Center For Internet And Society

The talk will outline Benkler's argument that social production is reshaping the production of information and culture, offering new challenges and opportunities to market actors in the networked environment, while creating opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. These results are by no means inevitable, however. A systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today's emerging networked information environment.

On March 11-12, 2006, Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society hosted a symposium to explore the development and expansion of the metaphor of "cultural environmentalism" over the course of ten busy years for intellectual property law. We invited four scholars to present original papers on the topic, and a dozen intellectual property experts to comment and expand on their works. Environmentalists have a complicated relationship with property rights. Those who worry about the physical environment often decry strong property rights that threaten to derail environmental regulation. But environmentalists have also harnessed property rights to preserve important habitats and open spaces, using voluntary, property-based mechanisms like conservation easements to block land development. Similarly, those concerned with cultivating a cultural environment in which creative works contribute to new generations of creativity often criticize strong intellectual property rights that threaten to impoverish the

On March 11-12, 2006, Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society hosted a symposium to explore the development and expansion of the metaphor of "cultural environmentalism" over the course of ten busy years for intellectual property law. We invited four scholars to present original papers on the topic, and a dozen intellectual property experts to comment and expand on their works. "Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of man," William Empson reminded us. This paper will explore the ways in which the law's impulse to generalize complicates the project of cultural environmentalism, which seeks to build a coalition of groups with very different interests and practices. Though cultural environmentalism attempts to provide an overarching metaphor for preserving a cultural commons for future creators and users of various types of information products, including copyrighted works, the move from the general principle to the specific activities to be protected will be difficult at best.

On March 11-12, 2006, Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society hosted a symposium to explore the development and expansion of the metaphor of "cultural environmentalism" over the course of ten busy years for intellectual property law. We invited four scholars to present original papers on the topic, and a dozen intellectual property experts to comment and expand on their works. In current debates about a "two-tiered internet," the romantic figure of the "network builder" is being used to end the arguments about desirable social policy that otherwise should occur. If only we had a more natural name for this network of networks than the internet; if only more people understood it to be a deeply human endeavor whose value comes from all of us; if only it were more visible as a social, self-reflected, self-entailed world that happens to be connected by machines. The internet needs a lobbyist. More importantly, however, it needs a new social theory. The theory that will see us through focuses on th

On March 11-12, 2006, Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society hosted a symposium to explore the development and expansion of the metaphor of "cultural environmentalism" over the course of ten busy years for intellectual property law. We invited four scholars to present original papers on the topic, and a dozen intellectual property experts to comment and expand on their works. James Boyle's "cultural environmentalism" metaphor laid the foundation for the recognition and protection of traditional knowledge and natural resources found in the developing world. The theory underlying the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was that while traditional communities may not have invented knowledge about the medicinal properties of local plants, they ought to be rewarded nonetheless for their preservation and conservation of biodiversity through limited rights to control and compensation. Taking a cue from the environmental justice movement, which demonstrated the disparate effects of environmental

Human rights atrocities that occur on a massive scale are often the result of deliberate policy, and international legal accountability requires that we prove not only that abuses occurred, but that violence was the deliberately planned. Statistical patterns in the violations may provide evidence of policy, but finding these patterns requires a creative use of data and models. This talk will review the use of data ranging from official border registries to cemeteries, declassified documents, and qualitative victim interviews, each analyzed by a wide range of techniques. Examples will be presented from El Salvador, Guatemala, Kosovo, Timor-Leste, and Chad.

Computer technologies that I collect under the heading "social software" increase the salience of informal groups. Their salience raises important questions about both the significance and the benefits of informal groups. I organize analysis of those questions around the concept of governance, and the concept of information governance in particular.

Sony's latest Digital Rights Management (DRM)-endeavour earned a charge of "fraud, false advertising, trespass and the violation of state and federal statutes prohibiting malware, and unauthorized computer tampering". The technology installs, unnoticed by the user, a piece of software that prevents consumers from unauthorised copying, is able to monitor and report user behaviour back to the firm and, accidentally, holds the door wide open for Trojans. Under other circumstances one would be tempted to describe such a strategy a hostile "spy at-tack". In case of Sony BMG, this seems to be part of a business model to sell digital music to consumers. The talk will have a closer look at the charges of the EFF and a Californian lawyer against Sony BMG's latest DRM strategy. The Sony BMG case adds a number of interesting new dimensions to the 'DRM and Consumer' debate. The talk will explain why the case is so important, also against the background of similar recent case law in Europe, and why it points into an entir