This semester, our class on Internet, Law and Politics has been led
through the power of new networks to affect politics by a new book, the
Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler. This book is bound to be
one of the most important statements on technology and politics of this
generation. It’s our great pleasure to
welcome Prof. Benkler to HLS tomorrow night in person. We hope
you
will join us.
Festivities begin on Tuesday late afternoon, April 18, 2006, at 5:45 p.m. for a
short talk by Yochai Benkler
in Hauser Hall room 102 at Harvard Law School, and then a party in
honor and in celebration of his new book at the Berkman Center
immediately thereafter (at 1587 Mass Ave, Cambridge). Prof. Benkler
has recently published his book, “*The Wealth of Networks: How Social
Production Transforms Markets and Freedom*,” through the Yale
University Press.
Prof. Benkler’s research at Yale Law School focuses on the effects of
laws that regulate information production and exchange on the
distribution of control over information flows, knowledge, and culture
in the digital environment. His particular focus has been the neglected
role of commons-based approaches toward management of resources in the
digitally networked environment, the increasing importance of nonmarket
production in general and collaborative peer production in particular,
and the significance of these phenomena in both economic and political
terms. “The Wealth of Networks” is a comprehensive social theory of the
Internet and the networked information economy. In it, Benkler describes
how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are
changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made
available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and
express themselves.
More information on the book (and ordering information) is available at here, and you
may download it (and much more) on his wiki. For directions
and maps, please see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/contact. Erica George at the Berkman Center is in charge — phone is 617-495-7547. Hope to see you there.
This semester, our class on Internet, Law and Politics has been led
through the power of new networks to affect politics by a new book, the
Wealth of Networks, by Yochai Benkler. I am certain that this
book will be one of the most important statements on technology and
politics of this generation. It’s our great pleasure to welcome
Prof. Benkler to HLS tomorrow night in person. We hope you will
join us.
Festivities begin on Tuesday late afternoon, April 18, 2006, at 5:45 p.m. for a
short talk by *Yochai Benkler*
in Hauser Hall room 102 at Harvard Law School, and then a party in
honor and in celebration of his new book at the Berkman Center
immediately thereafter (at 1587 Mass Ave, Cambridge). Prof.
Benkler has recently published his book, “*The Wealth of Networks: How
Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom*,” through the Yale
University Press.
Prof. Benkler’s research at Yale Law School focuses on the effects of
laws that regulate information production and exchange on the
distribution of control over information flows, knowledge, and culture
in the digital environment. His particular focus has been the neglected
role of commons-based approaches toward management of resources in the
digitally networked environment, the increasing importance of nonmarket
production in general and collaborative peer production in particular,
and the significance of these phenomena in both economic and political
terms. “The Wealth of Networks” is a comprehensive social theory of the
Internet and the networked information economy. In it, Benkler describes
how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are
changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made
available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and
express themselves.
More information on the book (and ordering information) is available at here, and you
may download it (and much more) on his wiki. For directions
and maps, please see http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/contact. Erica George at the Berkman Center is in charge — phone is 617-495-7547. Hope to see you there.
I just received in the mail the hard-copy edition of the Sixteenth Annual Theodore H. White Lecture, hosted by the Joan Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of the New Republic gave the lecture on October 27, 2005. The full text is worth reading. (It is available online
as a video file, but I can’t find the text online yet; looks like
previous iterations have been posted in PDF.) Since it is not
easily in text form yet, I thought I’d excerpt a bit from the end of
his lecture, right before Q&A (at which point Alex Jones, the
distinguished director of Shorenstein, steps back in to moderate).
“The achievement, I think, of the Clinton and the DLC generation was,
in fact, to think about first principles, to think about the
relationships between state and civil society, to think about the
ability of the market to achieve traditional, liberal ends. I
think that’s fundamentally what distinguished them from the
neo-liberals like Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis, who had emerged in the
1970s and ’80s.”
(FWIW, I am with him up to here, for certain.)
“My fear is that the new blogosphere generation, the one that’s
emerging today, the children of Howard Dean, is so focused on
organizational and tactical questions about how the Democratic Party
can frame its message, they’re not focused nearly enough on what the
Democratic Party and what liberals believe. That they are so tied
into the party structure itself that they don’t spend nearly enough
time thinking about what Democrats believe. …
“Let me just end with a word about what this means for liberal
journalism, because one of the striking things about the bloggers is
that they are not only activists, but they are journalists, too.
The blogs blur that division. Their stress on tactics, on winning
elections rather than on first principle, I think, is bad for liberal
opinion writing.
“The bloggers are helping to create a journalistic culture with too
much focus on what will help Democrats win, too much interest in the
short-term. And it’s producing cramped, small-bore, predictable
and, perhaps worst of all, dull political writing. It’s not what
liberals need today. It’s not what opinion journalism needs
today. It’s not even what the Democratic Party needs today, and I
don’t think Teddy White would have approved.”
The right call to arms, missing the point, or some of both?
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.
John Palfrey 