Safe Harbors and Online Creativity
by Nicholas Bramble | November 9, 2009 | news and ideas, policy | Comments Off
It’s great to be part of the worldwide exchange of ideas that the Information Society Project makes possible. For instance, I am just now sitting at the front of an auditorium at Tsinghua University School of Law in Beijing, China, having finished my presentation on the centrality of safe harbors (for online service providers) to the development of the user-generated Internet. My slides are available here, but in short, the idea is that Internet-regulating legislators need to pay attention to the kinds of online creativity and knowledge-sharing enabled by the safe harbors from intermediary liability created in CDA § 230 and DMCA § 512. I argued that these safe harbors promote the “spontaneous urge to action” that is at the heart of user-generated communities like Wikipedia, YouTube, and even social networks like Facebook and Twitter. They provide an alternative to the typical model of the creative actor spurred to action only by a rational calculation of the costs and benefits of exclusion.
These ideas are still taking shape, but it was great to be able to work them over with conference participants from civil society groups, law firms, and governments — participants who came from China, Thailand, India, Israel, Canada, and a host of other countries that have all dealt with online safe harbors in different ways. Many thanks to the organizers of the conference, to the Yale ISP and the Kauffman Foundation, and to the fine restaurants and street vendors in Beijing’s Haidian District.
Comments
Flickr Photos
|
A2K4 Update
yaleisp.org search
Recent Posts
- Governmental Deliberations on Exemptions to the DMCA’s Ban on Circumvention
- MFIA Wins Appeal Seeking Access to Sealed Records
- Innovate/Activate Unconference on September 24-25
- Bilski & the Definition of Things That “Are Free for All to Use”
- Illuminating the impact of intellectual property law on innovation