Marvin Ammori

A bi-partisan group of senators wrote FCC chairman Julius Genachowski to express concern over a potential deal between Sprint Nextel, Cricket, and Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE.

Current California senator Barbara Boxer (D) and her Republican rival, Carly Fiorina, share their views on net neutrality.

The New New Internet runs down the degree to which many countries experience the increasing trend in cyber espionage.

The recent Fox-Cablevision fee dispute (leading to blackout) upset not only baseball fans, but net neutrality fans as well.

It’s that time of year when the Registrar asks the professors for descriptions of their Spring classes, along with the book orders.

I’ve decided to teach cyberlaw this year similarly to how I taught it a few years back: more like a seminar. Rather than a grade based on an exam, I’ll assign a brief reaction paper and take classroom participation into account. Rather than a casebook of edited decisions, there will be several readable paperback books by leading law scholars and some full cases. Rather than lecture, discussion. And rather than emphasizing black letter law–which I don’t think is the best way to train exceptional lawyers–we will discuss policy arguments, legal theory, institutional arrangements, legal argumentation, etc.

Last time I taught the class this way, several students told me how much they loved it and how much they learned. Another said, “I feel like I didn’t learn any law. Only theory and debating.” She liked it less. (And she was wrong. I pulled down a cyberlaw casebook and showed her how we covered every topic in the book and knew the legal rules in every domain; we just challenged ourselves in other ways.)

So here are the books. All already classics. All are readable, I think, even for nonexperts. All are fun to read. Some I even largely agree with.

1. Cass Sunstein, Republic.com 2.0 (I really wanted to assign the first version, which proposes more aggressive, if foolish, arguments. It sparks better classroom discussion. Sunstein is, of course, the most cited legal scholar alive.)
2. Lawrence Lessig, Code 2.0 (This is a classic, full of brilliant, novel insights and frameworks. Lessig is a well-known constitutional law and cyberlaw pioneer, and the foundation of his reputation is this book.)
3. Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas (The book that got me interested in this field.)
4. Jack Goldsmith & Tim Wu, Who Controls the Internet? (This writing team consists of a brilliant Harvard Law professor, who formerly headed the Office of Legal Counsel, and Columbia Law School’s Tim Wu, who invented the term net neutrality and is generally brilliant, novel, and a great writer.)
5. Tim Wu, The Master Switch (Reading this book now, which is soon to be released. It’s like catnip for people like me. Brilliant book, beautifully written, and also a fun read.)
6. Daniel Solove, The Digital Person (A great book about digital privacy.)
7. Jack Balkin (ed.), Cybercrime (A great collection of articles about cybercrime and policy reactions to it.)
8. Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright (A classic book about digital copyright and the legislative history behind digital copyright law.)

I think this video speaks for itself: Nebraska is such a nice, homey state that, on your birthday, the Governor and the lovely First Lady sing happy birthday to you.

In fact, Nebraska has a unicameral, nonpartisan State Legislature and tolerant political culture. You’ll notice, in the video, that the Republican Governor, Dave Heineman, is singing arm and arm with Democratic political strategist Matt Stoller. This was before the Nebraska-Texas game on Saturday; spirits were high.

We began our gameday at the Governor’s tailgate. Also at the tailgate, adorned in lovely Texas orange, was Texas fan and FCC Commissioner (also former NTIA head) Meredith Attwell Baker, along with her husband Jamie Baker. She was with the Johanns family, meaning Senator Mike Johanns (also former Secretary of Agriculture) and his wife Stephanie, a telecommunications expert who has worked for Alltel and Verizon. I hope Commissioner Baker enjoyed her time here–especially since Texas won handily.

I attended with a few Nebraska law students active in the American Constitution Society (David Solheim and Aaron John) and a math/econ undergrad with the noble dream of attending Michigan for grad school (Adam Azzam). In such a small state, all the students seemed already to know everyone at the tailgate. In fact, last month, I threw a party, and art exhibit, at my home for a law student organization, and the mayor of Lincoln attended with his wife. So did his chief of staff, the former mayor of Omaha with (his wife) the Democratic Lt. Governor candidate, the head of Nebraska ACLU, the heads of Nebraska Appleseed, Nebraska Common Cause, and others. Lincoln is like a mini-DC, being the state capital, as well as a college town.

But posting this video after the Nebraska-Texas football game also gives me a chance to answer a question that people ask me almost weekly: “What are you doing in Nebraska?!”

Washingtonians ask me. Silicon Valley folks ask me. Even Nebraskans ask me, when they hear I spent years in big cities like Chicago, Washington, DC, Boston, and (right after college) a year in Paris.

I usually answer by saying: “I am in Nebraska because of  a kickass program in space & telecom law that I help lead.” Plus, the law students are wonderful, inspiring, and all that. (Well, most of them. Mine at least.)

And then I clarify: in Nebraska, it’s not like I live in an actual corn field, sleeping on cornhusks and awaking to ride my tractor to the nearest one-room school house to teach technology and First Amendment law to roughnecks whose wives churn butter. Nebraska is similar to any other state–most of the population is in one or two cities and the rest of the state is rural. That’s true of Michigan, where I’m from. (Detroit could compare with Omaha, Ann Arbor with Lincoln. Though, of course, Ann Arbor is in a league of its own.) Even New York is a mainly rural state with one big city. And I live in Lincoln, an hour from Omaha. That’s not much different from living in Ann Arbor–or living in any other midwestern college town, from Iowa City to Madison to Lawrence.

So, Lincoln Nebraska: a nice college town and state capital any day of the year. A great place to spend a birthday.

At least according to Suzanne Choney, writing on MSNBC’s Technolog.  Choney reports on how mobile carriers are moving away from their unlimited data plans and shifting towards tiered data pricing plans, and in some cases lowering speeds for high-data users who exceed a set amount of usage until the following billing cycle.

Linda McGlasson at the GovInfoSecurity Blog discusses the findings of a recent European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) Report on Cybersecurity Information Sharing.  The report suggests that economic incentives have higher efficacy than conventional wisdom may suggest, notably with regard to “cost savings, as well as incentives of quality, value and use of information shared.”  To view the full report, click here.

Cheryl Pellerin of the American Forces Press Service reports on a new cooperation initiative between the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense in securing America’s information networks.  To read the full joint statement of Defense Secretary Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano, click here.

Eric R. Sterner writing at World Politics Review discusses the inherent disadvantage defenders face in combating cyber threats in light of Stuxnet, and suggests new strategies (in particular a robust and flexible active defense policy) are critical to ensuring the US can quickly deal with such threats.