I wrote this in April of 2008 for The Times, and don’t think I ever posted it here — Humanizing the Web The Web’s design reflects the open ethos of its early users: it has no central managers, no main menu, and no investment in content – indeed, no business plan whatsoever. Instead, its framers […]
Kendra Albert, Larry Lessig and I are finishing up a study of link rot, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2329161. Link rot is the phenomenon by which material we link to on the distributed Web vanishes or changes beyond recognition over time. (Wiki discusses link rot here.) This is a particular problem for academic scholarship, which is increasingly linking […]
I’m seeking a full-time one-year rock star research associate to engage with a variety of projects and classes, with a broad opportunity to immerse in cyberlaw and Internet topics. Blurb below, with more information on how to apply at <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/getinvolved/jzra>. …JZ — Professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School of […]
I just published a short piece in the F-T in the wake of legal threats against users who tweeted or retweeted a link to a BBC report of child abuse that turned out to be wrong. Here’s the full text — Those who didn’t see the false child abuse accusations against Lord Alistair McAlpine on […]
We at the H2O project are seeking a full-time Project Manager. H2O is an online platform for textbook development and distribution, currently in a pilot stage. H2O is based on the open source model – instead of locking down materials in formalized textbooks, we believe that course books can be free (as in free speech) […]
I participated in the Berkman Center’s fascinating HyperPublic symposium in the summer of 2011. When moderating a panel I invoked the aphorism that “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.” It’s a way of encapsulating the idea that online free services usually make money by extracting lots of data from […]
This week, Apple announced that it was moving to a new, faster OS X operating system development cycle, starting with the release of Mountain Lion next summer. It previewed a number of features for the OS, and released some parts in beta. Mountain Lion is slated to include a feature called Gatekeeper as part of […]
A British insurance company called Motaquote has teamed up with TomTom, the GPS manufacturer to offer insurance prices based on data gathered by GPS. Fair Pay Insurance, Motaquote’s new program, is an opt-in insurance pricing scheme where drivers will get a free GPS unit in return for potentially lower (but possibly higher) premiums. The GPS […]
Last week several members of Congress — Senators Wyden, Cantwell, Moran, and Paul, and Reps. Issa, Lofgren and Chaffetz — floated a proposal to substitute for the contentious proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, previously discussed here. Sen. Wyden’s office has commented on the compromise, and TechDirt has a writeup and a copy of the document […]
A Close Look at SOPA Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Alicia Solow-Niederman This document is a guide to the Stop Online Piracy Act as proposed in the United States House of Representatives. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, 112th Cong. (2011). It represents our notes as we sought to understand exactly what it does and […]
