Colorado Technology Law Journal

The Digitization of the Carceral State: The Troubling Narrative Around Police Usage Of Facial Recognition Technology Sara E. Yates[1]* Print Version: The Digitization of the Carceral State- The Troubling Narrative Around Police Usage Of Facial Recognition Technology The technological veil conceals the reproduction of inequality and enslavement. -Herbert Marcuse[2] This Note applies a racial social control frame to the problem of facial recognition technology (FRT), showing how this technology may entrench preexisting inequalities and disparate treatment of people of color by law enforcement. Police usage Continue reading →

Regulating the Social Puppeteers: § 230 & Marginalized Speech Kylie Thompson[1]* Print Version: Regulating the Social Puppeteers- § 230 & Marginalized Speech   Introduction 462 I. What is § 230? 465 A. Legislative History 465 B. Expansive Scope 466 C. Threading the § 230 needle 468 II. The Power of Social Platforms 471 A. Harassment & Disinformation 471 B. Content Moderation Practices 474 C. Whose Content is it Anyway? 477 III. Reforming § 230 478 Conclusion 481 This paper addresses social platforms’ immunity under § 230 Continue reading →

Personal Information and Artificial Intelligence: Website Scraping and the California Consumer Privacy Act Brian Stuenkel[1]* Print Version: Personal Information and Artificial Intelligence- Website Scraping and the California Consumer Privacy Act This note presents a hypothetical in which an upstart technology firm scrapes public-facing webpages and websites, scooping up individuals’ personal identifying information (PII) including names, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth (among other information) in the process. In this hypothetical scenario, the tech firm then uses the information gathered to create a dataset containing the Continue reading →

Airline Commercial Use of EU Personal Data in the Context of the GDPR, British Airways and Schrems II W. Gregory Voss[1]* Print Version: Airline Commercial Use of EU Personal Data in the Context of the GDPR, British Airways and Schrems II In July 2019, shortly after the end of the first year of application of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK’s data protection regulator announced its intention to fine British Airways £183 million under the GDPR in connection with a data breach. Continue reading →

A Textualist Interpretation of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 Brian L. Frye[1]* Print Version: A Textualist Interpretation of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 Philosophy may not interfere with the actual use of language, it can only describe it. —Ludwig Wittgenstein[2] For numberless generations, jurisprudes waged total war in the conflict among textualism, intentionalism, and purposivism.[3] Textualists insisted that courts must interpret statutes based on the meaning of their text, intentionalists insisted on the intention of the legislature, and purposivists insisted on Continue reading →

You Can’t Be Serious: Problems of Facticity and ‘Plausible Nonliteral Assertions’ in U.S. Defamation Law Emily Erickson[1]* Matthew D. Bunker** Print Version: YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS- PROBLEMS OF FACTICITY AND ‘PLAUSIBLE NONLITERAL ASSERTIONS’ IN U.S. DEFAMATION LAW   Introduction 343 I. Roots of the Protection for Opinion, Rhetorical Hyperbole, and Satire 346 II. PNAs in the Courts 352 III. Constructing the Appropriate Audience 357 Analysis and Conclusion 360 Introduction In a scene from the 2013 film American Hustle,[2] 1970s con artist Irving Rosenfeld (played by Continue reading →

Hacking Antitrust: Competition Policy and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Charles Duan[1]* Print Version: Hacking Antitrust- Competition Policy and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal computer trespass statute that prohibits accessing a computer “without authorization or exceeding authorized access,” has often been criticized for clashing with online norms, over-criminalizing common behavior, and infringing freedom-of-expression interests. These controversies over the CFAA have raised difficult questions about how the statute is to be interpreted, with courts of appeals Continue reading →

Hacking the SEAMs: Elevating Digital Autonomy and Agency for Humans Richard S. Whitt[1]* “Certainty hardens our minds against possibility.” –Ellen Langer The time has come to challenge the predominant paradigm of the World Wide Web. We need to replace controlling “SEAMs” with empowering “HAACS.” Over the past two decades, Web platform ecosystems have been employing the SEAMs paradigm—Surveil users, Extract data, Analyze for insights, and Manipulate for impact. The SEAMs paradigm is embedded as reinforcing feedback cycles in computational systems that mediate, and seek to Continue reading →

Employment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for a Statutory Solution Brandon Ward[1]* Introduction Like the automobile, computer, and the internet defined the twentieth century, artificial intelligence (AI) will come to define the twenty-first century as it branches out to influence all aspects of humanity. One area that undoubtably will be shaped by AI is employment. Companies are racing to integrate automation, machine learning, and deep learning, all sub-processes of artificial narrow intelligence, into routine tasks or into the analysis of large data Continue reading →

Masters of Their Own Domains: Property Rights as a Bulwark Against DNS Censorship Nicholas Nugent[1]* It is increasingly becoming the practice of domain name system (DNS) intermediaries to seize domain names used by lawful websites for violating acceptable use policies related to offensive content or hate speech. Website hosting companies and social media platforms, entities that use but do not operate core Internet infrastructure, have long reserved and exercised their rights to gate their offerings, leaving booted speakers free to migrate to other providers. But Continue reading →