiate written terms, have been modified over the years to accommodate diverse methods of communicating contract terms. These modifications have been fashioned to account for the different signals sent to offerees by new methods of contracting. Today's courts, however, virtually ignore the fact that the common law of contracts has developed rules that account for the different signals sent by contract terms that are delivered in novel ways. This article argues that courts must consider the cautionary function that the paper contract form has traditionally served and account for the different signals sent by electronic contracts. To support this argument, the article reviews the electronic contracting case law and compares it to older cases addressing the issue of assent when contract terms are delivered by novel methods. The paper then discusses the factual differences between paper and electronic contracts, drawing on computer science and marketing scholarship examining the ways that individuals perceive electronic communications. The paper concludes by suggesting approaches to the assent issue that take these different perceptions into account.
contracts, internet
Abstract: Virtual worlds such as Second Life have received a lot of press in the United States recently. As individuals and businesses participate in these virtual worlds, questions arise regarding the application of existing laws to their virtual world transactions. Many questions have arisen regarding the property rights of participants in virtual worlds, and a Second Life member recently sued Linden Research, the company that developed Second Life, alleging that Second Life converted his virtual property. The questions regarding the legal nature of virtual world assets tend to mirror the questions regarding intangible rights generally, as courts have tended to struggle over whether these rights are property rights or contract rights. In this paper, I propose that the principle of numerus clausus be applied to virtual property, so that courts faced with disputes over such assets will have mandatory property forms to which to resort. Such an approach would limit the ability of vendors of such rights to customize them through their contracts, which are commonly embodied in electronically-presented standard forms.
property, virtual worlds, cyberspace
Abstract: This article analyzes the judicial decisions involving Internet and other electronic contracts during the period from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006. The authors explain that this year's cases show a maturation of the common law of electronic contracts in that the judges are beginning to recognize the realities of electronic communications and to apply traditional contract principles to those communications unless the realities of the technology justifies a different result.
Internet, contracts, cyberspace
Abstract: In this annual survey, we discuss the electronic contracting cases decided between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. In the article, we discuss issues involving contract formation, procedural unconscionability, the scope of UETA and E-SIGN, and contracts formed by automated agents. We conclude that whatever doctrinal doubt judges and scholars may once have had about applying standard contract law to electronic transactions, those doubts have now been largely resolved, and that the decisions involving electronic contracts are following the general law of contracts pretty closely.
contracts, electronic commerce, cyberspace
Abstract: In this survey, we discuss electronic contracting cases decided between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008. In addition to cases adding to the literature on the enforceability of online contracts, this survey includes cases discussing modification of online contracts, incorporation by reference, and unconscionability. We conclude that our common law is developing nicely to address the issues presented by internet contracting.
contracts, internet, cyberspace, contract modification, unconscionability
Abstract: In April, 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act ("BAPCPA"), the first major overhaul of bankruptcy law in 25 years. The proponents of BAPCPA were motivated primarily by a desire to put an end to bankruptcy abuse. The types bankruptcy abuse that BAPCPA's proponents wished to discontinue included liquidations by consumers who might be able to fund a repayment plan and the sheltering of assets in high-exemption states. This paper focuses on the second type of abuse, pre-bankruptcy exemption planning. Prior to the enactment of BAPCPA, courts exercised an enormous amount of discretion in determining whether a debtor's conversion of non-exempt assets to exempt assets before bankruptcy was fraudulent as to creditors. The new legislation removes judicial discretion when certain types of asset conversions are involved, primarily conversions of personal property into exempt homesteads. In my article, I analyze whether these changes, which on their face seem to discourage pre-bankruptcy asset conversions, in fact impose any greater penalties on debtors than did the case law pre-BAPCPA.
bankruptcy, fraudulent transfers, exemptions
Abstract: Almost fifty years ago, Grant Gilmore, the co-reporter for Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, recognized the difficulties that intangible assets pose for commercial law, noting that if you can see it, count, weigh and measure it, it exists; if you can't, it doesn't. The original drafters of Article 9 were concerned primarily about facilitating secured transactions in intangible payment rights. Today, the difficulties that Gilmore identified are multiplied by the proliferation of electronic assets, such as Internet domain names and assets in virtual worlds such as Second Life. Although Article 9 of the UCC was revised fairly recently, one area in which it does not adequately cover electronic assets is in its enforcement provisions. The enforcement provisions in Article 9 are based on a false distinction, a distinction based on the tangibility or intangibility of the asset in question. While courts can modernize commercial law through their decisions, courts faced with emerging electronic assets tend to cling to the same false distinction, viewing tangible property as the property paradigm and viewing many intangible assets as either new forms of intellectual property, or worse, as not property at all. This paper explores the problems caused by commercial law's fealty, in the creditors' remedies area, to the notion of tangibility, and suggests that courts and other lawmaking bodies look to general property principles in fashioning rules to govern electronic assets. The article analyzes recent judicial decisions and legislative enactments dealing with electronic assets and identifies some common mistakes that lawmaking institutions make in dealing with these new types of assets. The article concludes by analyzing some older decisions in which courts were forced to refine the concept of possession to account for new types of assets and suggests that courts dealing with electronic assets look to these, and not necessarily to other cases dealing with intangibles, in fashioning rules to govern electronic assets.
property, secured transactions, electronic assets, electronic commerce
Abstract: This is an article about how disputes over virtual world items, such as virtual money, Second Life islands, and even sex beds, can inform property law generally. Rights in these virtual world items, like rights in software and many other intangible assets, are transferred by standard-form agreements that are often designated as licenses. For many readers, virtual worlds need no definition; it has been hard to read a major newspaper in the past several years without encountering an article about virtual worlds. In the past several years, Second Life and other virtual worlds were featured in numerous articles in major American newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.
Virtual worlds have captured the attention of legal and other scholars. The legal literature tends to focus on the application of real world laws to the virtual environment. Some have discussed how our property laws should apply in virtual worlds; others have questioned whether virtual worlds need their own governance institutions. In this article, I will take another approach. Rather than asking whether real world laws can or should apply to virtual worlds, I will discuss the ways in which the study of virtual worlds can contribute to real world law. Specifically, I will explain what the study of virtual world assets can do for property law.
In this paper, I argue that virtual world assets are significant because they graphically illustrate the different rights that persons can hold in an intangible asset. Once we see that intangible assets encompass the very same rights that are embodied in tangible assets, we can understand that the law should not permit the unfettered customization of property rights in intangible assets by standard form agreements, just as the law does not permit the unlimited customization of property rights in tangible assets and real property. My thesis is that a study of virtual world assets can help us understand why the numerus clausus principle should be more rigorously applied to rights in intangible assets and that the numerus clausus can, in turn, assist us interpreting the standard-form agreements that convey rights in these assets.
clickwrap, virtual worlds, virtual property, numerus clausus
Abstract: This article reviews recent developments in the United States and the European Union involving Internet transactions. It describes those developments and analyzes both from a normative and practical perspective.
cyberspace law
Abstract: In this survey, we review electronic contracting cases decided between June 15, 2008 and June 15, 2009. During that period we found that there was not much action on the formation by click-wrap and browse-wrap front. We have previously observed that the law of electronic contracts has matured, and the fact that there have not been any decisions on whether click-wrap and browse-wrap are effective ways of forming contracts reflects that observation. This year brought us three modification cases, two cases in which a party alleged that it was not bound to the offered terms because an unauthorized party agreed to the terms, one case in which formation by the exchange of e-mail messages was at issue, and one in which plaintiffs argued, unsuccessfully, that they were third-party beneficiaries of the Craigslist Terms of Use. Finally, our last case addresses a question not unique to, but common in, electronic contracting cases: does Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code govern the transfer of software?
contracts, electronic contracts, cyberspace, terms of use
Abstract: In this article, I analyze the opinion in Network Solutions, Inc. v. Umbro International, Inc., the case that sparked much discussion about whether an internet domain name can be considered "property" of the registrant. I argue that for the purposes of creditors' rights laws, the characterization of a domain name as property or not is essentially irrelevant because under the laws governing creditors' rights, almost any right with monetary value can be made available to creditors. The thesis of this article is that judges can rework existing laws governing creditors' remedies to account for new technologies. Courts have been adapting such remedies to novel assets for more than a century, and there is nothing inherent in domain names to suggest that courts cannot do the same with respect to them.
domain name, Newtwork Solutions, Inc. v. Umbro International, Inc., remedies
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