- Amicus curiae
- Latin for "friend of the court". An individual or an organization
interested in an issue files a brief or participates in the argument in
a case in which that party or organization is not one of the litigants.
Lawrence Lessig files briefs on in various cases that threaten values he
believes should be preserved on the Internet or in the media.
Usually the court must give permission for the brief to be filed, and
arguments may only be made with the agreement of the party. The amicus
curiae is supporting, and that argument comes out of the time allowed for
that party's presentation to the court.
- Appellee
- The name used for the party who has won at the trial court level, but
the loser (appellant) has appealed the decision to a higher court.
Thus the appellee has to file a response to the legal brief filed
by the appellant. In many jurisdictions the appellee is called
the "respondent."
- Avatar space
- Virtual space. In Hinduism, the descent of a deity, or released
soul, to earth in bodily form. Avatar space grew out of the "MUD" or "M00"
text-based "virtual" worlds. In a MUD or MOO space you create objects and
identities and have them do things, but the objects action are text-based.
- Brandeis,
Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941)
- Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916-1939.
He was a child of German Jewish immigrants, a brilliant attorney, a leader
of the Progressive movement, and an active Zionist. President Woodrow Wilson
nominated Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. William Howard
Taft, a conservative who served as President of the United States (1909-1913)
and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1921-1930) opposed his nomination.
Brandeis's appointment broke down a taboo on Jews serving in the Supreme
Court and high positions in government and education. Brandeis became
famous for reforming legal arguments.
- Case Law
- Decisions of the appeals courts and other courts which make new interpretations
of the law and, therefore, can be cited as precedents. These interpretations
are distinguished from "statutory law," which is the statutes and codes
(laws) enacted by legislative bodies; "regulatory law," which is regulations
required by agencies based on statutes; and in some areas, the common law,
which is the generally accepted law carried down from England. The rulings
in trials and hearings which are not appealed and not reported are not
case law and, therefore, not precedent or new interpretations. Law students
principally study case law to understand the application of law to facts
and learn the courts' subsequent interpretations of statutes.
- Civil Liberties
- In the United States, civil liberties are those rights or freedoms
given to the people by the First Amendment to the Constitution, by Common
Law, or legislation, allowing the individual to be free to speak, think,
assemble,
- organize, worship, or petition without government (or even private)
interference or restraints.
- Code
- A set of instructions that control how the software and hardware that
make cyberspace work. Code is made and it is made by us. Lessig believes
that the users of the Internet should have input into what this code will
be like.
- Constitution
- The fundamental, underlying document which establishes the government
of a nation or state. The U.S. Constitution is one example.
- Constitution as discussed by Lessig
- When Lessig speak of constitution, he does not mean legal text. He
speaks of constitution in the British sense, not just a legal text.
He refers to "an architecture that structures and constrains social and
legal power, to the end of protecting fundamental values -- the principles
and ideals that reach beyond the compromises of ordinary politics."
(Lessig. Code. 1999. p.5)
- Constitutional rights
- Rights given or reserved for people by the constitution.
- East Coast Code
- This is the code that that Congress enacts, an array of statutes that
state how citizens are to behave. Some of this code controls citizens,
some controls companies, some bureaucrats. Lessig calls these government
regulations that come out of Washington East Coast Code.
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- Declan McCullagh
- McCullagh is is the Washington bureau chief for Wired
News, and an advocate for libertarianism on the Net. He is totally
against government intervention with the Internet. It is on this
point that he and Lessig disagree. A chapter of Lessig's book, Code
and other laws of cyberspace, is called "What Declan doesn't
get." Declan and Lessig have faced off on the Internet many times.
A Web space, http://www.what-declan-doesnt-get.com, was started,
and finally, McCullagh finally issued an Declan
type of apology to Lessig on the Net, complete with a poetic tribute,
admitting he was outclassed. " I deeply regret the errors of my ways, hereby
issue a full retraction" . (McCullagh. http://lists.insecure.org/politech/1999/Nov/0042.html
1999. )
- Microsoft Antitrust Court Case Civil Action No. 98-1233 (TPJ)
- STATE OF NEW YORK, ex rel. Attorney General ELIOT SPITZER, et
al., Plaintiffs and Counterclaim-Defendants, v. MICROSOFT CORPORATION,
Defendant and Counterclaim-Plaintiff.
- Judge Penfield Jackson determined that Microsoft held a monopoly in
computer operating systems, and issued a decisive statement , called
a "finding
a fact", not a verdict that stated:
"Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible
PC operating systems that if it wished to exercise this power solely in
terms of price, it could charge a price for Windows substantially above
that which could be charged in a competitive market. Moreover, it could
do so for a significant period of time without losing an unacceptable amount
of business to competitors," he added. "In other words, Microsoft enjoys
monopoly power in the relevant market." (Jackson, 1999 quoted IN
Wilcox. 1999.)
- Open code software
- Code that the user community could openly modify and improve.
Open code software is developed in the public interest, and is flexible,
strong, smooth-running, low-priced or free. Open source software is developed
by uncoordinated, but collaborating programmers, using freely distributed
source code and the communications facilities of the Internet
- Proprietary software
- Proprietary software is software, whose use, redistribution or modification
is prohibited, or requires a user to ask for permission, or is restricted
so much that a user effectively cannot do it freely. Proprietary software
is generally commercial.
- Sovereignty
- Absolute and independent authority of a community or a nation
- Tort Law
- The word tort comes from the French word for "wrong," a civil wrong
or wrongful act, whether intentional or accidental, from which injury
occurs to another. Torts include all negligence cases as well as
- intentional wrongs which result in harm. Tort law is one of the
major areas of law.
- Y2K
- Many computer programs resident in computer chips or in software routines
have dates stored in a two digit format. This does not account
for a transition from 99 to 00. An unexpected result can occur, like
the calculation of a negative number or a failure on the part of the software
to proceed. As it turned out, the Y2K crisis was overblown.
Nonetheless, businesses and corporations spent a lot of money upgrading
equipment and making contingency plans to survive the problems that the
dawning of the new millennium would bring to computer systems.
- West Coast Code
- Code that code writers construct. Those instructions embedded
in the hardware and software that makes cyberspace work is called West
Coast code. This is the code written by code writers, originally
in Silicon Valley, hence the name West Coast. When commerce writes
code, code can be controlled, because commercial entities can be controlled
by East Coast code as government regulates the commercial enterprises.
Thus, East Coast code can exert power over West Coast Code.
Legal definitions were taken form or verified in
Hill, Gerald, and Hill, Kathleen. Law.com
dictionary. Santa Monica, California, General Publishing Group.
Online. Available: http://dictionary.law.com/ 18 August 2001.
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