Internet Law and Tech: Resources
The following are select links relating to the law, policy and business of the internet, emerging technologies and related areas. Last updated: May 25, 2021. Please see the legal disclaimer.
Twitter List:
Internet and Emerging Technology: Law and Policy. A curated Twitter List related to law and policy of the internet, infosec, and emerging technologies. The list follows 170 individuals and organizations, including scholars, legal practitioners, entrepreneurs, members of the business and technology press, public policy advocates, and non-profit organizations.
Websites and Blogs – Internet Law, Tech and Policy:
TechDirt: TechDirt reports on and analyzes changes in government policy, technology and legal issues impacting innovation, as well as the impact of technological innovation on society, civil liberties and consumer rights.
EFF’s DeepLinks Blog: Electronic Frontier Foundation’s blog on law and policy developments, including EFF initiated or supported lawsuits.
CIS Blog: Tech/Internet law and policy updates on the blog of the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School.
Schneier on Security: Bruce Schneier’s blog on security, cryptography and security technology.
Technology & Marketing Law Blog: A multi-contributor blog, founded by Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University School of Law; High Tech Law Institute), focusing primarily on legal developments related to online marketing and advertising.
The Volokh Conspiracy: A multi-contributor, general interest legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy is hosted at Reason. Although not focused specifically on internet law and policy, many entries discuss developments in the area, particularly those by contributors Orin Kerr (professor of law at UC Berkeley Law School and well known scholar in the subjects of computer crime law and internet surveillance) and Stewart Baker (former NSA general counsel and assistant secretary for policy at the United States Department of Homeland Security). Full list of Volokh Conspiracy contributors here.
Michael Geist’s Blog: Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. To a significant extent, his blog emphasizes Canadian IP and Cyberlaw, and he also hosts a tech policy podcast, Law Bytes.
MIT Technology Review: A technology website, rather than a legal blog, but since so many science and technology developments both relate to the internet and have legal and public policy implications, it’s an essential regular read.
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering: The blog of Johns Hopkins research professor, Matthew Green, focused primarily on practical and applied cryptography.
Just Security: An online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy based at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.
Light Blue Touchpaper: An infosec blog by researchers in the security group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
LawFare: The national security law and policy blog of The Lawfare Institute (in cooperation with Brookings).
Tim Wu’s Blog: Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia Law School, author, and public policy advocate, who in recent years has pressed for revitalization of American antitrust with a particular focus on the power of the big tech platforms. In March 2021, Wu was appointed by President Biden to the National Economic Council as a special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy. Upon his appointment by the president, Wu placed his blog and twitter account on hold.
Treatises, Guides and Casebooks:
E-Commerce & Internet Law: Treatise with Forms (Ian C. Ballon; West Publishing; multi-volume set; )
Internet Law: Cases and Problems, 10th Edition (pdf casebook; $30 suggested price) by Professor James Grimmelmann (Professor of law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School). Professor Grimmelmann also blogs at The Laboratorium.
2020 Internet Law Cases and Materials (kindle edition – $9.99; paperback and pdf editions also available) by Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University School of Law; High Tech Law Institute). Professor Goldman also provides additional resources (e.g., course syllabi, exams, sample exam answers, etc.) at this link.
Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases and Materials, 5th edition (2020) (kindle edition; pdf and epub versions also available) by Professors Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University School of Law; High Tech Law Institute) and Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown University Law Center). Professors Goldman and Tushnet also provide additional resources (e.g., course syllabi, exams, sample exam answers, etc.) at this link.
Computer Crime Law (4th edition; January 2018) casebook and 2021 Supplement by Professor Orin Kerr (Berkeley) (West; )
Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age (2020) (2021 edition coming July 2021) by Peter Menell, Mark Lemley, Robert Merges and Shyamkrishna Balganesh; Volume 1 (Amazon Kindle and paperback); Volume 2 (Amazon Kindle and paperback); and Statutes 2020 (Amazon Kindle and paperback).
EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense Guide – described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as “tips, tools and how-tos for safer online communications”. Also see the Free Software Foundation’s Email Self-Defense Guide, but, in both cases, keep in mind my caveat under Tools and Services below.
Robot Law edited by Ryan Calo (University of Washington School of Law), A. Michael Froomkin (University of Miami School of Law), and Ian Kerr (University of Ottawa) ($$$; Edward Elgar Publishing; March 2016).
Fairness and Machine Learning: Limitations and Opportunities by Solon Barocas, Moritz Hardt, and Arvind Narayanan. This constitutes a work-in-progress, incomplete online textbook with, according to the authors, essential chapters still missing.
Trademark Law: An Open Source Casebook, Version of 7.0 (2020) (pdf and .doc versions – free; print version also available for purchase) by Professor Barton Beebe (NYU School of Law).
The United States Copyright Office’s “Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition” (1,301 pages). The compendium (the first since 1984’s Second Edition) took effect on December 22, 2014 (with the most recent updates effective January 28, 2021) and is the governing administrative manual for registrations and recordations issued by the Copyright Office on and after that date.
Email Newsletters:
Tech Policy Watch: – a curated weekly newsletter providing links to artificial intelligence and technology policy articles from around the world. Coordinated by Marietje Schaake (Stanford Cyber Policy Center).
Politico’s Morning CyberSecurity Tipsheet. Sign up (or read online) at the link.
Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram – a monthly email digest of his comments on security. Sign up here.
Just Security‘s daily curated email summaries of national security and related developments. Sign up here.
Benedict Evans’ technology newsletter. Evans formerly worked at Andreessen Horowitz (‘a16z’), a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Sign up (or read online) at the link.
Casey Newton’s Platformer: a newsletter about platforms and democracy from the former Silicon Valley editor of The Verge.
Redecentralize Digest: a monthly newsletter about decentralizing the internet and related technology and politics.
Matt Stoller’s Big: a newsletter on the history and politics of monopoly power from a journalist, author and former U.S. Senate Budget Committee policy advisor and analyst.
ProPublica’s Big Story: a several-times-a-week newsletter detailing major investigations by ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit, investigative journalism newsroom.
Matt Levine’s Money Stuff newsletter from Bloomberg (sign-up): not exclusively technology related, but typically with a number of posts about the nexus of finance and technology (e.g., venture capital, blockchain and the like).
Six China-related Newsletters which often touch on matters relating to technology, technology transfers, and competition: Sinocism newsletter by Bill Bishop (sign-up); China Heritage Newsletter providing valuable translations of original Chinese contemporary sources; Politico’s China Watcher Newsletter covering developments in U.S. – China relations; Foreign Policy’s China Brief newsletter, a weekly digest, plus analysis by Foreign Policy senior editor and former Beijing correspondent James Palmer; China Financial Markets newsletter, edited by Beijing-based, Carnegie Senior Fellow Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets; and Interconnected, a newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, money, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations by Kevin Xu. Also, my China Twitter List – a curated Twitter List relating to China and consisting of 74 individuals and organizations – largely China critics – including scholars, legal practitioners, entrepreneurs, members of the business and technology press, and members of the foreign policy establishment.
General Interest Newsletters: The Browser a curated daily collection of links to five recommended articles from across the web “on every imaginable topic” (as well as to a choice podcast and video), plus best of the week emails; Insight, the newsletter of Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at the UNC School of Information and Library Science and a frequent columnist at the New York Times and The Atlantic; the email newsletter of Robin Sloan, author, enthusiast-level programmer (who experiments with machine learning), and thinker on the future of media; and the email newsletter of interesting links from Laura Olin, a communications and media consultant and the former director of the Obama 2012 campaign’s social media strategy.
Podcasts and Video:
Techdirt Podcast: a weekly discussion of technology related developments, policies, and controversies.
LawFare Podcasts: LawFare hosts several podcasts including the Cyberlaw Podcast, The National Security Law Podcast, and Rational Security.
a16z and 16 Minutes on the News, two podcasts on technology and the future from the prominent venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Their “General Newsletter” is also recommended; sign up at this link.
Ipse Dixit: a podcast on legal scholarship hosted by law professor Brian L. Frye and several others, with each episode featuring a different guest discussing their scholarship.
This Week in Law.
Santa Clara University High Tech Law Institute:
Without Precedent Podcast, a monthly podcast series examining the impact of technology innovations on the law and legal practice.
Berkman Center for Internet & Society – Multimedia
Audio Fishbowl: Berkman’s Podcast on Internet & Society
Berkman’s YouTube Channel
Stanford Center for Internet & Society (CIS) – Multimedia
Stanford CIS YouTube Channel
AI Podcast, a series of conversations about technology and science, including but not limited to artificial intelligence.
Sinica Podcast and The Little Red Podcast: two podcasts discussing current affairs in China, often touching on matters relating to surveillance, AI, and technology.
How to Start a Startup – a series of video lectures (and related readings) by Y Combinator, its former President Sam Altman, and various guest lecturers (initially given at Stanford in Fall 2014).
Accidental Tech, featuring three software developers, podcasters and reviewers.
John Gruber’s The Talk Show – tech/software developments in general, and Apple, more specifically.
Websites and Blogs – Tech and General (Non-Legal):
Two Rivers of Tech News/Links:
Techmeme’s River of Tech News.
Y Combinator’s Hacker News.
OnTech and NYT Technology: New York Times’ primary technology offerings.
WSJ Tech ($$$): Wall Street Journal’s technology section.
The Verge’s tech policy webpage and ArsTechnica.
Scott Galloway: a professor of marketing at NYU, bestselling author, and podcast host (The Prof G Show), whose output often relates to Silicon Valley, technology policy, and tech companies.
Felix Salmon: formerly a well known finance journalist at Reuters. Now senior editor at Fusion. This is his personal website, which links to his writings across the web.
Musings on Markets: thoughts on valuation, corporate finance and the news of the day by NYU business and finance professor, Aswath Damodaran.
New Geography.com: economic, demographic, and political commentary about places.
Jason Kottke: link blogger extraordinaire.
Quanta – an online magazine focused on science, tech and philosophy.
538: Nate Silver’s “data journalism” website.
Four VCs: M.G. Siegler – ; Fred Wilson – ;
Benedict Evans – and Mark Suster – ;
Two Software Developers: John Gruber (Daring Fireball) – and
Marco Arment –
Ben Thompson’s Stratechery: technology commentator and analyst.
New Scientist ($$$): The online website of New Scientist magazine.
Om Malik: entrepreneur, journalist and VC.
Books:
The Amazon links below are provided for convenience only and do not generate affiliate fees for this website’s publisher —
Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (2012) – George Dyson (Amazon)
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (2011) – James Gleick (Amazon)
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (2012) – Jon Gertner (Amazon)
The Chip : How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution (1985) – T.R. Reid (Amazon)
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (1999) – Michael A. Hiltzik (Amazon)
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010) – Tim Wu (Amazon)
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (25th anniversary edition; originally 1984) – Steven Levy (Amazon)
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (2006) – Fred Turner (Amazon)
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet (1996) – Katie Hafner (Amazon)
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone (2018) – Brian McCullough (Amazon); see also his Internet History Podcast
Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made (2004) – Andy Hertzfeld (Amazon)
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (2005) – John Battelle (Amazon)
Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age (2013) – Susan P. Crawford (Amazon)
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (1997) – Clayton Christensen (Amazon)
The Wealth of Networks (2006) – Yochai Benkler (free download) (Amazon)
Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (2002) – Richard Stallman (free pdf download)
The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It (2008) – Jonathan Zittrain (Amazon)
Codev2 (2006) – Lawrence Lessig – (free download) (Amazon) This is the second (updated) version of Lessig’s classic Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, originally published in 1999.
The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz (2016) – Aaron Swartz (Amazon); and The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (2016) – Justin Peters (Amazon)
You Are Not a Gadget – Jaron Lanier (Amazon); and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (2018) – Jaron Lanier (Amazon)
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography (2009) – Simon Singh (Amazon); and The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (1996) – David Kahn (Amazon)
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (2014) – Glenn Greenwald (Amazon)
Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations (2017) – NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (Wikipedia entry) (Amazon)
Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon Hardcover (2014) – Kim Zetter (Amazon); and Worm: The First Digital World War (2011) – Mark Bowden (Amazon)
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016) – Tim Wu (Amazon)
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (2016) – Cathy O’Neil (Amazon)
Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017) – Zeynep Tufekci (Amazon)
American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What to Do About It (2017) – Jennifer Granick (Amazon)
Re-Engineering Humanity (2018) – Frischmann and Selinger (Amazon)
The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World (2018) – Jennifer Rothman (Amazon)
Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies (2018) – Woodrow Hartzog (Amazon)
Habeas Data: Privacy vs. the Rise of Surveillance Tech (2018) – Cyrus Farivar (Amazon)
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (2019) – Gretchen McCulloch (Amazon)
The Social Media Upheaval (2019) – Glenn Harlan Reynolds (Amazon)
The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (2018) – Tim Wu (Amazon)
Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us from Citizen Kings to Market Servants (2020) – Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi (Amazon)
See also: The CyberSecurity Canon – a project begun by Rick Howard, former Palo Alto Networks Chief Security Officer, to identify a list of must-read books for cybersecurity practitioners. The Cybersecurity Canon (mission statement) is now hosted by The Ohio State University’s Institute for Cybersecurity & Digital Trust.
Tools and Services:
Caveat: In light of the capabilities of the NSA, certain nation states (including China and Russia) and various hackers, the consideration and use of any tool or service which promises things such as enhanced security or anonymity for the user must be undertaken with extreme caution. Any tool or service might have been compromised, and many of these tools and services can be difficult to properly use. Even if the safety of any such tool or service has not been compromised, errors in use or the compromise of the user’s hardware or, for example, of intermediate, middleman or endpoint software/hardware, might jeopardize the user and the user’s safety, security or anonymity. This list does not constitute any endorsement or warranty by me of any of these third party tools or services (or of the links to such tools and services); all such third party tools and services are used at the reader’s own risk.
The Sunlight Foundation’s Sunlight Labs Tools and Projects: Although Sunlight Labs has shut down, many of its former tools and projects (such as those for tracking legislation and public policy) are now being maintained by other organizations. A list of such tools and projects and their current web locations can be found at the link.
Democracy.io: EFF’s online tool for sending messages to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Lumen’s searchable database of DMCA takedown notices and cease and desist letters.
The Tor Project, including the Tor Browser and Orbot.
Tails: an operating system designed to be used from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card independently of a computer’s original operating system, and which aims to protect privacy and anonymity.
Digital First Aid Kit, a set of tools designed by a group of NGOs, including EFF, to provide preliminary assistance to those facing common digital threats (e.g., account hijacking, seizure of devices, malware infections and DDoS attacks).
Project Shield (Google Ideas – application required), to help human-rights activists, NGOs, and news organizations defend their websites from distributed denial of service (DDos) attacks.
Digital Attack Map: Google Ideas’ live data visualization, displaying DDoS attacks in real time.
Freedom of the Press Foundation’s SecureDrop open-source whistleblower submission system that media organizations can use to securely accept documents from anonymous sources (originally coded by the late Aaron Swartz).
Selected Internet Law and Policy Papers:
Caveat: Keep in mind the New York Times advisory regarding law review articles – “About 43 percent of law review articles have never been cited in another article or in a judicial decision . . . The judge, lawyer or ordinary reader looking for accessible and timely accounts or critiques of legal developments is much better off turning to the many excellent law blogs . . . In the 1970s and 1980s, about half of all Supreme Court opinions cited at least one law review article, according to a [recent] study . . . Since 2000, the rate is just 37 percent — even as Supreme Court opinions have grown longer and more elaborate . . . The leading Supreme Court advocates know that law review articles carry almost no weight with the justices. ‘Only a true naïf,’ Seth P. Waxman, a former solicitor general said in 2002, ‘would blunder to mention one at oral argument.'”
• The Fourth Amendment and the Global Internet – Orin Kerr, 67 Stanford Law Review 285 (2015)
• Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw – Ryan Calo, California Law Review, Vol. 103 (2015)
• Bulk Metadata Collection: Statutory and Constitutional Considerations – Laura K. Donohue, 37 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 757 (2014)
• Don’t Fear the Leaker: Thoughts on Bureaucracy and Ethical Whistleblowing – Glenn H. Reynolds, University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper No. 254 (2014)
• The Mosaic Theory of the Fourth Amendment – Orin Kerr, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 110 (forthcoming 2012)
• The Path of Internet Law: An Annotated Guide to Legal Landmarks – Michael L. Rustad and Diane D’Angelo, Duke Law & Technology Review, Vol. 2011, No. 012 (2012)
• Ten Commandments of Internet Law Revisited: Basic Principles for Internet Lawyers – Arno R. Lodder, Information & Communications Technology Law, Vol. 22, Issue 3 (forthcoming 2013)
• ‘I’ve Got Nothing to Hide’ and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy – Daniel J. Solove, 44 San Diego Law Review 745 (2007)
• Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox – Lina M. Khan, 126 Yale Law Journal (2016)
• more to come •
Legal Disclaimer: The links above are provided for convenience only and are not intended to be comprehensive. I am not responsible for the content or operation of any external websites, and caution should be used by readers, as any information provided on this website or on any external websites that are linked to by this website might not necessarily be complete, timely or accurate.
Return to the Top