New Internet Law Work-in-Progress Series
By Eric Goldman
Announcing a New Internet Law Works-in-Progress Series and Call for Participation
The High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School are pleased to announce a new annual works-in-progress series for Internet Law scholarship. The inaugural event will be held at Santa Clara University on March 5, 2011. Thereafter, the event will rotate between NYLS and SCU each Spring semester.
Why Another Work-in-Progress Series?
As Internet Law scholars, many of us already have numerous venues to present our works-in-progress. However, although many existing works-in-progress events have accommodated our scholarship in the past, none of them expressly cater to Internet Law scholarship. For example, in August the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference (IPSC) at Berkeley cut the Internet Law papers to manage their capacity constraints. It made complete sense for an IP-oriented works-in-progress series to turn down non-IP Internet Law scholarship, but it also highlighted that we as Internet Law scholars need our own dedicated venue to meet, socialize with and learn from each other as a community. We hope this new series will serve that purpose.
Call for Participation
Topically, we take a broad view of what constitutes “Internet Law” scholarship, and we welcome all types of scholarly approaches (doctrinal, theoretical, empirical, etc.). We offer three ways to participate in the event:
Papers-in-Progress Presentation for paper drafts sufficiently advanced to share with event attendees. We anticipate giving extra speaking time to these presentations. To qualify for these slots, you will need to upload a paper draft no later than February 21, 2011. If we have to prioritize presentation requests based on capacity constraints, we plan to give greater priority to papers earlier in the drafting process that will most benefit from peer feedback, i.e., (a) papers that have not been circulated to publication venues will get higher priority than (b) papers that have been circulated to publication venues but do not yet have a publication commitment, which will get higher priority than (c) papers that have been accepted for publication.
Projects-in-Progress Presentation for research projects without a paper draft for attendees to review in advance. This might occur because your paper draft isn’t ready to share (or does not arrive before the Feb. 21 cutoff) or because you would like to explore a paper idea before writing a draft. We intend to allocate less speaking time for these presentations than for papers-in-progress presentations.
Discussant. Space permitting, we welcome other scholars to join the conversation as active audience participants.
How to Participate
If you would like to participate in the event, please email Eric Goldman (egoldman@gmail.com) no later than January 17, 2011. In your email, please (1) specify your desired form of participation (paper-in-progress, project-in-progress or discussant), (2) provide a short talk abstract (please, no more than 500 words), and (3) let us know the paper’s status (uncirculated, circulated or accepted for publication). We intend to confirm participation by February 1, 2011, but we will respond before then to early participation requests, so we encourage you to submit your request at your earliest convenience.
There is no event participation fee, but all participants are responsible for their own travel expenses. We will be announcing additional travel and hotel information soon. There are no publication obligations associated with presenting at the event.
Other Events of Interest
Immediately preceding the March 5 work-in-progress event are two other events of interest to Internet Law scholars. We encourage you to join us for one or both of these events.
On March 4, 2011, Santa Clara University is hosting a symposium entitled “47 U.S.C. § 230: a 15 Year Retrospective” to recognize the 15 year anniversary of the statute’s enactment. Featured speakers include former Representative Christopher Cox (one of the two named co-sponsors of the bill that evolved into the statute), Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, Ken Zeran (the plaintiff in the seminal 230 case Zeran v. America Online) and many more. The event is sponsored by the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, and co-sponsors include Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center, Stanford Law School’s Law, Science & Technology program, the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the New York Law School’s Institute for Information Law and Policy, the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For more on this event and to RSVP, see the event page. Work-in-progress participants get free admission to this symposium.
On March 3, 2011, the Stanford Technology Law Review will hold a symposium on current and emerging issues of secondary or intermediary liability on the Internet. Panels will explore these issues in the context of copyright, trademark, and aspects of privacy law. The event will take place at Stanford Law School, with more details to come soon. Please contact Symposium Chair Holley Horrell (hhorrell@stanford.edu) for more information.
For More Information
We will be posting more information about the work-in-progress event to our event web page.