New Software Regulation Clearing House Launched

The Software Regulation Clearing House, conceived of and managed by Professor Paul Ohm and funded by a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, tracks governmental regulation of software development. It is a definitive online searchable database of statutes, administrative regulations, and case law-Federal, State, and Foreign-that either mandate or prohibit particular features or functionality in software.

The Clearing House is publicly available and constantly updated to reflect changes in the law. The database currently contains more than 470 federal and state regulations. Examples include the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention provisions, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, the Broadcast Flag, and proposed Spyware legislation.

Legal scholars can look generally at state regulation of software and software developers can understand how law impacts their activities. Professor Ohm plans to add readable analysis to each of the regulations in order to make the database more accessible to non-lawyers.