Suffolk University Law School

By: Adj. Prof. Cyrus Daftary & Adj. Prof. Todd Krieger

Now more than 80% of Americans use the Internet with over 106 million having shopped on it. Americans now spend as much time on the Internet as they do watching television thanks to the likes of smartphones and tablets. Given the amount of time people spend online, it is clear the Internet will continue to be an integral part of our daily lives.

Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, iPad, Google, Kindle, LinkedIn and many other recent innovations have been the catalyst for substantial changes in our business and social paradigms and raise novel legal issues not always anticipated by existing laws.  Digital activities expand well beyond the local and national levels with consumers and businesses accessing and offering goods and services across the globe. Many online activities cut across multiple jurisdictions and potentially will be regulated by hundreds of jurisdictions. These challenges are compounded by the fact every country has its own unique and complex legal system. None of these legal systems anticipated the development of the Internet, and many are rethinking how their existing laws apply to the Internet.  Consumer protection rules, global privacy standards, and, of course, taxes are just a few examples of the issues being debated and decided by many jurisdictions. 

This course explores a broad range of current legal issues related to the Internet and emerging technology, including social networking, blogging, digital discovery, virtual worlds, information security, privacy, traditional and open source software licensing, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Internet, antitrust and technology tying, taxation and e-commerce, spyware, and more. The course is designed to provide students a hands-on opportunity to grapple with some of these issues and better understand how these new technologies work. Course content is updated as new developments emerge. Each lecture seeks to guide students through difficult legal complexities arising with emerging technologies. The web pages that follow are designed to complement the course as well as provide students and practitioners with valuable information.