Publications (by topic)

Arrange by date | topic | type

Some things I write don’t fit neatly into one subject box, so they appear more than once on this list.


A. Feder Cooper and James Grimmelmann, The Files are in the Computer: On Copyright, Memorization, and Generative AI, Chicago-Kent Law Review (forthcoming)

Part of the Chicago-Kent Law Review AI Disrupting Law Symposium, March 8 and April 26, 2024

Tong Chen, Akari Asai, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Sewon Min, James Grimmelmann, Yejin Choi, Hannaneh Hajishirzi, Luke Zettlemoyer, and Pang Wei Koh, CopyBench: Measuring Literal and Non-Literal Reproduction of Copyright-Protected Text in Language Model Generation, 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) (forthcoming)
Madiha Zahrah Choksi and James Grimmelmann, How Licenses Learn, 28 Lewis and Clark Law Review 249 (2024)

Part of the Data in Business & Society symposium at Lewis and Clark Law School, September 8, 2023

Katherine Lee, A. Feder Cooper, and James Grimmelmann, Talkin’ ’Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain, Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. (forthcoming 2024)
Katherine Lee, A. Feder Cooper, and James Grimmelmann, Talkin’ ’Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain (The Short Version), 3rd ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law 48 (2024) Available under a Creative Commons License
Timothy B. Lee and James Grimmelmann, Why The New York Times Might Win Its Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI, Ars Technica (Feb. 20, 2024)
The Token-Bound NFT License (2022)
James Grimmelmann, Yan Ji, and Tyler Kell, EIP-5218: NFT Rights Management (draft 2022)
James Grimmelmann, Yan Ji, and Tyler Kell, Copyright Vulnerabilities in NFTs, IC3 Blog (Mar. 21, 2022)

Also adapted for The Verge

Computers and Robots Don’t Count, Slate (Aug. 23, 2016)
Copyright for Literate Robots, 101 Iowa Law Review 657 (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License
There’s No Such Thing as a Computer-Authored Work – And It’s a Good Thing, Too, 39 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 403 (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Copyright Outside the Box symposium at Columbia Law School (October 2, 2015)

Harry Potter and the Mysterious Defeat Device, Slate (Sept. 22, 2015)
Indistinguishable from Magic: A Wizard’s Guide to Copyright and 3D Printing, 71 Washington and Lee Law Review 683 (2014) Available under a Creative Commons License

Responding to Kyle Dolinsky, CAD’s Cradle: Untangling Copyrightability, Derivative Works, and Fair Use in 3D Printing, 71 Washington an Lee Law Review 591 (2014) as part of the W&LLR Student Notes Symposium (September 19, 2013)

James Grimmelmann and David Post, Brief of 36 Intellectual Property and Copyright Law Professors as Amici Curiae,, ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc. (U.S 2014)
Why Johnny Can’t Stream: How Video Copyright Went Insane, Ars Technica (Aug. 30, 2012)
Three Theories of Copyright in Ratings, 14 Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 851 (2012) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law Copyright and Creativity symposium (Jan. 27, 2012)

The Elephantine Google Books Settlement, 58 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 497 (2011)
Owning the Stack: The Legal War to Control the Smartphone Platform, Ars Technica (Sept. 11, 2011)
The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books, American Constitution Society Issue Brief (2009) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Ethical Visions of Copyright Law, 77 Fordham Law Review 2005 (2009) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the the When Worlds Collide symposium at Fordham Law School (Oct. 30–Nov. 1, 2008)

How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement, Journal of Internet Law, April 2009, at 1 Available under a Creative Commons License
Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer (2008) Available under a Creative Commons License

Search Engines

Speech Engines, 98 Minnesota Law Review 868 (2014) Available under a Creative Commons License
What to Do About Google?, Communications of the ACM, September 2013, at 28 Available under a Creative Commons License
Some Skepticism About Search Neutrality, in The Next Digital Decade: Essays on the Future of the Internet (Berin Szoka & Adam Marcus eds., TechFreedom 2010) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Google Dilemma, 53 New York Law School Law Review 939 (2009) Available under a Creative Commons License
Information Policy for the Library of Babel, 3 Journal of Business and Technology Law 29 (2008) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Structure of Search Engine Law, 93 Iowa Law Review 1 (2007) Available under a Creative Commons License
Don’t Censor Search, 117 Yale Law Journal Pocket Part 48 (2007)

Speech

Public Business and Private Accounts, Communications of the ACM, September 2024, at 37
James Grimmelmann and Gautam S. Hans, Brief of First Amendment and Internet Law Scholars as Amici Curiae, Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton (U.S. 2024)
Listeners’ Choices, 90 University of Colorado Law Review 365 (2019) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the 26th Ira C. Rothgerber, Jr. Constitutional Law Conference on Listeners and the First Amendment at the University of Colorado, April 13, 2018

Speech In, Speech Out, in Ronald K.L. Collins & David M. Skover, Robotica: Speech Rights and Artificial Intelligence 85 (2018) Available under a Creative Commons License

See also this sur-response

No ESC, The Recorder Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of an online symposium on the 20th anniversary of Zeran v. AOL, and reprinted in Zeran v. America Online (Eric Goldman and Jeff Kosseff eds. 2020)

Speech Engines, 98 Minnesota Law Review 868 (2014) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Illegal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Censorship, 79 University of Chicago Law Review Dialogue 57 (2013) Available under a Creative Commons License

Responding to Derek E. Bambauer, Orwell’s Armchair, 79 University of Chicago Law Review 863 (2012)


Privacy

Madiha Zarah Choksi, Marianne Aubin Le Quéré, Travis Lloyd, Ruojia Tao, James Grimmelmann, and Mor Naaman, Under the (Neighbor)hood: Hyperlocal Surveillance on Nextdoor, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) (2024)

Also at International Communication Association (ICA) 2024

Do You Consent?, Slate (May 27, 2015)
Big Data’s Other Privacy Problem, in Big Data, Big Challenges for Evidence-Based Policy Making 211 (Kumar Jayasuria and Kathryn Ritcheske eds., West Academic 2015)
The Law and Ethics of Experiments on Social Media Users, 13 Colorado Technology Law Journal 219 (2015) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the When Companies Study Their Customers: The Changing Face of Science, Research, and Ethics symposium at the University of Colorado, Boulder (Dec. 4, 2014)

First-Class Objects, 9 Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law 421 (2011) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Privacy and the Press symposium at the University of Colorado, Boulder (Dec. 3, 2010)

Known and Unknown, Property and Contract: Comments on Hoofnagle and Moringiello, 5 Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial, and Commercial Law 85 (2011) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Data Security and Data Privacy symposium at Brooklyn Law School (Mar. 19, 2010)

The Privacy Virus, in Facebook and Philosphy (Dylan Wittkower ed., Open Court 2010)
Privacy as Product Safety, 26 Widener Law Journal 793 (2010) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Internet Expression in the 21st Century: Where Technology & Law Collide symposium at Widener University School of Law in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (February 22, 2010)

The Unmasking Option, 87 Denver University Law Review Online 23 (2010) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of a Cyber Civil Rights symposium at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law (November 20, 2009)

Saving Facebook: A Response to Professor Freiwald, 95 Iowa Law Review Bulletin 13 (2009) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reply to Susan Freiwald, A Comment on James Grimmelmann’s Saving Facebook, 94 Iowa Law Review 1137 (2009)

Saving Facebook, 94 Iowa Law Review 1137 (2009) Available under a Creative Commons License
Total Information Awareness, The New Republic (Dec. 11, 2008)
Accidental Privacy Spills, Journal of Internet Law, July 2008, at 3 Available under a Creative Commons License

Blockchain

James Grimmelmann and A. Jason Windawi, Blockchains as Infrastructure and Semicommons, 64 William and Mary Law Review 1097 (2023) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the William and Mary Law Review Cryptocurrency Symposium, February 11, 2022

The Token-Bound NFT License (2022)
James Grimmelmann, Yan Ji, and Tyler Kell, EIP-5218: NFT Rights Management (draft 2022)
James Grimmelmann, Yan Ji, and Tyler Kell, Copyright Vulnerabilities in NFTs, IC3 Blog (Mar. 21, 2022)

Also adapted for The Verge

Sarah Allen, Srdjan Capkun, Ittay Eyal, Giulia Fanti, Bryan Ford, James Grimmelmann, Ari Juels, Kari Kostiainen, Sarah Meiklejohn, Andrew Miller, Eswar Prasad, Karl Wüst, and Fan Zhang, Design Choices for Central Bank Digital Currency: Policy and Technical Considerations (Brookings Institution 2020)
All Smart Contracts Are Ambiguous, 2 Journal of Law and Innovation 1 (2019) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Journal of Law & Innovation Symposium on Algorithms, Big Data, and Contracting: The Law of Agreements in the Digital Era, January 11, 2019

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of ICO Crowdfunding, Jotwell: Technology Law (November 2018) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing a draft of Shaanan Cohney, David Hoffman, Jeremy Sklaroff, & David Wishnick, Coin-Operated Capitalism, 119 Columbia Law Review 591 (2019)

Arvind Narayanan, Kevin Werbach, and James Grimmelmann, Why Porn on the Blockchain Won’t Doom the Technology, Wired (Mar. 29, 2018)
James Grimmelmann and Arvind Narayanan, The Blockchain Gang, Slate (Feb. 16, 2016)

Artificial Intelligence

David Goedicke, Alexandra Bremers, Stacey Li, James Grimmelmann, and Wendy Ju, Mutual Benefit: The Case for Sharing Autonomous Vehicle Data with the Public (draft 2024)
The Defamation Machine (2024) Available under a Creative Commons License

This illustrated essay is an edited version of the 38th Annual Silha Lecture, delivered on October 23, 2023 at the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

A. Feder Cooper and James Grimmelmann, The Files are in the Computer: On Copyright, Memorization, and Generative AI, Chicago-Kent Law Review (forthcoming)

Part of the Chicago-Kent Law Review AI Disrupting Law Symposium, March 8 and April 26, 2024

Tong Chen, Akari Asai, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Sewon Min, James Grimmelmann, Yejin Choi, Hannaneh Hajishirzi, Luke Zettlemoyer, and Pang Wei Koh, CopyBench: Measuring Literal and Non-Literal Reproduction of Copyright-Protected Text in Language Model Generation, 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) (forthcoming)
James Grimmelmann, Blake E. Reid, and Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Generative Baseline Hell and the Regulation of Machine-Learning Foundation Models, Lawfare (May 8, 2024)
Katherine Lee, A. Feder Cooper, and James Grimmelmann, Talkin’ ’Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain, Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. (forthcoming 2024)
Katherine Lee, A. Feder Cooper, and James Grimmelmann, Talkin’ ’Bout AI Generation: Copyright and the Generative-AI Supply Chain (The Short Version), 3rd ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law 48 (2024) Available under a Creative Commons License
A. Feder Cooper, Katherine Lee, Madiha Zahrah Choksi, Solon Barocas, Christopher De Sa, James Grimmelmann, Jon Kleinberg, Siddhartha Sen, and Baobao Zhang, Arbitrariness and Social Prediction: The Confounding Role of Variance in Fair Classification, AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (forthcoming 2024)

Honorable mention, best student paper, AI for Social Impact Track

Timothy B. Lee and James Grimmelmann, Why The New York Times Might Win Its Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI, Ars Technica (Feb. 20, 2024)
A. Feder Cooper, Katherine Lee, James Grimmelmann, Daphne Ippolito, and 31 other participants, Report of the 1st Workshop on Generative AI and Law (2023) Available under a Creative Commons License
Words of Wisdom, Jotwell: Technology Law (June 2023) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Samuel R. Bowman, Eight Things to Know About Large Language Models (2023)

James Grimmelmann and Daniel Westreich, Incomprehensible Discrimination, 7 California Law Review Online 164 (2017) Available under a Creative Commons License

Responding to Solon Barocas and Andrew Selbst, Big Data’s Disparate Impact, 104 California Law Review 101 (2016)

Computers and Robots Don’t Count, Slate (Aug. 23, 2016)
Copyright for Literate Robots, 101 Iowa Law Review 657 (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License
There’s No Such Thing as a Computer-Authored Work – And It’s a Good Thing, Too, 39 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 403 (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Copyright Outside the Box symposium at Columbia Law School (October 2, 2015)

Big Data’s Other Privacy Problem, in Big Data, Big Challenges for Evidence-Based Policy Making 211 (Kumar Jayasuria and Kathryn Ritcheske eds., West Academic 2015)
Discrimination by Database, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (Nov. 2014) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing a draft of Solon Barocas and Andrew Selbst, Big Data’s Disparate Impact, 104 California Law Review 671 (2016)


Content Moderation

Public Business and Private Accounts, Communications of the ACM, September 2024, at 37
The Barons and the Mob (Charles Duan and James Grimmelmann, eds., 2024) Available under a Creative Commons License
Armin Namavari, Barry Wang, Sanketh Menda, Ben Nassi, Nirvan Tyagi, James Grimmelmann, Amy Zhang, and Thomas Ristenpart, Private Hierarchical Governance for Encrypted Messaging, 45th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland) (2024)
Charles Duan and James Grimmelmann, Content Moderation on End-to-End Encrypted Systems: A Legal Analysis, 8 Georgetown Law Technology Review 1 (2024) Available under a Creative Commons License
James Grimmelmann and Pengfei Zhang, An Economic Model of Online Intermediary Liability, 38 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1011 (2023) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the BTLJ-BCLT symposium From the DMCA to the DSA—A Transatlantic Dialogue on Online Platform Liability and Copyright Law at Berkeley Law School, April 7-8, 2023

James Grimmelmann and Gautam S. Hans, Brief of First Amendment and Internet Law Scholars as Amici Curiae, Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton (U.S. 2024)
Content Cartels and Their Discontents, Jotwell: Technology Law (Apr. 2021) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing evelyn douek, The Rise of Content Cartels (Knight First Amendment Institute 2020)

The Letter (and Emoji) of the Law, Jotwell: Technology Law (Apr. 2020) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Eric Goldman, Emojis and the Law, 93 Washington Law Review 1227 (2018)

The Platform is the Message, 2 Georgetown Law Technology Review 217 (2018) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Governance and Regulation of Internet Platforms symposium at Georgetown University Law School, February 23, 2018

To Err is Platform, Knight First Amendment Institute Emerging Threats (2018) Available under a Creative Commons License

Responding to Olivier Sylvain, Discriminatory Designs on User Data, Knight First Amendment Institute Emerging Threats (2018). Reprinted in The Perilous Public Square: Structural Threats to Free Expression Today (David E. Pozen ed. 2020)

Make America Troll Again, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (April 2017) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (2015)

The Virtues of Moderation, 17 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 42 (2015) Available under a Creative Commons License

Property

James Grimmelmann and Christina Mulligan, Data Property, 72 American University Law Review 829 (2023) Available under a Creative Commons License

Chinese translation: 数据财产权, 9 法治社会 [Law-Based Society] 61 (魏远山 [Wei Yuanshan] trans. 2024)

James Grimmelmann and A. Jason Windawi, Blockchains as Infrastructure and Semicommons, 64 William and Mary Law Review 1097 (2023) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the William and Mary Law Review Cryptocurrency Symposium, February 11, 2022

Shrutarshi Basu, Nate Foster, James Grimmelmann, Shan Parikh, and Ryan Richardson, A Programming Language for Future Interests, 24 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 75 (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
Littleton: A Future Interests Interpreter (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
Interactive Future Interests (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
Sarah Allen, Srdjan Capkun, Ittay Eyal, Giulia Fanti, Bryan Ford, James Grimmelmann, Ari Juels, Kari Kostiainen, Sarah Meiklejohn, Andrew Miller, Eswar Prasad, Karl Wüst, and Fan Zhang, Design Choices for Central Bank Digital Currency: Policy and Technical Considerations (Brookings Institution 2020)
Shrutarshi Basu, Nate Foster, and James Grimmelmann, Property Conveyances as a Programming Language, 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, & Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward!) 128 (2019)
Real + Imaginary = Complex: Toward a Better Property Course, 66 Journal of Legal Education 930 (2017) Available under a Creative Commons License
Stephen Clowney, James Grimmelmann, Michael Grynberg, Jeremy Sheff, and Rebecca Tushnet, Open Source Property (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License Available under a Creative Commons License
The Internet Is a Semicommons, 78 Fordham Law Review 2799 (2010) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of a symposium on Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It (2008) and David Post, In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (2009) at Fordham Law School (December 4, 2009)


Language

The Defamation Machine (2024) Available under a Creative Commons License

This illustrated essay is an edited version of the 38th Annual Silha Lecture, delivered on October 23, 2023 at the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

When Law is Code, Jotwell: Technology Law (July 2024) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Sarah B. Lawsky, Coding the Code: Catala and Computationally Accessible Tax Law, 75 SMU L. Rev. 535 (2022)

The Structure and Legal Interpretation of Computer Programs, 1 Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Research in Computational Law no. 3, art. 19 (2023) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the COHUBICOL Philosophers’ Seminar on The Legal Effect of Code-Driven ‘Law’, November 11–12, 2021

The Humble Vending Machine, Jotwell: Technology Law (July 2022) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing a draft of Gregory Klass, How to Interpret a Vending Machine: Smart Contracts and Contract Law, 7 Georgetown Law Technology Review 69 (2023)

Programming Languages and Law: A Research Agenda, 2nd ACM Symposium on Computer Science and Law 155 (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
Shrutarshi Basu, Nate Foster, James Grimmelmann, Shan Parikh, and Ryan Richardson, A Programming Language for Future Interests, 24 Yale Journal of Law and Technology 75 (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
Littleton: A Future Interests Interpreter (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
Interactive Future Interests (2022) Available under a Creative Commons License
All Smart Contracts Are Ambiguous, 2 Journal of Law and Innovation 1 (2019) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Journal of Law & Innovation Symposium on Algorithms, Big Data, and Contracting: The Law of Agreements in the Digital Era, January 11, 2019

Shrutarshi Basu, Nate Foster, and James Grimmelmann, Property Conveyances as a Programming Language, 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, & Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward!) 128 (2019)
Cindy Cohn and James Grimmelmann, Seven Ways in Which Code Equals Law, in Code: The Language of Our Time (Christine Schipf et al. eds., Hatje Cantz 2003) Available under a Creative Commons License Available under a Creative Commons License

This essay is a slightly edited version of an address Cindy Cohn delivered at the Ars Electronica festival in 2003. It is available under a Creative Commons license thanks to generous permissions from her and from Ars Electronica.


Internet Law

The Barons and the Mob (Charles Duan and James Grimmelmann, eds., 2024) Available under a Creative Commons License
Internet Law: Cases and Problems (Semaphore Press 14th ed. 2024)

Annual editions 2011–

The Return of Age Verification Laws, Communications of the ACM, May 2024, at 34 Available under a Creative Commons License
Kendra Albert and James Grimmelmann, Do the Right Thing, Communications of the ACM, May 2023, at 18 Available under a Creative Commons License
Glimpse of the Future: AI in Hollywood, The Ankler (Feb. 7, 2023)
Spyware vs. Spyware: Software Conflicts and User Autonomy, 16 Ohio State Technology Law Journal 25 (2020) Available under a Creative Commons License

A revised version of a Distinguished Lecture given for the Ohio State Technology Law Journal (September 20, 2019)

Continuity and Change in Internet Law, Communications of the ACM, May 2019, at 24 Available under a Creative Commons License
The Lolcat Theory of Internet Law, Jotwell: Technology Law (March 2019) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing An Xiao Mina, Memes to Movements (2019)

Consenting to Computer Use, 84 George Washington Law Review 1500 (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Hacking into the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: The CFAA at 30 symposium (November 6, 2015)

Police Force, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (July 2016) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing multiple articles

An Offer You Can’t Understand, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (May 2015) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing a draft of Lauren E. Willis, Performance-Based Consumer Law, 82 University of Chicago Law Review 1309 (2015)

Anarchy, Status Updates, and Utopia, 35 Pace Law Review 135 (2014) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Social Media and Social Justice symposium at Pace Law School (March 28, 2014)

Introduction: Books and Culture, in The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz (New Press 2015) Available under a Creative Commons License Available under a Creative Commons License Available under a Creative Commons License
The Cancer of the Internet, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (Nov. 2013) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Finn Brunton, Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (2013)

Death of a Data Haven: Cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the World’s Smallest Nation, Ars Technica (Mar. 27, 2012)
Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law, 2012 University of Illinois Law Review 405 Available under a Creative Commons License
Undiplomatic Immunity, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (Nov. 2011) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Felix T. Wu, Collateral Censorship and the Limits of Intermediary Immunity, 87 Notre Dame Law Review 101 (2011)

Owning the Stack: The Legal War to Control the Smartphone Platform, Ars Technica (Sept. 11, 2011)
Good Faith Scholarship, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (Oct. 2010) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Joseph Michael Reagle Jr., Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (2010)

James Grimmelmann and Paul Ohm, Dr. Generative or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the iPhone, 69 Maryland Law Review 910 (2010) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It (2008)

Cybercrime: Digital Cops in a Networked Environment (Jack M. Balkin, James Grimmelmann, Eddan Katz, Nimrod Kozlovski, Shlomit Wagman, and Tal Zarsky eds., N.Y.U. Press 2007)
Regulation by Software, 114 Yale Law Journal 1719 (2005) Available under a Creative Commons License
James Grimmelmann and Becky Bolin, Policy Responses to Spam, PORTIA Reading Group (2005)

IP

Patterns of Information Law: Intellectual Property Done Right (2016) Available under a Creative Commons License

Virtual Worlds

Bone Crusher 2.0, 71 Rutgers University Law Review 843 (2019) Available under a Creative Commons License

A lightly revised version of the Fourth Annual Greg Lastowka Memorial Lecture, delivered at Rutgers Law School Camden (November 15, 2018)

Third Parties to the Rescue, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (Nov. 2009) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing Michael Risch, Virtual Third Parties, 25 Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal 416 (2009)

Virtual World Feudalism, 118 Yale Law Journal Pocket Part 126 (2009)

Turkish translation: Sanal Dünya Feodalizmi (Fırat Fevzi Kafadar trans. 2024)

Virtual World Law, in Busines and Legal Primer for Game Development (S. Gregory Boyd and Brian Green eds., Charles River Media 2006)
Virtual Power Politics, in The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds 146 (Jack M. Balkin and Beth S. Noveck eds., N.Y.U. Press 2006) Available under a Creative Commons License
Virtual Borders: The Interdependence of Real and Virtual Worlds, First Monday (Feb. 2006) Available under a Creative Commons License
Virtual Worlds as Comparative Law, 49 New York Law School Law Review 147 (2004) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the State of Play conference at New York Law School (Nov. 13-15, 2003)


Civil Procedure

Brief of Amicus Curiae James Grimmelmann, Berry v. LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group, Inc. (4th Cir. 2014)
Future Conduct and the Limits of Class-Action Settlements, 91 North Carolina Law Review 387 (2013) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Elephantine Google Books Settlement, 58 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 497 (2011)
James Grimmelmann and Julie Samuels, Brief of Amicus Curiae Electronic Frontier Foundation, OpenMind Solutions, Inc. v. Does 1-2925 (S.D. Ill. 2011)

Autonomy

Spyware vs. Spyware: Software Conflicts and User Autonomy, 16 Ohio State Technology Law Journal 25 (2020) Available under a Creative Commons License

A revised version of a Distinguished Lecture given for the Ohio State Technology Law Journal (September 20, 2019)

Do You Consent?, Slate (May 27, 2015)
The Law and Ethics of Experiments on Social Media Users, 13 Colorado Technology Law Journal 219 (2015) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the When Companies Study Their Customers: The Changing Face of Science, Research, and Ethics symposium at the University of Colorado, Boulder (Dec. 4, 2014)


Google Books

Future Conduct and the Limits of Class-Action Settlements, 91 North Carolina Law Review 387 (2013) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Elephantine Google Books Settlement, 58 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A. 497 (2011)
The Orphan Wars, EDUCAUSE Review, Jan./Feb. 2011, at 48 Available under a Creative Commons License
D Is for Digitize: An Introduction, 55 New York Law School Law Review 11 (2010) Available under a Creative Commons License

Introduction to a symposium issue based on the D Is for Digitize conference at New York Law School (Oct. 8–10, 2009)

Objections to the Google Books Settlement and Responses in the Amended Settlement (ver. 2.0 2010) Available under a Creative Commons License
Supplemental Letter of Amicus Curiae Institute for Information Law and Policy, Authors Guild v. Google (S.D.N.Y 2010) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Amended Google Books Settlement Is Still Exclusive, CPI Antitrust Journal (Jan. 2010) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Google Settlement: Why It Matters, Publishers Weekly (Nov. 23, 2009)
Brief of Amicus Curiae Institute for Information Law and Policy, Authors Guild v. Google (S.D.N.Y 2009) Available under a Creative Commons License
The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books, American Constitution Society Issue Brief (2009) Available under a Creative Commons License
How to Fix the Google Book Search Settlement, Journal of Internet Law, April 2009, at 1 Available under a Creative Commons License

Education

When Tenure Standards Are Wrong, 20 Green Bag 291 (2017) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of a micro-symposium on Eric Goldman, Writing Tenure Review Letters: My Top 10 Suggestions, 19 Green Bag 2d 357 (2016)

Scholars, Teachers, and Servants (2017) Available under a Creative Commons License

I wrote this essay for myself as a personal statement of principles. It is public but not published.

The Merchants of MOOCs, 44 Seton Hall Law Review 1035 (2014) Available under a Creative Commons License

Part of the Legal Education Looking Forward symposium at Seton Hall Law School (October 25, 2013)

SSRN Considered Harmful (2007) Available under a Creative Commons License
Finding Every Loophole, Harvard Crimson (Oct. 1, 1998) Available under a Creative Commons License
James Grimmelmann, Sarah Hurwitz, and Benjamin Rahn, Towards a More Flexible Core, Harvard Crimson (Apr. 10, 1997) Available under a Creative Commons License

Conflict of Laws

Renvoi and the Barber, 22 Green Bag 2d 109 (2019) Available under a Creative Commons License

Miscellaneous

If Code Is Law, Then Coders are Lawyers, Jotwell: Cyberlaw (Dec. 2012) Available under a Creative Commons License

Reviewing E. Gabriella Coleman, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (2012)

Koans of Equity, 58 Journal of Legal Education 472 (2008) Available under a Creative Commons License
Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, and James Grimmelmann, Modeling Facts, Culture, and Cognition in the Gun Debate, 18 Social Justice Research 283 (2005)
Bunnies, Ducks, and One Great Dane, Killing The Buddha (Jan. 30, 2002) Available under a Creative Commons License
Peer-to-Peer Terrorism, Salon (Sept. 26, 2001) Available under a Creative Commons License
From Each According to His IPO, Salon (Apr. 25, 2001) Available under a Creative Commons License
Elements of the Theory of Computation (2d ed.): Solutions Manual (Prentice-Hall 1999)

Please do not ask me for a copy. I do not own the copyright, and I am not in a position to verify teachers’ credentials. All inquiries should be directed to Prentice-Hall.

Quantum Computation: An Introduction (1999) Available under a Creative Commons License

Unpublished undergraduate thesis

Welcome to Microsoft: Here Be Dragons, Harvard Computer Review (Sept. 1997) Available under a Creative Commons License

In general, please treat the permissions here as the beginning of a conversation, not the end. If you reuse one of my works, I’d love to hear about it, especially if you do something transformative and clever with it. And if you’d like to do something that would require further permisssion, please contact me also. The necessary rights aren’t always mine to grant, but where they are, I’ll give serious consideration to any polite request.

Note also that you have a number of blanket privileges under copyright law that apply regardless of whether I’ve specifically granted permission or not. First, copyright doesn’t protect ideas, only particular expressions of them. I’ll be upset if you plagiarize my ideas, but that doesn’t give me a legal right to stop you. Second, United States copyright law contains numerous specific exceptions, although the conditions are often quite technical. Third, you have extensive fair use rights. In general, the following kinds of uses tend to be legal (but remember that this list is not exhaustive):

Except where I’ve provided more specific requests, when I license a work under a Creative Commons license, I require that the attribution notices you must provide under those licenses indicate: