Thomas Jefferson School of Law

 

This course will survey legal issues concerning government and private regulation of the Internet, including the regulation of obscenity and other offensive speech, defamation, anonymity, trademarks, copyrights, privacy, and jurisdiction. The Internet is a medium for the transmission of information, and Internet law is the law of control of information. This control can take forms as varied as censorship and copyright. In the United States the First Amendment and the Patent & Copyright Clause of the constitution define the limits of these forms of control. The situation is further complicated by the international nature of the Internet; content forbidden by U.S. law may be legal elsewhere, and content legal in the U.S. may expose U.S. web content publishers to civil or criminal penalties in other countries. This course will provide an overview of some of the areas in which the domestic and international legal system has been placed under the greatest stress by changes in information technology.

 

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