Harvard Law School students in “Internet, Law and Politics” have developed this site
to build out their arguments about the ethics and legality of United
States technology companies operating in China and participating in its
filtering and surveillance regime. There are five people
testifying in class today, each have posted their testimony online.
Berkman senior geek-in-residence Luis Villa spoke over the weekend at LinuxWorld Boston; Tina Gasperson and Slashdot covered his talk.
David Beisel at Genuine VC takes on what “viral marketing” in Web 2.0 really means. He even advances a formula for it:
Viral adoption = (how inherently sharable x how easily sharable) x (integration of sharing into content/service)
Minnesota is considering taking up ODF (via Andy Updegrove). In this case, unlike the process in Massachusetts, it’s a proposed law, accessible online here. So what do they think “open standards” means? Here’s the definition:
(f) “Open standards” means specifications for the encoding and transfer of computer
2.4 data that:
2.5 (1) is free for all to implement and use in perpetuity, with no royalty or fee;
2.6 (2) has no restrictions on the use of data stored in the format;
2.7 (3) has no restrictions on the creation of software that stores, transmits, receives, or
2.8 accesses data codified in such way;
2.9 (4) has a specification available for all to read, in a human-readable format, written
2.10 in commonly accepted technical language;
2.11 (5) is documented, so that anyone can write software that can read and interpret the
2.12 complete semantics of any data file stored in the data format;
2.13 (6) if it allows extensions, ensures that all extensions of the data format are
2.14 themselves documented and have the other characteristics of an open data format;
2.15 (7) allows any file written in that format to be identified as adhering or not adhering
2.16 to the format;
2.17 (8) if it includes any use of encryption, provides that the encryption algorithm is
2.18 usable on a royalty-free, nondiscriminatory manner in perpetuity, and is documented
2.19 so that anyone in possession of the appropriate encryption key or keys is able to write
2.20 software to unencrypt the data.
2.21 (g) “Restricted format” means any data format that is accessed, stored, or transferred
2.22 and is not open standards compliant.
On behalf of the directors of the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard Law School, I am delighted to invite you to our
spring conference, “Bloggership: How Blogs are Transforming Legal
Scholarship,” to be held Friday, April 28, 2006.
Please join us for a series of four panel discussions featuring some of
the most prominent legal bloggers, including Glenn Reynolds
(InstaPundit), Eugene Volokh (The Volokh Conspiracy), Ann Althouse
(Althouse), and Larry Solum (Legal Theory Blog). An equally
distinguished lineup of commentators from both inside and outside the
legal academy will provide context on the panelists’ work, including
Peter Lattman (The Wall Street Journal Law Blog) and Howard Bashman
(How Appealing). The discussions will be moderated by Paul L. Caron,
Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati
College of Law, author of the Tax Prof Blog as well as the Publisher
and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Professor Blogs Network.
The conference will be held Friday, April 28, 2006 from 8:30 a.m. to
5:15 p.m. in the Ames Moot Courtroom on the second floor of Austin Hall
at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. The conference is free
and open to the public. We hope you will join us and feel free to let
others know that this event is taking place. If you are
interested in the subject but are far away or otherwise cannot attend,
the audio feed from the conference will be webcast and accessible from
the Berkman Center’s home page.
The students of Internet, Law and Politics at HLS are arguing over the
Massachusetts ODF matter today in class. They’ve created this site to set forth the arguments. Don’t miss the videos as well as the text files.
The topic: “Resolved: The Massachusetts Open Document Format policy is
an instance of a state exceeding the boundaries of good public
policy-making.” Here’s one side of the argument. Here’s the other.
(If you’re reading this and want to fire in a question on Monday
afternoon, 3/20/06, feel free to send me an e-mail at jpalfrey AT
law.harvard.edu and I’ll try to pose it to the group here.)
I had the pleasure of meeting Daniel Rubin, a reporter at the
Philadelphia Inquirer, at an event at the National Constitution Center earlier this week. Dan’s got a terrific blog that I’ve just
started reading and subscribing too, called Blinq. I note also that Jay Rosen and his students at NYU are already signing his praises, which is a fine endorsement indeed.
Right this very minute, Creative Commons Mexico
is launching in Mexico City. Congratulations, Larry Lessig, Leon
Felipe Sanchez, and all the CC International team on yet another
landmark on your road to world domination. For atmospherics, Larry has “My Life” playing in the background…
(This launch is coinciding with the end of Day 1 of iLaw-Mexico here.)
Dan Gillmor is visiting Internet, Law and Politics at HLS today.
The topic is the changing nature of the citizen in a “we the media”
world. (If you see this post and want to mail in a question to me
to ask him, please send to jpalfrey AT law.harvard.edu).
– I asked him what he thinks about Global Voices, which we covered a few weeks ago in this class. Of course he
loves it, but he said he wishes that Global Voices would call itself
“journalism.” He says it would make his job easier.
– “We live in a state of perpetual beta,” Dan says. I got the sense that he thinks that’s good.
– He’s a fan of self-assembling newsrooms, such as Command Post, Center for Cooperative Research, and Oh My News.
– “I wouldn’t rely on Wikipedia for any life-changing decision,” Dan
says. “Hell, I wouldn’t rely on the New York Times for a
life-changing decision. This is largely a discourse on media
literacy.”
– Despite his obvious bullishness about the decentralization of the
media regime, “most people won’t be participants, probably,” Dan
claims, “because they are too damn busy, leading their lives, spending
time with their kids.”
John Palfrey 