Day: November 9, 2022

Goldman on Zauderer and Compelled Editorial Transparency

Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University – School of Law) has posted “Zauderer and Compelled Editorial Transparency” (Iowa Law Review Online, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

A 1985 Supreme Court opinion, Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, holds the key to the Internet’s future. Zauderer provides a relaxed level of scrutiny for Constitutional challenges to some compelled commercial speech disclosure laws. Regulators throughout the country are adopting “transparency” laws to force Internet services to disclose information about their editorial operations or decisions when they publish third-party content, based on their assumption that Zauderer permits such compelled disclosures. This article explains why these transparency laws do not qualify for Zauderer’s relaxed scrutiny. Instead, given the inevitably censorial consequences of enacting and enforcing compelled editorial transparency laws, they should usually trigger strict scrutiny—just like outright speech restrictions do.

Recommended.

Grimmelmann & Mulligan on Data Property

James Grimmelmann (Cornell Law School; Cornell Tech) and Christina Mulligan (Brooklyn Law School) have posted “Data Property” (American University Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In this, the Information Age, people and businesses depend on data. From your family photos to Google’s search index, data has become one of society’s most important resources. But there is a gaping hole in the law’s treatment of data. If someone destroys your car, that is the tort of conversion and the law gives a remedy. But if someone deletes your data, it is far from clear that they have done you a legally actionable wrong. If you are lucky, and the data was stored on your own computer, you may be able to sue them for trespass to a tangible chattel. But property law does not recognize the intangible data itself as a thing that can be impaired or converted, even though it is the data that you care about, and not the medium on which it is stored. It’s time to fix that.

This Article proposes, explains, and defends a system of property rights in data. On our theory, a person has possession of data when they control at least one copy of the data. A person who interferes with that possession can be liable, just as they can be liable for interference with possession of real property and tangible personal property. This treatment of data as an intangible thing that is instantiated in tangible copies coheres with the law’s treatment of information protected by intellectual property law. But importantly, it does not constitute an expansive new intellectual property right of the sort that scholars have warned against. Instead, a regime of data property fits comfortably into existing personal-property law, restoring a balanced and even treatment of the different kinds of things that matter for people’s lives and livelihoods.