Michael Froomkin

University of Miami School of Law, Rm. G-382
+1 (305) 284-4285
Snail mail   E-mail   Short bio   Full c.v   SSRN page

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Current Interests

Current Writing

• Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially as applied to health and other professions
• Privacy Theory
• RTBF, US-style
• Robot regulation and standardization
• Privacy and technology, including the Internet, big data, cryptography

Recent or Future Writing & Projects

• Surveillance
• Anonymity
• Regulation of Drones
• ICANN

Founding & Editing

• • Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), Founder & Editor in Chief
  • I started “We Robot” – a conference on legal and policy issues relating to robotics. I was Program chair of the 2012 edition and We Robot 2014 both here at U.Miami. We Robot 2013 was at Stanford University; and We Robot 2015 was at the University of Washington. I was the Chair again for We Robot 2016 at the University of Miami. We Robot 2017 was at Yale, and We Robot 2018 at Stanford. I chaired again for We Robot 2019 at U.Miami. Next year We Robot 2020 will be at the University of Ottawa.
  • ICANNWatch, Co-founding Editor
  • I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, Editorial Board

• Personal blog at Discourse.net

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Fellow & Advisor

• University of Miami Center for Computational Science, Member
• Yale Law School Information Society Project (Yale ISP), Non-Resident Fellow
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Advisory Board
• Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Advisory Board
• Future of Privacy Forum, Advisory Board

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Teaching

The University of Miami is not actually in Miami, but in nearby Coral Gables.   Here is the City Beautiful’s homepage and a map of our neighborhood and a close-up. Visit our webcams and see our weather.

Fall 2018

• Torts (4 cr.)
  

  I’m teaching Torts to Section B in F309, T/Th/F 9:30-10:50.

Spring 2019

• Administrative Law (4 cr.) TBA
  

  Course Description
  Administrative law is the introduction to how federal agencies make regulatory decisions – both rulemaking and adjudication – and how you sue the government if you think they got it wrong. Federal agencies adjudicate more cases every year than all state and federal courts combined. The federal code of regulations is much longer than the codification of federal statutes.

  Complications arise from what are often broad or ambiguous delegations of authority from Congress. There are issues about how and when agency decisions are subject to judicial review. And always lurking is the question of how we reconcile our dependence on an unelected, expert bureaucracy with our commitments to government that is democratically accountable and legitimate.

  Administrative Law is vitally important for anyone contemplating a practice that might involve federal regulations in any way which, if you think about it, is almost everything. A 2011 survey of GW law school alumni put Administrative Law as one of the top three most useful courses I took in law school, and #2 on the list of ‘courses I wish I had taken in law school’.

  Grading will be based on class participation and a an 8-hour take-home final exam.

• Topics in Technology Law Seminar  (2 credits)
  

  Course Description
  This seminar will consider how the legal system responds to new technology. Most of our attention will be on issues arising from very recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and from Robotics, but the law’s reaction to other technologies, ranging from the telegraph and the railroad to the Internet, will make their appearances too.

  A paper is required. Students may write their seminar papers on any mutually agreeable issue relating to law and technology. Grading will be based on the paper and seminar participation.

  This 2-credit seminar will initially meet twice a week to discuss readings and to help participants select paper topics. Then the course will not meet for several weeks in order to allow participants to write their papers and receive feedback on drafts. It will resume at the end of the semester for student paper presentations.

Contact me if you wish me to supervise a paper. I will gladly see you by appointment.

Past Teaching
Civil Procedure Constitutional Law Electronic Commerce Seminar International Law Internet Law	Internet and the Market: E-Commerce & Intellectual Property Jurisprudence Robots & AI Law (shortcourse) Torts Trademark	Law & Games Seminar (MMPORGs, not “gaming”) Intellectual Property in the Digital Era Seminar Internet Governance Seminar

I have some  unofficial advice about course selection in law school and some idiosyncratic writing tips. I’ve also got a half-written FAQ for people thinking about law school.

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Publications

 

AI & Robots
Privacy & Cryptography	E-Commerce	Other
Internet Governance & Governance Generally	Administrative Law	Discourse.net

AI & Robots

• When AIs Outperform Doctors: Confronting the Challenges of A Tort-Induced Over-Reliance On Machine Learning, 61 Ariz. L. Rev. 33 (2019) (with Ian Kerr & Joëlle Pineau).
• Introduction to Robot Law (book chapter) in Robot Law (Ryan Calo, A. Michael Froomkin, & Ian Kerr eds., 2016).
• Self-Defense Against Robots and Drones, 48 Conn. L. Rev. 1 (2015) (with Zak Colangelo)

Privacy & Cryptography

• Lessons Learned Too Well: Anonymity in a Time of Surveillance, 59 Ariz. L. Rev 95 (2017).
• Self-Defense Against Robots and Drones, 48 Conn. L. Rev. 1 (2015) (with Zak Colangelo)
• Regulating Mass Surveillance as Privacy Pollution: Learning from Environmental Impact Statements, 2015 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1713.
• From Anonymity to Identification, 1 J. Reg. & Self-Reg. 121 (2015)
• Pseudonyms by Another Name: Identity Management in a Time of Surveillance (book chapter) in Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions (Mark Rotenburg, Julia Horwitz, Jeramie Scott, eds. 2015).
• “Pets Must Be on a Leash”: How U.S. Law (and Industry Practice) Often Undermines and Even Forbids Valuable Privacy Enhancing Technology, 74 Ohio St. L.J. 965 (2013).
• Hard to BELIEVE: The High Cost of a Biometric Identity Card (with Jonathan Weinberg), Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law & Social Policy at UC Berkeley School of Law (Feb. 2012)
• Government Data Breaches, 24 Berkeley Tech L.J. 1019 (2009)
• Identity Cards and Identity Romanticism (book chapter) in Lessons from the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society (Ian Kerr, ed., 2009)
• Anonymity and the Law in the United States (book chapter) in Lessons from the Identity Trail: Anonymity, Privacy and Identity in a Networked Society (Ian Kerr, ed., 2009)
• The Uneasy Case for National ID Cards as a Means to Enhance Privacy (book chapter) in Securing Privacy in the Internet Age (A. Chander, L. Gelman, M.J. Radin, eds 2008)
• The New Health Information Architecture: Coping with the Privacy Implications of the Personal Health Records Revolution, UM ELSI Group for Project HealthDesign (2008)
• Forced Sharing of Patient-Controlled Health Records, UM ELSI Group for Project HealthDesign (2007)
• Creating a Viral Federal Privacy Standard, 48 B.C.L. Rev. 55 (2007)
• A Dispatch From the Crypto Wars (Review of Matt Curtin, Brute Foce: Cracking the Data Encryption Standard (2005)), 2 I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 345 (2006)
• Anonymity in the Balance, in DIGITAL ANONYMITY: TENSIONS AND DIMENSIONS (C. Nicoll et al. eds., 2003)
• The Death of Privacy?, 52 STAN L. REV. 1461 (2000)
• The Constitution and Encryption Regulation: Do We Need a “New Privacy”?, 3 N.Y.U. J. Legis & Pub. Pol. 25 (1999-2000).
• Legal Issues in Anonymity and Pseudonymity, AAAS Symposium Volume, 15 The Information Society 113 (1999).
• Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living With Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases, 15 U. Pitt. J. L. & Com. 395 (1996) (Conference for the Second Century of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Symposium volume)
• It Came From Planet Clipper, 1996 U. Chi. L. Forum 15 (The Law of Cyberspace symposium volume)
• Anonymity and Its Enmities, 1 Journal of Online Law art. 4 (1995)
• The Metaphor is the Key: Cryptography, the Clipper Chip and the Constitution, 143 U. Penn. L. Rev. 709 (1995)
• The Constitutionality of Mandatory Key Escrow–A First Look in Building in Big Brother: The Cryptographic Policy Debate 413 (Lance Hoffman, ed. 1995).

Internet Governance & Governance Generally

• Lessons Learned Too Well: Anonymity in a Time of Surveillance, 59 Ariz. L. Rev. 95 (2017)
• Almost Free: An Analysis of ICANN’s ‘Affirmation of Commitments’, 9 J. Telecom. & High Tech. Law 187 (2011)
• Ethical, legal and social issues for personal health records and applications (2010) (with Reid Cushman, Anita Cava, Patricia Abril, & Kenneth W. Goodman), 43 Journal of Biomedical Informatics 551 (2010).
• Building the Bottom Up From the Top Down, 5 I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society 141 (2009)
• Tim Wu, Esther Dyson, Esther, A. Michael Froomkin, and David A. Gross, On the Future of Internet Governance,. American Society of International Law, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting. Vol. 101.
• International and National Regulation of the Internet (book chapter) in The Round Table Expert Group on Telecommunications Laws: Conference Papers (E.J. Dommering & N.A.N.M. van Eijk (eds.) (2005).
• When We Say US^TM, We Mean It!, 41 Hous. L. Rev. 839 (2004).
• Technologies for Democracy (book chapter) in Democracy Online: The Prospects for Electronic Democracy (Peter Shane, ed. 2004).
• Commentary: Time to Hug a Bureaucrat, 35 LOY. U. CHI. L.J. 139 (2003).
• ICANN & Anti-Trust, 2003 U. ILL. L. REV. 1 (with Mark Lemley).
• ICANN 2.0: Meet the New Boss, 36 LOY. L.A. L. REV. 1087 (2003)
• Habermas@discourse.net: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace, 116 HARV. L. REV. 749 (2003)
• ICANN’s UDRP: Its Causes and (Partial) Cures, 67 BROOK. L. REV. 605 (2002)
• Internet Governance: The ICANN Experiment (Or, Three Paradoxes in Search of a Paradigm), in LA LIBERTAD DE INFORMACION: GOBIERNO Y ARQUITECTURA DE INTERNET 12 (Loreto Corredoira y Alfonso ed., 2001).
• Form and Substance in Cyberspace, 6 J. SMALL & EMERGING BUS. L. 93 (2002)
• Internet’s International Regulation: Emergence and Enforcement, in EVOLUTION DES SYSTEMES JURIDIQUE, BIJURIDISM ET COMMERCE INTERNATIONAL / THE EVOLUTION OF LEGAL SYSTEMS, BIJURALISM AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE (Louis Perret & Alain-Francois Bisson eds., 2002).
• The Collision of Trademarks, Domain Names, and Due Process in Cyberspace, 44 COMM. ACM. 91 (2001).
• Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution, 50 DUKE L.J. 17 (2000)
• Semi-Private International Rulemaking: Lessons Learned from the WIPO Domain Name Process, in REGULATING THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY 211 (Christopher T. Marsden ed., 2000)
• Of Governments and Governance, 14 Berkeley Law & Technology Journal 617 (1999)
• A Commentary on WIPO’s The Management of Internet Names And Addresses: Intellectual Property Issues
• A Critique of WIPO’s RFC3
• Comment, The Empire Strikes Back, 73 Chi-Kent L. Rev. 1101 (1998)
• The Internet as a Source of Regulatory Arbitrage (book chapter) in Borders in Cyberspace (Brian Kahin and Charles Nesson, eds.) (MIT Press, 1997)

E-Commerce

• Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow’s Economy, in INTERNET PUBLISHING AND BEYOND: THE ECONOMICS OF DIGITAL INFORMATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 6 (Brian Kahin & Hal Varian eds., 2000) (with James Bradford DeLong).
• Beating Microsoft at its Own Game, HARV. BUS. REV., Jan-Feb. 2000, at 159 (reviewing CHARLES FERGUSON, HIGH STAKES, NO PRISONERS (1999)) (with J. Bradford DeLong).
• 2B as Legal Software for Electronic Contracting — Operating System or Trojan Horse?, 13 Berkeley Law & Technology Journal 1023 (1999)
• Firme digitali e Autorità di Certificazione: La garanzie di validità degli atti elettronici, 23 ingenium (Italy) 12 (March, 1998) (tr. Giovanni Nasi)
• Recent Developments in US Computer Law, Amicus Curiae 27 (Jan., 1998)
• Digital Signatures Today in Financial Cryptography 287 (Rafael Hirschfeld ed., 1997) (Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol. 1318)
• Flood Control on the Information Ocean: Living With Anonymity, Digital Cash, and Distributed Databases, 15 U. Pitt. J. L. & Com. 395 (1996) (Conference for the Second Century of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Symposium volume)
• The Essential Role of Trusted Third Parties in Electronic Commerce, 75 Ore. L. Rev. 49 (1996) (The Law and Entrepreneurship Program: Innovation and the Information Environment, Symposium Volume). Reprinted in Readings in Electronic Commerce 119 (Ravi Kalakota & Andrew B. Whinston, eds. 1997).

Administrative Law

• Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution, 50 DUKE L.J. 17 (2000)
• Reinventing the Government Corporation, 1995 Ill. L. Rev. 543
• The Imperial Presidency’s New Vestments, 88 Nw. L. Rev. 1346 (1994)
• Still Naked After All These Words, 88 Nw. L. Rev. 1420 (1994).
• Politiké Finance V SFR (with Steve Gordon), 12 Právník 1079 (1990).
• Climbing the Most Dangerous Branch: Legisprudence and the New Legal Process, 66 Tex. L. Rev. 1071 (1988) (book review).
• Note, In Defense of Administrative Agency Autonomy, 96 Yale L.J. 787 (1987).

Blogging, Online Games, and Other Fun Stuff

• The Plural of “Anecdote” is “Blog”, 84 Wash. U. L. Rev. 1149 (2007)
• Virtual Worlds, Real Rules, 1 N.Y.L. SCH. L. REV. 103 (2004) (with Caroline Bradley)
• ELSI Guide to Licensing Project HealthDesign Work Product in the Public Interest, for Project HealthDesign (2007)

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Miscellany

• Slides from my presentation at The Public Voice in Internet Policy Making, entitled Lessons Learned From the ICANN Process, and from the ICANN-critique process (.ppt) (22 June 2002), sponsored by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
• Slides from my presentation at INET 2002, Trademark Law Meets the Internet (.ppt).
• A draft article on ICANN’s problems, A Proposal for an Improbable Solution to the Problems of an Improbable Body (pdf), written for the conference on “New Technologies and International Governance” held at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, co-sponsored with George Mason University Washington DC. This paper was delivered February 12 2002, i.e. before ICANN CEO Stuart Lynn proposed radical changes to ICANN. For my views of that, please see ‘Where Goes ICANN’
• I’ve written a little essay on a notable ICANN outrage involving re-delegation of the .au ccTLD.
• Monash University’s Centre for Law in the Digital Economy (CLiDE) has copies of my slides for the Inaugural Lecture I gave on Aug. 9, 2001: Winners and Losers: The Internet Changes Everything — or Nothing?
• My brother has a nice article online about Why The Web Can Work So Well for Journalists
• The inaugural issue of the Duke Law and Technology Review has a short interview with me.
• I have discovered a new taste for poetry. Sometime a haiku just reaches you where you live.
• My prepared statement for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Communications Subcommittee hearing on ICANN Feb. 14, 2001. Also in massive .pdf (with charts).
• My prepared statement for a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications entitled “Is ICANN’s New Generation of Internet Domain Name Selection Process Thwarting Competition?”
• Public interest groups’ letter to Department of Commerce requesting hearings on new gTLDs. Also a press release regarding the letter.
• Slides prepared for my talk on Internet & International Regulation: Emergence and Enforcement at the University of Ottawa’s Conference on the Evolution of Legal Systems, BiJuralism and International Trade 2000. If you were there you may have noticed that (1) I didn’t actually use these slides as this wasn’t a Powerpoint-friendly event and (2) the actual talk diverged somewhat from the slides, especially as parts of it were in a different language.
• Slides from my talk “The Assault on Anonymity and its Consequences” given at a workshop on “Anonymity and Internet: rights and obligations in a borderless society” in Tilberg, NL sponsored by the Institute for Globalization and Sustainable Development (Globus) and the Centre for Law, Public Administration and Informatization (CRBI).
• Slides from my talk “Cross-Border B2C eADR” given to a TIAS/Arthur Andersen seminar on “Legal and valuation issues of E-business” in Tilburg, NL (2000).
• UPDATED An only slightly tongue-in-cheek set of powerpoint slides on The Virtual Law School
• A pdf version of a (very) short write-up of a talk called Digital Signatures Today that appeared in the Proceedings of Financial Cryptography ’97.
• You may also want to visit a paper I did not write: the cryptographers’ report on the practicalities, costs, and even dangers of key escrow.
• I did write part of a moot court problem based on an invented cryptography control statute. Here is my imaginary really pro-Clipper court decision. You can also view the entire moot court problem, and hear a RealAudio transmission of the hearing. You can also hear a RealAudio of a panel on “Addressing Law Enforcement Concerns in a Constitutional Framework” recorded at the SAFE forum discussion of cryptographic export control, held July 1, 1996 at Stanford University. The nice people at CDT have also produced a transcript of that session. .
• My presentation to UM’s 3rd International Tax Institute: The Internet: A Free Port in Every PC? (slides only).
• My e-cash “position paper” for CFP ’97 on the Unintended Consequences of E-Cash.
• An Internet audio version of my CFP ’98 panel on Crypto and Privacy at the Fringes of Society or my CFP ’95 panel, Can We Talk Long-Distance? Removing Impediments to Secure International Communications.
• I wrote a WordPerfect 5.1 macro that converts a footnoted document into crude HTML with hyperlinked notes. The macro assumes that reveal codes is OFF, and that the document you want converted is in one window while the alternate document is empty. The macro does not fix headings (style codes do that well), nor does it do a table of contents. To fix bold and underline, find the CHANGECO macro provided with WP5.1 and change them to the appropriate HTML. An additional manual search and replace, plus some cutting up into separate documents, is needed to change this to a frames document.
• This WP 5.1 macro will convert footnotes in a westlaw document into wordperfect footnotes. The Westlaw document must have been saved in WP 5.1 form. To run the macro, open the WP5.1 version of the downloaded file, type ALT-F10 then type WESTFN and hit the enter key. The macro assumes that reveal codes is OFF. It will strip off the excess headers and footers inserted by Westlaw into documents, but will leave the Westlaw copyright notice intact. If the macro is working you should see a progress report in the lower left hand corner of your screen. This macro is very simple-minded, and sometimes gets mixed up if there are atrociously long footnotes, so you do need to check the result. Looking at the final footnote to see if has the same number, and same text, as the original will usually but alas not inevitably tell you if things worked right. Even if they didn’t, a small amount of manual tweaking will usually fix the resulting document.
• Click here for a surreal compliment
• The high school I attended now has its own Web site; it seems to have gotten somewhat cooler than when I was there (and much more computerized!). There is also a web site for the college I attended (the fight song is kinda fun), the place I went to grad school, and the law school I attended and its library’s better page. Now my wife and my brother have homepages too.
• Some ICANN stuff
  • I have an ICANN/WIPO page.
  • Beware the ICANN Board Squatters! and Update: Replacing the ICANN Board Squatters
  • Comments on ICANN’s proposed by-law changes.
  • My comments on ICANN’s proposed Uniform Dispute Policy and Rules
  • Of Governments and Governance, a paper delivered at a conference on “The Legal and Policy Framework for Global Electronic Commerce: a Progress Report”.
  • Slides from a talk called “The Root of all Evil?” presented at the CPSR conference Sept. 25, 1999. Powerpoint .ppt file; or as HTML. CPSR has also posted an excellent summary of my talk.
  • A preliminary draft of my TPRC paper: Semi-Private International Rulemaking: Lessons Learned from the WIPO Domain Name Process (in .pdf format). Now in version 2.0
  • Some thoughts on how ICANN might introduce instant accountability by signing A Contract With The Internet.
  • The EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, a comment delivered at a symposium on The Internet and Legal Theory.

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Non-standard disclaimers may apply. Beware of these fallacies…and and these too! This personal Web page is not an official University of Miami Web page. See disclaimer.