Article Title: Seven Cases That Shaped the Internet in 2001, or the First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers - Part I

• Publication year: 2002
• Pages: 04-6
• Citation: Vol. 2002 No. 04 Pg. 04-6

Utah Bar Journal Volume 4.

04-6 (2002). Article Title: Seven Cases That Shaped the Internet in 2001, or The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers - Part I

April, 2002

Article Title: Seven Cases That Shaped the Internet in 2001 or The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Lawyers¹ - Part I

Author: Miriam Smith

Article Type

Utah Law Developments

Article

I. Introduction

The advent of the printing press in 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg heralded a new era for the world. Some have said that Gutenberg, thanks to his invention, was the most significant person of the past millennium

Four authors, Agnes Hooper Gottlieb, Henry Gottlieb, Barbara Bowers, and Brent Bowers, ranked people of the previous millennium in accordance with a BioGraph system, which scored people according to: 1) lasting influence; 2) effect on the sum total of wisdom and beauty in the world; 3) influence on contemporaries; 4) singularity of contribution; and, 5) charisma.(fn2 )Each category was weighted from 10,000 to 2,000 points.(fn3)

Gutenberg, despite earning a measly 210 points out of 2,000 for charisma, beat out everyone from Christopher Columbus to Andy Warhol to top the list.(fn4) While some may disagree with the Gottlieb/Bowers ranking, the Encyclopedia Britannica classes Gutenberg's printing press as "the most important technological advance" of the Renaissance era.(fn5)

For Gutenberg personally, his invention brought him a multitude of legal problems. Much of what we now know about Gutenberg comes from the numerous lawsuits filed against him by former partners and creditors who either wanted in on the invention or a quick repayment of their investment.(fn6)

Though it is impossible to predict what will be the most important invention of the next millennium, the Internet has clearly earned its place in history. It is now the fastest growing electronic technology in world history. While it took 46 years before 30 percent of the United States population adopted electricity; 38 years for 30 percent to adopt the telephone and 17 years for television - the Internet hit the 30 percent adoption rate in only 7 years!(fn7)

Two-thirds of Americans have already logged on with over 40 percent of non-users at least somewhat likely to log on in the next year. The Internet's capacity to carry information doubles every 100 days.(fn8) This new medium is unprecedented for connecting people - to each other, to information resources and to commerce. The United States Supreme Court has likened the Internet to "a vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications and a sprawling mall offering goods and services."(fn9)

Law and the Internet

The Internet, likewise, has brought sufficient legal problems to foster the development of an entirely new body of law, cyberlaw. Practitioners of cyberlaw must be conversant in areas ranging from contract to trademark law. This development is, of course, good news for lawyers, but may frustrate some and prompt them to want to dispatch with lawyers as suggested in the title of this article.

One reason these Internet purists may be frustrated with lawyers is that "[t]he world wide web has progressed far faster than the law and, as a result, courts are struggling, to catch up."(fn10)

The year 2001 found the courts issuing a myriad of cyberlaw decisions. While A&M Records v. Napster(fn11) may have stolen the headlines, courts were busy on numerous other issues. Among these cases are two clarifying issues as to "new uses" for written works under copyright law; two cases considering issues of jurisdiction; one ruling limiting liability under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; and two cases affecting online music. These seven cases give a sense of the overall development of cyberlaw and of the Internet.

In this article, I examine whether a grant of rights includes the new uses of electronic databases and e-books. A subsequent article will consider recent cases on the long-arm of Internet law and the circumstances under which Internet Service Providers enjoy immunity in cases of copyright infringement. The final article in this series analyzes recent developments in Internet music distribution and Internet radio.

II. New Use

What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other word would smell as sweet . . .

ROMEO AND JULIET, Act 2, scene 2

And that which we call a book or a newspaper or...