EFF "David_Johnson" Archive

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access_rights_johnson.article

"Access Rights -- All Power to the Sysop?", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Some enlightened sysops will create mechanisms by means of which users can participate in making rules and overseeing their enforcement. Will those sysops prosper in preference to others who act less accountably? Will the existence of checks on arbitrary exercises of raw power help to keep other, external, regulators at bay?"

anonymity_online_johnson.article

"The Unscrupulous Diner's Dilemma and Anonymity in Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "The ultimate implication, I believe, is that to achieve a civilized form of cyberspace, we have to limit the use of anonymous communications. Many early citizens of cyberspace will bitterly oppose any such development, arguing that anonymous and pseudonymous electronic communications are vital to preserve electronic freedoms and allow free expression of human personality. But the problem with that view is that we all collectively face the diners' dilemma -- we must collaborate in groups to build a rich social fabric, and we know that the ability to act anonymously, sporadically, in large groups brings out the worst in human character." One of Mr. Johnson's more controversial pieces.

content_regulation_johnson.article

"Taking Cyberspace Seriously: Dealing with Obnoxious Messages on the Net", David Johnson. Excerpt: "Territorially-based laws fail us when we confront new phenomena involving participants whose geographical locations span legal jurisdictions and have little relationship to the locus of the harms they might inflict...we can reduce the intensity of the debate, and find some real solutions...if we take seriously the idea that cyberspace is a separate place...fully absorb the fact that most communications on the net amount to the joint creation of a new shared space allowing the assembly of like-minded individuals."

cops_net_architecture_johnson.article

"Law Enforcement and The Architecture of Cyberspace -- Should the Cops on the Beat Design the Electronic Street?", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "The Administration has made its position clear: it will seek to encourage the use of the "Clipper Chip" and push for legislation that will require electronic communications systems to be designed to facilitate wiretapping and surveillance in real time...So we have a set of proposals that, in somewhat breath-taking fashion, claim for the cops not only the right to walk the beat but a privilege to say just how the street will be designed...But no such origin accounts for our best public spaces and I can tell you...that putting wiretapping at the top of the design priority list is a really dumb idea..."

cyber_barbwire_johnson.article

"Barbed Wire Fences in Cyberspace: The Threat Posed by Calls for Ownership of Transactional Information", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Concerned about the threat to privacy created by such electronic dossiers, some have called for new laws granting each of us "ownership" of all the transactional information generated as we move around the network...This may produce a sort of cattle drive vs. sheep herder battle on the electronic frontier. Either "information wants to be free" or we can all put barbed wire around the tracks we leave -- but we can't have both a free information range and a system of information ownership. The First Amendment implications of any such privacy regime are staggering."

cyber_first_amend_johnson.article

"Volume Controls in Cyberspace? -- Hard First Amendment Questions in the Age of Electronic Networking", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Some call for enforcement of the First Amendment in cyberspace. Some point out that the First Amendment is a local U.S. ordinance...But no one has yet come to grips with the hard question of how we will balance the community interests in imposing some limitations on speech against the desire to facilitate open communication over the Net...In other words, if we did have a "First Amendment" in cyberspace, generally agreed upon as a global balancing tool for the rights of speech and the protection of other interests, what would it say?"

cyber_law_office_johnson.article

"Designing Your Law Office in Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "If you practice law with a computer, you already have an office in Cyberspace...You should pay attention to your Cyberspace office for two critical reasons. First, there are many clients who can get there more easily than they can get to your physical office...[and] unless you take an interest, the place you personally go to through your computer screen will be designed by staff members or computer companies who have no idea at all about your taste in virtual furnishings."

cyberjuris_quidproquo_johnson.article

"Jurisdictional Quid Pro Quo and the Law of Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "...both national and international law doctrines regarding jurisdiction rely heavily on questions regarding the (1) the extent of the voluntary "contacts" the relevant person has had with the interested jurisdiction and (2) the fairness of asserting personal jurisdiction over the acts of a foreign person. There is a sliding scale, with the importance of looking to fairness becoming greater as the extent of contacts diminishes. There may also be a corrollation between a state's assertion of jurisdiction over a person or matter and its practical ability to enforce a judgment."

cyberlaw_johnson.article

"Lawmaking and Law Enforcement in Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "One way to advance exploration of the question whether Cyberspace should be self-regulating (or, perhaps, even "sovereign" within its sphere) is to discuss in concrete terms how the law of Cyberspace can be made and enforced so as to achieve both effectiveness and fundamental principles of fairness."

future_legal_net_johnson.article

"The Future of the Net - As It Pertains to Lawyers", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "As we contemplate the inevitable emergence of new disputes and some new creative opportunities, all of us who are lawyers should look carefully at the wonderful things that have been accomplished on the net without any traditional law -- and attempt as best we can, consistently with the constraints of growth and newbies and commerce and boundaries, to preserve the spirit of the old net as we try to help build the new one."

good_fences_johnson.article

"Electronic Communications Privacy: Good Sysops Should Build Good Fences", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Congress was right to make the extent of electronic privacy protection depend substantially on context-any other approach would have interfered with open access to communications intended to be publicly disseminated. But the result of this approach is that every system operator ("Sysop") of an electronic communications system or remote computing service bears an added burden-a duty to make clear to all concerned which types of messages may be disclosed to others and which may not."

granularity_cyberlaw_johnson.article

"Granularity and the Law of Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: 'With regard to intellectual property doctrine, the simultaneous bigness and smallness of intellectual artifacts in cyberspace causes serious problems. Should we consider each e-mail message a "work"? How can we use the "proportion taken" factor in a "fair use" analysis when we are dealing with the copying and forwarding of "whole" e-mail messages?...The same can be said about many other areas of law. The large numbers of small bits traversing a network make it nearly impossible for a sysop to review messages in advance -- and therefore requires us to rethink the application to sysops of traditional "publisher" liability for defamation...'

lauritsen_johnson_legal_comp.article

"Re-envisioning Law Practice with Computers: Collaboration and Visualization", by Marc Lauritsen & David Johnson. (Prepared for the Sixth Annual Technology in the Law Practice Conference, March 1992)

legal_software_johnson.article

"Beyond Personal Productivity Software: A Proposal for Joint Development of Substantive Power [Software] Tools Designed for Use By Lawyers in Groups". Paper by David Johnson.

net_redist_johnson.article

"Creating Network Redistribution Rights -- Does Electronic Information Really Want to Be Free?", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: 'For some time, a debate has raged between the high priests of copyright orthodoxy ("nothing is broken; copyright always adapts") and a growing group (copypunks?) who say we need a new form of intellectual property for electronic networks ("it's broken, and we're glad").'

new_cyber_caselaw_johnson.article

"The New Case Law of Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Can we use the net itself to perform adjudication and to create a[n online equivalent of] "common law?"...If we want to develop principled consideration and articulation of widely shared values, rather than mob rule and lynchings, we need to capture some of the best attributes of the networks conversation leading to consensus -- in reacting to particular cases and controversies."

online_dispute_resolution_johnson.article

"Dispute Resolution in Cyberspace", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Should the networks themselves evolve new and better ways to resolve the disputes that arise in connection with their use?...Disputes that have arisen over the networks are, demonstrably, different in character, as well as subject matter, from more traditional fights...If there were a special set of rules applicable to the resolution of disputes in cyberspace, it seems likely that those rules should reflect and respect the special (and best) characteristics of the territory."

reward_online_authors_johnson.article

"Rewarding Authorship in Cyberspace: Is Intellectual Property the Answer or the Problem?", article by David Johnson. Excerpt: "Everywhere we turn, there are stern warnings that the new ease of making electronic copies will destroy incentives for the creation of new works -- and, therefore, that the network will destroy culture as we know it unless strong new measures are taken to enforce copyright and patent laws...Let me try to make the contrary case: the case that intellectual property law is creating serious problems and that we need to find ways to weaken our current protections dramatically for intellectual property [online]..."

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