Search Tips:
About News
The News database contains brief articles covering legal, legislative, and Internet-related business developments written by Pike & Fischer's legal editors and experts from The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. The material in News dates from 1999 to the present and is updated daily.

Word or phrase
Use this field to narrow your search to articles including a word or phrase within any part of the document, including the headline. You do not need to use any special punctuation or commands to search for a phrase. Simply enter the phrase the way it ordinarily appears. If a phrase contains a noise word, your search will skip over that word when searching for it. Use connector, wildcard and stemming tools to fine-tune your results.

Examples: fair use
  e-mail or email
  S. 150
  Rep. Rick Boucher


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Topics
Use this field to restrict your search to one or more of ILR's eight topical areas:
  • Criminal Liability (CR): includes coverage of computer crimes, search and seizure, and sentencing issues. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to online pornography laws, the No Electronic Theft Act, and the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime.
  • Freedom of Speech/Content Regulation (FS): includes coverage of the First Amendment, online defamation, filtering and blocking content, indecency and obscenity, and third-party liability issues. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, and the Children's Internet Protection Act.
  • Intellectual Property (IP): includes coverage of the protections afforded to copyrights and trademarks online, Internet patents, and trade secrets. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
  • Internet Commerce (IC): includes coverage of e-mail marketing, clickwrap licensing, electronic signatures, online sales and business practices, electronic banking, provision of Internet service, computer trespass, and domain name registration. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the CAN-SPAM Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, and the European Directive on Electronic Commerce.
  • Jurisdiction & Procedure (JU): includes coverage of long-arm jurisdiction, venue, service of process, choice of law, and electronic evidence. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Zippo test, the Brussels Convention, and the Hague Convention on International Jurisdiction.
  • Privacy & Security (PR): includes coverage of online anonymity, the collection and use of personal identifying information, workplace privacy, electronic government, encryption, spyware, hacking, and the interception of electronic correspondence. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and the EU Privacy Directive.
  • Taxation (TX): includes coverage of Internet-related state, federal, and international taxation. Use this topic to search issues pertaining to the Internet Tax Freedom Act, Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act, and the Streamlined Sales Tax Project.
  • Telecommunications (TC): includes coverage of VoIP, reciprocal compensation, broadband access and other issues regulated by state, federal, and international authorities. Use this topic to search rules, regulations, and decisions pertaining to the Federal Communications Commission and similar regulatory bodies.

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Date
This field allows you to search for an article by its date or to restrict your search results to a certain date range.

Using Connectors
Your search may consists of a group of words or phrases linked by connectors such as and and or that indicate the relationship between them.

Examples: apple and pear « Both words must be present
  apple or pear « Either word can be present
  apple w/5 pear « Apple must occur within 5 words of pear
  apple not w/5 pear « Apple must not occur within 5 words of pear
  apple and not pear « Only apple must be present


If you use more than one connector, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for. For example, apple and pear or orange juice could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange).

Noise words, such as if and the, are ignored in searches, but hyphens are not (e-mail will produce results only for e-mail, not email) Use the OR Connector for multiple spellings (e-mail or email).

» More about connectors   

Using Wildcards ( * and ?)
A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word.

Examples: appl* « would match apple, application, etc.
  *cipl* « would match principle, participle, etc.
  appl? « would match apply and apple but not apples.
  ap*ed « would match applied, approved, etc


Note that use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word may slow search performance.


Using Stemming
You may use the ~ character to extend or stem your search to cover grammatical variations on a word.

Examples: test~ « would also find testing
  appl~ « would also find applying, applies, and apply


» More search tips  

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