Blog

• Controlling Cyberspace

This semester, we’re starting an exciting new class, aimed not at lawyers, but undergraduate CS students here at Harvard. It’s called CS42: Controlling Cyberspace – and we’re sharing the syllabus online.  Anything big we’re missing? Read more »

• Computers Going Wild?

Computers Gone Wild: Impact and Implications of Developments in Artificial Intelligence on Society was an informal discussion that took place at Harvard Law School on December 8^th, 2011. Hosted by Jonathan Zittrain, Marin Soljačić and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, we brought together eighteen mostly local guests to discuss the ways that AI is changing society. Unlike futuristic predictions involving the Singularity or the underlying technology, this workshop explored current technology. Sessions included discussions on warfare, finance, education, and labor. Below is a list of attendees and a summary of the discussion.

Read more »

• Ideas for a Better Internet
Ideas for a Better Internet, or i4bi, is an interdisciplinary course at Harvard and Stanford that challenges students from law, computer science, and public policy to come up with novel and plausible ways to improve the Internet and its use. i4bi centers on immersing participants in Internet history, technologies, and politics, so that students can come up with ideas that help to build a better Internet — however they define “better.” Read more »
• Microsoft Echoes Apple App Store Requirements

Here at Future of the Internet, we’ve already talked a little bit about Apple’s content requirements for both the iOS and Mac App Stores in JZ’s The PC is Dead post. As JZ said,

“Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore found his iPhone app rejected because it contained “content that ridicules public figures.” Fiore was well-known enough that the rejection raised eyebrows, and Apple later reversed its decision. But the fact that apps must routinely face approval masks how extraordinary the situation is: tech companies are in the business of approving, one by one, the text, images, and sounds that we are permitted to find and experience on our most common portals to the networked world. Why would we possibly want this to be how the world of ideas works, and why would we think that merely having competing tech companies—each of which is empowered to censor—solves the problem?”

Apple’s approach is an example of a larger phenomenon. Read more »

• A SOPA compromise is floated
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 here. The proposal omits the elements of SOPA that had run into the most resistance. Gone is tinkering with fundamental Internet architecture such as the use of the domain name system. Gone is the involvement of the Attorney General. Gone is the criminal copyright streaming provision that could, theoretically, make a teenage Justin Bieber a felon for streaming amateur videos featuring his renditions of songs by his favorite artists.In all these ways, the Wyden compromise is significantly better than SOPA. So what’s left? Read more »

About Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School