Science & Technology

On March 6, HLS Professor John Palfrey ’01, vice dean, library and information resources at HLS, and Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation and director of its Center for Digital Media Freedom, participated in an online debate on Ars Technica on the Communications Decency Act and whether ISPs and social networking sites should be more liable for the things their users post. The debate, The Future of online obscenity and social networks, is included below.

Born Digital, a book by HLS Professor John Palfrey ’01 and Urs Gasser L.L.M. ’03, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, was named a Best Science and Technology Book of 2008 by the Library Journal, in March.

The following article, entitled, “Facebook rules,” including commentary from Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95, was published in the February 18 edition of the New York Times.

In the summer of 2007, HLS Professors Mark Ramseyer ’82 and Steven Shavell approached editors at Harvard University Press with the idea of starting a unique online venture: a broad-focused, faculty-edited journal with an open access format, to provide first-rate scholarship to the widest possible audience.

Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, an associate professor of law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, has been named executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. 

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?”

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

Headlines on any given day underscore the increasing globalization of antitrust law and economics—for example, “Apple iTunes charged by EC with restrictive pricing practices.”

An ambitious new player has appeared on the Internet scene, determined to dominate the flow of information across the Web.

According to one prediction, the new technology will bring every individual “into immediate and effortless communication with every other” and will “practically obliterate political geography and make free trade universal.”

Several school boards have recently mandated that science curricula include the teaching of intelligent design--the theory that all advanced life forms are so complex that they must have been designed by an intelligent force.

With conferences, research and ideas, HLS faculty and students keep pace with the ever-changing world of intellectual property issues.

HLS professors propose different ways to address the proliferation of music downloading.

Unbound, HLS's first online journal, opened up shop in cyberspace in the fall and plans to take advantage of what the neighborhood has to offer, like streaming video, discussion boards and links to related sites for legal activism.

Imagine a world without copyrights on songs or movies. Instead, government tax revenue would compensate entertainers in proportion to how much consumers listened to or watched their products.

Depending on your perspective, Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi may be either a crank or a prophet. But William McSwain '00 wants to keep the Internet free for both.

Stacy Stern '93 isn't as famous as the Pets.com sock puppet. She never raised billions from venture capitalists or played foosball in the office during the height of the Internet boom. Yet in the annals of Silicon Valley, Stern can boast of a more impressive distinction: success.

Last year the Berkman Center for Internet & Society launched a project to determine the level and quality of Web filtering in nations around the globe-starting with Saudi Arabia and China, believed to be among the most restrictive blocking regimes in the world.