Graftstein Lecture in Communications Archives
Monday March 8, 2021
5pm - 6:45pm EST
Zoom MeetingAbstract: The burgeoning field of Law and Technology is beginning to draw more heavily from the long established field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This is a welcome development: STS deepens the legal academy’s understanding of sociotechnical systems and helps legal scholars avoid errors and pitfalls. Yet even as Law and Technology draws from social constructivism and other STS methods, it should take care not to abandon the commitment to prescription and normativity that makes legal scholarship unique.
Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor at the University of Washington School of Law. He is a founding co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab and (with Chris Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird, and Jevin West) the UW Center for an Informed Public. Professor Calo holds adjunct appointments at the University of Washington Information School and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Professor Calo's research on law and emerging technology appears in leading law reviews (California Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Columbia Law Review) and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Artificial Intelligence) and is frequently referenced by the national media. His work has been translated into at least four languages.
Algorithms and the New Politics of Recognition
The Digital Humanities Network and the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto welcome Professor Wendy Chun, Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media at Simon Fraser University
to present the Grafstein Lecture in Communications
Wednesday, February 5, 2020: 4:00 – 6:00 PM
University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Room J140
78 Queen’s Park Crescent, Toronto, Ontario
Description: What does recognition mean in an era of pervasive data capture and automatic pattern detection? Tracing the historical move from “pattern discrimination” to “pattern recognition,” this talk unpacks the logic and politics of recognition at the core of systems designed to automatically identify and classify users. It also examines the gap between user interactions, captured actions and algorithmic projections in order to understand how we have become figures in a drama called “Big Data.”
Bio: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University's Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016), and co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota + Meson Press 2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades and where she’s currently a Visiting Professor. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and she has held fellowships from: the Guggenheim, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She has been a Visiting Professor at AI Now at NYU, the Velux Visiting Professor of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School; the Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon, Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Luneburg, Germany), and a Visiting Associate Professor in the History of Science Department at Harvard, of which she is an Associate.
Prof. Nicole Starosielski
Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
New York University
Network Interference: The Politics of Internet Operations
Thursday March 7, 2019
5.00 p.m - 7:00 pm
Rosalie Silberman Abella Moot Court Room
Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's ParkBiography
Nicole Starosielski’s research focuses on the global distribution of digital media, and the relationship between technology, society, and the aquatic environment. Her book, The Undersea Network, examines the cultural and environmental dimensions of transoceanic cable systems, beginning with the telegraph cables that formed the first global communications network and extending to the fiber-optic infrastructure that carries almost international Internet traffic. Starosielski has published essays on how Fiji’s video stores serve as a nexus of digital media access (Media Fields Journal), on Guam’s critical role in transpacific digital exchange (Amerasia), on the cultural imbrications of cable systems in Hawaii and California (Journal of Visual Culture), and photo essays on undersea cables (Octopus and Media-N).
Abstract
The internet is supported by a vast network of undersea cables, data centers, and network exchanges. These infrastructures have profound effects on access to, speed, and ownership of digital content. This talk will describe some of the key pressure points in the production and operation of digital infrastructures. Taking the cases of Huawei’s attempt to enter the submarine cable industry and the problems of cable repair in national waters, the talk will reveal that although digitization has enabled many of the features of flexibility, modularity, and globalization of the supply chain, the supply chain of internet infrastructure often remains relatively fixed and bound up in national politics.
Prof. Edward W. Felten
Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs
Princeton University
Guardians, Job Stealers, Bureaucrats, or Robot Overlords?
Preparing for the Arrival of Intelligent Machines
Thursday February 8, 2018
5.00 p.m - 6:30 pm
Rosalie Silberman Abella Moot Court Room
Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's ParkProf. Felten's research interests include computer security and privacy, and public policy issues relating to information technology. Specific topics include software security, Internet security, electronic voting, cybersecurity policy, technology for government transparency, network neutrality and Internet policy. He blogs about technology and policy at Freedom to Tinker.
He is the Director of Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), a cross-disciplinary effort studying digital technologies in public life. CITP has seventeen affiliated faculty members and maintains a diverse research program and a busy events schedule.
Prof. Tim Wu
Columbia Law SchoolThe Attention Merchants
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Rosalie Silberman Abella Moot Court Room,
Jackman Law Building, 78 Queen's ParkProf. Wu spoke about his book, 'The Attention Merchants',
which chronicles the long rise of industries that 'feed on human attention'.Some press coverage of the book: The Atlantic; New York Times; National Post.
Reception to follow.
Book will be available for purchase onsite.The Honourable Roger T. Hughes
Federal Court of CanadaLex Aetheria - Law of the Aether
Friday, January 15, 2016
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Victoria College, Rm. 101
91 Charles Street West, TorontoThere is an emerging international body of law and enforcement of Court Orders directed to regulate the content of telecommunications, including the internet – I call this the lex aetheria. The lex aetheria is following in the footsteps of earlier international law, such as lex mercatoria and lex maritime, because there is a need to transcend national boundaries in order to deal with what is recognized by all civilized nations to be undesirable activity whether it be criminal, anti-social or infringement of rights. The purpose of my lecture is to recognize this emerging body of law, and to make recommendations for its future course.
Konrad von Finckenstein
Former Chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission and Justice of the Federal Court
"Thoughts on Redesigning Canada's Regulatory System for Communications"
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
4:00 p.m.
Victoria College, Room 101Abstract: Current Canadian legislation and institutions to regulate communications all stem from the early 1990s. Since then we have seen a veritable revolution in communications technology such as cable TV, wireless phones, satellites, digitization, fibre cable, internet, social media etc. In addition we have seen unpatrolled consolidation both vertical and horizontal among communications companies. Yet our legislation and institutions have remained virtually unchanged. A rethink, new legislation, and new institutional set up are clearly required. Key principles, considerations, process and reform of institutions will be discussed.
About Konrad Von Finckenstien:
Konrad von Finckenstein currently practices as an arbitrator with JAMS, The Resolution Experts, in Toronto and has had an extensive government and judicial career.
As the chief commercial counsel of the Canadian Government he led the legal team negotiating inter alia, the bail outs of Chrysler and Massey Ferguson, the establishment of a Bell Helicopter assembly plant for all its civilian copters in Canada, and the privatisation of Canadiar and DeHavilland.
Subsequently he became the chief counsel to the Canada US free trade negotiations. In this position he was responsible for negotiating the dispute settlement provisions, drafting, and implementing the agreement. He was also responsible for overseeing the drafting and implementing of all legislation, regulations and orders required to give effect to the provisions of NAFTA in Canada.
He was the Commissioner (CEO) of the Competition Bureau for seven years. During his tenure the Bureau examined the merger of four of Canada’s leading banks (ultimately blocking them) collected the largest fine in Canadian criminal history for price collusion. He also reviewed and approved the merger between Air Canada and Canadian Airlines ensuring that the merger would not lead to a monopoly in the skies. In addition to ensuring a competitive marketplace for Canadian businesses and consumers, he led the drive to create of the International Competition Network (an umbrella organization encompassing all the competition agencies of the world) to harmonize competition regimes worldwide and served as the Founding Chairman.
As a Justice of the Federal Court from 2003 to 2007, he heard cases involving immigration and refugee law, intellectual property and administrative law. In particular, von Finckenstein held that uploading music tracks over the Internet is not in itself a violation of Canadian copyright law.
In 2007, he was appointed Chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for a five-year term. He was instrumental in removing unnecessary regulations, allowing the industry to react more quickly to market changes and consumer preferences in an era of rapid technological change. Over ninety percent of telephone market was foreborne from regulation and exposed to competition. During his tenure the industry went through an unprecedented degree of consolidation. To meet these challenges he established frameworks for diversity of voices, vertical integration and net neutrality.
Trebor Scholz
Associate Professor of Culture and Media,
Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts"The Organization of Work. Next Steps for Crowdsourcing"
Thursday March 6, 2014
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Victoria College, Rm. 101
91 Charles Street West, TorontoRead a description of Prof. Scholz's lecture
Over the past decade, advancements in software development, digitization, faster and cheaper bandwidth, processing power, and storage, and the introduction of a wide range of inexpensive, wireless-enabled computing devices, set the global stage for emerging forms of labor that help corporations to drive down labour costs and ward off the falling rate of profits.
While it does not look or smell like labour, digital work is part of the daily lives of millions of invisible workers in the United States, India, and Russia.
In the legal gray zone of the Internet, with its stark asymmetry of enforceable rights, platforms like 99Designs, CrowdFlower, or Amazon Mechanical Turk have become templates for Post-Fordist labor that challenge the achievements of decades-long labor struggles including minimum wage, sick leave, and the 8-hour workday.
How relevant are unions to the millions of crowdsourced workers? Which concrete projects offer new ways of thinking about “digital solidarity” for the globally distributed workforce?
Trebor Scholz is an artist, writer, and conference organizer and the chair of the conference series The Politics of Digital Culture at The New School.
He is the author of a monograph on the history of the social Web and its Orwellian economies (forthcoming from Polity). He is also the author, with Laura Y. Liu, of From Mobile Playgrounds to Sweatshop City (2011). Mr. Scholz is the editor of Learning Through Digital Media and a volume on digital labor (Routledge, 2012). He co-edited the nine-volume Situated Technologies series and The Art of Free Cooperation (Autonomedia, 2007). Recent book chapters include “Facebook as Playground and Factory,” “Points of Control,” and “Cheaper by the Dozen: An Introduction to Crowdsourcing.”
Mr. Scholz has spoken at 150 conferences internationally. He also founded the Institute for Distributed Creativity, which is widely known for its online discussions of critical network culture. Dr. Scholz holds a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He has chaired seven major conferences and co-chaired the 2011 Digital Media and Learning conference in Los Angeles.Joshua Gans
Professor of Strategic Management
Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto"Information Wants to be Shared"
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Bennett Lecture Hall, Flavelle House, 78 Queen’s ParkIn 1905, a then obscure Swiss patent examiner published a paper that revolutionized physics. The paper’s motivating issue was how to observe simultaneous events. In the decades previous, the issue of simultaneity had perplexed many, none more than those in charge of running railroads. Many collisions could be traced back to scheduling problems and a lack of consistency in the time registered by clocks in different locations. Engineers and inventors struggled to find ways of synchronizing the clocks in different locations. The surge in demand for information about “the time” had occurred because of the increased interconnectivity of locations worldwide. Information on the time needed to be shared internationally. The problem was how to secure agreement on what the time was. As Einstein – the patent examiner in question – worked out how information about the timing of events could be shared, he realized that time itself was essentially a matter of perspective. The story of time is one of shared information. Information on the time is of little value if only one person knows it.
Stewart Brand famously declared, “Information wants to be free.” Except he didn’t (not really). And it doesn’t. Information is much more complicated than that. What information really wants—what makes it more valuable, useful, and immediate —is to be shared.
Sharing enhances most information’s value. The business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers who have relied on scarcity and control, have collapsed in the face of new technologies. Equally important, sharing can revive moribund, threatened industries even as it helps to explain how some platforms have, almost accidentally, thrived in this new environment.
Joshua Gans holds the Jeffrey C. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is a Professor of Strategic Management at Rotman (with a cross-appointment in the Department of Economics). His research is primarily focused on understanding the economic drivers of innovation and scientific progress, and he has core interests in digital strategy and antitrust policy. Joshua serves on the editorial board of Management Science, is managing director of the Core Research consultancy and writes regularly for Forbes, HBR and Digitopoly. His book, Information Wants to be Shared, was published in 2012 by Harvard Business Review Press.
Robert Darnton
Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian,
Harvard University"Books, Libraries & The Digital Future"
Thursday, March 15, 2012
5:30 p.m.
Bennett Lecture Hall
Flavelle House, 78 Queen’s ParkClick here to watch the lecture via webcast
Read an account of the lecture from the University of Toronto iSchool
In a famous metaphor, Thomas Jefferson explained that the spread of an idea resembled the lighting of a candle by a taper, or another candle: one candle gained light, and the other did not lose it. The Internet promotes the diffusion of knowledge in the same way and on a larger scale - unless commercial speculators continue to fence off the public domain and to claim it as their own. One way to resist commercialization is to promote the creation of a Digital Public Library of America, which will make the collections of our research libraries available, free of charge, to all Americans and in fact to everyone in the world.
Robert Darnton was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1960) and Oxford University (B.Phil., 1962; D. Phil., 1964), where he was a Rhodes scholar. After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he became a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He taught at Princeton from 1968 until 2007, when he became Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and institutes for advanced study, and his outside activities include service as a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Oxford University Press (USA) and terms as president of the American Historical Association and the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award and election to the French Legion of Honor. He has written and edited many books, including The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, probably his most popular work, which has been translated into 17 languages), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990, (1991, an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany), and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995, a study of the underground book trade). His latest books are The Case for Books (2009), The Devil in the Holy Water, or The Art of Slander in France from Louis XIV to Napoleon (2010), and Poetry and the Police: Communication Networks in Eighteenth-Century Paris (2010).
Margaret Jane Radin
Henry King Ransom Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
William Benjamin Scott & Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, emerita, Stanford University
Adjunct Professor, University of Toronto Faculty of Law"Boilerplate is Changing Our Legal Universe"
Monday, March 21, 2011
5:00 p.m. (Reception to follow.)
Room FLB, Flavelle House, 78 Queen’s Park.Many people enter into contracts every day without knowing it, or at least without being able to do anything about it. Often, when we buy a product or service, we are stuck with a set of standardized terms (known as a contract of adhesion, or more colloquially, boilerplate). Boilerplate is proliferating immensely in the networked digital environment. We are clicking “I agree” to terms we do not read, and would not understand if we did.
Boilerplate is problematic both from a normative and democratic perspective. From a normative point of view, such contracts are hard to reconcile with freedom of contract. Boilerplate also undermines principles of democratic ordering, because when firms use boilerplate to divest recipients of entitlements enacted by democratic processes, those processes lose their significance.
Yet boilerplate is a fact of contemporary life. What, then, if anything, can be done to ameliorate its normative and democratic embarrassments? Professor Radin will discuss this question, and those attending the lecture will offer their own suggestions.
By reading the above you have agreed to it.
Professor Mark Rose
Department of English, University of California, Santa Barbara"Drama in the Courtroom: Nichols v. Universal and the Determination of Infringement"
Thursday, March 25, 2010
5:00 pm
Cassels Brock and Blackwell Classroom C,
Flavelle House, 78 Queen's Park
University of Toronto Faculty of LawThe Centre for Innovation Law and Policy is delighted to host the 2010 Grafstein Lecture, presented by Professor Mark Rose. Professor Rose is a Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1977. He has taught at Yale University and the University of Illinois as well as at UCSB. He is the author of many books on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to Science Fiction as well as of Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright (1993). He also frequently serves as a consultant and expert in litigation involving allegations of copyright infringement.
Abstract: Nichols v. Universal (1930), in which the playwright Anne Nichols sued Universal Pictures claiming that the movie The Cohens and the Kellys infringed her play Abie's Irish Rose, is a classic copyright case that is perhaps best known for the "pattern test" proposed by Judge Learned Hand. But Hand's opinion is also well known for his expression of irritation at the use of expert testimony at trial. In this lecture I explore the issues in the case and the testimony of the opposed experts, dwelling in particular on the curious theories of Nichols' expert, Moses L. Malevinsky, the author of The Science of Playwriting. I suggest that Nichols ultimately can be understood as a drama of conflicting literary theories in which each of the parties approached the matter from a distinct theoretical position and that Judge Hand's famous decision, too, was founded on literary theory.
Professor Neil Netanel
Professor, University of California at Los Angeles School of Law"Copyright’s Paradox"
Monday, March 23, 2009
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
McCarthy Tetrault Classroom A,
Flavelle House, 78 Queen's Park
University of Toronto Faculty of LawThe United States Supreme Court famously labeled copyright “the engine of free expression” because it provides a vital economic incentive for much of the literature, commentary, music, art, and film that makes up our public discourse. Yet today’s greatly expanded copyright law often does the opposite—it can be used to quash news reporting, political commentary, church dissent, historical scholarship, cultural critique, and artistic expression. In Copyright’s Paradox, Neil Weinstock Netanel explores the tensions between copyright law and free speech concerns, revealing how copyright law can impose unacceptable burdens on speech. Netanel provides concrete illustrations of how copyright often prevents speakers from effectively conveying their message, tracing this conflict across both traditional and digital media and considering current controversies such as the YouTube and MySpace copyright infringement cases, Hip-hop music and digital sampling,and the Google Book Search litigation. The author juxtaposes the dramatic expansion of copyright holders’ proprietary control against the individual’s newly found ability to digitally cut, paste, edit, remix, and distribute sound recordings, movies, TV programs, graphics, and texts the world over. He tests whether, in light of these developments and others, copyright still serves as a vital engine of free expression and he assesses how copyright does--and does not--burden speech. Copyright and free speech will always stand in some tension. But, as Netanel demonstrates, there are ways in which copyright can continue to serve as an engine of free expression while leaving ample room for speakers to build on copyrighted works to convey their message, express their personal commitments, and fashion new art.
Neil Netanel is a Professor of Law at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. He writes and teaches in the areas of copyright, international intellectual property, and media and telecommunications. Professor Netanel earned his J.S.D. from Stanford University, J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and B.A. from Yale University. His recent books and book projects include Copyright’s Paradox (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Development Agenda: Global Intellectual Property and Developing Countries (Neil Weinstock Netanel ed., Oxford University Press, 2008); and From Maimonides to Microsoft; The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010) (with David Nimmer).
Professor Jessica Litman
University of Michigan Law School"Rethinking Copyright"
January 29, 2008
5:00 pm
University of Toronto Faculty of LawJessica Litman is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she teaches copyright law, trademark law and Internet law. Professor Litman is the author of the book Digital Copyright, as well as many articles on intellectual property, the public domain and information law. She has testified before Congress and the White House Information Infrastructure Task Force's Working Group on Intellectual Property. She is a trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA and the chair of the American Association of Law Schools Section on Intellectual Property. She is a member of the Intellectual Property and Internet Committee of the ACLU and the advisory board of Cyberspace Law Abstracts. Professor Litman has a B.A. from Reed College, an M.F.A. from Southern Methodist University, a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, and clerked for 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Betty Fletcher.
Prof. C. Edwin Baker
Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law
University of Pennsylvania Law School"Media Ownership and Media Markets:
A Democratic and Economic Evaluation"C. EDWIN BAKER, Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor, University of Pennsylvania School of Law. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania since 1981 and a graduate of Yale Law School and Stanford University, Ed Baker has also taught at NYU, Chicago, Cornell, Texas, Oregon, and Toledo law schools and at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and was briefly a staff attorney for the ACLU. His first book, Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech (Oxford, 1989), presented a general theory of free speech emphasizing individual liberty. His more recent focus on media policy has resulted in Advertising and a Democratic Press (Princeton, 1994), Media, Markets, and Democracy (Cambridge, 2002) (winner of the 2002 McGannon Communications Policy Research Award), and Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters (Cambridge, 2007). He has written over 40 academic articles about free speech, equality, property, law and economics, jurisprudence, and the mass media and lectured on issues concerning press freedom or media policy in Canada, Czech Republic, England, Ethiopia, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Scotland and Switzerland as well as the United States. His current work is turning more toward political and legal philosophy. The 2006-07 academic year Ed Baker is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study where he is working on the possibility of a legitimate legal order and issues concerning the basis and proper content of a legal commitment to fundamental equality.
Ambassador David A. Gross
U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy
in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs
United States Department of State"New Technologies and the Rise of Political Liberty"
February 7, 2006
4:30 pm
Bennett Lecture Hall
Flavelle House - Faculty of Law
78 Queen's ParkProfessor Yochai Benkler
Yale Law School"Freedom, development, and the emergence of sharing in the networked information economy"
Monday, November 29th, 2004
5:00 p.m.
FL3
Flavelle House
78 Queen's ParkPeter Grant
Partner and Chair of the Technology, Communications and Intellectual Property Group
McCarthy Tétrault"Blockbusters and Trade Wars"
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
A "cultural tool kit" is one of the measures that a government can develop to encourage a range of local cultural products without undermining freedom of expression. Such was the theme of Peter Grant's lecture delivered on the occasion of the Annual Grafstein Lecture in Communications on March 30, 2004: "Popular Culture in a Globalized World." The world of cultural economics, says Grant, works quite differently than the marketplace for ordinary commodities. Subjecting cultures to trade agreements "precludes countries from maintaining space and choice for local cultural expression." Grant proposes the establishment of a cultural tool kit - a series of measures that he believes governments should adopt to encourage local popular cultural products. Among the policy measures that he suggests include the "support of public broadcasting" and the "imposition of reasonable scheduling or expenditure requirements on private broadcasters." Many countries are now pitted against the huge US entertainment industry in order to preserve their cultural identity. According to Grant, if countries around the world are unable to tell their cultural stories and are instead overwhelmed with foreign cultural material, resentment will result. Instead, if local culture is fostered and nourished by welldesigned cultural tool kits, a nation confident in the future of its own culture will also be "capable of accepting other views without fear." Grant has also written a recent book on this topic, Blockbusters and Trade Wars.
Michael Froomkin: "Winners and Losers: The Internet changes Everything or Nothing?"
by James McClary
Michael Froomkin, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, delivered the 2003 Grafstein Annual Lecture in Communications on February 13th. Professor Froomkin specializes in the law of the Internet and has published numerous papers on Internet governance, ICANN, e-commerce, cryptography and piracy. Even more notable is the fact that he was a student of Ernest Weinribs Torts class at Yale Law School in 1984.
Froomkins lecture explored two apparently contradictory stories of the development of the Internet, The Cypherpunk Dream and Datas Empire. The Cypherpunk Dream is a free world built on the core technologies of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) and strong cryptography. It is a world of user empowerment and weakening government. The Cypherpunk Dream sees a correlation between the net and democracy. It is anti-censorship and pro-communication. Ideas, information and innovation can be created and shared within diasporic communities all over the globe. Users can rely on cryptography to protect anonymity.
In contrast, Datas Empire refers to the control that governments are now beginning to exercise over the Internet. In addition to the core technologies of TCP/IP and cryptography, Datas Empire relies on the fact that all users are based somewhere and can be tracked and monitored through centralizing traffic areas such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This world, far from the anonymity of Cypherpunk, is a world of sensors, where information about users can be stored indefinitely. In contrast to the globalizing tendencies of Cypherpunk, Datas Empire is a renaissance of the state, with the potential for perfect taxation and perfect law enforcement.
Froomkin believes that these stories are not mutually exclusive, but they do indicate two opposing forces that are already affecting the development of law. There are interesting questions that should be asked. Does technology force outcomes? Is there a one-way effect on this technology, or can it be constrained? What role should there be for standards bodies, such as ICANN?
Although the law is already changing, Froomkin urges us to look at whether legal responses to technology are really necessary. Are these actually new problems? Are legal changes appropriate?
In sum, Froomkin message is that even though it seems that the internet changes everything, to the extent that democracy remains strong and alive, the internet changes nothing. We can make sure we are heading in a good direction by remaining interested in how we get there.
Stanford Scholar Speaks of Free Culture in 2002 Grafstein Lecture
By Craig McTaggart
Stanford Law School's Prof. Lawrence Lessig offered his theory of free culture in the third annual Grafstein Annual Lecture in Communications in January 2002. He expanded on theories described his books, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999) and The Future of Ideas(2001), and told four stories of copyright law run amok.
Lessig despaired that while new technologies are decreasing the costs of creativity, there is a parallel trend of increased intellectual property protection for works. As he wryly noted, the technological trend means more is possible with less; the legal trend means less is allowed than before.
He described a techno-legal arms race between expression-enabling technology and copyright-controlling legislation. Unfortunately, in this taffy pull, copyright law is winning. Lessig urges a return to shorter copyright terms and less protection against derivative works, to ensure a steady supply of free culture, an essential input for creativity and innovation.
In Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig had explained to a public otherwise entranced by the Internet that despite its supposed free nature, the Internet enables near-perfect control over information. Those in a position to exercise this control are in effect the Internets content regulators. In The Future of Ideas, Lessig asserted that the titans of the U.S. copyright industry are actively manipulating both technical code and legal code (copyright) to extract more control over ideas than copyright law grants them. The elimination of real-space constraints on control results in the shrinking of the commons of ideas which creators can use in creating new works (since most creation is incremental).
By emphasizing the original purpose and terms of intellectual property protection under U.S. law, Lessig argued that the drive to propertize has gone out of control, at the urging of Disney and commercial copyright holders, not individual creators. The inability to conceive of resources as being part of a commons, not owned or controlled by anyone in particular, he argued, threatens to starve the processes of expression and innovation of ideas - their most important raw material.
Lessig recently presented this theory to the U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft, a constitutional challenge of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (pejoratively known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act), which extended by 20 years both existing copyrights and future copyrights in the U.S.
After delivering the lecture, Lessig spent a week at the Faculty in January 2002 leading an intensive course on "The Law of Cyberspace."