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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Solicitor General's Brief in Cablevision Case
The United States Solicitor General’s office has filed its brief (posted online here) in the long-running RS-DVR matter, popularly referred to as the “Cablevision” case. The brief is terrific. The United States takes the position that the Supreme Court should not review the case, which had been decided unanimously by the Second Circuit in favor…
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NPR's Talk of the Nation on Online Safety
NPR’s ToTN ran a piece yesterday on Online Safety that references lots of good data and the Internet Safety Technical Task Force report. Guests included three experts on this topic: Lenore Skenazy (author of Free Range Kids), Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, and Janis Wolak (UNH). It is rare that one hears such a nuanced…
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Online Intermediaries
Issues swirling around Craigslist have given rise to a new round of consideration of our liability scheme of online intermediaries. David Ardia — a very thoughtful observer of this scene, a Berkman fellow, and director of our Citizens Media Law Project — comments on a podcast at Legal Talk Network. The themes are similar to…
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Debate on Section 230 and Internet Intermediaries
ArsTechnica has posted my debate with Adam Thierer, the eloquent director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s Center for Digital Media Freedom. I read more or less everything Adam writes and by and large agree with it all. Here, we disagree on whether it’s time to rethink the scope of Section 230 immunity in certain…
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Spamdog Millionaire: Social Media Spam and Internet Filtering
Our friends at StyleFeeder have offered up some great data about the geographic sources of social media spam on their tech blog. The background: Philip Jacob, the founder of StyleFeeder, is a long-time anti-spam advocate, while also being a careful guy who doesn’t want to ruin the Net in the process of fighting nuisance online. …
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Peter Suber at Harvard University on the Future of Open Access
Peter Suber is addressing a standing-room-only house today at Harvard, in a session jointly hosted by the Berkman Center, the Office for Scholarly Communications, and the Harvard Law School Library. He insisted on a question-mark at the end of the talk’s title, so his topic is “The Future of Open Access?”, not “The Future of…
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Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship
I am delighted to point to a statement by a growing number of law school librarians calling for open access to legal scholarship.
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Help on Cyberlaw Research?
New Berkman Center executive director Urs Gasser and I are working on several ongoing research projects. We’re hoping that one or two students might like to work with us, ideally over the next few years (yes, that’s a big ask!), perhaps as a Student Fellowship. More info here.
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The Future of Open Access
It’s our great pleasure at the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center, along with the university’s Office of Scholarly Communications, to host Peter Suber for a public talk next week on the Future of Open Access. It will take place on Thursday, February 26 at 12:30 p.m. We’ve had a tremendous response from…
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Welcome back, Urs Gasser!
It is our great good fortune at the Berkman Center that Urs Gasser has returned, on a full-time basis, to be our new executive director. I can’t think of anyone better positioned to move us forward in our second decade. Urs has been a longtime fellow of the Center, but most recently has been living…
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Quite a Saturday morning at StopBadware
This morning, it seems that many (all?) Google search results led to a warning page meant to be associated with sites that have malware on them. We at StopBadware are partners with Google, among others, working hard to fight malicious code together. Our role, as researchers, is to help set the criteria for what constitutes…
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Internet Safety Technical Task Force Report Released
Tomorrow, I’ll be at the State of the Net Conference in Washington DC to release formally the Internet Safety Technical Task Force final report. It’s available online. We’ve posted an executive summary (3 pages plus cover pages) as well as the full report (278 pages in total).