Cornell symposium addresses issues of law and government regulation regarding the Internet

How much government regulation of the Internet should there be? How should the First Amendment and privacy law apply to the electronic superhighway, where everything from medical information to pornography is available at the press of a button?

These issues and others will be examined by law professors, attorneys, a representative of America Online and the president of Morality in Media at a symposium on "Regulating Cyberspace: Is Censorship Sensible?" April 12 and 13 at Cornell University.

All events, which are free and open to the public, take place in the MacDonald Moot Court Room of Myron Taylor Hall.

The symposium opens Friday, April 12, at 7 p.m. with a keynote address by Bruce Taylor, president of the National Law Center for Children and Families. In a legal career that has spanned more than two decades, Taylor has prosecuted more than 80 state and federal obscenity jury cases, as well as cases in child pornography and child sexual abuse. He was most recently a senior trial attorney for the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Saturday's session begins at 10 a.m. with a panel discussion on "Regulation of the Internet: Arguments for and against Government Regulation, Self-Regulation or No Regulation." The afternoon session gets under way at 1:30 p.m. with a panel discussion on "First Amendment, Privacy and the Internet: Legal Issues Surrounding the Internet." Symposium participants include Mark Eckenwiler, Gordon & Glickson, P.C.; Alan Davidson, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology; Llew Gibbons, professor of law, Temple University School of Law; Marjorie Hodges, policy adviser to Cornell Information Technologies; Adam Lehman, assistant general counsel for America Online; Bob Peters, president, Morality in Media; and Pam Samuelson, visiting professor of law at Cornell.

The symposium is sponsored by Cornell's Journal of Law and Public Policy, Cornell Law School, the Cornell Office of Information Technologies, the New York State Bar Association, Graduate and Professional Stusents Association and BAR-BRI.