Beth Noveck is a Founding Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for open government and head of the United States Open Government Initiative, and a Professor of Law (on leave) and Director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School.  She is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and a 1997 graduate of Yale Law School.

Please don’t miss this opportunity to attend a special event and ISP Reunion with Beth Noveck.

Can We Defend Free Speech on the Net?

If it is true, as John Gilmore reportedly said several decades ago, that “the First Amendment is just a local ordinance on the Net,”should we defend the principle of free speech across the Internet, and, if so, how do we do that?  Is that merely an exercise in cultural imperialism, exporting U.S. law and U.S.-centric principles outside of our borders?  Is the “bordered Internet” — an Internet carved up into separate domains within which the law of each of the 180 or so
sovereign states around the globe prevails — the best that we can hope for?  I will argue that it is not, and that the freedom of speech is worth defending across the globe-spanning Internet, not because it is enshrined in the US Constitution but because it is a higher-order principle applicable to all.  As to the “how,” I will sketch out an argument about a new politics for the Internet, and the new conception of “civic virtue” and citizenship that I believe are called for if we are to collectively realize the freedom-enhancing potential of this new place.

About David Post

David Post is the I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at the Beasley School of Law at Temple University, where he teaches intellectual property law and the law of cyberspace. Professor Post is also a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Senior Fellow of the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School, an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and a contributor to the influential Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Professor Post is the author of Cyberlaw: Problems of Policy and Jurisprudence in the Information Age (3d Edition, West, 2007) (co-authored with Paul Schiff Berman and Patricia Bellia), and In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (Oxford
U. Press 2008)

Alien Infrastructures: Learning from Unusual Arrangements of Information and Communication Technology

Christian Sandvig

Pragmatically minded researchers often use “best practices” comparisons to study the design and organization of technological systems such as telephone networks, broadband providers, and platforms for computer-supported cooperative work.  While best practices are often useful, in complex interdependent systems that depend heavily on their context, dramatic and inspirational differences may be just as valuable as the imitation of commonalities.  This argues for research on best practices and also on strange practices.  In this research project we compile a literature of cases that are recognizable as information and communication systems, but due to one (or more) severe constraint they have evolved in a way that is noticeably strange.  By focusing on these constraints we develop a database of difference that includes shoe computers, pigeon networks, modern long-distance atmospheric optical networks, and Internet services optimized for semi-nomadic reindeer herders.  We use this corpus to assess our own expectations for technological systems of information and communication, and reflect on what a standpoint theory of infrastructure might look like.

Infrastructures of Imageability

Susanne Seitinger

Increasingly, urban environments are brightly illuminated by a combination of display and lighting technologies at nighttime. These systems fulfill different functions and are rarely designed together to enable a holistic lighting environment. Meanwhile, advances in LED technology and the miniaturization of embedded electronics are converging towards new types of addressable infrastructures that both provide light and convey content. Rather than understanding these systems separately, I suggest blurring the boundary between various “infrastructures of imageability” to rethink their social and aesthetic role in the city. I revisit the socio-technical origins of lighting and display to suggest some possible directions for alternative narratives of urban illumination.

Rural Development through Village Knowledge Centers in India

Ramesh Subramanian

For the past several years, India has experimented with extending the reach of ICTs to rural areas with a view to bringing development to these areas. This paper examines the implementation of Village knowledge Centers in rural Southern India. I first describe the developmental disparity that exists between urban and rural areas in India, and justify the implementation of rural projects that extend ICTs to rural areas. I examine prior work and then describe in detail the Village knowledge Center Project conceived, developed and implemented by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a NGO located in Chennai, India. I then describe my field visits and observations and conclude with an analysis of the role and benefits of such projects, unresolved questions and issues, and possible directions for future work.

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Christian Sandvig (Ph.D Stanford) is an Academic Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University as well as an Associate Professor in Communication, Media, and the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Susanne Seitinger (MCP MIT, BA Princeton) is a Ph.D. student with the Smart Cities group at the MIT Media Lab. Her dissertation –Liberated Pixels: Alternative Narratives for Lighting Future Cities– explores the aesthetic and interactive potentials for future lighting and display infrastructures.

Ramesh Subramanian (PhD, MBA Rutgers) is a Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project, Yale Law School as well as the Gabriel Ferrucci Professor of Information Systems at Quinnipiac University. His research interests focus on the intersection of IT and technology policy in developing countries, Security, Law, & Cross-cultural issues.

The Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholar Working Group features ongoing research concerning the digital age. Meeting alternatively at Harvard, MIT, and Yale, the group aims to share and enrich knowledge among rising scholars. Sessions are designed to advance research through cross-disciplinary conversation.

The Google Books Settlement: Class Action, Copyright, Antitrust, or All of the Above? The proposed settlement in the Google Books case obviously raises interesting issues in civil procedure, copyright (domestic and international), and antitrust. But the actual analyses within these areas trail off surprisingly rapidly into doctrinal minutiae and difficult framing problems. Only by looking at the three of them together is it possible to recover a genuinely synoptic view of the settlement. I will discuss the factual basics of the settlement, along with the essential issues it raises in these various bodies of law–and then dazzle, entertain, and enlighten by showing how profoundly they’re connected.

Principles for Radical Copyright Reform

What’s wrong with copyright law? Currently, it is illegal to watch most DVDs on a linux operating system, to play the radio on too many speakers in a shop, and even possibly to watch “The Wizard of Oz” while playing “The Dark Side of the Moon” in the background. Do these apparently absurd results “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”? What rules might promote authorship better? This talk will discuss the purpose of copyright and principles for redrafting the copyright statute to produce sensible rules — and a richer culture.

Christina Mulligan is a Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Before joining the ISP, she was Production Editor and Article Editor for the Journal of Law & Technology at Harvard Law School and an attorney with the Institute for Justice. She is the author of the article Perfect Enforcement of Law, 14 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 13 (2008). Her research interests include intellectual property reform, technology policy, and the proper role of government in society.

The 45 minute lecture will take place at 6:00 p.m. in William L. Harkness (WLH) Hall, followed by a discussion. The event will be moderated by Elizabeth Stark, lecturer at Yale (“IP in the Digital Age,” “Intro to Law and Technology”) and fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Questions can be submitted using the hashtag #wireside.

For more information, or to find out about screenings in other locations, see the Open Video Alliance announcement.

This colloquium, sponsored by the Liberty Tree Initiative, McCormick Foundation and the First Amendment Center, will feature the following speakers: Frank Pasquale on Search Engine Law and the First Amendment February 5 at noon; Arianna Huffington on the first amendment online February 22 at 4:00 p.m.; David Post on Protected Political Speech in Email – April 9 at noon; and Beth Noveck on Open Government and the First Amendment in April at Yale Law School.

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, a nationally syndicated columnist, and author of eleven books. She is also co-host of “Left, Right & Center,” public radio’s popular political roundtable program.

In May 2005, she launched The Huffington Post, a news and blog site that has quickly become one of the most widely-read, linked to, and frequently-cited media brands on the Internet.

In 2006, she was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

This event is part of the Liberty Tree First Amendment Online Colloquium: http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuallife/ISPevents.htm.  Future colloquium speakers will include Arianna Huffington, Beth Noveck, and David Post.

Frank Pasquale is a Yale ISP Fellow and is the Loftus Professor of Law at Seton Hall School of Law.  He joined Seton Hall after practicing law as an attorney at Arnold & Porter LLP, where his work included antitrust and intellectual property litigation. Professor Pasquale’s prior experience includes clerking for the Honorable Judge Kermit Lipez of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and serving as a fellow at the Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property in Lima, Peru. During his time at Yale Law School, Professor Pasquale served as a teaching assistant for first year students and as an editor of the Yale Law and Policy Review and the Yale Symposium on Law and Technology before graduating with a J.D. in 2001.  Pasquale has focused his scholarship on enriching intellectual property and health law with insights from economics, philosophy, and social science. His work on search engines has been excerpted in Bellia, Post, & Berman’s Cyberlaw and delivered to a plenary session of the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference. His work on retainer medicine was selected for presentation at the St. Louis University Health Law Scholars Workshop. Professor Pasquale blogs at Concurring Opinions and Madisonian.net, and has has guest-blogged at Jurisdynamics. At the Co-Op, his posts focus on methodology in legal scholarship, health law, and IP. The Madisonian blog has a technology focus. Along with Gaia Bernstein and Jim Chen, Pasquale organized a virtual symposium at Law & Technology Theory. Pasquale has been quoted in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Financial Times, and many other publications. He has appeared on CNN to comment on Google’s China policy. He has been interviewed on internet regulation on David Levine’s Hearsay Culture podcast, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, and on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation.Professor Pasquale has testified before Congress and before the New York City Broadband Advisory Commission. He presented Internet Nondiscrimination Principles for Competition Policy Online before the Task Force on Competition Policy and Antitrust Laws of the House Committee on the Judiciary, appearing with the General Counsels of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. He appeared with Congressman Bob Goodlatte to discuss Reputation and Privacy in an Age of Social Networking at the State of the Net West Policy Conference at Santa Clara Law School.