Rethinking Rights and Regulations: Institutional Responses to New Communications Technologies

Front Cover
Lorrie Faith Cranor, Steven S. Wildman
MIT Press, Aug 29, 2003 - Business & Economics - 456 pages
Contributors to this volume explore the dynamics of new communications technologies and public policy; from TPRC 2002.

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
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

Functionality as the Distinction Between Patent and Copyright Subject Matter
227

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About the author (2003)

Lorrie Faith Cranor is a Principal Technical Staff Member in the Secure Systems Research Department at AT&T Labs-Research.

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.

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