BEN SAUL, University of Sydney - Faculty of Law
Email: B.Saul@usyd.edu.au

Journalists and war correspondents have long assumed a special importance in investigating and documenting war crimes and other human rights violations in armed conflict. In recent years, threats to the safety of journalists have proliferated. This article considers how international law protects journalists and media personnel and objects from violence. The examines the legal regimes applicable in international armed conflict, followed by non-international conflict, and finally violent situations (or public emergencies) beneath the level of armed conflict (such as low-level insurgency, terrorism or other domestic unrest). While the normative legal frameworks protecting journalists and media objects are well developed, the application of those norms raises complex interpretive issues which are examined in this article, while there remains the residual problem - common to humanitarian law as a whole - of securing enforcement and implementation of those norms.

BENJAMIN DURANSKE, Pillsbury Winthrop LLP
Email: benjamin.duranske@pillsburylaw.com
ROBERT J. BLOOMFIELD, Cornell University - Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
Email: rjb9@cornell.edu

Advances in virtual world technology pose risks for the safety and welfare of children. Those advances also alter the interpretations of key terms in applicable laws. For example, in the Miller test for obscenity, virtual worlds constitute places, rather than "works," and may even constitute local communities from which standards are drawn. Additionally, technological advances promise to make virtual worlds places of such significant social benefit that regulators must take care to protect them, even as they protect children who engage with them.

ANN BARTOW, University of South Carolina - School of Law
Email: bartow@law.sc.edu

Efforts to decrease the sexist aspects of online fora have been largely ineffective, and in some instances seemingly counterproductive, in the sense that they have provoked even greater amounts of abuse and harassment with a gendered aspect. And so, in the wake of a series of high profile episodes of cyber sexual harassment, and a grotesque abundance of low profile ones, a new business model was launched. Promising to clean up and monitor online information to defuse the visible impact of coordinated harassment campaigns, a number of entities began to market themselves as knights in cyber shining armor, ready to defend otherwise defenseless people whose reputations have been sullied on the Internet Of course these companies charge a fee and place particular emphasis on women who they recognize as potential clients. This article raises three concerns about these businesses. First, these companies have economic incentives to foster conditions online that perpetuate acts of online harassment, as the more harassment there is online, the greater the number of potential clients. These companies are also incentivized to create fora with hostile climates and to stir up trouble themselves. Second, these companies have economic incentives to oppose legal reforms that might enable online defamation and harassment victims to seek recourse from law enforcement agencies or through the courts. And finally, though they cloak themselves in the mantel of protectors of the innocent, their real agenda is to sell their services to wealthy corporations and individuals for far more nefarious purposes: to help bad actors hide negative information about themselves. This practice creates information asymmetries that can harm anyone who detrimentally relies on what they incorrectly assume to be the best available information and can lead to increases in the sorts of financial losses and personal vulnerability that access to unmanipulated Internet search results might otherwise reduce.

COREY RAYBURN YUNG, The John Marshall Law School
Email: coreyrayburnyung@gmail.com

This article addresses four central questions. First, what is the difference between normal law enforcement policy and a 'war' on crime? Second, assuming such a line can be discerned, has the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act ('AWA') in combination with other sex offender laws triggered a transition to a criminal war on sex offenders? Third, if such a criminal war is emerging, what will be the likely effects of such a transition? Fourth, if such a criminal war is emerging with substantial negative consequences, can it be stopped? By reviewing America’s history of criminal wars, primarily in the War on Drugs, the article identifies three essential characteristics of a criminal war: marshaling of resources, myth creation, and exception making. It concludes that the federalization of sex offender policy brought about by the AWA elevated law enforcement to a nascent criminal war on sex crimes. This change could have repercussions as substantial as the drug war has had on American criminal justice and society.