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For Immediate Release Friday, March 3, 1995
Contact:
Ann Arbor -- The Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review will host a panel discussion entitled "Beyond Jake Baker: Policing the Internet" on March 9, 1995 at the University of Michigan Law School, from 7:00-9:00 p.m. A panel of nationally known scholars and advocates will discuss the legal, social and political questions related to the Jake Baker Incident.
The prosecution of University of Michigan undergraduate Jake Baker for internet-related activities has sparked a controversy which raises important issues regarding the extension of law and policy to evolving technologies. The panel will discuss many of these issues including: First Amendment rights and protected speech; the basis for federal regulation of interactive communications; privacy rights; and obscenity, harassment and community values. The panelists will also address the unique position of universities as essential providers and regulators of access to the these new technologies. The future of this new medium, which has the potential to profoundly impact the development of modern society, will ultimately depend on the legal framework which emerges from the current debate.
The panel will consist of the following national figures: Catherine MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan; Scott Charney, Chief of the Computer Crimes Division of the U.S. Department of Justice; Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director o f the National ACLU and head of its Cyber Liberties Task Force; Danny Weitzner, Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology; and Virginia Rezmierski, of the University of Michigan's Information Technology Division. The panel's moderator will be Donald Lively, a law professor specializing in First Amendment and communications law at the University of Toledo.
The Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review is committed to using interactive media to promote informed discourse about the interrelated legal, social, and public policy issues raised by emerging technologies. The MTTLR will be providing legal analysis, updates and a forum for response to these issues via the internet and the Lexis legal database system. A transcript of the proceedings from the panel discussion along with other information regarding the case will be available in the Archives section of the MTTLR's World Wide Web site. (http://www.umich.edu/~mttlr/archives/).