eprintid: 36916
rev_number: 8
userid: 5976
dir: disk0/00/03/69/16
datestamp: 2019-06-17 15:27:01
lastmod: 2019-06-17 15:27:01
status_changed: 2019-06-17 15:27:01
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
contact_email: madison@pitt.edu
eprint_status: archive
creators_name: Madison, Michael J
creators_email: madison@pitt.edu
creators_id: MADISON
creators_orcid: 0000-0001-6503-754X
title: Authority and Authors and Codes
ispublished: pub
divisions: sch_law_law
divisions: sch_law_law_facultypub
full_text_status: public
keywords: CFAA, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, hacking, computer intrusions, authors, authorship, copyright, code, signals, signaling, imageability
abstract: Contests over the meaning and application of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) expose long-standing, complex questions about the sources and impacts of the concept of authority in law and culture. Accessing a computer network “without authorization” and by “exceeding authorized access” is forbidden by the CFAA. Courts are divided in their interpretation of this language in the statute. This Article first proposes to address the issue with an insight from social science research. Neither criminal nor civil liability under the CFAA should attach unless the alleged violator has transgressed some border or boundary that is rendered visible or “imageable” in the language of the research on which the argument draws. That claim leads to a second, broader point — emphasizing the potential “imageability” of computer networks, including the Internet, has implications that go beyond one statute because of what that emphasis may teach those who create and implement those networks and who shape the authority that relevant computer code exercises. “Authority” and “authorization” are social practices, continuing negotiations between those who produce them and those who acknowledge and recognize them. “Imageability” is a way of translating that observation into a normative claim in a specific statutory context. Recognizing the social dimensions of “authority” implicates both what kind of Internet society wants and what kind of Internet society will get.
date: 2016
date_type: published
publication: George Washington Law Review
volume: 84
number: 6
publisher: George Washington University Law School
pagerange: 1616-1643
refereed: FALSE
issn: 0016-8076
official_url: https://www.gwlr.org/authority-and-authors-and-codes/
related_url_url: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2884996
article_type: researcharticle
citation:   Madison, Michael J  (2016) Authority and Authors and Codes.  George Washington Law Review, 84 (6).  pp. 1616-1643.  ISSN 0016-8076     
document_url: http://d-scholarship-dev.library.pitt.edu/36916/1/madison.authority.pdf