The material and discussions in this law school casebook assume familiarity with the first year legal courses, but not beyond. Subjects covered include online contracts, digital signatures, privacy, liability of Internet service providers and other intermediaries, electronic payment systems, and taxation issues. Because understanding the legal issues frequently depends on understanding the technology underlying Internet communications, glossaries for help with technical terms are provided.
Margaret Jane Radin is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law at Stanford University, and Director of Stanford Law Schools Program in Law, Science and Technology. Professor Radin is a noted property theorist. She is the author of Contested Commodities (Harvard University Press 1996) and Reinterpreting Property (U. Chicago Press 1993). Her articles, including Property and Personhood and Market-Inalienability, are anthologized and excerpted in a number of casebooks. As a teacher, she has pioneered courses covering Legal Issues in Cyberspace, Electronic Commerce, and Intellectual Property in Cyberspace. Her current research and teaching include patent law and first-year contracts. Recent publications include Humans, Computers and Binding Commitment, and Incomplete Commodification in the Computerized World. In 1998, Professor Radin was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum at its Davos Conference.
John A. Rothchild is Associate Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School, where he teaches courses in Electronic Commerce, Copyright, and Constitutional Law. In 1997-98, he served as Chairperson of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developments Consumer Protection Guidelines Project, which initiated the development of international policy recommendations for controlling fraudulent and misleading conduct in electronic commerce. In 1998-99, he was the Victor Kramer Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.
Gregory M. Silverman is Assistant Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law. He has taught an advanced seminar on Electronic Commerce at the University of Chicago Law School, and now teaches an upper level course on this subject at Seattle University. He is also a founding member of the Seattle-based Center for Electronic Commerce and Information Systems. Professor Silverman teaches commercial law and intellectual property courses, with a strong emphasis on digital technology issues. Prior to teaching, Professor Silverman spent two years in Germany as a Max Rheinstein Fellow in Law with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, advised technology clients in Massachusetts and was chair of the Cape Cod Commission, a regional land use and planning agency. He is the author of Imperatives, Normativity and the Law, 31 CONN. L. REV. 601 (1999).
