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Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law

Print Archive

The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law publishes four times a year (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter). We have two selection cycles (spring and fall) per year. We also publish Blog posts authored by current Vanderbilt Law students on topical current events.

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Section Contents

Volume 28, Issue 4

  • Turning the Tide: Reforming Western Water Law in the Age of AI Infrastructure

    June 2026 | Rhyma Asim | Article | This Note proposes a legal framework based on the purpose of prior appropriation law in order to regulate AI infrastructure. States following the prior appropriation doctrine will be highlighted since these states are generally those facing severe droughts. Through this framework, it will be demonstrated that the priority of use principle is misaligned, and the beneficial use principle should be the central theme of prior appropriation law, and the establishment of a proper water right. As AI accelerates and environmental harms concentrate in historically marginalized areas, the time has come to adapt the logic of natural resource law to the digital age. To do so, this Note will argue that prior appropriation law (1) must be recentralized with its original purpose of promoting efficient beneficial use; and (2) must assert transparency of consumption as a critical factor in order to reflect the belief that water is a public resource owned by the state rather than individuals. These reformed water law principles provide courts with a proper framework that prioritizes such a limited and critical natural resource. This analysis can also serve as a deterrent for further oppression communities will face due to the race to develop smarter AI tools.

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  • When the Purse Strings Paint the Picture: Executive Overreach and Censorship in Federal Arts Funding

    June 2026 | Megan Brown | Article | This Note proposes a legislative reform to the boundaries of NEA funding decisions to honor both artistic integrity and the executive orders. The solution calls for Congress to clarify the statutory language governing the NEA grants by defining ambiguous umbrella terms while reaffirming the agency’s core mission of promoting artistic expression and public access to the arts. Simultaneously, clearer statutory guidance would help constrain executive discretion, thereby reducing the risk of viewpoint discrimination and limiting the potential for overreach. Finally, this Note contends that existing administrative law principles and judicial doctrines can act as a backstop. Although these measures would not eliminate all controversy from publicly funded art, they could help ensure that censorship and arbitrary enforcement are minimized, thus protecting artistic integrity and constitutional rights, while simultaneously adhering to the law.

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  • Patent Law's Trade Remedy

    June 2026 | Michael L. Doane | Article | This Article provides an in-depth evaluation of criticisms leveled at Section 337, the responses of the US International Trade Commission (USITC) thereto and the role Section 337 plays, in the context of US trade policy, in the enforcement of US IPR against infringing imports from both large and small predatory infringers. This Article reframes the discussion to consider that, as a component of US trade policy, Congress intended for Section 337 to provide a remedy to small or nonmanufacturing innovators and specifically designed the requirements for obtaining Section 337 relief to achieve this goal. The promotion of innovation and investment in the United States is an historically central feature of US trade policy. As the United States starts to move away from a strict free trade policy to one intended to address some of the more mercantilist policies adopted by certain US international trade partners, Section 337 occupies a unique position as a mechanism specifically designed for such a purpose.

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  • Open Secrets

    June 2026 | Robin Feldman and Vaughn Goehrig | Article | This Article makes two principal contributions to illuminating this problem. First, it presents, for the first time in legal literature, an in-depth examination of the typical life cycle of a biosimilar drug, assessing precisely where original biologics manufacturers use insufficient disclosure and trade secrets to gain more market protection than they are rightfully entitled to. Second, it charts a path toward a solution. Through either congressional action or the agency’s own licensing authority, the Food and Drug Administration should facilitate the disclosure of manufacturing information currently protected as trade secrets. Part VI outlines both the congressional and regulatory route for implementing this plan, placing particular emphasis on the latter, given the highly polarized state of Congress today. More generally, this Article demonstrates why the Food and Drug Administration is in a perfect position to release––or to require the release of––this crucial information and how such action would have a profound effect on the access and affordability of biologics.

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  • Limiting Inconsistencies in Legal Languages

    June 2026 | Sarah B. Lawsky | Article | This Article provides an example of a tax statute that mandates inconsistent outcomes for the same set of facts and shows how that inconsistency has been addressed by the Treasury and the IRS. The Article establishes the inconsistency in part by using an automated theorem prover. The Article also shows how a particular domain-specific programming language, Catala, helps prevent the implementation of certain inconsistencies.

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  • Addressing the Stale Line of Sports-Betting Behavior: Examining the Economic Shortfalls and Tax Solutions in Legalizing Sports Betting

    June 2026 | Peyton Rameas | Article | This Note examines the intricacies of sports-betting regulations at both the state and federal levels, including state and federal tax law, tribal compact law, and federal consumer protection law. Unlike other forms of gambling, sports betting appeals to a consumer’s sense of familiarity. While traditional gambling games have a level of uncertainty that deters risk-averse consumers, a regular sports fan may overestimate his or her sports knowledge and underestimate the uncertainties of gambling. To resolve this mismatch, this Note proposes a tax policy requiring sportsbooks to withhold a percentage of sports-betting winnings from participants and remit the percentage to the state in which the sportsbook is operating in. By directly reducing expected winnings, this tax structure operates as a behavioral deterrent while preserving state revenue streams. Sporting events are family-friendly fun that attract people from all age groups, but networks like ESPN that broadcast sports-betting content normalize sports betting to young audiences, encouraging rather than deterring nongamblers to participate in sports betting. When entertainment networks integrate sports betting into their broadcasts, sporting events become mutually dependent on sports betting. While implementing a nationwide ban on sports betting may deter a larger portion of the US population, there are alternative methods that would protect consumers and state revenue without incentivizing individuals to engage in illegal sports betting. By taxing all sports-betting winnings, regulators can use taxes to deter sports bettors because the tax directly impacts the reward and lowers the bettors’ expected immediate winnings.

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Volume 28, Issue 3

  • Artificial Personhood: The Implications of Recognizing the Legal Personhood of Artificial Intelligence

    June 2026 | Daniel C. Borges | Article |

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is here in a big way. As society grapples with the implications of this profound new technology, the question of whether AI entities should be granted independent legal recognition, akin to human personhood, has emerged as a pivotal topic in jurisprudence. This Article explores the foundations, evolution, and implications of AI personhood, addressing philosophical perspectives, the development of personhood as a legal fiction (with specific emphasis on corporate personhood), and the need for AI personhood to counter the risks posed by rapidly developing AI technology. It defines the "AI person" as one whose legal recognition furthers a net societal benefit, and it proposes equivalent rights and responsibilities of existing nonhuman persons that might translate to the AI person. This Article then examines the impacts and ramifications of AI personhood, including the need for human intervention and oversight of AI persons, as well as ripple effects of AI personhood throughout society. Despite challenges and potential opposition, this Article argues that AI personhood is a necessary adaptation of entity law that addresses pressing issues with AI and encourages a more equitable and sustainable future for humans and technology.

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  • Accessibility in the EdTech Era: The Growth in Implementation of Learning Technologies and the Students Who Are Left Behind

    June 2026 | Madeleine Braksick | Article |

    Educational Technology (EdTech) has gained popularity in recent years, enabling distance learning and connectedness across school districts, and among students, teachers, and families alike. However, vague or nonexistent standards for regulating these technologies have led to students with rights to special education services not having those services upheld to the same standard as traditional educational mechanisms. While the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been modified over time to form heightened standards for making education appropriate for all students, it has consistently fallen short in its regulation of both assistive and educational technologies. This Note explores the consequences of those shortcomings, how they are only amplified over time, and what frameworks for regulation might be most effective in creating a better future for students with disabilities in the modern learning environment. Specifically, the IDEA guarantee of a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) has welcomed significant debate and case law surrounding what the idea of a truly “appropriate” education is and to what extent public and charter schools must take measures to ensure that the necessary accommodations, services, and supports are in place. Due to its broad parameters, the IDEA has not always sufficed to protect the rights of each individual student, which has been inevitably consequential. Without the proper learning supports and services, students with disabilities are unable to receive or access an equitable education and inevitably are inhibited from achieving their full potential. Ultimately, protection and enforcement of special education services requires a thorough revision. Enforcers of special education rights require a clearer framework for how schools and institutions select, implement, and modify various EdTech tools to ensure they are equitable and accessible for all students. There are a few ways this can happen: enforcing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), formalizing DOE guidance, and facilitating greater transparency and collaboration across relevant stakeholders. In creating and enforcing such frameworks, regulatory and educational agencies can better ensure an equitable education for all students.

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  • Here, There, and Absent from the Film: Carving Out a Protection for Trailers in California’s Anti-SLAPP Statute

    June 2026 | Zach Cogan | Article |

    California’s anti-SLAPP statute is designed to encourage free speech and to prevent litigation that chills participation in public discourse, including the creation and promotion of media. It is a standard industry practice for filmmakers to use trailers to promote their films before the final cut and to gauge the success of certain cinematic elements—such as characters, plot points, and overall tone—so the necessary adjustments can be made before the film is released to audiences. Subjecting studios and filmmakers to litigation for adjusting these relatively minor elements that were present in the trailers will chill this beneficial and standard industry practice. This Note contends that there is a doctrinal gap under California’s anti-SLAPP step two, where even minor elements can be found to mislead a reasonable consumer. This Note will analyze California’s anti-SLAPP statute, the Woulfe v. Universal City Studios LLC decision, First Amendment scholarship, and the industry customs surrounding trailers in determining whether legislative change is needed. It proposes a narrow statutory amendment creating a rebuttable presumption of nondeception at anti-SLAPP step two when studios show (1) objective indicia of good-faith iteration and (2) material trailer-to-film consistency, preserving suits against genuinely misleading campaigns while protecting iterative marketing.

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  • Who's Afraid of Copyright and AI?

    June 2026 | Deborah R. Gerhardt | Article |

    Copyright and AI need not be a copyright no man’s land. Recent decisions by the Copyright Office have gotten so much media attention that many creators are unsure if they can secure copyright protection if they use AI as a creative tool. The proposed creative control paradigm can help us all tackle the challenge of determining when works created with the assistance of AI are copyrightable. Instead of relying on long-established nuanced precedent for protecting works generated with new technology, the Copyright Office asserts that any content generated with assistance from AI tools is unprotectable. This position is radically inconsistent with foundational copyright precedent. Copyright authorship and originality principles have long permitted ownership of content made using content generated by cutting edge technology or the assistance of other creators. Copyright authorship doctrine permits authors to own content created with such tools or by contributors who are not co-authors. If an author can own copyrights in content created collaboratively with a non-author creator or another mechanical tool, why can’t that author own a work created using an AI platform? The work-for-hire doctrine permits non-human companies to own content they direct their employees to create. It is inconsistent to permit nonhumans to own content created by humans but refuse to allow humans to own content they direct machines to create. Derivative works are protectable even when they are based on preexisting public domain content. Why can’t a photographer own a copyright in a work if AI was used to create the first draft? No clear principle indicates why content generated by AI should be treated so differently from other works that contain unprotectable elements. When an author satisfies the originality and authorship standards, but the work cannot be disaggregated from their first AI generated draft, the creative contributions should be copyrightable despite the use of unprotectible building blocks, comparable to words in a language or colors in a palette. In an era when AI is so prevalent, artists may not even be aware of all the applications that incorporate it. When everyone from software engineers to artists, filmmakers to writers, and translators to composers are using AI, everyone needs clarity about who can protect what. In addition to being unclear and inconsistent with settled copyright doctrine, the Office’s position is creating bizarre incentives. Telling the truth about the creative process could jeopardize copyright protection, especially for authors without access to copyright counsel. By asserting that the use of generative AI defeats copyrightability absent detailed disclaimers, the Copyright Office may be incentivizing applicants to lie about their creative process or abandon efforts of registration, if they used AI as a creative tool. For these reasons, the current position of the Copyright Office on the protectability of AI-generated works should be clarified in a way that is consistent with foundational copyright doctrine. Instead of refusing to engage with the creative possibilities and limitations of AI, courts and the Copyright Office could apply a creative control paradigm to meet the challenge of discerning when works generated with the assistance of AI should be protected.

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  • When Robots Read Westlaw: Linking Inputs and Outputs in Generative AI Fair Use Analysis

    June 2026 | Aaron Lam | Article |

    Generative artificial intelligence has revealed a novel tension in copyright law: a two-stage act (input and output) of copying that traditional fair-use doctrine never squarely anticipated. In the input stage, vast swaths of copyrighted expression are reproduced and ingested to train large language models. In the output stage, those models generate works that may substitute for or dilute the market of the originals. Courts now face both stages. Their rulings diverge when they consider training and outputs together. In Bartz v. Anthropic PBC and Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc., the courts characterized training uses as “highly transformative,” yet reached opposite conclusions on market harm because the evidentiary records differed. By contrast, in Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, the fair-use defense failed outright: ROSS’s AI-generated outputs were found to compete directly with Thomson Reuters’s paid research tools. These cases confirm that transformation alone is not dispositive: the fourth statutory factor—whether outputs substitute for or erode the market for the original—can ultimately determine the outcome. This Note therefore advances an “input-output linkage” framework. It would enable courts to evaluate the permissibility of unlicensed training (input) by looking to the commercial purpose, functional use, and market effects of the resulting outputs. This framework helps explain why wholesale copying for training may qualify as fair use when outputs serve new, non-substitutive functions (as Kadrey intimates), yet fails when outputs compete with the original work or its derivatives (as in Thomson Reuters). Aligning fair use doctrine with copyright’s utilitarian goals in this way preserves incentives to create while also permitting socially valuable AI innovation. Still, adjudication alone cannot fully resolve the structural licensing challenges posed by generative AI. This Note argues that to supply ex-ante clarity and enable scalable markets for training data, targeted legislative or regulatory measures are needed. Such interventions would ensure that copyright law protects both creative labor and accommodates the need for training data.

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  • Controlling the Narrative: Copyright’s Derivative Rights Doctrine & Semiotic Disobedience in the Age of AI

    June 2026 | John Tehranian | Article |

    This Article argues that copyright’s derivative rights doctrine—long treated as a technical mechanism of market control—has operated as a powerful but underexamined tool of epistemic governance. As the doctrine’s scope has expanded, it has increasingly privileged dominant narratives while recasting resistive ones as acts of infringement. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies—from the largely forgotten copyright disputes over the English translations of Mein Kampf and Bambi on the eve of World War II to the infamous stand-off between Wall Street’s Charging Bull and Fearless Girl statues—the Article demonstrates how derivative rights have been deployed to suppress what Sonya Katyal terms “semiotic disobedience.” In effect, the doctrine has rendered certain cultural symbols legally inviolable, thereby insulating prevailing ideologies from contestation by suppressing challenges to their authority. The Article therefore argues that the derivative rights doctrine has created sacred texts in two distinct senses: works that are treated as sacrosanct and epistemologies that are rendered incontestable. In the absence of meaningful constraints from fair use and other doctrinal limitations, a capacious derivative rights doctrine not only betrays copyright’s constitutional aim of promoting progress in the arts, but also impairs the capacity of marginalized communities to resist dominant orthodoxies and entrenched powers. To better promote the expressive and creative interests in resistive narratives, the Article concludes by proposing a recalibration of derivative rights, drawing inspiration from the compulsory mechanical licensing regime in music as a possible foundation for reform—an intervention made increasingly urgent by the rise of generative AI and the anticipated proliferation of derivative cultural production.

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Volume 28, Issue 2

  • Reconceiving Safety Regulation for AI and ML Medical Software

    February 2026 | Barbara J. Evans, Eric S. Rosenthal, and Azra Bihorac | Article |

    This article explores the challenges of regulating AI and ML clinical decision support tools intended to assist trained health care professionals in delivering clinical care. Two old, twentieth-century regulatory models have dominated discussions of medical AI policy since 2013. Thinking inside these old regulatory boxes has not produced effective regulatory solutions to address the novel risks AI poses in clinical care. The first regulatory box treats software as a medical device, which tasks medical device regulators with making software safe but neglects the crucial roles physicians, nurses, administrators, medical practice regulators, and other health oversight bodies must also play to make AI-enabled health care safe for patients. The second box views AI-enabled healthcare as a complex sociotechnical system where the central regulatory challenge is to incentivize the creation of “slack” at the human-AI interface: that is, to inject buffers, redundancies, and checks and balances that enhance opportunities for human actors to intervene if the software runs amok. The 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 favored this latter model, but it has not been successfully implemented. This article then offers two more conceptualizations. Viewed through the lens of the old corporate practice of medicine doctrine, the central oversight challenge in AI-enabled health care is to prevent non-physician corporate actors (for example, software developers) from overriding or corrupting physicians’ ability to exercise independent medical judgment on behalf of their patients. The final conceptualization likens AI and ML tools to intelligent agents that are “colonizing” the health care system and threatening various harms to the indigenous humans—patients, health professionals, and administrators—who inhabit it. Protecting the safety, culture, and values of health care may require institutional and regulatory reforms that go far beyond merely repurposing old regulatory frameworks left over from the past century.

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  • Cybersecurity Risk Shifting

    February 2026 | Deborah R. Farringer | Article |

    This Article provides an overview of the growing problem of ransomware attacks in the health care sector, examining the existing laws utilized most frequently to address these attacks. In considering current regulatory, legislative, and judicial approaches being contemplated, this Article argues that although health care companies should not be seen as victims in the same way as the individuals whose data has been compromised, a statutory, regulatory, or judicial scheme that shifts blame and responsibility entirely to the health care companies will not adequately address the problem and will simply increase costs and expenses to health care consumers. Therefore, any legal approaches to addressing the problem must be balanced—recognizing some responsibility on the part of health care companies in shoring up systems and processes to make their data less vulnerable while simultaneously providing adequate guidance and support to assist entities in combatting cyber risk in coordination with state and federal agencies.

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  • Patients Versus Profits

    February 2026 | David A. Simon | Article |

    Two motives drive much of American health care. The first is the motive to heal the sick—the patient motive. The second is the motive to generate financial gains—the profit motive. This Article asks the following question: where do these two motives intersect and diverge? Using three emerging technologies as examples, this Article provides a framework for answering this question. It then uses this framework’s insights to explain when and how legal and extra-legal institutions can be used to improve care, either by constraining the profit motive or aligning it more closely with the goals of patient care. This Article concludes with some thoughts about the prospect of using market mechanisms to improve patient health.

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  • The Privacy Law Jigsaw: Piecing Together Legal Compliance When Pieces Don’t Fit

    February 2026 | Roy Wyman and Wesley McCulloch | Article |

    Over the past six years the United States has shifted from a relatively stable and laissez-faire privacy regime, anchored by a few, sector-specific federal statutes such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, to an increasingly fragmented landscape dominated by numerous state-level consumer privacy laws. While these laws share commonalities, they also vary in important ways. This Article analyzes that patchwork legal regime and its impact on businesses through four points of friction: (i) statutory applicability and thresholds; (ii) notice-and-choice requirements; (iii) individual data-management rights; and (iv) controller–processor contracting obligations. This Article further explores how modern service-delivery models, especially software-as-a-service and AI tools, undermine the traditional controller—processor dichotomy, leaving the entities that exercise the greatest de facto control over personal data with the fewest direct statutory duties. Concluding that incremental state legislation is unlikely to resolve these flaws, the Authors advocate for a unified privacy framework that would focus regulatory obligations on the nature and risk of the processing rather than arbitrary data categories, thus providing clearer compliance pathways for businesses and stronger privacy protections for individuals.

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Volume 28, Issue 1

  • A Speaker-Based Approach to Content Moderation: The Case of Livestreaming

    October 2025 | Maayan Perel | Article |

    This Article proposes a speaker-based approach to livestreaming moderation. Beyond the current one-size-fits-all-users approach, it suggests leveraging Machine Learning (ML) and AI to personalize the general optimization function of AI-based filtering models, and tailor it to the specific characteristics of the account holders, including their preferences, interests, and past digital activity. Indeed, advanced predictive capabilities are already exploited by social media platforms for content curation purposes, to match content to users, and maximize platforms’ revenues. Accordingly, under the proposed approach, potentially violent users should be subject to stricter moderation thresholds, while non-violent speakers could face more lenient thresholds. This nuanced approach to content moderation could enhance the integrity of livestreams, ensuring that livestreams that foster democratic discourse and informed citizenship outweigh harmful and unlawful streams. real-time nature challenges existing filtering techniques that are mainly designed to address prerecorded content.

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  • Metaphysical Quandary of Synthetic Media Transparency

    October 2025 | Darrell G. Mottley | Article |

    This Article advocates for the rights of artists and content creators to maintain confidentiality regarding the presence of AI-generated elements in their creative work. As the field of AI-generated media rapidly evolves, this Article advocates for democratizing AI-assisted digital output by establishing a sui generis framework that will counter government efforts to categorize such content. The sui generis framework proposes that individuals should not be obligated to reveal whether their creations incorporate outputs generated by artificial intelligence, allowing them more creative freedom and personal autonomy over their creative processes. Furthermore, the Article examines the role of transparency in AI-generated works for consumers and explores the impact of technology on creator rights and intellectual property.

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  • Student-Athletes, Universities, and Society: Balancing the Symbiosis

    October 2025 | Casey Faucon | Article |

    This Article argues that student-athlete, NIL leveraged business ownership and creation is a means to balance the long-term goals and needs of the student-athletes, the universities, and consumers of college sports. First, the promotion of student-athlete business ownership and creation embraces the rights restorative framework benefitting student-athletes. Second, universities can fulfill their educational and development missions and remain financially and athletically competitive. Third, promoting student-athlete business ownership and creation embraces the role of consumers in this symbiotic relationship and can have the larger, spillover effect of contributing to regional economic development in America’s unique college towns.

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  • Private Equity’s Viable Path to College Athletics Investment: Potential Entity Mechanisms and Antitrust Considerations

    October 2025 | Michael Ilg | Note |

    This Note analyzes the decision between a single entity structure and joint venture seen in most professional sports leagues in the United States. Based on the entity formation and antitrust considerations, the most viable option for private investment is a full buyout leading to the league operating as a joint venture with traditional sports league collective bargaining.

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  • Minors or Miners? Analyzing Compensation of User-Generated Content Under the Fair Labor Standards Act

    October 2025 | J. Clayton Eaton | Note |

    This Note argues that the current landscape of labor and content regulation is ill-suited to address the realities of virtual economies comprised of user-generated goods and services. Next, this Note proposes adapting and repurposing an archaic provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act to protect young creators in the modern, digital age and ensure that the compensation structures treat creators more fairly.

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  • The Public Health Cost of Online Behavioral Targeting

    October 2025 | Arthi Annadurai | Note |

    This Note proposes the establishment of state regulatory agencies to enforce stricter informed consent rules, similar to those used in human subjects research, in order to protect vulnerable health app users while also preserving the marketing efficiency created by online behavior targeting techniques. These rules would require clear and accessible disclosures about how data is used, modeled after the stringent consent requirements in human subjects research, and ensure that consumers understand the potential risks to their health.

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Volume 27, Issue 4

  • How the Law Makes Smart Cities Unaccountable, and How to Start Making It Better: Lessons from Sidewalk Toronto

    July 2025 | Beatriz Botero Arcila | Article |

    Sidewalk Toronto was the flagship project of Sidewalk Labs, the smart-city subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. It was the largest smart-city project planned in North America or Europe. It is also the most notable failure of such a project to date.

    Smart city projects and the technologies behind them improve the delivery and efficiency of city services, produce data to help local policymakers learn from their policy interventions and bring several economic development benefits. At the same time, they can create important risks to fundamental rights and enhance the capabilities of corporate and public surveillance. When Sidewalk Toronto was abandoned many suspected it was because of the concerns and opposition it raised regarding the risks of increased corporate surveillance it posed.

    Although concerns about surveillance were the political driver of Sidewalk Toronto’s failure, this Article argues that the reason why the project failed, and perhaps had to fail, is because there was no apt legal framework to sustain it. Sidewalk Toronto was an interesting project from a local economic development perspective, and from an innovation perspective. However, existing privacy laws in Canada were not up for the task of handling, reasonably limiting, and ensuring the safe use of ubiquitous data collection in the city’s public spaces and infrastructures. Additionally, and most importantly, the public-private structure of governance behind the project was unaccountable and unfit to oversee its safe development.

    This Article demonstrates that the interplay between data protection law and public and private governance structures that govern smart city projects around the world are crucial to guarantee smart cities safety and trustworthiness; and for cities to be able to harness their benefits. In doing so, this Article calls for not only reform of data governance law, but also reform in other fields of law better equipped with dealing with the power asymmetries and particularities of the sectors where digital technologies are being adopted. This Article focuses on cities and how local law and governance should be adapted to address these risks.

    While digital technologies promise solutions to urgent urban challenges, the Sidewalk Toronto story teaches a stark lesson: without robust legal frameworks and accountable institutions, smart city projects around the world will create substantial risks.

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  • Governing Global Gig Platforms in the Age of AI: When the Manager is an Algorithm

    July 2025 | David S. Lee & Felicia F. Chen | Article |

    Gig workers are vulnerable to discrimination from the sharing economy platforms on which they work. This challenge is worsened by these platforms’ dependence on algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which are used to control and direct gig workers. These platforms also often operate globally, and discrimination embedded within their algorithms can be magnified when exported into new cultural contexts.

    These platforms exercise significant influence over gig workers, but their for-profit nature means that their boards and directors often prioritize shareholder value over gig worker protection. This tension has led to intense debates, as platforms attempt to minimize the rights and benefits they provide to gig workers. Yet, recent legal developments from the European Union—specifically, the European Union’s Platform Workers’ Directive, AI Act, and Framework Convention on AI—signal the beginning of a global legal and policy shift towards protecting gig workers and regulating AI use.

    This Article examines the intricate interplay among algorithmic discrimination, corporate governance, and growing global legal scrutiny to protect gig workers and govern AI. This emerging legal and regulatory framework from the European Union has the potential to align platforms’ incentives with gig workers’ rights. Finally, this Article offers policy recommendations and actionable organizational changes for platforms to navigate this evolving legal landscape.

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  • Applying the Public Forum Doctrine to Public Official and Campaign Social Media Accounts

    July 2025 | Jonathan Peters & Skylar Bandoly | Article |

    The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in the 2019 case Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump that the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account was a designated public forum, making it a First Amendment violation for President Trump to block users from it on the basis of their viewpoints. A few years later, in the 2024 case Lindke v. Freed, the US Supreme Court established a two-part test to determine whether a public official’s social media activity constituted state action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. This Article reviews these and related cases to explore—in the context of public forum analysis—how courts have addressed the personal social media accounts of public officials and the campaign accounts of candidates running for elected office, particularly if the candidate is running for re-election. This Article also offers several proposals regarding how courts should address such accounts.

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  • State and Regulatory Agency Approaches to Limiting Deepfakes in Political Advertising

    July 2025 | Mary Margaret Burniston | Note |

    With recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), regulators have turned their attention to the issue of how—and whether—to regulate the use of AI in political advertisements. While nineteen states have passed legislation regulating AI in political advertising, such regulations may be challenged as violations of the First Amendment. Furthermore, federal agencies also dispute which regulatory agency has jurisdiction to address the problem, with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) both claiming authority. Beyond issues of jurisdiction, agency action is also limited by the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.

    As deepfakes in political advertisement present the clearest threat of electoral confusion and deception, lawmakers should focus on deepfakes and craft content-neutral regulations of the manner of speech that can be used in AI-generated political advertisements. Such regulations would advance the strong government interest of preventing misrepresentation and electoral confusion. These regulations should be narrowly tailored to require labeling of deepfakes, while leaving open ample channels of alternative communication. The FCC and FEC should exercise complementary roles, with the FCC focusing on deepfakes in robocalls, television, and radio, and the FEC focusing on prohibiting fraudulent misrepresentation.

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  • Roll for Lawsuit: Are Actual-Play Series Copyright Ingringers?

    July 2025 | Mark Mehochko | Note |

    Dungeons and Dragons is a highly popular Tabletop Role-Playing Game designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1973. The game’s emphasis on narrative storytelling makes it an interesting subject for copyright analysis. When a group plays Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) for an audience, using copyrighted materials from Dungeons and Dragons’s publisher, Wizards of the Coast, there is an open question about whether the players infringe on Wizards of the Coast’s exclusive rights under § 106 of the Copyright Act of 1976. This issue is further complicated by Wizards of the Coast’s unique approach to licensing.

    This Note examines how Dungeons and Dragons performances implicate Wizards of the Coast’s exclusive rights under the Copyright Act. After establishing that groups playing D&D publicly are likely liable for infringement of the reproduction, derivative work, and public performance rights of Wizards of the Coast, a statutory solution is proposed based on the Ninth Circuit’s holding in Allen v. Academic Games League of America, Inc.

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  • De-Identified and Unregulated: How Data Brokers Outpace State Privacy Laws

    July 2025 | Hannah Moore | Note |

    State consumer privacy laws, though increasingly important in the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy framework, fail to effectively regulate the practices of data brokers who exploit de-identified data. Laws like the Tennessee Information Protection Act (TIPA) exempt de-identified data from key protections, leaving significant gaps in oversight.

    While the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) establishes standards for de-identification, advanced analytics and linkage techniques employed by data brokers render this data increasingly susceptible to re-identification. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken steps to address these risks, but its limited authority highlights the need for comprehensive solutions.

    This Note proposes two key approaches to addressing the privacy risks posed by data brokers and the re-identification of de-identified data: enacting federal privacy legislation and adopting synthetic data generation to mitigate re-identification risks to close regulatory loopholes. Together, these measures aim to address the shortcomings of state and federal privacy frameworks, ensuring stronger protections for de-identified data in an evolving data ecosystem.

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  • NIL Speeds Ahead While Title IX Trails Behind: Finding Room for Title IX in the Evolving NIL Landscape

    July 2025 | Sophie Zelony | Note |

    Title IX was enacted to eliminate sex-based discrimination in educational programs receiving federal funding, including intercollegiate athletics. While the law has successfully increased female participation in sports, disparities in the treatment of male and female athletes persist, particularly in the context of publicity and promotional resources. The rise of name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities has further widened this gap, as universities and their affiliated collectives disproportionately promote male athletes, enhancing their marketability and NIL earning potential. Schroeder et al. v. University of Oregon presents a novel legal issue—whether Title IX applies to NIL deals when universities provide unequal publicity resources to male and female student athletes. This Note examines how Title IX’s equal treatment mandate extends to NIL promotional efforts, arguing that when institutions directly or indirectly facilitate NIL opportunities in a manner that disproportionately benefits male athletes, they risk violating federal law. Furthermore, the entanglement between universities and NIL collectives raises critical questions of agency law, suggesting that collectives function as promotional arms of institutions rather than independent third parties. Without regulatory intervention, these inequities will continue to undermine Title IX’s purpose.

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Previous Issues

July 2025

Volume 27, Issue 3

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July 2025

Volume 27, Issue 2

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February 2025

Volume 27, Issue 1

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February 2025

Volume 26, Issue 4

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February 2025

Volume 26, Issue 3

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January 2024

Volume 26, Issue 2

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November 203

Volume 26, Issue 1

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July 2023

Volume 25, Issue 4

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June 2023

Volume 25, Issue 3

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