David G. Post:  Research & Writings  

[last updated: December, 2006]  [ email me ]

            I am currently the I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of  Law in Philadelphia, PA.  I'm also an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, a Fellow at the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, the Co-Director of ICANNWatch.org , Disputes.org, and the Cyberspace Law Institute , an occasional contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy blog , and a member of the band "Bad Dog ."  

 

            If you're interested in more details, here's a brief bio,  and  my complete CV. , and some write-ups about my work from Wired, the NY Times Cybertimes , Inter@ctive Week , and  The Temple Times.

For Students:  [NB:  A copy of Acrobat reader, required for PDF files, is available here ]

·         Here is a description of Temple University Law School's program in Intellectual Property and Technology Law .

·         Here is the latest version of my "Writing Guidelines”  [PDF Format ]  

Recent Writings  [Note:  Most of my papers can be accessed at my SSRN author page]

 

                 Here’s an amicus brief I wrote (with Eric Goldman and Scott Christie) in the case of People of New York v. Direct Revenue LLC, on the matter of the enforceability of “clickwrap” agreements.  [MS Word format here]

 

                     ”Nice Questions Unanswered:  Grokster, Sony’s Staple Article of Commerce Doctrine, and the Deferred Verdict on Internet File-Sharing” (forthcoming, Cato Supreme Court Review 2005) (with Annemarie Bridy and Timothy Sandefur)

 

                                Web Scaling and Internet Intermediaries (a presentation at Mich. State Univ., April 2005)

 

                                Here’s an amicus curiae brief I wrote (on behalf of the American Conservative Union and the National Taxpayers’ Union) in support of Respondents (Grokster and Streamcast) in the case of MGM et al. v. Grokster in the Supreme Court (March 2005)

 

                                Here’s a review of Larry Lessig’s most recent book, “Free Culture,” that appeared in Reason magazine.

Thomas Jefferson’s Cyberspace

                    I have begun working on a book, tentatively entitled In Search of  Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace , setting out a "Jeffersonian perspective" on events in the online world.   Here is a draft of the Prologue.   Some other pieces that will eventually make their way into the book are:

Cyberspace Governance

·         What Larry Doesn't Get:  Code, Law, and Liberty in Cyberspace (52 Stanford Law Review 1439 (2000)). A review (sort of) of Larry Lessig's book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

·         Against 'Against Cyberanarchy ' -- a reply to Jack Goldsmith (17 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1363 (2002))   

·         Anarchy, State, and the Internet: An Essay on Law_Making in Cyberspace (J. Online Law, 1995)  An early attempt to grapple with some of the new features of cyberspace "law" and, in particular, the relationship between the software that defines this new place and traditional rules and rule-making institutions).

·         Law and Borders: The Rise of Law in Cyberspace (co-authored with David R. Johnson) (48 Stanford L. Rev. 1367 (1996))  (developing in a (hopefully) more coherent way the argument that irrelevance of physical location on the net strengthens the argument for decentralized 'self-governing' institutions in cyberspace).

·         And How Shall the Net Be Governed?  A Meditation on the Relative Virtues of Decentralized, Emergent Law ,” (co-authored with David Johnson) (in Coordinating the Internet, Brian Kahin and James Keller (eds.), MIT Press, 1997)

·         The 'Unsettled Paradox': The Internet, the State, and the Consent of the Governed (5 Indiana J. Global Legal Studies 521, 1998)  (describing some of the ways that the a-geographical character of cyberspace might affect our thinking about the relative advantages of State and non-State institutions in regulating activity there)

·         Governing Cyberspace (43 Wayne Law Review 155 1997)  (describing the contrast between centralized and de-centralized law-making institutions as a battle between "Hamiltonian" centralizers and "Jeffersonian" de-centralizers for control over the relevant law-making institutions).

·         Of Horses, Black Holes, and Decentralized Law-Making in Cyberspace   (Yale Private Censorship/Perfect Choice Conference, March 1999) (focusing on the dramatically different ways that one might attempt to control the problem of "spam" on the Internet).

·         Pooling Intellectual Capital: Some thoughts on Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Limited Liability in Cyberspace .  1996 U. Chi. L. Forum 139.  A longish piece, arguing that pseudonymity is a kind of "limited liability" (in cyberspace, as elsewhere), and that attempts to regulate "anonymity" in cyberspace must take into account the sometimes profound benefits that pseudonymous communications can afford.

Complexity Theory and the Law

·        How Long is the Coastline of the Law:  Thoughts on the Fractal Nature of Legal Systems (co-authored with Michael B. Eisen) (29 Journal of Legal Studies 545  (2000)

·         The New Civic Virtue of the Net: A Complex Systems Model for the Governance of Cyberspace   (co-authored with David Johnson) (in The Emerging Internet, 1998 Annual Review of the Institute for Information Studies, (C. Firestone, ed.)

·        Chaos Prevailing on Every Continent": Towards a New Theory of Decentralized Decision-making in Complex Systems (73 Chicago-Kent Law Review 1055 (1998)

Copyright Law

·        A Summary of Copyright Law.  I prepared this PowerPoint presentation for a talk on copyright issues that I gave recently to the Health Sciences faculty at Temple.

·        "Copyright, Scientific Research, and the Public Access to Science Act ."  [draft]  This is part of the work I've been doing with some of the folks at the Public Library of Science and is intended as a response to some of the arguments put forward by opponents of the recently-introduced "Public Access to Science Act."

·         His Napster's Voice  (20 Temple Env. & Tech. L.J. 35 (2002), reprinted in Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectual Property in the Information Age (W. Crews and A. Thierer, eds (Cato Institute, 2002)) and Mots Pluriels , special edition No 18 (August 2001) [ MS Word version here ] 

 

Other, Older Stuff

·          Technolog! & (Meaning /3 Life  

    Personal Jurisdiction and Cyberspace Governance

Some Plugging In columns on jurisdictional matters
"Cyberspace's Constitutional Moment" (November 1998)

" The State of the States" (September 1998)

Betting On Cyberspace (June 1997)

Copyright Law and other Intellectual Property matters

Miscellaneous Issues