Internet Law Web Sites

These are Web sites that keep track of Internet law news and that will provide you many ideas for research. Compiled by Ph.D. student Dean Smith. Last updated December 2009.

  1. Visit the Web site of the First Amendment Center for news and analysis. Under the main section, be sure to see "More Headlines" for news stories in reverse chronological order. Also, be sure to check out the topic overviews -- including part of the site devoted to student speech -- by going to the upper left of the site and clicking on "See All Topics." These are very well done little overviews if you're just getting started on a certain topic, like campus speech codes or student press issues. http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/
  2. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is often involved in cutting-edge litigation involving the Internet. Be sure to click on "Deep Links Blog" and "Press Releases." http://www.eff.org/
  3. SaveTheInternet.com is one of several subsidiary sites of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This one focuses on issues related to Net Neutrality. http://www.savetheinternet.com/
  4. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press tracks journalism-related news and litigation. Be sure also to check out their ongoing resource projects, such as the shield law compendium. http://www.rcfp.org/
  5. The ACLU is one of the most active organizations in the country in terms of litigating First Amendment cases. Here are Web sites for the national organization and the North Carolina office (folks here maybe don't realize it, but the N.C. office is an important one). You can click on "Free Speech" on either Web site for details about recently completed or ongoing litigation the ACLU is involved in. http://www.aclu.org/ and http://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/
  6. The Media Law Prof Blog is a node of the law professors’ blog network focused on media law issues. http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/media_law_prof_blog/
  7. The Media Law Blog is an ongoing project of Robert Ambrogi, a lawyer-journalist in Massachusetts. http://www.legaline.com/medialaw.html
  8. CyberJournalist, run by pioneering online journalist Jonathan Doube, tracks journalism-related new media issues. If you'll scroll all the way down, you'll see a topic heading "Legal Issues" that will be of interest. http://www.cyberjournalist.net/
  9. SCOTUSBLOG will keep you abreast of doings at the U.S. Supreme Court, including recent decisions and oral arguments on the docket. http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/
  10. The Legal History Blog is run by Mary Dudziak, and it's the best legal history blog on the Web. http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/
  11. Balkinization is a group blog run by Jack Balkin. Some of the sharpest legal scholars post on this blog, and there is a good amount of discussion about Internet/new media issues. http://balkin.blogspot.com/
  12. I Want Media is a site that does a good job of aggregating daily news from around the media industry. Potential paper ideas lurk in the headlines, and the link for "BOOKS" will take you to a continuously updated list of recent publications on media-related topics. http://www.iwantmedia.com/
  13. Jim Romeneski's Media News blog at the Poynter Institute is one of the oldest blogs on the Web. It is a news aggregator that focuses exclusively on the journalism biz. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45
  14. Jay Rosen's PressThink is probably the smartest blog around in terms of exploring issues at the intersection of journalism and new media. Rich, thoughtful and well-researched posts, even if not specifically about law. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/
  15. Dave Winer is an Internet pioneer, and his blog is said to be the oldest on the Web (he helped write the original blogging software). Again, the site is not specifically about law, but he talks about cutting-edge issues that might spark law-related ideas. http://www.scripting.com/
  16. Dan Gillmor was a longtime print journalist (San Jose Mercury News) who migrated to the Web and became a pioneer of so-called "citizen journalism." He wrote the oft-cited book "We Media," and he keeps up a journalism-oriented blog, Center for Citizen Media. http://citmedia.org/blog/
  17. How could I have forgotten our very own Paul Jones? He's an Internet pioneer and an active blogger. (Actually, Paul is worth visiting once a week. He posts almost every day. Very newsy.) http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/
  18. Eugene Volokh's group blog is heavy on politics, but he is a First Amendment scholar and peppers the blog with law-related posts. Volokh Conspiracy http://volokh.com/
  19. Jonathan Zittrain is a young hotshot in the world of cyberlaw. You can search Westlaw or Lexis or HeinOnline for his articles. You probably also know his book, "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It." http://futureoftheinternet.org/blog
  20. John Palfrey works with Zittrain at the Berkman Center at Harvard. He is another oft-cited hotshot, author of "Born Digital." http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/
  21. & 22. David Weinberger and Doc Searls are, like Paul Jones, Internet pioneers. Not legal folk per se, but they tend to be talking about the most current issues.
  22. For the heck of it, I'll also mention Cory Doctorow. He's a novelist, but he's also an Internet hotshot, co-founder of BoingBoing, constantly quoted, etc. Fun and forward-looking. http://craphound.com/
  23. Harvard’s Berkman Center, home to scholars such as Jonathan Zittrain. Here's the home URL and the main link for the citizen media department: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu ... http://www.citmedialaw.org