Rethinking Rights and Regulations: Institutional Responses to New Communication Technologies

Lorrie Faith Cranor, Steven S. Wildman

MIT Press, 2003 - Business & Economics - 446 pages

The contributors to this volume examine issues raised by the intersection of new communications technologies and public policy in this post-boom, post-bust era. Originally presented at the 30th Research Conference on Communication, Information, and Internet Policy (TPRC 2002)—traditionally a showcase for the best academic research on this topic—their work combines hard data and deep analysis to explore the dynamic interplay between technological development and society.

The chapters in the first section consider the ways society conceptualizes new information technologies and their implications for law and policy, examining the common metaphor of "cyberspace as place," alternative definitions of the Internet, the concept of a namespace, and measures of diffusion. The chapters in the second section discuss how technological change may force the rethinking of legal rights; topics considered include spectrum rights, intellectual property, copyright and "paracopyright," and the abridgement of constitutional rights by commercial rights in ISP rules. Chapters in the third and final section examine the constant adjustment and reinterpretation of regulations in response to technological change, considering, among other subjects, liability regimes for common carriers and the 1996 detariffing rule, privacy and enhanced 911, and the residual effect of state ownership on privatized telecommunication carriers. The policy implications of Rethinking Rights and Regulations are clear: major institutional changes may be the necessary response to major advances in telecommunications technology.

Contents

• Cyberspace as Place: 3
• Place and Cyberspace: 29
• Will the Real Internet Please Stand Up? An Attorneys Quest to Define the Internet: 55
• Governance in Namespaces: 81
• The Geographic Dispersion of Commercial Internet Use: 113
• The Evolution of Legal Rights: 147
• Some Economics of Wireless Communications: 149
• Spectrum Management Property Rights Markets and the Commons: 193
• Functionality as the Distinction Between Patent and Copyright Subject Matter: 227
• Advantage ISP Terms of Service as Media Law: 249
• Anticircumvention Misuse: 279
• Regulatory Innovation and Responses to Technological Change: 307
• Improving Network ReliabilityLiability Rules Must Recognize Investor RiskReward Strategies: 309
• Emergent Locations Implementing Wireless 911 in Texas Virginia and Ontario: 335
• Creative Destruction in Emerging Markets Privatizing Telecoms and the State: 367
• The Potential Relevance to the United States of the European Unions Newly Adopted Regulatory Framework for Telecommunications: 397
• Index: 429

About the author

Steven S. Wildman is James H. Quello Professor of Telecommunication Studies and Director of the James H. and Mary B. Quello Center for Telecommunication Management and Law at Michigan State University.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Rethinking Rights and Regulations: Institutional Responses to New Communication Technologies; Research Conference on Communication, Information, and Internet Policy; Telecommunications Policy Research Conference Series
• Editors: Lorrie Faith Cranor, Steven S. Wildman
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: MIT Press, 2003
• ISBN: 0262262169, 9780262262163
• Length: 446 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Information Management; Computers / Information Technology; Technology & Engineering / Telecommunications