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Minors or Miners? Analyzing Compensation of User-Generated Content Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
No full textRoblox is an online platform where users, many of whom are under the age of eighteen, create games, virtual experiences, and digital assets that generate significant revenue for Roblox Corporation, the owner of Roblox. These young content creators are compensated primarily through platform-specific virtual currency, which can be difficult to convert into real-world money due to the high thresholds for conversion and the unfavorable exchange rates. Even though these systems resemble labor relationships, existing legal frameworks and government actions do little to address the creators’ rights to fair compensation. This regulatory gap has allowed platforms like Roblox to operate under minimal oversight, raising concerns about coercive and exploitative labor practices. 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
In Code We Trust: Blockchain’s Decentralization Paradox
Full text linkThis Article explores blockchain technology’s decentralization and governance challenges. It interrogates the tension between the idea of a trustless, decentralized economy at the core of blockchain’s promise and the realities of power concentration and information asymmetry. Examining the ramifications of the Crypto Winter of 2022 on trust and governance within the blockchain ecosystem, the Article also underscores a critical paradox within blockchain ecosystems. It argues that despite the foundational ethos of decentralization and open participation, the governance structures of major blockchain networks manifest significant centralization, challenging the narrative of an egalitarian, user-driven evolution. The current state of blockchain’s centralities fundamentally incentivize participants to be opportunistic. In light of the collapse of several blockchain organizations in 2022, this Article highlights the danger of blockchain’s centralities. It posits that, without an effective governance regime established by network participants, blockchain’s tragedy will continue to destroy the network’s valuable resources. Finally, this Article stresses the need to design a fully polycentric blockchain system, from both operational and governance aspects, to incentivize network participants and stakeholders to act in the interest of the community rather than in their own interests
Cleaning the Plastic Spring
Full text linkEveryday plastic items typically display the chasing arrows symbol with a resin identification code. When seen on a plastic product, this seemingly insignificant trade combination causes the average consumer’s mind to confer unwarranted environmental benefits to the item. Plastic, unlike aluminum, glass, or paper, poses barriers to recycling that diminish a region’s recycling capabilities. Despite knowing most Americans lack the knowledge necessary to properly discard plastic waste, plastic-producing companies continue to plaster chasing arrows symbols and resin identification codes onto their products. Worse yet, these companies do so without explaining the available recycling opportunities or challenges associated with recycling most plastics. This in turn misleads consumers to believe they are aiding the environment when they “recycle” plastic products that are actually destined for a landfill—thereby contributing to a phenomenon known as greenwashing. U.S. policymakers have provided a mosaic of responses aimed at preventing greenwashing. These disjointed approaches coalesce into an inefficient regulatory framework that plastic-producing companies can circumvent with relative ease. The fractured responses to greenwashing in the plastics industry call for a solution that bypasses the varying governmental approaches and political polarization. This Note proposes a third-party certification as a private environmental solution to greenwashing in the plastics industry. Following the lead of the Marine Stewardship Council and its Blue Fish Label, this Note promotes a certification that addresses the plastic problem’s critical barriers to a solution while navigating political polarization
How the Law Makes Smart Cities Unaccountable, and How to Start Making It Better: Lessons from Sidewalk Toronto
Full text linkSidewalk 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
Applying the Public Forum Doctrine to Public Official and Campaign Social Media Accounts
Full text linkThe 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
Delaware Supreme Court Rules That Officer Exculpation Amendments Do Not Require Separate Class Vote of Non-Voting Shares
Full text linkPlan-B Activist Defense: Defending Animal-Rights Activists in Courtrooms Hostile to Political Argumentation
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Do Representative Payments Matter?
No full textFor many decades, courts have awarded the representative plaintiffs who bring class actions an extra payment when the actions recover something for the class. It has long been thought that the payments are necessary to induce a class member to step forward and serve as a representative, and, without them, many class actions would go away. Indeed, we show that the payments had become all but ubiquitous in non-securities class actions. In 2020, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit became the only circuit to hold the payments unlawful. We test whether the Eleventh Circuit\u27s decision caused a decline in class action filings there relative to other circuits. Much to our surprise, we did not find good evidence of a decline. We surmise that class members may be willing to serve as representatives without the extra compensation for selfless or principled reasons. Although, if true, this might not entirely defeat the case for representative payments, it certainly complicates that case because some believe the payments are not costless. As a result, our analysis may give courts and commentators additional reason to rethink their support for prevailing practices
Analysis of Environmental Law Scholarship 2023-2024
No full textThe Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) is published by the Environmental Law Institute’s (ELI’s) Environmental Law Reporter in partnership with Vanderbilt University Law School. ELPAR provides a forum for the presentation and discussion of some of the most creative and feasible environmental law and policy proposals from the legal academic literature each year. The articles that are considered include all environmental law articles published in select law journals during the previous academic year. The law journal articles that are republished and discussed are selected by Vanderbilt University Law School students with input from their course instructors and an outside advisory committee of experts.
The purpose of this Comment is to highlight the results of the ELPAR article selection process and to report on the environmental legal scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year, including the number of environmental law articles published in general law reviews versus environment-focused law journals and the topics covered in these articles. We also present the top 20 articles that meet ELPAR’s criteria of persuasiveness, impact, feasibility, and creativity. From the top 20 articles, we selected five articles to be republished in shortened form in this issue, including some with commentaries from leading practitioners and policymakers. This Comment provides an empirical snapshot of the environmental legal literature during the past academic year and provides information on the top articles chosen by ELPAR