Freedom of expression in cyberspace: Should there be any limits? If so, who should decide what the rules will be?

Those topics will be addressed in a lecture at Cornell University titled "Sex, Lies, and the Internet: Some New and Not So New Questions about Free Expression in Cyberspace" by David G. Post, co-founder and co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute and visiting associate professor of law at Georgetown University's Law Center. The lecture, free and open to the public, will be presented Monday, Sept. 16, in Goldwin Smith D Auditorium at 8 p.m. as this year's Daniel W. Kops Freedom of the Press Fellowship Program.

"The radically decentralized, boundary-disregarding characteristics of the global network will force us to confront truly profound questions about the nature of law-making power and the nature of law itself," Post has written. "Thomas Jefferson said that he would prefer a world of newspapers and no government to a world of government and no newspapers; we may be about to find out just what he might have had in mind."

Post teaches constitutional and copyright law, as well as the "law of cyberspace," at Georgetown Law Center, from which he graduated in 1986. This past summer, he conducted, with two colleagues, the first Internet-wide electronic course on cyberspace law for more than 20,000 subscribers.

He writes a monthly column, "Plugging In," for The American Lawyer and is the forum moderator for "Supreme Court Watch" on Counsel Connect, the world's largest online service for attorneys. He has appeared as a commentator on Internet law on national news programs and Court TV's "Supreme Court Preview," and is widely published.

Post twice served as a law clerk for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first time in 1986-87 when she served on the U.S. Court of Appeals and the second in 1993-94 during her first term on the Supreme Court.

A 1972 graduate of Yale University, Post earned a Ph.D. from Yale in 1978 in anthropology, specializing in primate behavior and ecology and evolutionary theory, and a J.D. from Georgetown in 1986.

The Kops Freedom of the Press Fellowship Program was established in 1990 by Daniel W. Kops, a 1939 graduate of Cornell and former editor of The Cornell Daily Sun, to bring distinguished speakers to Ithaca annually to discuss issues relating to freedom of the press. Kops is the founding president of Kops-Monahan Communications.

The Kops Fellowship is hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences in cooperation with the American Studies Program.