Student ID # ____________________
THESE EXAMINATION QUESTIONS MUST BE RETURNED AT THE END OF THE EXAMINATION.
SANTA
CLARA UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL
OF LAW
FINAL EXAMINATION
57931 Cyberspace
Law May
3, 1997
Professor Eric
Schlachter Spring
Semester
3 Questions 1:30
to 4:00
THE EXAMINATION RULES AS STATED IN THE CURRENT STUDENT HANDBOOK GOVERN THIS
EXAMINATION, EXCEPT THAT THIS IS AN OPEN BOOK EXAM.
Instructions--PLEASE READ CAREFULLY
1. This is an open book
exam. All written and printed materials are permitted.
2. This is a multiple
part exam with a total time limit of 2 hours, 30 minutes. There are a total of
three questions, with the following weighting for each question:
Question 1: 50% (1 hour, 15 minutes)
Question 2: 30% (45 minutes)
Question 3: 20% (30 minutes)
3. Enter your student
identification number in the space provided above.
4. Please write or type
your exam on paper provided.
5. I have the following
exam tips and strategies for you:
(a) Please
outline your answers carefully and deliberately. I recommend that you spend
approximately 1/3 of your allocated time reading the question and outlining a
response.
(b) Follow
the call of the question. Target your response to your audience.
(c) While
generally your answers should be based on legal principles, it is always
appropriate to address business issues.
(d) You
are likely to find that additional information would be useful in your
analysis. Please indicate what additional information would be helpful, and
then make assumptions to proceed with your analysis.
Question 1 (1 hour, 15 minutes)
Andrew Canyoudo, a partner in your firm, has forwarded to you the following
email from one of his clients, Mike Saber:
Andrew, I need your help! I and my company have
been repeatedly and viciously attacked by Lew Wort on a message board located
at http://www.smallinvestor.com. I have complained to the sysop and still no
action!!! This is unacceptable. Andrew, please resolve this matter.
Andrew explains to you that Andrew has recently represented Mike’s company,
Crumb Corp., in its negotiations with BoBo Corp. BoBo recently announced that
it was acquiring Crumb Corp. in a merger. Andrew explains that we now represent
Mike individually [note: assume any necessary conflict waivers have been
obtained].
Attached to Mike’s email is the text of four messages posted by Lew Wort in
the "BoBo Forum" at smallinvestor.com, an active message forum for
the discussion of BoBo’s business. In the header for all four messages, it says
that the postings were made from 98765.4321@compuserve.com [note: assume the
address is consistent with CompuServe’s address scheme]:
Message 172: Why did Crumb Corp. sell to BoBo
instead of going public? Because if Crumb Corp. had gone public, everyone would
have seen what a fraud the company is. Mike Saber is an infamous crook.
Message 178: It’s time to sell BoBo stock. Now! By
some crooked means Saber was able to peddle his miserable creation to BoBo. All
the insiders are selling as a result.
Message 179: How do I know Saber is a crook? I had
many friends who worked with him in Estonistan. As you know, all Estonistanians
are very unethical as a race. But my friends say Saber tops them all.
Message 182: Jeff, thanks for your message. I’ll
see you at the COMDEX conference. And if you see Saber at the conference, tell
him to watch his step. I’ll be there with a couple of tough guys from our
security department.
When you go to look at the smallinvestor.com site, you cannot find messages
172, 179 or 182, but message 178 is still publicly available in the BoBo forum.
What do you do to "resolve the matter"? Please outline a list of
the actions you plan to take and what you hope to accomplish by doing so. If
you plan to communicate with a party, please outline their legal rights and
obligations and indicate how you would might use the legal context to
effectuate your goals.
END OF QUESTION 1
Question 2 (45 minutes)
Your client Foreignews is launching an advertising-supported website
oriented towards U.S. executives doing business in South America. Among the
features your client plans to offer is a What’s New area. This area will be
composed of articles published by English language periodicals in the various
countries in South America. Once every 12 hours, Foreignews’ robot will go to
each periodical’s website, make a copy of their articles, and automatically
upload the articles to Foreignews’ website. Foreignews has decided to do this
rather than just hypertext link to the articles because, by putting the
articles on a server located in the U.S., Foreignews’ users will not have to
wait for the articles to be sent over the Internet from South America.
Your client has scheduled a conference call to discuss the advisability of
launching this feature. Please prepare an outline of the points you would like
to cover in the call and provide some brief analysis of why each point is an
issue.
[Ignore all international copyright treaties and conflicts of laws issues;
assume that the copyright laws of all foreign jurisdictions are identical to
U.S. copyright law. Do not discuss any issues related to INS v. AP, NBA v.
Motorola or the "hot news" misappropriation tort. While copyright is
an important part of this question, there are other issues to address.]
END OF QUESTION 2
Question 3 (30 minutes)
You are approached by a potential client, crapsgambling.com. They intend to
launch a gambling website, where users can play online craps, blackjack,
roulette and other games of chance "against the house" for real
money. The entrepreneurs are aware that there may be issues involved with the
legality of what they intend to do. Therefore, their first order of business
when they hire a law firm will be to prepare a user "agreement" that
users will be required to accept. As far as you can tell, they expect to use
this agreement to protect themselves from all legal issues.
Please briefly describe the reasons why the user agreement may not
adequately protect their interests.
[Although to some degree this question requires you to identify ways in
which crapsgambling.com and its principals might be liable, the focus is on how
the user agreement can or cannot deal with such liability and why.]
END OF QUESTION 3
END OF EXAMINATION