Recent Highlights

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  Scholars discuss fall-out of Google Book settlement, at Berkman Center conference on open libraries

  What will “libraries” in 2075 look like? Can copyright law be re-engineered? Should we trust Google to make decisions in the public interest? Those were some of the questions discussed at a workshop entitled “Alternative Approaches to Open Digital Libraries in the Shadow of the Google Book Search Settlement,” which took place at Harvard Law School on July 31.

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  Authors of ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ assess cyberspace 10 years later

  The following article, "Authors of 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' assess cyberspace 10 years later," by Colleen Walsh, appeared in the June 18, 2009, issue of the Harvard Gazette.

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  Harvard’s Berkman Center to conduct independent review of broadband studies to assist FCC

  The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world. This project will help inform the FCC’s efforts in developing the National Broadband Plan.

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  Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Berkman Center releases new study

  A major research project from Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society’s Internet and Democracy Project has lent enormous insight into the previously unexplored flow of online communication in the Middle East and North Africa. The study, “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent,” comes at a time of tremendous political unrest and electronic activism in the Middle East.

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  Preserving Free Speech on the Internet: In cyberlaw clinic, students help litigate matters of first impression

  For students looking for cutting-edge legal work in the realm of new technologies, there may be no better place than the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. In the fall of 2008, more than 40 students were involved in a wide range of projects that explored areas such as free speech, intellectual property and online child safety in the context of the Internet and other rapidly developing technologies. Many of the projects the center undertook involves issues being litigated for the first time.

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  At technical symposium, Zittrain discusses how to combat rising online security threats

  At the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center’s 20^th Anniversary Technical Symposium, Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 discussed why the Internet’s once-celebrated openness has led to the now regularly occurring security threats, and sketched solutions to deal with these threats.

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  Berkman Center launches new website on media trends

  The Berkman Center for Internet & Society launched a new Web site called ‘Media Cloud’ in conjunction with Thomson Reuters in July. The goal of Media Cloud is to provide a new search tool that illustrates the nature of news and how information flows between blogs and more traditional news outlets like newspapers.

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  Zittrain at Davos: Cybercrime threat rising

  Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95, co-founder and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, participated in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. He joined leading Internet experts in a panel discussion on “Is the Internet at Risk?”

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  Protecting—and learning from—“digital natives”

  Kids these days—they IM, they text, they “twitter … and they’re also the subject of a new book, Born Digital, by two experts affiliated with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society: John Palfrey ’01, the Henry N. Ess Professor of Law at HLS, and Urs Gasser, an associate professor at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and the newly appointed executive director of the Berkman Center.
  

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  Yochai Benkler, taking Berkman chair, looks at the challenges and promise of social production

  Yochai Benkler ’94 marked the occasion of his appointment as the Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies with a lecture attended by HLS faculty, students, and members of the Berkman family on October 14.

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  In a wide-ranging interview, Palfrey and Zittrain survey the future of the Internet

  As concerns mount about everything from spam to piracy, from privacy to child safety, the web is at a critical juncture in its existence, Professors Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey argue, its future uncertain and perhaps in serious jeopardy. In an interview, they discuss their recent book projects and what they propose as a solution to the problem. 

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  Professor John Palfrey discusses how he's working to untangle the web

  Since its inception, Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society has helped foster innovation on the Web, especially as the Internet has evolved into a more interactive medium. Executive Director John G. Palfrey Jr. ’01 talked to HLT about the center’s role in developing “Web 2.0.”

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  Zittrain warns against what lies ahead for the Internet in recent book

  In his most recent book, The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It, Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 paints a disheartening picture of the future of the Internet’s innovation and participatory opportunities. If we continue on our current trajectory, he warns, we will lose sight of the most positive characteristics the Internet has brought to society.