Biography

Paul Ohm joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Law School in 2006. He specializes in the emerging field of computer crime law, as well as criminal procedure, intellectual property, and information privacy.

Prior to joining Colorado Law he worked as an Honors Program trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Ohm is a former law clerk to Judge Betty Fletcher of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Mariana Pfaelzer of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. He attended the UCLA Law School where he served as Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review and received the Benjamin Aaron and Judge Jerry Pacht prizes. Prior to law school, he worked for several years as a computer programmer and network systems administrator, and before that he earned undergraduate degrees in computer science and electrical engineering.

Recent Publications [SSRN]

Good Enough Privacy, 2008 Chicago Legal F. ____ (invited paper) (forthcoming 2008).

Computer Programming and the Law: A New Research Agenda (accepted paper) (forthcoming 2009).

The Myth of the Superuser: Fear, Risk, and Harm Online 41 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1327 (2008).

What Lies Between Privacy and Security: The Problem with Justification Standards (in progress) (expected 2008)

Legal Issues Surrounding Network Monitoring Research, Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference 2007 (invited paper) (with Dirk Grunwald and Doug Sicker).

The Olmsteadian Seizure Clause, 2008 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 2.

The Analog Hole and the Price of Music: An Empirical Study, 5 J. Telecomm. & High Tech. L. 573 (2007) (with Doug Sicker and Shannon Gunaji).

Do Blogs Influence SSRN Downloads? Empirically Testing the Volokh and Slashdot Effects

Forum-format commentary, The Fourth Amendment Right to Delete, 119 Harv. L. Rev. F. 10 (2005).

Teaching

Professor Ohm has taught courses in Criminal Procedure, Introduction to Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Computer Crime. In spring 2008, he will teach Copyright and Criminal Procedure.

Research Agenda

Professor Ohm's current projects include:

1. Privacy: Developing privacy-related works-in-progress including:
   • Justification Standards: Pointing out the flawed belief in the differences between probable cause and reasonable suspicion.
   • Good Enough Privacy: Arguing that we should wish for neither a world of perfect surveillance technology nor a world of perfect privacy-protecting technology.
2. The Myth of the Superuser: Calling into question the overused, harmful myth of power which distorts nearly every debate about online conflict.
3. Software Regulation Clearing House: Building a web-accessible, searchable database of Federal, State, and International laws and regulations that regulate software development.
4. Case Law Natural Language Processing: Using machine learning techniques to analyze case law.
5. An empirical study of the effect of blogging on SSRN Downloads.
6. Network Measurement Research Privacy Project: Working with Computer Science network researchers to develop rules, technologies, guidance, and processes to better protect the privacy of their research subjects.