I earned my LL.B. from the University of British Columbia, during which I took a large number of paper-based courses, including two directed research projects.

Those papers are published here under a Creative Commons License. I am asserting my moral rights and copyright in these works, and I license them for free distribution with certain Creative Commons restrictions to be enumerated shortly. For now, feel free to read and quote from, provided the use is not for profit and attribution is cited.

• Crystallizing Liquid Law[Coming soon!]
• Technology-Driven Shifts in Transactional Structures
• As information technology now pervades all industries, it is crucial to understand the new concepts being introduced in relation to identifying the parties to a transaction and the peculiar geography of an Internet-based transaction. This paper examines these issues primarily in a context of liability, and concludes with a call for a return to first principles in the common law of liability. A hypothetical business is developed, with every transactional element virtualized, or “cyber-ized”, to demonstrate these concerns.
• Distilling the Message[Coming soon!]
• How High-Tech, Low Fidelity Media are Collapsing Culture into Highlight Reels and Punchlines
• The pop-culture industries (music and movies, primarily) are determined to be producing a different set of products than they did in the past, and it is the incompatibility of this set and its market with outdated sales and licensing paradigms that are a major cause of declining revenues. This paper develops and advocates a creative and constructive approach to DRM use that could help restore the revenue stream.
• Riding Waves of Code
• Looking for Infringement in the Evolution of Game and Virtual World Mods
• This paper examines, in depth, the evolution of gaming and game mods in general, then more specifically in the context of computer entertainment. A “next generation” mod is hypothesized – the intelligent mod – which is analyzed in terms of its impact on game play an on intellectual property law. It is used as part of a strategy to determine whether “fair play” can be inferred from any form of protection of game play as an expression, and whether game play itself should be – or can be deemed to be – a protected form of expression.
• Opening Source
• Has Davidson Shut the Door on the Fair Use/Fair Dealing Exceptions, and thus on Users’ Rights?
• In Davidson & Assoc. v. Internet Gateway, et. al., the courts decided that End User License Agreements and Terms of Service agreements were valid, and that the waivers of user rights otherwise protected by the statutory intellectual property regime were consented to. This paper argues against that such a decision undermines the official IP regime, and paves the way for massive over-propertization and the establishment of corporate regimes.
• The Source Door
• When and How Far should it be Opened? Reforming the Intellectual Property Regime for Computer Software through a Hybrid Protection Model
• This paper proposes a system that borrows from copyright and patent law to create a unique multi-phase system of protection for software that is accessible to non-industrial developers, yet rigid enough in its early stages to provide incentives for investment and development. It recognizes the unique nature of software within IP, and acknowledges concerns of various camps in the industry, from big business to open source, as well as public policy objectives. It develops this hybrid within the context of the Canadian legal system and software industry, as the industry is large in Canada, yet there is no patent protection yet for software.
• Deputizing a Ministry
• Who Should be in Charge of the Cyber-Republic?
• This policy paper examines and replaces the popular terminology used to describe the elements of the online world, and through the establishment of these new paradigms, re-visits issues of Internet governance. It calls for specialized government bodies that have the public interest at heart and the competence and tech-savvy of industry organizations.
• Sheriffs and Vigilantes of the Cyber-Frontier
• Justice within Virtual Worlds
• This paper examines avatar rights and the competition between them and developer rights under the freedom of expression. It further expands upon Balkin's expansion of Castronova's sui generis rubric of “interration” to propose a legal system for virtual worlds that is flexible enough to accommodate their variety.