• Selected
• Entire List

Abstract:
Computer scientists have recently undermined our faith in the privacy-protecting power of anonymization, the name for techniques for protecting the privacy of individuals in large databases by deleting information like names and social security numbers. These scientists have demonstrated they can often 'reidentify' or 'deanonymize' individuals hidden in anonymized data with astonishing ease. By understanding this research, we will realize we have made a mistake, labored beneath a fundamental misunderstanding, which has assured us much less privacy than we have assumed. This mistake pervades nearly every information privacy law, regulation, and debate, yet regulators and legal scholars have paid it scant attention. We must respond to the surprising failure of anonymization, and this Article provides the tools to do so.

privacy, information privacy, anonymization, reidentification, deidentification, HIPAA, Data Protection Directive

Abstract:
Nothing in society poses as grave a threat to privacy as the Internet Service Provider (ISP). ISPs carry their users' conversations, secrets, relationships, acts, and omissions. Until the very recent past, they had left most of these alone because they had lacked the tools to spy invasively, but with recent advances in eavesdropping technology, they can now spy on people in unprecedented ways. Meanwhile, advertisers and copyright owners have been tempting them to put their users' secrets up for sale, and judging from a recent flurry of reports, ISPs are giving in to the temptation and experimenting with new forms of spying. This is only the leading edge of a coming storm of unprecedented and invasive ISP surveillance.

This Article proposes an innovative new theory of communications privacy to help policymakers strike the proper balance between user privacy and ISP need. We cannot simply ban aggressive monitoring, because ISPs have legitimate reasons for scrutinizing communications on an Internet teeming with threats. Using this new theory, policymakers will be able to distinguish between an ISP's legitimate needs and mere desires.

In addition, this Article injects privacy into the network neutrality debate - a debate about who gets to control innovation on the Internet. Despite the thousands of pages that have already been written about the topic, nobody has recognized that we already enjoy mandatory network neutrality in the form of expansive wiretapping laws. The recognition of this idea will flip the status quo and reinvigorate a stagnant debate by introducing privacy and personal autonomy into a discussion that has only ever been about economics and innovation.

privacy, Internet, cyberlaw, ISP, wiretap, charter, comcast, nebuad, phorm, network neutrality

Abstract:
Fear of the powerful computer user, "the Superuser," dominates debates about online conflict. This mythic figure is difficult to find, immune to technological constraints, and aware of legal loopholes. Policymakers, fearful of his power, too often overreact, passing overbroad, ambiguous laws intended to ensnare the Superuser, but which are used instead against inculpable, ordinary users. This response is unwarranted because the Superuser is often a marginal figure whose power has been greatly exaggerated.

The exaggerated attention to the Superuser reveals a pathological characteristic of the study of power, crime, and security online, which springs from a widely-held fear of the Internet. Building on the social science fear literature, this Article challenges the conventional wisdom and standard assumptions about the role of experts. Unlike dispassionate experts in other fields, computer experts are as susceptible as lay-people to exaggerate the power of the Superuser, in part because they have misapplied Larry Lessig's ideas about code.

The experts in computer security and Internet law have failed to deliver us from fear, resulting in overbroad prohibitions, harms to civil liberties, wasted law enforcement resources, and misallocated economic investment. This Article urges policymakers and partisans to stop using tropes of fear; calls for better empirical work on the probability of online harm; and proposes an anti-Precautionary Principle, a presumption against new laws designed to stop the Superuser.

Computer crime, cyberlaw, internet, DRM

Abstract:
This essay proposes a new interdisciplinary research agenda called Computer Programming and the Law. By harnessing the power of computer programming, legal scholars can develop better tools, data, and insights for advancing their research interests. This essay presents the case for this new research agenda, highlights some examples of those who have begun to blaze the trail, and includes code samples to demonstrate the power and potential of developing software for legal scholarship. The code samples in this essay can be run like a piece of software - thanks to a technique known as literate programming - making this the world's first law review article that is also a working computer program.

computer programming, empirical, experimental, cyberlaw, perl, scraping

Abstract:
We present the results of a series of surveys of college-aged consumers of music exploring their willingness to pay for digital downloads of music and measuring the impact of the so-called analog hole. The analog hole refers to a perhaps - unavoidable vulnerability of most digital rights management systems. In short, because people cannot consume digital information directly, every device that performs digital content must convert the digital information into an analog signal, which is very difficult to keep from being copied.

Although the analog hole has been widely decried by content providers, surprisingly little is known about fundamental aspects of how it operates. Can average users exploit the analog hole, or is this limited to sophisticated users? Does analog hole copying significantly degrade the quality of music or video? Will people pay for music that isn't a perfect digital copy? Intuitions and guesses abound, but nobody has ever conducted a study to answer these questions. We have. Although our surveys' sample sizes were too small to come to statistically significant conclusions, we did discover several interesting results including one tantalizingly specific result: What's the analog hole worth? Based on our survey, twenty-four cents. That's how much less our respondents were willing to pay for a music track when a perfect digital copy was replaced by an analog hole copy. Although our results need to be replicated on a larger scale, they suggest many conclusions that have never before been proved: people are willing to pay for less-than-perfect analog hole copies of songs; people will pay much more than half the price of a typically-priced digital music file for its degraded alternative; and even self-avowed "pirates" show a willingness to pay for digital music, albeit at prices well below today's market standard of ninety-nine cents a song.

analog hole, DRM, copyright, empirical

Abstract:
SSRN's download statistics are criticized for being biased in favor of bloggers. Just how does the supposed bias work, and how strong is it?

This paper reports the results of a small empirical study undertaken in April, 2007. While guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy, the author used a small computer program to collect SSRN Abstract View and Download statistics every fifteen minutes.

The study took on an unexpected dimension when links to some of the author's blog posts appeared in an article on the Slashdot website, one of the most widely-read technology websites. This allowed the author to compare the Volokh Effect with the better known and more often studied Slashdot Effect.

This is a quickly-compiled draft summarizing and analyzing the results.

The odds are very good that the author is collecting data about this abstract page, as well.

ssrn, blogs, blogging, empirical law, colorful graphs