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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Weblogs@Harvard after Eight Years
More often that you might think, we get asked about how the Weblogs@Harvard project (the server on which this blog appears) got started and why we at the Berkman Center maintain it. I got several questions about it in the context of an event this week, in fact, eight years or so into the project. …
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Digital Public Library of America, Session IV
These are my live-blog notes for the fourth and final full session at the DPLA content and scope working session: 1) The messy issue of rights and permissions for in-copyright works is the biggest issue that the DPLA will face. (We have a workstream set up for legal issues on the wiki.) A variant of…
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Digital Public Library of America, Session III
Here are some quick notes on three take-aways from Session III at the Content and Scope planning meeting of the Digital Public Library of America. 1) Materials that are in copyright will have to be thought about by the DPLA differently (the red zone) from those in the public domain (green) or orphan works and…
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Digital Public Library of America, Session II
My three take-away points/topics from the second session, focusing on characteristics of public domain collections and open business models: 1) We have done a lot of work toward collection-building in a DPLA. We need to learn from the experience of our own projects in the United States and those of others that are underway today. …
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Digital Public Library of America, Session 1 Notes
Here’s my rough live-blog (while moderating; please excuse briefness) of the key points and problems from session 1 of the Digital Public Library of America working meeting on “Scope and Content” of a possible DPLA, today at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA: 1) We began with a voice from public libraries and one…
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Fifth Conference on Law and Mind Sciences
In studying the practices of young people with respect to information and technology, one of the themes that comes up all the time is whether or not “their brains are being rewired” as they use new media. Conversations about how kids interact with one another through social media often turn to questions of whether or…
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Collective Management of Copyright: Solution or Sacrifice?
The Kernochan Center at Columbia University Law School is hosting its annual symposium today in NYC on the timely issue of collective management of copyright. Non-IP lawyers may be scratching their heads after reading that sentence. What, after all, is collective management of copyright? Daniel Gervais, the opening keynote speaker, starts the conference by answering…
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Shepard Fairey and AP Settle Copyright Suit
The artist Shepard Fairey and the Associated Press announced today that they have reached a settlement in their dispute over copyright issues related to the Obama “Hope” poster created during the 2008 presidential campaign cycle. The AP has also issued its own press release about the settlement. (Disclosure: Along with my HLS colleague, Prof. Terry…
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DDoS Report, in the Wake of Wikileaks, Cablegate, and Anonymous
The Wikileaks/Cablegate story has long-term implications for global society on very many levels. (See JZ’s excellent FAQ on Wikileaks, co-developed with Molly Sauter.) One is our shared understanding of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack phenomenon. The incidence of DDoS has been growing in recent years. It links up to important threads to emerge…
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Noah Feldman, Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices
I have had the great pleasure this evening of introducing Prof. Noah Feldman on the occasion of his talk on his new book, Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices (Twelve, 2010). Noah’s interlocutor: our great friend Christopher Lydon, former Berkman Center fellow and journalist who has led the way in…
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Henry N. Ess III Chair Lecture Notes
I’m preparing for a lecture tonight at Harvard Law School. Here’s the abstract: The Path of Legal Information November 9, 2010 I propose a path toward a new legal information environment that is predominantly digital in nature. This new era grows out of a long history of growth and change in the publishing of legal…