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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Internet Filtering Session at the SDP 2007
This morning — at the Summer Doctoral Program in Cambridge, MA — we’re taking up the topic of Internet filtering and the work of the ONI (and what we’ve written about in our forthcoming book from MIT Press, called Access Denied). Some of the questions that students raised about the topic and after reading our…
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Summer Doctoral Program(me) Comes to Cambridge
In the course of the past 5 academic years, I’ve come to think that one of my favorite things that happens in our little world is the Summer Doctoral Program (or, Programme, as our friends at the Oxford Internet Institute, the OII). Three of the past five years it’s been in Oxford, where it was…
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Steve Gibson at the Anti-Spyware Coalition
We have the great honor of hosting the ASC‘s third big public meeting here at the Harvard Law School. We’re grateful to Ari Schwartz and Ross Schulman for bringing the meeting to our campus. We’re proudly a member of ASC through our StopBadware project, which has grown into one of the biggest and most interesting…
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Berkman Books
The faculty and fellows of the Berkman Center will publish four books this year. Two of them are out already: David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and John Clippinger’s A Crowd of One. In celebration of this high-water mark for the team, we’ve put together a new page on the Berkman web site called Berkman Books,…
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IS2K7 Conference: Charlie's Avatar Speaking
In real life, Prof. Charles Nesson has been flat on his back the last few days, sadly just in time for the conference that he’s spent a year or more pulling together. It’s the 2007 Internet & Society conference, this time on the topic of University. His co-chair, Charles Ogletree, has done a masterful MC-ing…
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Is There Such a Thing as "Good Internet Filtering"?
One of the most provocative themes from yesterday’s ONI conference is captured by Prof. Dr. Urs Gasser in his blog: is there such a thing as best practices for technical Internet filtering? Richard Clayton said emphatically not; others seemed intrigued.
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OpenNet Initiative Study, New Web Site Released
I couldn’t be more excited about the release today of our new ONI web site and the release of our first global study. We’re here in Oxford, England, at what my colleague Ron Deibert calls “the first ONI Woodstock, without the drugs.” The headline of the study is a substantial growth in the scale, scope…
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OpenNet Initiative Conference, Study Release This Week
We’re gearing up this week to host our first big Internet filtering conference this week, which is already oversubscribed. The event is taking place in Oxford, England, hosted by our partners at the Oxford Internet Institute, in cooperation with our other partners at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and the University of Cambridge’s Advanced…
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Three Conversations on Intellectual Property: Fordham, University of St. Gallen, UOC (Catalunya)
Three recent conversations I’ve been part of offered a contrast in styles and views on intellectual property rights across the Atlantic. First, the Fordham International IP conference, which Prof. Hugh Hanson puts on each year (in New York, NY, USA); the terrific classes in Law and Economics of Intellectual Property that Prof. Urs Gasser teaches…
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ONI Tests in Nigeria Around Elections
The OpenNet Initiative ran a series of tests related to Internet access during the recent elections in Nigeria. Though the election was fraught with issues generally, and though certain web sites were inaccessible during key moments of the election period, we found no evidence of tampering with the Internet. We’re in the process of refining…
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Debating Internet & Democracy at the Oxford Union
As part of our first-ever OpenNet Initiative conference in May, we are participating in a debate at the Oxford Union. The resolution is: “This House believes that the Internet is the greatest force for Democratisation in the World.”
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Key Themes of Internet, Law and Politics 2007
In preparation for the final class of the semester in Internet, Law and Politics 2007 at Harvard Law School, I am posting a draft of the core themes of the course to the class wiki. Comments, as always, most welcome. * * * Internet Law and Politics, 2007: Themes of the Course – The puzzle…