Internet Lawyer

Internet Lawyer: August Heats Up

Is it me, or just the Internet lawyer in me feeling the heat as summer comes to a close? Facebook has been sued in Texas for data privacy breaches in a case that looks like a big deal. Google lost its fight in NYC to protect a blogger's identity. Banks are sued in Virginia for not helping the anti-spam movement. And Oprah files suit going against websites for unauthorized use of her name and likeness in their advertising and on their sites. All allegations and not proven facts, of course.

But that's a lot of legal action in a week or so. Particularly in mid-August, when almost everything in a trial lawyer's business life shuts down. Is this a sign that people are just fed up with all the nonsense going on out there and aren't going to take anymore? Hard to say, but in my book, Google Bomb, I reveal the inside tricks of online attackers and scofflaws. Maybe we are just starting to catch up with what is really going on. As an Internet lawyer interested in creating and supporting a more civil, law abiding online society, that is good to see. 

Internet Lawyer: The Need For New Laws

As an Internet lawyer I have the task of not only staying abreast of the latest technological and business changes in the online world but also tracking many of the key Internet law cases working their way through the courts. 

Every Internet lawyer must deal with a very rapid pace of change and evolution. Sometimes change happens at an imperceptably slow pace. And so, given that fifteen years have passed since the Internet came into public use, how is it that, according to the Judge in the MySpace suicide case, we don't have criminal laws to protect ourselves from online malicious attacks, even if mere words are spoken? In a world in which mere words can get you in a lot of trouble...threatening the President, or phoning in a bomb threat, or using the telephone lines to harass, why don't we have a functional equivalent for online misconduct? When will we begin to hold accountable the scofflaw who yells "fire" in a crowded theatre? That's the question an Internet lawyer interested in seeing a robust and healthy online society ought to be asking. Congress and state legislatures need to take notice.

Internet Lawyer: Global Free Speech

As an Internet Lawyer I am often involved in helping to define the scope of online "free speech". And at Dozier Internet Law we have been following the attacks on free speech in Iran, the new law that has just passed in Kazakhstan and the efforts ongoing in China to curtail and further control online speech. Are we so provincial in the United States to think that all because we controlled the web in its early days, we are still the epicenter of web commerce and technology, and we passed the first laws to govern the Internet - that our fundamental belief system should be exported and willingly embraced by the rest of the world?

This will be one of the biggest challenges for the governance of the web...who will write the rules by which all play? Can we really expect a country to live up (or down?) to whatever standards we as Americans embrace? And if so, should there be an expectation, then, that those countries should be able to impose their own moral high ground on us in the US? This is an issue that is beginning to come to prominence. The debate about how to govern a world in which everyone might ideally play by the same rules is just beginning. 

If we in the US would never allow a country to impose its own unique, seemingly healthy, but clearly objectionable rules on us, why should we expect other countries to do so?

Internet Lawyer Thoughts

As an Internet lawyer, I'll be commenting here on the state of the web and some of the more interesting or compelling ethical, legal and moral issues I run into, or think about. Join in the discussion. Prior to becoming a full time Internet lawyer in 2001, I was the founder and CEO of a venture backed E-commerce business. I was also the chief architect and technologist of e-commerce applications for American Express, Citicorp, and Sears in the 1990s. Prior to my Internet lawyer days I was a trial lawyer beginning in 1981. So if there is something I say that piques your interest, let me know.