Welcome to the Cyberspace Law for Non-Lawyers electronic course. As with a "real" course in the "real world," let's begin with a few logistical details.
You can expect one email message every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the duration of the course. Each message should be no more than two - four individual screens or so. We anticipate that the course will last for approximately three months.
Please note that this course is running on a one-way listserver; do not reply to any of the messages you receive, for your replies will not be transmitted anywhere (and will simply clog up the listserver). We have, however, made arrangements with Counsel Connect and Court TV to post all of our course material on a World Wide Web site; the URL is
This site includes a discussion function which will allow you, if you are so inclined, to post your own comments and reactions to the individual messages that we have mailed out.
Because this course is going to cover "cyberspace law for non-lawyers, "we should probably begin with a few words about what we mean by "cyberspace law." Cyberspace is a new and exciting frontier, and presents a host of new and difficult legal questions in many areas. The development of legal rules that will govern activity in this new environment is likely to be a complex, and at times a controversial, process. We hope to give you a basic framework that will help you think about some of the questions that have arisen in six areas of the law: copyright, privacy, trademark, libel, free expression, and contracting. Our framework is drawn primarily from existing United States law, largely because that is the law that we know best.
We do not have, and we do not pretend to have, the magic wand that can resolve all of the difficult questions arising out of online communications. We hope that this short course will serve as a springboard for additional thinking and discussion among Netizens about the way that law can, and should, be applied to these fascinating questions.
We will begin the course in the next message with a discussion of Copyright Law, moving on to the other areas thereafter. We look forward to sharing this material with you.
authors:
| Larry Lessig | David Post | Eugene Volokh |
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