DR.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIA NATIONAL LAW

UNIVERSITY
2019-20

LAW AND EDUCATION

PROJECT ON:

AN ANALYSIS:

LEGAL EDUCATION IN DIGITAL AGE

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

MR. SHASHANK SHEKHAR DWIJ SINGH SENGAR

Asst. Professor (LAW) ENROLLMENT NO. – 150101046

RMLNLU Xth SEMESTER

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Introduction

Legal Education is a branch of knowledge which cannot be compartmentalized as subjects

are human beings with functional brains and not static machines. In the globalized digital age
of today where press of a button adjusted to codes can alter the course of action, legal
education has to address the multifaceted growth of law. It has to equip the budding lawyers
with the clinical digital techniques in contrast to traditional deliverance. The future age is an
electronic era and law has to be updated to handle the challenges as well as new laws have to
be drafted to find procedural and investigative tools to educate them to find solutions in the
jurisprudence sea of legal education. A lawyer with a multi-disciplined, multi- purpose
education would be able to contribute to national development and social changes in a
constructive way.

The Computer Age or Digital Age is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the
ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge
that would have been impossible earlier. Research has contributed to the resolutions of
several recent legislative and policy decisions in view of the increased invasion of technology
& net over the print version. Future research needs to be designed with the public policy
agenda in mind. The academic community has much to contribute to the debates over new
developments in the digital age resulting in the emergence of cyber laws in combination and
addition to earlier codified laws.

The project analyses the factors, reasons & problems related to jurisdiction in cyber-crimes,
fixing of liability to impose penalty and punishment, the investigative and procedural
difficulties in handling and procuring evidence which is narrow, cumbersome, and
incompatible with new technology.

Education is moving into the digital age. Pedagogies have changed to engage the latest digital
technologies. The methods of distribution are now a blend between face-to-face and some
other combination of virtual interfaces. The content is moving from traditional text-based
learning to text-plus-multimedia. The community is now involved in the development of
content. The world of education is still in transition; the move to an all-digital environment
will not be completed for some time to come. The cost of creating high-end multimedia
content, although coming down, is still prohibitive for all but the very edge of the
marketplace. The digital age has brought profound change to academic law libraries.

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Numerous outside entities with which we work - accrediting agencies, publishers, other
libraries, library organizations and consortia, information technology departments on campus
and in legal education, are also dealing with, and reacting to, the impact of digital technology
from their perspectives. Academic law libraries cannot operate in a vacuum in responding to
change, particularly if we want to master the future we envision rather than drift towards a
future with no controls. Collaborations with these external entities, whose response to the
digital challenge will greatly impact our futures, will enable us to influence their direction
and achieve outcomes that best serve the academic law library and its place in legal
education. The importance and necessity of these collaborations, therefore, prompt this
scenario of the future.1

Digital technology revolutionizes many of the ways we receive and use information every
day. The availability of online resources has changed everything from hunting for a new
house to reading the newspaper to purchasing plane tickets, and as a result has disrupted
established structures (such as the real estate, news, and airline businesses). Telecommuting
has become widespread. The market for popular music has transformed dramatically. Internet
telephony presents a real challenge to established telecommunications companies. Millions of
blogs, social networking sites, and interactive online games have created new modes for
interaction and expression. In short, the advent of digital technology touches almost every
aspect of modern life.2 Perhaps no area holds more potential for such transformation than
education. Many diverse and exciting initiatives demonstrate how rich sources of digital
information could enhance the transfer of knowledge. Yet at the same time, the change in
education arguably has been less radical, especially in comparison to mundane endeavours
such as selling a used bicycle or booking hotel rooms. There are many complex reasons for
this slow pace of change, including lack of resources and resistance to new practices. As this
white paper explains, however, among the most important obstacles to realizing the potential
of digital technology in education are provisions of copyright law concerning the educational
use of content, as well as the business and institutional structures shaped by that law. Digital
technology makes informative content easier to find, to access, to manipulate and remix, and
to disseminate. All of these steps are central to teaching, scholarship, and study. Together,
they constitute a dynamic process of digital learning.

As per ITAA 2008, Section 73 is given as follows:

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[Section 73] Penalty for publishing electronic Signature Certificate false in certain
particulars:

(1) No person shall publish a Electronic Signature Certificate or otherwise make it available
to any other person with the knowledge that:

(a) the Certifying Authority listed in the certificate has not issued it; or

(b) the subscriber listed in the certificate has not accepted it; or

(c) the certificate has been revoked or suspended, unless such publication is for the purpose
of verifying a digital signature created prior to such suspension or revocation

(2) Any person who contravenes the provisions of sub-section (1) shall be punished with
imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine which may extend to
one lakh rupees, or with both.3

Meaning

The Information Age, also commonly known as the Computer Age or Digital Age, is an idea
that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information
freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible
to find previously. The idea is linked to the concept of a digital age or digital revolution, and
carries the ramifications of a shift from traditional industry that the industrial revolution
brought through industrialization, to an economy based on the manipulation of information,
i.e., an information society.

The Information Age formed by capitalizing on the computer microminiaturization advances,

with a transition spanning from the advent of the personal computer in the late 1970s to the
internet’s reaching a critical mass in the early 1990s, and the adoption of such technology by
the public in the two decades after 1990. Bringing about a fast evolution of technology in
daily life, as well as of educational life style, the Information Age has allowed rapid global
communications and networking to shape modern society. The digital age is started in second
millennium, and it means that every company, shop, or bar, have at least one computer. When
we say, this is age of..., first we think, theology of that age. Digital age is started,(digital
photos, digital computers, digital books, digital airplanes...). The schools have digital
structures,(on knowledge I mean), and we do not writing just on paper, we can write on

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computer, phones, PDA, or something like that. A new generation of cars have auto-control,
when you are sleepy.

The Impact on Jobs and Income Distribution

The Information Age has impacted the workforce in several ways. First, it has created a
situation in which workers who perform tasks which are easily automated are being forced to
find work which involves tasks that are not easily automated. Second, workers are being
forced to compete in a global job market. Lastly workers are being replaced by computers
that can do the job more effectively and faster. This creates problems for workers in industrial
societies. Jobs traditionally associated with the middle class (assembly line workers, data
processors, foremen, and supervisors) are beginning to disappear, either through outsourcing
or automation. Individuals who lose their jobs must either move up, joining a group of “mind
workers” (engineers, attorneys, scientists, professors, executives, journalists, consultants), or
settle for low-skill, low-wage service jobs.

The “mind workers” form about 20% of the workforce. They are able to compete
successfully in the world market and command high wages. Conversely, production workers
and service workers in industrialized nations are unable to compete with workers in
developing countries and either lose their jobs through outsourcing or are forced to accept
wage cuts. In addition, the internet makes it possible for workers in developing countries to
provide in person services and compete directly with their counterparts in other nations.

This has had several major consequences:

Growing income inequality in industrial countries the polarization of jobs into relatively
high-skill, high wage jobs and low skill, low-wage jobs has led to a growing disparity
between incomes of the rich and poor. The United States seems to have been more impacted
than most countries; income inequality started to rise in the late 1970,’s, however the rate of
increase rose sharply in the 21st century. Income inequality in the United States has now
reached a level comparable to that found in South America.4

Teaching and learning in traditional schools from kindergarten to graduate schools,

benefits from digital technology that enables new pedagogical methods and allows easy
access to vast quantities of educational content.

Examples of changes that capitalize on this potential include:

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• A planned online network for high school history teachers, allowing them to share advice
and classroom resources

• Classroom teaching enhanced with new media such as PowerPoint slides or video and audio
clips

• Extension of the classroom dialogue through mechanisms such as email or class blogs and
wikis;

• Student authorship of diverse content beyond the traditional term paper and diorama, from
video and audio to hyperlinked web pages.

Obstacles To Digital Learning

• Uncertain or Unfavourable Copyright Law

Lawyers tend to look first to legal regimes when surveying the landscape of a public policy
issue. At times, this is the wrong place to begin, because economic or social forces play a
greater role in shaping practices. In studying educational use of content, however, the law is
the natural starting point: all of those other forces operate in the shadow of copyright law.
Copyright single-handedly creates the monopolies that underpin economic interests in this
area, and it profoundly shapes norms and institutional practices concerning the use of content.
The next several subsections review and analyze exceptions to copyright that may protect
uses of content for digital learning. It finds that they are frequently narrow, cumbersome,
incompatible with new technology, or vague. The penultimate subsection discusses the
potential consequences for educators whose unauthorized use of content is found to fall
outside of these exceptions: a potential infringement suit, steep legal fees, and substantial
damages. The final subsection briefly considers different treatments of these legal issues in
other selected countries outside the United States.

• The Fair Use Doctrine

If the educational use exceptions are excessively specific and narrow, the fair use doctrine
presents exactly the opposite problem. The fair use doctrine has evolved through over a
century and a half of judicial decisions as a defense to copyright liability governed by a very
general set of standards. The only way to predict whether the doctrine will immunize a
particular use from liability is to analogize the facts at hand to those of other cases that have
come before the courts in the past. This open-ended structure gives the fair use doctrine
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important flexibility to deal with myriad situations left uncovered by the various
particularized exceptions to infringement, such as educational use exceptions that fail to
anticipate new technology. At the same time, however, this uncertainty frustrates institutional
educational users who feel pressure to establish clear rules for educators, librarians, and
students concerning the legal use of copyrighted works.

The essence of the current Fair use Doctrine, dates back at least to Folsom v. Marsh, an 1841
decision by Justice Joseph Story. The doctrine continued to evolve for over a century. In its
1976 overhaul of the Copyright Act, Congress codified the fair use doctrine for the first time,
without modifying the doctrine or removing from the judiciary the power to determine its
boundaries. The current fair use provision, found in section 107 of the statute, reads:

the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phone
records for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple
copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In
determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to
be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature
or is for non -profit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a
whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is
made upon consideration of all the above factors. Since the 1976 codification, courts have
continued to shape the fair use doctrine by applying its standards to particular situations.
While most courts analyzing fair use review each of the four enumerated factors in reaching
their decisions, these factors are not a mechanical test that can be applied with precision. The
evolution of this defense is an ongoing project.

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• Statutory Damages and Legal Fees

Even where content users have a good-faith belief that their conduct is permitted under
exceptions for educational use or fair use, every such use carries at least a small risk of
litigation. A successful defense still entails significant legal fees. A report by the American
Intellectual Property Law Association estimates that the average cost to defend a copyright
case is just under one million dollars. While some education-related cases surely would
require less than this average amount, this is an especially expensive type of litigation across
the board. Statutory damages, like actual damages, aim to reduce incentives to violate
copyright law, making the expected cost of infringing action no less than the expected cost of
obtaining authorization. However, statutory damages often explicitly and purposefully go
much higher than actual damages. Under some circumstances common in educational
settings, especially where a teacher draws content from multiple works, maximum statutory
damages for infringements can reach extremely high levels. Non-profit educational
enterprises can seldom risk such large damages on top of substantial legal fees. In addition, a
number of factors make statutory damages awards unpredictable, further complicating
educational users calculus of risk.

Internet and Globalization

The two key forces having a deep impact on society are uniformly recognized as being the
Internet, leading to the digital revolution, and the globalization, with its deep impact on legal
information. These two forces can be studied separately, but they are intrinsically interwoven
into the work of law librarians and access to legal information. The Internet and digital
revolution have led both to an information overload, with information coming from many
different directions, and the simultaneous increased speed of information, where almost
instantaneous responses are expected from the easy flow of information. The context of legal
research today presents us with an inflation of information, augmented by an inflation of
legal issues. Law reflects societal concerns, and new areas of regulation have appeared, as
well as new substantive law areas. Environmental law, bio-ethics, information technology
and Internet-related issues are just a few. These new areas appear in a domestic context. In
addition, almost every domestic law area now has an international component. Globalization
has been defined as the process of integrating nations and peoples—politically, economically,
and culturally—into a larger community. The focus is not on nations but on the entire globe. 5
This complex, controversial, and synergistic process combines technology in

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communications and transportation with the deregulation of markets and open borders to lead
to vastly expanded flows of people, money, goods, services, and information. 6 The dark side
of globalization produces economic and social dislocations and arouses public concerns over
job security, concentration of economic power, harm to the environment, danger to public
health and safety and the disintegration of indigenous cultures. 7 In the information field, we
can also say that it has created a digital divide, between those who have access to the Internet,
and those who do not the world is shrinking, and it is now difficult to distinguish between
domestic and foreign and international law in a global setting. We need to look beyond
national jurisdiction. New terms have been coined, such as transnational law, 8 Global laws,
and there is an international element to most domestic law subjects, e.g. international trade
law, the international law of human rights, environment, criminal law, etc. The law of foreign
countries has to be studied. Every important domestic subject –securities regulation, criminal
law, procedure, environmental law, family law, etc.—has an international dimension.

Impact of Internet on Legal Research—A CRITICAL LOOK

In spite of the huge technological advances, access to information is different from use as a
reliable source. There are both positives and negatives. A huge amount of information is
accessible, in an easy and convenient way, but it is unfiltered, and on the web currently, there
is no organized control of information, it is hard to know what you are missing, and if the
information you find is accurate and authoritative, 9 and the most relevant to your specific
needs. Researchers want easy, convenient access to the most reliable materials that directly
relate to their research interests, which is the reason library indexing and classification tools
and systems have been designed in the first place, so that researchers have precision in their
research. These tools are lost in full text searching.10 Full text online searching can yield a
wealth of information. Often lacking is the proper context and direction to ensure the mass of
information is highly relevant to the matter at hand. This problem can be met by resorting to
web guides, or background texts online or in print, which provide analysis and summaries. In
the law field in the United States, the reliance on Internet search engines has led to the loss of
a lot of sophisticated indexing tools, such as subject and digest keyword indexing, the
elaborate system created by West and used since the end of the 19th century. 11 Many
commentators have written on comparing free text searching versus classified arrangement
and indexes. In general, free-text works best for factual research, but not always with the best
results. Even Lexis came out with its own headnotes and classification several years ago,

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after starting as a pure full text database. Also, for the general public, there are some
limitations to getting the plain text of the law. How much can one understand the law by
looking at a text? If no context is provided, it may be harder to understand the issue, the
procedure, etc., which are provided in a commercial system such as West, with headnotes and
annotations. The greatest danger is for non-professionals who get the letter of the law, but not
the context. The Internet makes legal information much more accessible to the public. But, it
is not clear that the greater accessibility makes the law more understandable, because it may
lack a context. People can misinterpret the text of the law, unless there are disclaimers. It may
also put a greater burden on the legal profession to explain the law. So, what is there to do?

In evaluating a web source, the following questions need to be asked and answered with some
confidence. What is the source? Is this source reliable? Is it up-todate? Is this the official,
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final version of a text? Can you cite this to a court? For research purposes, it is important to
strike a balance between electronic and print sources, and know the strengths and weaknesses
of each.13 To make some sense out of the mass of information provided on the Internet, a
good way to manage legal information on the Internet is to start with reputable web sites.

New Roles for Librarians in the Digital Age

In this rapidly evolving technological environment and in the face of constant change what
are the new roles for librarians? Technology does not replace human expertise, and law
librarians are called upon to provide guidance in a proactive way, reaching out to their
audience, since the audience may not go to them. The focus here is on law librarians, not
libraries. But a few thoughts are in order first on the future of law libraries. Even though their
demise has been proclaimed many times, it may be based on the erroneous assumption that
libraries are warehouses of books. Libraries are physical buildings that house library
materials, but they do so in an organized fashion, and providing classified access to library
materials. A library in its fullest sense is more than a building, it is a place where people are
served and where people are not only encouraged to interact with the information they are
seeking, but are helped and guided in their research. How then will law librarians cope with
the information overflow and provide guidance in a way that meets the needs of researchers,
whether they come to the physical library, or directly through the library web site, or other
distant technologies? New roles emerge for librarians who are needed to evaluate the quality
of information; teach legal research methodology; and be seen as core participants in the
mission of their institutions. This is a tall order, because at the same time they need to keep

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up with the breakneck pace of technology, and adjust to the new information seeking and
usage behaviours of students, faculty, judges and lawyers.

Conclusion And Suggestions

Information reliability, authenticity, precision, relevance, accuracy, and version control. The
challenges posed by digital libraries are many. The long term consequences of the digital
world are unknown. There is so much information available, but without any context, which
raises educational issues. In the law field, it is not only a matter of digital competence, but
also of legal consequence. Some as yet unanswered questions are whose responsibility is it to
train the public, and whether there will a growing demand. The recent development in the
U.S., to add a legal research test on the bar exam, is of interest to the whole world, because it
signifies the importance of a sound legal research training to the competent practice of law. It
is an amazing time to be a law librarian, and an information specialist. It is also an amazing
time to be able to connect with so many colleagues from all over the world, and help one
another. It makes us stronger as a profession, and more effective in communicating our value
to the decision-makers in our institutions. 14What greater pleasure than to share what we know
to foster knowledge and scholarship, and be both a great fan of innovation, and a guardian of
digital records for the long term future. It is possible to embrace the information revolution,
while keeping the tradition of service and quality of information that has been the trademark
of libraries. At a time when researchers are still sorting out the complex relationship between
adolescents and the mass media, the entire nature of the media system is undergoing dramatic
change. The explosive growth of the Internet is ushering in a new digital media culture.
Youth are embracing the new technologies much more rapidly than adults. In addition,
because of their increased spending power, youth have become a valuable target market for
advertisers. These trends have spurred the proliferation of Web sites and other forms of new-
media content specifically designed for teens and children. The burgeoning digital
marketplace has spawned a new generation of market research companies, and market
research on children and youth is outpacing academic research on youth and the newer
media. The emergence of this new media culture holds both promise and peril for youth.
Whether the positive or negative vision of the digital future prevails will be determined, in
large part, by decisions being made now and in the next few years in the halls of government
and in corporate boardrooms. Research has contributed to the resolutions of several recent
legislative and policy decisions in areas including television violence and the Vchip,

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children’s educational television programming, and privacy and marketing to children on the
Web. Future research needs to be designed with the public policy agenda in mind. The
academic community has much to contribute to the debates over new developments in the
digital age.

End Notes

1. http://www.aallnet.org/Archived/Leadership Governance/
committees/scenario10.html
2. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/media/files/ copyrightandeducation.html
3. http://220.227.161.86/17796IT_ACT_2008.pdf
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Age#Digital_Age
5. See the definition in Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy (2002 ).
6. Id.
7. Id.
8. The history of the term “transnational” is retraced in Germain’s Transnational Law
Research Ch. I, section 1.01.3 (1991- . Looseleaf). The term is often attributed to
Philip Jessup in his book Transnational Law (1956), but the first author to use it was
actually Gustav Walker, an Austrian law professor, in 1934, and then Ernst Rabel in
The Conflict of Laws: A Comparative Study (1945)
9. See infra, Section C, on “Authenticity of Official Legal Digital Sources.”
10. Richard Leiter, “Musings on the Future of Law Libraries,”
11. For a good history, see Robert Berring, “Legal Research and Legal Concepts: Where
Form Molds Substance,” 75 California Law Review 5 (1987). See also Richard A.
Danner, “Legal Information and the Development of American Law: Writings on the
Form and Structure of the Published Law” 99 Law Library Journal.
12. For some tips, see Doyle, Tony, & John L. Hammond, “Net Cred: Evaluating the
Internet as a Research Source,” 34 Reference Services Review 56-70 (2006);
Vaughan, C. Judd, Lucy I. Farrow, & Betty J. Tims, “Evaluating Public Web Site
Information: A Process and an Instrument,” 34 Reference Services Review 12-32.
13. Anne V. Ellis, “The Joy of Paper and Ink,” Legal Times (July 17, 2006).
http://west.thomson.com/pdf/librarian/Ellis_Legal_Times071706.pdf
14. 4. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_definition_of_Digital_Age.

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