Technology and the Public Interest
Books, essays, and commentary from John Palfrey
Essays
Notes from AI Action Summit in Delhi, India, February 2026
Reflections on AI, governance, and the public interest from the AI Action Summit in Delhi.
Read essayConcord Free Public Library 150th Anniversary Celebration
Remarks on libraries, civic institutions, and the enduring importance of public knowledge.
Read essayInvesting in the Arts—in Chicago and Beyond
Thoughts on philanthropy, culture, and why investing in the arts matters for public life.
Read essayCommentary from John Palfrey
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OpenLibrary.org
There’s enormous promise in the Open Library project, which we’re hearing about today at Berkman’s lunch event from Aaron Swartz. The idea is wonderfully simple: to create a single web page per book. That web page can aggregate lots of data and metadata about each book. In turn, the database can be structured to indicate…
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OpenNet Initiative on What Really Happened in Burma
Over the last few weeks, we’ve all witnessed the extraordinary bravery of protesters in Burma (or Myanmar, depending on whom you ask) and the great lengths to which the military junta has been willing to go to keep the world from knowing much about what was going on there. Many reported the story of how…
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Yahoo!, the Shi Tao Case, and the Benefit of the Doubt
Rep. Tom Lantos has called on Yahoo! executives to return to Congress to talk about what they knew and when in the Shi Tao case. Rep. Lantos alleges that Yahoo!’s general counsel misled a hearing (at which I and others submitted testimony, too) in 2006 by indicating that the company knew less than it actually…
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How Long Will Scrabulous Last in Facebook?
I am curious to see how long Facebook leaves this app up after this WSJ article. Scrabulous, a Facebook app made by third-party developers, is an obvious knock-off of Scrabble. One might reasonably raise copyright and trademark issues related to it (perhaps the Scrabulous developers could withstand these complaints; query as to Facebook’s willingness to…
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Cookie Crumbles Contest: Make a Video, Help Consumers, Win Cash
Have fun and help raise awareness about how the Internet really works — and possibly earn a trip to DC and $5000 if you’re really good at it! The Berkman Center, StopBadware, Google, Medium, and EDVentures present Cookie Crumbles. It’s a fun contest for people who like to make short, humorous (yet meaningful) videos and…
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Drew Clark: Mind the Minders
Who is watching the FCC? Drew Clark of the Center for Public Integrity is visiting us today at the Berkman Center for our lunch series and other conversations. He’s showing off MediaTracker, a very cool application that gives a detailed description of which companies control media distribution by zip code and who from those companies…
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WaPo on the Myanmar Internet Crackdown
Roby Alampay nails some of the key issues related to Internet governance and international law in an editorial today in the Washington Post. It’s well worth a read, especially if you’ve been following the Myanmar crackdown. Alampay also makes a key link: the issue of Internet access should be perceived to be a human rights…
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The First Edition: Berkman.TV
HLS clinical student Angela Kang and fellow (and prof.) Wendy Seltzer produced the first-ever installment of Berkman.TV, as part of MediaBerkman. The topic: the Coop book controversy and the copyright issues involved.
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Sam Bayard on MediaDefender, Chill Letters
Sam Bayard of the CMLP has a thoughtful post on the MediaDefender controversy, the Diebold matter of a few years ago, chilling effects (the project and the concept, both), and the DMCA. Sam’s post is good lawyering, in its way. It made me think about how, in the copyright field, the usual arguments sometimes get…
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Sorry, Coop, You Can't Have Our IP
The Harvard Cooperative Society — also known as our campus bookseller (also a Barnes & Noble) — has been claiming that it has an “intellectual property” right in the ISBN numbers and/or prices of the textbooks that we as faculty assign to our students. We’ve got an op-ed in The Crimson this morning disputing their…