The Internet: Issues at the Frontier (course wiki) - User contributions [en]

Talk:Main Page

2014-05-21T14:41:04Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1309109400

== First reading notes ==

0. Re: Deliberation Day - wow. Spinning off one specific tangent here, the "likeminded people become more homogenous" part reminded me a little of some papers I've read on group identity formation (one attached); another example is how people from different states become united as "Americans" when traveling in Germany. Potentially more 'net-relevant: how group and community memberships of discussion participants are formed and displayed (or not) online - roll call lists, sigs, badges, tags. Would it be outside the class scope to discuss group/relationship formation through net-based discussion?

1. Having bibliographies to chase down from the "conference paper" pdf (Macoubrie, I assume - where should I send proofreading suggestions?) would be awesome; is there any way to get these?

2. Re: using the internet as medium for tech policy discussions (Macoubrie): +1 to meta, first of all. I noticed that access to these discourse technologies wasn't really discussed, though;

3. Also re: Macoubrie, where it talks about inclusion of all affected demographics in a discussion: it would be interesting to see whether internet discussions tend to have and/or can support diversity of thought rather than (just) diversity of demographics, and how you'd even begin to be able to answer and measure that question. I've heard that successful members of minority groups are sometimes considered successful because of how well they're able to imitate/conform to the majority's mode of thought/action, meaning that (for instance) a woman on the board may not add that much thought-diversity because she's trained herself to express things in a male-like manner - but in pictures, the board sure looks a lot more diverse. Does this happen on the internet? Are influential participants on the internet already filtered for technologically literate, good English-language writers of short prose?

4. Was reading "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" I hit the part where Feynman describes being on the commission investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster. He tells the process of discourse within the group with pretty decent detail; it might be interesting to compare that (or other pre-internet but still in-fairly-modern-society examples of discourse) with what the same discussion might look like with today's tools.

[[User:Mchua|Mchua]] 23:00, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

== Templates ==

I took the liberty of template'ing [[Tools]] and [[Topics]]. If we want the main page to show them, but we also want them to have their own pages, this will keep the two locations in sync. On the other hand, if anyone thinks it will be too complicated for new users, feel free to revert. --[[User:Danray|Danray]] 22:20, 10 November 2008 (EST)

The Google Book Search Settlement

2014-05-21T14:41:02Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1309109400

'''Topic Owners: [[User:Gwen|Gwen]], [[User:Lbaker|Lee]], [[User:Cooper|Jon]]'''

'''Topic Date:''' March 30

back to [[syllabus]]

= Concrete Questions of the Week =

How will [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_book_search the Google book digitization project] affect various interests, including those who were parties to the [http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/intl/en/Settlement-Agreement.pdf settlement] between Google and the Authors Guild/American Association of Publishers, and those who were not? In particular, what changes will libraries (public, private, and university) and readers face going forward, and how should they respond?

= Brief Overview of the Google Book Search Settlement =

== History of the Settlement ==
In 2004, [http://www.google.com/ Google] began to [http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/print_library.html digitally scan books] from the university library collections of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and the University of Michigan, as well as from the New York Public Library system. Google provided a service, [http://books.google.com/ Google Book Search (GBS)], whereby users could search within these digitized books. The service allowed users to search and view the entire content of books in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain public domain], but it also permitted searching copyrighted books, providing short [http://books.google.com/googlebooks/screenshots.html#snippetview "snippets"] containing the search term and some surrounding text.

Crying foul, the [http://www.authorsguild.org/ Authors Guild], a writers' advocacy group, initiated a [http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.attachment/authors-guild-v-google/Authors%20Guild%20v%20Google%2009202005.pdf class action law suit] on September 20, 2005 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claiming [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Infringement copyright infringement]. The [http://www.publishers.org/ Association of American Publishers (AAP)] followed with a [http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.attachment/mcgraw-hill/McGraw-Hill%20v.%20Google%2010192005.pdf suit of its own] on October 19, 2005. Google [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112958982689471238.html responded] that its actions were lawful under the doctrine of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use fair use.] Rather than fight that battle, however, Google decided to settle with the Authors Guild and the AAP.

The parties announced a [http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/intl/en/Settlement-Agreement.pdf settlement] on October 28, 2008. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denny_Chin Judge Denny Chin] is supervising the settlement process. Under the [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14741799/SDNY-Order-Extending-Deadline-to-September-4 current schedule], authors have until September 4, 2009 to opt out of the settlement, and the court will hold a final hearing on October 7, 2009, after which it will accept or reject the settlement. On April 14, 2009, Professor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Nesson Charles Nesson] filed a [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14227449/Letter-to-Request-Intervention-in-Authors-Guild-v-Google motion to intervene] in the lawsuit as counsel on behalf of two professors and the [http://openaccesstrust.org/ Open Access Trust], and on April 17, 2009, the [http://www.archive.org/index.php Internet Archive], an online library led by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_Kahle Brewster Kahle], also [http://www.opencontentalliance.org/2009/04/17/internet-archive-files-intervention-request/ sought to intervene.] Judge Chin [http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2005cv08136/273913/92/ denied both of these requests.] On May 4, 2009, a number of library associations [http://wo.ala.org/gbs/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/googlebrieffinal.pdf filed a brief] requesting that the court "vigorously" supervise implementation of the settlement, should it be approved. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/technology/internet/29google.html?_r=3&hp reportedly commenced a review] of the settlement's legality under [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law antitrust law.]

== Content of the Settlement ==
The [http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/intl/en/Settlement-Agreement.pdf settlement] creates an entirely new legal regime for book digitization. Under the settlement, Google will continue to offer GBS, but it will now have to pay authors and publishers for books still under copyright from the revenue it makes from advertising and selling access to the books. To facilitate payment, the settlement creates a new entity called the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Rights_Registry Book Rights Registry (BRR)], an independent body chaired by an equal number of author and publisher representatives and charged with maintaining a database of book copyrights and implementing the terms of the settlement. Google will be able to continue to digitize books, free from fear of litigation (at least from those copyright owners who do not opt out of the settlement and who published a book prior to January 5, 2009). In return, 63% of revenue from advertising and book sales will be channeled to the BRR for distribution to rights owners. The BRR also possesses other powers. For instance, the BRR has some discretion over dividing revenues between publishers and authors, has some approval power over GBS’s security standards, will help set book prices, and can even license copyrights to third parties besides Google. The settlement is thus non-exclusive to Google, though it contains a [http://dltj.org/article/first-formal-gbs-objections/ “most favored nation clause”] that requires the BRR to give Google at least as good terms as any other third-party for the 10 years after the settlement’s approval.

Users of GBS will continue to be able to search the contents of books, but instead of returning "snippets" for copyrighted books, search results will depend on the type of book. The settlement places each book in one of three categories. First are public domain books, which users will continue to be able to view in their entirety. It is estimated that about 20% of GBS books are in the public domain. Second are books that are in-copyright and commercially available, which means that they are available for sale new through a “customary channel of trade” (e.g. it is available new at Amazon). For these books, GBS will display only bibliographic information and "front material" (copyright page, table of contents, index, etc.). About 10% of GBS books are estimated to be in-copyright and commercially available. Third are books that are in-copyright but not commercially available, which account for an estimated 70% of GBS books, and thus make up the bulk of what is covered by the settlement. For these books, users will be able to view up to 20% of the book (with some restrictions). Rightsholders may choose to deviate from these default settings and individually set the amount of each of their books available for users to view. Institutions and individual users will also have the option of paying for permanent online access to the full content of digitized books. The initial price of the institutional subscription will be set with reference to the prices of products and services “comparable” to GBS and will vary based on the type of institution (e.g. whether it is a corporation, a library, or a government office) as well as how many people are members of the institution.

Libraries are also specifically addressed by the settlement. Each public library will be [http://dltj.org/article/gbs-settlement-public-access/ provided a single GBS terminal] that will display the entire content of the Institutional Subscription Database (ISD), essentially a database comprised of all books that are in-copyright but not commercially available. Academic libraries will be allowed to have multiple terminals with such access, based on the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled at their respective schools. Institutions may also purchase subscriptions to the ISD. "Fully participating libraries" are given digital copies of any book scanned from their collections, as well as digital copies of books that are in their collection but were scanned from another library, provided that a sufficient proportion of their own collection has been digitized.

== Implications of the Settlement ==
What does this [http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/intl/en/Settlement-Agreement.pdf settlement] mean for libraries and the reading public? Many have hailed it both for improving access to knowledge by creating [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30gleick.html?em "the long dreamed of universal library"] (or at least a [http://paulcourant.net/2008/10/28/the-google-settlement-from-the-universal-library-to-the-universal-bookstore/ "universal bookstore"]) and for [http://lessig.org/blog/2008/10/on_the_google_book_search_agre.html providing more access] than may have been permitted under fair use if the case had gone to trial. But is this settlement optimal for all interested groups? The ramifications of the settlement will affect not only those parties who participated in the negotiations (Google, authors, and publishers), but also libraries and the reading public, neither of whom had a direct voice in the settlement-drafting process. Each of these groups will likely face a different set of benefits and problems. With a focus on libraries (public, private, and academic), we aim to identify the main challenges that the Google digitization project will entail and develop ways of working within the bounds of the settlement to mitigate these concerns.

'''Substantive concerns generally fall within one of the following categories:'''
* ''Access'': Are the permitted free uses of copyrighted books sufficient? Is the number of public terminals provided to libraries adequate? Are subscription costs for individuals, and especially institutions, going to be too high? Could more be done to increase access to the wealth of knowledge in GBS? These questions get to the heart of the debate over GBS, and are discussed at length in the assigned [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281 Darnton] and [http://paulcourant.net/2009/02/04/google-robert-darnton-and-the-digital-republic-of-letters/ Courant] pieces.
* ''Antitrust and Monopoly'': Does Google's de facto monopoly of digitized book search violate antitrust law? Even if not, are there protections that could be implemented to ensure that Google does not misuse its monopoly? And what about the BRR's monopoly control over licensing digitized works? Will this harm authors or would-be competitors of GBS? How does the most favored nation clause impact the ability of competitors to GBS to emerge? The assigned [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=james_grimmelmann Grimmelmann piece] provides a good discussion of these issues.
* ''Copyright'': What are the substantive implications of the settlement for copyright law? Was Google [http://lessig.org/blog/2008/10/on_the_google_book_search_agre.html right to settle] rather than [http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-book-search-settlement.html pursue its fair use defense?] Does Google's settlement make it more difficult for competitors to rely on a fair use defense? And what consequences will the settlement have for orphan works? Are Google and the BRR reaping profits from orphan works [http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/04/legally-speaking-the-dead-soul.html illegally or unfairly?] And how will the BRR's copyright database help future licensees track down copyright owners? Will the database be openly available and readily updated?
* ''International Implications'': What impact will the settlement have on foreign works in the U.S.? Will [http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2009/04/google-book-settlement-orphan-works-and-foreign-works.html foreign authors be exploited?] Individuals using GBS outside the U.S. are [http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/#2 not covered by the settlement.] Could the settlement's coverage be expanded so that they too will have the increased access the settlement provides? Is there a problem with the disconnect that foreign works available in the U.S. are covered by the settlement and will create revenue for Google and the BRR whereas international users will not have increased access to GBS?
* ''Privacy and Security'': Will GBS [http://booksquare.com/google-book-search-and-reader-privacy-a-consideration-and-call-to-action/ monitor users' reading habits?] If not, what security will it provide so that others are not able to acquire this information? If so, what protections will Google provide readers so that the information is not used or disseminated in harmful ways? And will Google [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/05/libraries-warn-of-censorship-privacy-cost-in-googles-digital-library/ censor books in GBS?] If so, what measures will be taken to ensure the censorship is limited to appropriate situations (e.g. preventing minors from viewing obscenity)?
* ''User Interface'': Could the settlement provide more [http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/shimenawa.php/2009/01/26/a-fire-on-the-plain imaginative options for readers], such as better annotation or modification features? Does GBS's scanning [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21514 fragment works] in harmful ways? And how will Google choose which books and which editions to show at the top of GBS searches? Could the settlement have done more to resolve these issues?

= Outline of Class Plan =

We will be working from the assumption that the current proposed settlement will be approved by the court. Within the framework that this settlement establishes, then, how can we mitigate the concerns that have been raised by libraries and the reading public? We hope to explore the contours of these problems and produce an array of possible solutions.

'''Class time will be segmented as follows:'''
* The class will begin with a short overview of the settlement itself, provided by the student presenters responsible for this class session.
* Then, each of our three [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/The_Google_Book_Search_Settlement#Guests guests] will be given ten minutes to present his views on the settlement and begin to answer the question posed above.
* After our guests have introduced their perspectives on the settlement, we will follow up with questions we have prepared for them. These questions are designed to ensure that all important aspects of the settlement and its expected effects are brought up.
* Finally, we will open the session to class discussion, guided by the Berkman Question Tool (see [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/The_Google_Book_Search_Settlement#Class_Participation Class Participation]). The discussion will be focused on normative suggestions for how institutions and readers should respond to the settlement in the wake of its (presumed) approval by the court.

= Guests =

Three guests will be participating in our class session. Two of them will be joining us live, and one will join us over videoconference. All three guests will be present for the duration of the class session.

* [http://www.debevoise.com/Attorneys/detail.aspx?id=541bb1af-ea41-4f18-b528-d40bdefabbfb&type=showfullbio Jeffrey P. Cunard] (via videoconference), managing partner of the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm [http://www.debevoise.com/ Debevoise & Plimpton LLP].
* [http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=486 John G. Palfrey], Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Vice Dean of Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, and [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/jpalfrey Faculty Co-Director] of the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ Berkman Center for Internet and Society]. (Blog located [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/ here].)
* Allan A. Ryan, Director of Intellectual Property at [http://harvardbusiness.org/ Harvard Business Publishing].

= Class Participation =

We will be using our old friend, [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/chooser.php the Berkman Question Tool]! (The instance name for our class session is IIFGBS, and it is located [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/IIFGBS here].) Before the day of our class session, we will seed the question tool with some questions that we feel are particularly relevant and topical. We encourage everyone to take a look at these questions prior to the class and to make comments, add more questions, and vote up the questions you find most interesting. We will be using this list of questions to guide the class discussion, especially in the final portion of the class.

= Readings =

== Assigned Readings ==

* [http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/google-settlement-13nov08.pdf This summary of the settlement], prepared by [http://www.policybandwidth.com/ Jonathan Band] on behalf of [http://www.arl.org/ the Association of Research Libraries] and [http://www.ala.org/ the American Library Association].

* [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/sites/iif/images/Settlement_Selections.doc These selected provisions] from the settlement agreement.

* [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=james_grimmelmann This article] by [http://james.grimmelmann.net/ James Grimmelmann], outlining potential problems with and revisions to the settlement.

* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281 This New York Review of Books article] by [http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/darnton.php Robert Darnton] criticizing the settlement. (Or, for those who prefer to listen rather than read, [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100969810 hear Darnton's criticisms] on [http://www.npr.org/ National Public Radio].)

* [http://paulcourant.net/2009/02/04/google-robert-darnton-and-the-digital-republic-of-letters/ This letter in response to Darnton] by [http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pnc/ Paul Courant] (head of the University of Michigan's library, a participant in Google Book Search), challenging Darnton's criticism of the settlement.

* [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22496 This New York Review of Books piece] by Darnton in response to Courant's challenges. (Skip the published version of Courant's letter here, which is less detailed than the one posted on his blog at the link above, and just read Darnton's response at the bottom of the page.)

== Optional Readings ==

*Experiment with the current incarnation of [http://books.google.com/ Google Book Search.]

*Skim the [http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/intl/en/Settlement-Agreement.pdf settlement agreement], focusing on Article 4 (Economic Terms for Google Book Search) and Article 7 (Obligations and Rights of Participating Libraries).

*For the highly ambitious, [http://waltcrawford.name/ Walt Crawford] of [http://citesandinsights.info/ Cites and Insights] has compiled [http://citesandinsights.info/civ9i4.pdf this 30-page newsletter], which includes excerpts from an enormous number of blog posts, accompanied by his own commentary. It covers the landscape up until late February of 2009.

*[http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13174399 This Economist piece] introduces [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster_Kahle Brewster Kahle] and his [http://www.archive.org/index.php Internet Archive] as an alternative or supplement to Google Book Search.

== Further Research ==

*The full settlement, including all of its attachments, is available [http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/r/view_settlement_agreement here].

*[http://pureinformation.org/about/ Timothy Vollmer] of [http://pureinformation.org/ pureinformation.org] has compiled a comprehensive and regularly updated [http://pureinformation.org/archives/2008/11/25/google-book-settlement-link-dump-awesomeness/ list of links] to articles and blog posts about the settlement.

= Class Session Recap =

The class session was dominated largely by discussion among our three guests, punctuated by questions from the class. What follows below is a thematic summary of the views that were expressed during this discussion. For a more detailed account of the class session (including diachronic notes on the guests' presentations, the live discussion, and the online discussion, as well as lists of our prepared questions), see our [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/sites/iif/images/Class_Notes_03.30.09.pdf edited class notes].

''A Private Settlement With Benefits for Everyone''

Despite the many concerns (e.g. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281 Darnton's]) and settlement amendment proposals (e.g. [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=james_grimmelmann Grimmelmann's]) raised in newspapers and the blogosphere, it is important to remember that this settlement is the (presumptive) result of actual litigation between specific parties. The parties have taken care to incorporate other interests into the negotiation process, but at its core the settlement is designed to satisfy the concerns of publishers and authors that led them to sue Google in the first place. Nonetheless, major libraries had a presence during the negotiations, participating both directly and through Google. The public interest was also taken into account in a variety of ways, culminating in the [http://dltj.org/article/gbs-settlement-public-access/ provision of public access terminals] to all public and academic libraries and substantial [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2008_Oct_31/ai_n30957631/?tag=content;col1 access provisions for the visually impaired]. It should also be noted that copyright holders, as members of the reading public themselves, had a stake in ensuring that the public interest was not ignored during the negotiations. All three guests agreed that the settlement represents a substantial improvement over the status quo for everyone affected. Professor Fisher, however, suggested that "an ideal dream scenario" would be a more useful basis of comparison than the status quo, and once such an ideal was described, the settlement was found to fall short of the ideal.

''Publishers and Authors: Upholding the Copyright Regime''

From the publishers’ perspective, the litigation was essentially concerned with ensuring that copyright remains a permissions-based regime. When Google decided to start digitizing books on a massive scale, it did so without attempting to secure permission from rights holders; this move was a bold challenge to the existing regime. Publishers were also concerned about potential repercussions from Google’s practice of providing libraries with digital copies of the books scanned from their collections. Library users have [http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter7/7-d.html special exemptions] under the Copyright Act to copy books in a library’s collection, and these exemptions were carved out during an era where photocopying a book, page by page, was the only means of producing such a copy. In today’s digital era, this exemption for library users, coupled with the ease of online library "use" resulting from mass digitization, could lead to much more widespread copying of books in library collections without any revenue being generated for the rights holders. It was these concerns that motivated publishers and authors to bring suit against Google.

''Libraries: Concerned About Resource Strain and the Proprietary Database''

Although the settlement would result in a net increase in public access to information, there are causes for concern from the perspective of libraries. The provision of a free public access terminal to every library represents a boon to small-town local libraries, but it likely would act as a strain on a larger libraries with more user demand, such as the New York Public Library system. The digital book database that Google is amassing would be an invaluable corpus on which to perform various types of research, and research libraries are rightfully concerned about restrictions on the use of this information. Potential problems also arise from the concentration of this corpus in the hands of a single (or small handful of) powerful private actor(s). The issue of concentrated private power over vast information is particularly alarming because the settlement effectively precludes any potential competitors from offering a comparable service in the near future.

''The Settlement Mechanism as a Problem-Solving Tool''

Additionally, considerations of institutional competence were raised. The effects of the settlement on copyright doctrine -- and in particular, the [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/04/technology/internet/04books.html fate of orphan works] -- are uncertain but have the potential to be far-reaching. Are broad legal issues that so fundamentally affect the public interest best decided through private litigation, or should Congress step in? Is it wise to establish such a rigid, comprehensive system for the digital book realm before we, as a society, have a better idea of how we want to structure our digital world?

''Concrete Normative Suggestions''

* Professor Nesson rejected our premise that the settlement will be accepted in its current form. He views the threats posed by this settlement to digital freedom as urgently severe and alarming; thus, he advocates active intervention in the settlement process itself. Indeed, following our class, Professor Nesson [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14227449/Letter-to-Request-Intervention-in-Authors-Guild-v-Google moved to intervene] as counsel on behalf of professors [http://www.lewishyde.com/index.html Lewis Hyde] and [http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~lewis/ Harry Lewis] and the [http://openaccesstrust.org/ Open Access Trust], although the request was [http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2005cv08136/273913/92/ denied].
* Professor Zittrain sees the "golden copies" of digitized books that Google provides to participating libraries as holding great potential as instruments of change. He suggests that libraries cooperate in a large-scale creative use of these copies.
* Professor Fisher emphasized the importance of understanding the problem on the big-picture level of legal theory and social goals before electing a particular course of action by a particular institution.
* Professor Palfrey suggests three generalized improvements to the settlement that would begin to address many of the concerns that have been raised:
** Ensure the possibility of a meaningful competitive landscape, such that second-comers are not barred from success.
** Establish a means by which the public can have a meaningful level of control over the workings of the Book Rights Registry.
** Create a system of periodic review for the settlement terms. This system would not need to involve periodic wholesale review of the entire settlement by the courts; it could instead merely involve libraries negotiating sunset provisions for individual works with publishers, authors, and other rights holders.

= Teacher's Guide =

This section is intended to provide guidance to anyone interested in teaching about the Google Book Search settlement in the future. Anyone who has taught on this topic is encouraged to use this wiki page to share additional wisdom gained from the experience. The development of our plan for this class session (including our selection of the Google Books Settlement as a focus within the broader topic of the internet and publication, as well as our decisions about guests, readings, and technology use) is documented on [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/Talk:The_Google_Book_Search_Settlement the discussion page].

== Evaluation of the Class ==

''Topic Breadth and Time Constraints''

The Google Book Settlement is a large, diverse, and contentious topic. Even with our efforts to limit the scope of our discussion by (a) assuming the settlement would be approved and (b) focusing primarily on concerns raised by libraries and the reading public, two hours was enough time only to scratch the surface. One way to help alleviate this difficulty would be to focus the topic even more narrowly (for instance, by choosing to discuss only one or two of the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/The_Google_Book_Search_Settlement#Implications_of_the_Settlement major substantive concerns] we have identified), albeit at the cost of precluding discussion on subjects that students might find more interesting. The most significant factor contributing to the palpable time constraint, however, is the sheer complexity of the settlement itself. At over 140 pages plus appendices, the settlement contains a lot of material that must be digested before potential concerns may be formulated and discussed. [http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/google-settlement-13nov08.pdf Band's summary] does a good job of explaining the most relevant portions of the settlement, and [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=james_grimmelmann Grimmelmann's article] explains major concerns in the context of the settlement, but neither piece addresses all the relevant details. As a result, significant time was spent with Mr. Cunard answering specific questions on the terms of the settlement before the class could proceed to a more high-level discussion about concerns and potential solutions. Additionally, while each of our guests brought his own unique and insightful perspective to the settlement, we found two hours to be insufficient to appropriately accommodate three guests.

''Reading Assignments''

The amount of reading we assigned seemed proportional to a two-hour class session, and for the most part, the content of the readings was relevant to our discussion. We sought to provide a descriptive introduction of what the settlement encompasses and what issues it raises, as well as an introduction to the normative implications of the settlement. For descriptive pieces, we chose not to assign the entire settlement given its length and technical legal language (which would have been particularly difficult for the non-law students in our class). Instead, we assigned [http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/google-settlement-13nov08.pdf Band's piece] to provide a readable summary of the settlement, some [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/sites/iif/images/Settlement_Selections.doc selected examples] of provisions in the settlement to give a taste of the actual settlement, and [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=james_grimmelmann Grimmelmann's primer] on the chief issues raised by the settlement. As to normative pieces, we assigned what we felt were the most provocative (and the most discussed) pieces on the settlement: the [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22281 Darnton] and [http://paulcourant.net/2009/02/04/google-robert-darnton-and-the-digital-republic-of-letters/ Courant] articles, plus [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22496 Darnton's response] to Courant. We felt the readings all served their purpose well during the class (the students seemed relatively well informed of the descriptive aspects of the settlement and its normative implications), with the sole exception being the actual settlement provisions that we assigned but whose language we did not examine closely during class. We felt that it would be useful to have students--especially law students--glimpse what the settlement's actual language looked like, but given our time constraints, we were unable to delve into the particular language and whether it would implement the settlement in the manner that the various commentators expect it to.

''Discussion Framework and Presence of Guests''

A substantial portion of the class discussion focused on the question of whether the pre-settlement status quo was the appropriate comparison against which the settlement should be judged. One specific alternative “dream scenario” was suggested as a potential foil to the settlement, but it seems that more could have been done with this approach. A more lively discussion of alternatives to the settlement might have emerged had the guests only been present for the first hour of the class. Planning for a portion of class discussion to take place outside the presence of the guests would have prevented monopolization of the conversation by the guests, thereby allowing for more student input and a greater diversity of ideas and proposals. In particular, by removing the “settlement expert” after a specified period of time, the amount of time spent asking detailed descriptive questions about the settlement could have been reduced, allowing more time for an open-ended normative discussion of concerns with the settlement and potential solutions. Of course, if fundamental questions regarding the mechanics of the settlement remained or arose after the guest's departure, an informed discussion of concerns and solutions would become more difficult. In order for a closed class discussion to be productive, those leading the discussion would need to have a firm grasp of the major points of the settlement and be able to act as a fall-back experts on descriptive matters once the guests have left.

''Use of Technology''

This class was served well by a minimal use of technology. The Berkman Question Tool was useful in providing a means for backchannel discussion while not being too distracting. It also provided fall-back questions to use if there was a lull in the discussion, with student voting (presumably) signaling which questions and topics the class found most interesting. Videoconferencing was an effective way of communicating with a remote speaker. However, the camera placement was not ideal, as it gave the remote guest a view of students' backs.

== Suggestions for Future Iterations ==

''Topic Management''

Even though our topic was narrowed to addressing the concerns of libraries and the reading public under the assumption that the proposed settlement agreement will take effect, we were able only to scratch the surface of this topic in the two hours allotted. Structuring the class around a more focused topic (perhaps looking at only one or two of the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/The_Google_Book_Search_Settlement#Implications_of_the_Settlement major substantive concerns] we identified) would likely allow for a deeper and more substantial discussion. As the topic becomes more focused, however, it may be more difficult to ensure that all students are interested and feel competent to contribute to the discussion. A class specifically addressing antitrust concerns, for example, would likely have alienated many of the non-law students in the class.

''Readings Management''

Future iterations of this class would do well to use the readings we assigned, as they are comprehensive, yet readable. Furthermore, they are currently the pieces most mentioned by those discussing the settlement, so knowledge of them is crucial for being able to participate in the discussion. The one exception is the actual settlement provisions that we assigned. Careful thought should be put into assigning portions of the settlement agreement itself as reading. Any such settlement excerpts should be selected deliberately with an eye to how they will be used in class. Parsing the language of settlement terms might alienate any non-law students in a class, so the composition of student backgrounds should be taken into account in deciding whether to assign reading from the settlement agreement. Although a glimpse of what the actual settlement looks like can be educational, it could probably be done without. One further caution is that the settlement is part of a constantly changing landscape (see our [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/The_Google_Book_Search_Settlement#History_of_the_Settlement summary of the settlement's current status]), so future classes on the subject will need to make sure they are up to date on any recent developments -- for instance, whether the settlement has been modified, accepted, or rejected. If a major change does occur, then substitute readings may be needed.

''Guest Management''

Potential ideas of ways to help foster a lively class discussion that is neither dominated by the guests nor stuck on purely descriptive questions include the following:
*''Fewer guests.'' While each guest had a unique perspective on the settlement, more guests means less time for class discussion and student input. This trade-off is especially problematic given the complexity of the settlement.
*''Pre-recorded material.'' In order to better control timing and ensure that only the most relevant and interesting guest statements are presented to the class, interviews with the guests and/or prepared statements by them could be recorded and edited. This edited footage would then be shown to the class instead of, or in conjunction with, live guests. Recorded interviews would also enable the presentation of guests who are not available on the day of the class session; for example, our class might have benefited from a recorded interview with [http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/darnton.php Robert Darnton], who was enthusiastic about participating in the discussion but was unable to join us in real time because of a schedule conflict.
*''Time limits on guests.'' Both to mitigate time constraints and also to lead students away from descriptive questions and toward more normative discussion, the amount of time for which the guests are available could be limited. One possible arrangement would be to have the guests available for introductions and questions during the first hour, and then to have student discussion proceed during the second hour without the guests present.

''Technology Management''

Technology might be used more effectively in the following ways:
*''Interest polling for planning purposes.'' The Berkman Question tool, or even an online poll, might have been used earlier in the planning process in order to determine which of the major issues the class found most interesting. This technique could have alleviated some of the problems mentioned under "topic management" above, by allowing for a more narrowly focused class while ensuring that at least a plurality of students would be interested in the discussion.
*''Videoconferencing details.'' Appropriate camera placement should be considered in advance, in order to avoid awkward arrangements such as we experienced. Videoconferencing also offers a convenient way of limiting the period of time during which the guests are available, whereas ushering out live guests would be more difficult.

Session checklist

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== Before class ==

* Have you confirmed your guest list? (As early as possible)
* Have you settled arrangements with your guests, such as when and where they will arrive, who will meet them, how they will find the room, what they will be doing with the session, whether they will stay for dinner, and so forth? (As early as possible)
* Do you have a room reserved if it will not be Hauser 105 (useful if you've chosen an audience beyond that of the class)? (2 weeks advance notice required; arrange with Moira)
* Do you know what discussion techniques and formats you will be using during class, and is how to use them documented on your wiki page? Have you sent out the relevant prepwork to your classmates so that they can come in ready? (1 week in advance)
* Do you know what technologies you will be using? Have you tested them, and is how to use them documented on your wiki page? Have you sent out the relevant installation/training links to your classmates so that they can come in ready? (1 week in advance; IT needs at least 48 business hours notice for AV requests)
* Do you have your readings worked out and documented, with links, on your wiki page? Have you sent your classmates an announcement/reminder of your finalized readings? (1 week in advance)
* Do you have a precis/briefing summary of your topic up on the wiki, emphasizing the intellectual trajectory of your topic -- what is deemed settled and what questions are thought open? Have you sent a link to this to your classmates? (1 week in advance)
* Do you have a time allocation (how much you plan on spending on each activity and who will lead it) for the 2 hours of class you will be running? Is this posted on your wiki? (1 day in advance)

== During class ==

* Has your A/V equipment been hooked up at least 10 minutes before class start?
* Do you have an IM backchannel to the IIF team (or at least JZ's AIM/Gtalk) prearranged and open?
* Is someone recording/photographing/taking notes of the session?
* Do you have copies of all handouts/worksheets/materials the class will be working with?
* Have the tables, chairs, blackboards, etc. been arranged and cleared for the kinds of interactions you want to have?
* Have you set aside space (and possibly time) for food consumption? Has the food team told you what they'll be bringing?
* Have you introduced your guests to the class?

== After class ==

* Have you sent thank-you notes to your guests?
* Have you checked to make sure that your classmates have finished and posted their deliverables for you so that they are accessible from your wiki page?
* Have you given your classmates feedback on their deliverables?
* Have you updated your wiki page with a summary of results?
* Have you asked the IIF team and an external party for feedback on your updated/summarized wiki page?
* Have you settled food arrangements for next week's class? You can refer to the dietary restrictions [[Dietary notes|here]], young foodwalla.

== End of term ==

Have you finalized the page for your class session so that it could be used by educators and others looking to cover your topic? (This includes integrating into the page any useful materials or ideas generated in the class session itself.)

Prediction Markets

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'''Topic Owners:''' '''[[User:Mwansley|Matthew]]''', '''[[User:Et|Elisabeth]]'''

back to [[syllabus]]

<div style="float:right; padding:0 1em; margin-left:1em; clear:both; width:66%; background:#ffc; border:1px dashed #575744;"> This is the wiki page for the IIF class on Prediction Markets, a two-hour seminar held Monday, April 27, 2009. The class focused on novel applications of prediction markets, particularly for law and public policy. The discussion was joined by Professor Justin Wolfers, an economist at Penn. Before class began, students were asked to propose their own prediction market contracts and to come up with ideas for novel applications more generally. Sections 1-5 of this page describe our plans for the class and the pre-class activities and basically reflect (without commentary) the information that was available on the site before the class itself took place. The final two sections -- the class recap and the Teacher's Guide -- include a summary of what took place, our reflections on how it all went, and a series of suggestions for how future generations of IIF might structure a session on Prediction Markets.</div>

= Precis =

Our seminar this week aims to discuss novel and/or controversial applications of prediction markets. Our study will be organized into three parts. First, before class everyone will get acquainted with prediction markets as they now exist and understand the basic economic theory behind their success -- this page and the first [http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Predictionmarkets.pdf required reading] (the Wolfers/Zitzewitz article) will cover that background. We also tried a (failed!) experiment with creating our own prediction contracts on intrade.net that inadvertently taught a lesson about how difficult it is to get efficient information markets (more below). Second, we will examine a few proposals for how prediction markets might be used at the frontier. The readings cover Professor Wolfers' crime prediction market, the DARPA project, and the Google Flu Tracker, as well as a series of short ideas from Professor Abramowicz; and class members will also propose their own innovative applications. Professor Wolfers will appear by videoconference to discuss these questions. Third and finally, we will try to figure out what prediction markets can and cannot do well as applied to law or government. At this point, we will consider skeptical arguments, both moral objections and practical/theoretical worries. Ultimately, the class will come to some conclusions about what uses prediction markets might have in the future.

What Prediction Markets Do Now

The most high-profile examples of prediction marketsthe Iowa Electronic Markets and Intradestarted by focusing primarily on predicting election outcomes and related political and financial events. Now they have expanded to cultural (Oscars) and technological (X Prize) events as well. The status of the commercial markets is uncertain; for example, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TradeSports Tradesports] announced recently that it [http://www.tradesports.com/ is closing]. And questions remain about the [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1134563_code183716.pdf?abstractid=1134563&mirid=1 legality] of prediction markets, whether the CTFC will [http://www.cftc.gov/lawandregulation/federalregister/proposedrules/2008/e8-9981.html regulate] them, and whether they will be [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6716/is_4_27/ai_n29450615/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1 taxed]. The basic idea is that prediction markets are more accurate than experts or traditional public opinion polls, because among other advantages they require participants to offer predictions backed by some conviction (money) and because they aggregate knowledge held by many minds. Private companies, like Google and Hewlett-Packard, are thus [http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2006/tc20060803_012437.htm increasingly employing] internal and external prediction markets to better forecast sales or to predict which products are likely to be most popular, among other things.

Novel Applications of Prediction Markets

More central to our purposes are increasingly prevalent proposals to use prediction markets to help guide law and policymaking. One of the earlier and more controversial applications was DARPA's planned terrorism futures market, which would have helped the Pentagon predict terrorist attacks, assassinations, and the like but was killed following [http://www.mongabay.com/external/pentagon_terror_futures.htm political outcry]. Somewhat less controversial are proposals to use prediction markets in areas with less potential for moral hazard. Some scholars have argued that they could be useful for [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=928896 corporate governance], for example as an alternative to disclosure requirements aimed at insider trading and other problems -- the idea is that prediction markets in which corporate insiders participated would provide the desirable information, at lower cost and greater accuracy. Professors Wolfers, Henderson, and Zitzewitz, in one of the [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1118931 required readings], describe how prediction markets might be useful to policymakers allocating resources to combat crime. Michael Abramowicz's recent book [http://www.amazon.com/Predictocracy-Market-Mechanisms-Private-Decision/dp/0300115997 Predictocracy] offers an extended analysis of the usefulness of prediction markets in law and decisionmaking by courts and legislatures (among other institutions).

Skeptical Concerns

Prediction markets offer a lot of promise but of course are far from a perfect tool, perhaps especially as applied to policymaking. Skeptics have raised several concerns. Markets are not very helpful when information is secret. If government changes policy in response to the market results, it might be difficult to identify winning conditions. Trading volume is a recurring concern. If volume is too low, not only may results be inaccurate accurate, but the market might even be subject to manipulation by a few well-endowed investors. Finding a non-ambiguous proposition for betting is more challenging when applied to real-world events, especially if the result cannot be easily quantified. Public mistrust of markets also limits their utility to policy-making, as evidenced by the widespread concerns among politicians about creating moral hazards. Moreover, markets are only as good as the information they receive, and some skeptics are upset to learn that in many cases markets just have the effect of re-articulating conventional wisdom. These and other skeptical concerns need to be addressed before real world legal or policy markets will be practical.

= Guest =

[http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/index.shtml Justin Wolfers] (joining via videoconference) is a tenured Associate Professor of Business and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He is a leading expert on prediction markets and has published articles on them in, among others, Economica, Science, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Professor Wolfers also serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Prediction Markets and as an advisor to seven different for-profit and not-for-profit organizations that work on prediction markets.

= Class Plan =

We aim for the class to proceed as follows:

* Professor Wolfers will lead off with an overview of how prediction markets work, their potential for use by private and public policymakers, and the most cutting-edge or salient issues that prediction market proponents face today

* Professor Fisher will offer a brief response

* We will then turn to questions and class discussion

* Finally, we'll discuss and critique the policy applications that class members themselves came up with

= Readings =

== Required Readings ==

 Background 

* [http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Predictionmarkets.pdf Prediction Markets]
Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz | 18 Journal of Economic Perspectives 107 (2004) | (19 pages, essential background--only one equation for the math-phobic)

 Novel Applications of Prediction Markets 

* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/technology/internet/12flu.html Google Uses Searches to Track Flu’s Spread]
Miguel Helft | New York Times | November 11, 2008 | (1 page, useful diagram)

* [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1118931 Predicting Crime]
M. Todd Henderson, Justin Wolfers, and Eric Zitzewitz | Olin Working Paper No. 402 | April 2008 | (5 pages, just read abstract and introduction)

* [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?cat=9 Applications to Law] and [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?cat=10 Applications to Government]
Michael Abramowicz | Excerpts from Predictocracy | A series of short suggestions on novel applications of prediction markets to law and government

* [http://www.mongabay.com/external/pentagon_terror_futures.htm Collection of Newspaper Articles on the DARPA Markets]
Carl Hulse of the NYT and Wire Services | July 2003 | (~6 pages)

 Skeptical Concerns 

* [http://ftp.fas.org/sgp/congress/2003/s072803.html Dorgan Speech] [http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2003/s072903.html Daschle Speech]
Discussion of the DARPA Markets in the Senate | July 28 and 29, 2003 | (2 short comments, mostly for humor value)

* [http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/122/feb09/notes/prediction_markets_and_law.pdf Prediction Markets and Law: A Skeptical Account]
Student Note | 122 Harvard Law Review 1217 (2009) | (21 pages, a short but good overview of defenses and criticisms of prediction markets, especially as applied to law)

* [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?cat=12 Advantages of Prediction Markets] and [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?cat=13 Disadvantages]
Michael Abramowicz | Excerpts from Predictocracy | Professor Abramowicz's discussion of some advantages and problems of Prediction Markets

== Optional Readings ==

* A brief paper describing the failed DARPA terrorism futures market, by a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. [http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/sept03/terrorism.pdf Robert Looney, DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market for Intelligence: Outside the Box or Off the Wall?, STRATEGIC INSIGHTS (2003).]

* Cass Sunstein's [http://www.amazon.com/Infotopia-Many-Minds-Produce-Knowledge/dp/0195189280 Infotopia]

* Robin Hanson's [http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf Futarchy] proposal

* Cass R. Sunstein, [http://www1.law.nyu.edu/journals/lawreview/issues/vol80/no3/NYU303.pdf Group Judgments: Statistical Means, Deliberation, and Information Markets], 80 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 962 (2005)

* Michael Abramowicz & M. Todd Henderson, [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=928896 Prediction Markets for Corporate Governance], Notre Dame L. Rev. (2007)

* Chapter 10 of Michael Abramowicz's book [http://www.amazon.com/Predictocracy-Market-Mechanisms-Private-Decision/dp/0300115997 Predictocracy]

= Class Participation =

We asked students to participate in two pre-class activities; the tasks and the results are below.

== Creating a Market on Intrade.net ==

Several weeks ago the class started an experiment with its own prediction markets. Here was the plan:

::"Everyone will create their own prediction market contract via intrade.net. Once you set up an account there, you can then create you own contract at http://www.intrade.net/market/create/start.faces. Your contract can be about anything you like (doesn't have to be legal), but it should conclude before our class date, April 27, 2009. The idea is (1) for everyone to get a feel for how prediction markets operate; (2) to see what kinds of contracts get enough volume to be successful and what kinds don't; (3) to see how accurate the predictions are, how they change over time, etc.

::"Once you've signed up and created a contract -- please do so by Friday, March 20 -- you can invite other people in the class to bet on your contract to give it some initial starting volume. (Intrade.net gives everyone $10k in play money upon signing up, so obviously if people want to bet on the wider world's contracts, that's great too). Everyone should list the contracts they've created below to facilitate class participation on intrade (and so that we can generate a variety of different kinds of contracts). At the actual class session on April 27, everyone should come in prepared to briefly discuss what happened with their contract (feel free to create more than one)."

Here were the contracts that the class created:

* Matthew: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=337549#Democrat_to_Be_Elected_Virginia_Attorney_General_in_2009 2009 Virginia Attorney General Race]

* Elisabeth: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338219#US_to_Lift_Sanctions_Against_Cuba_by_end_of_2009 US To Lift Sanctions Against Cuba by end of 2009]

* CKennedy: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=337550#China%3A_Charter_08_more_than_1_million_signers_by_12.31.09 A Million Chinese Charterists]

* [[User:Dulles|Dulles]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/listing/showEvent.faces?e=31362 Congress or FCC strengthens network neutrality principles by the end of 2010].

* [[User:Danray|Dan]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=337892 U.S. Supreme Court strikes down all or part of Â§ 5 of the VRA this Term]

* Andrew: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338028#GM_Files_for_Chapter_11_by_4/20/09%3F Will General Motors file for Chapter 11 by April 20, 2009?]

* [[User:DebbieRosenbaum|Debbie]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338029 Nesson Takes Down the RIAA]

* [[User:MSanchez|Msanchez]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338056 U.S. Recording Industry Cease Filing File-sharing Lawsuits]

* [[User:lbaker|Lee]]: [http://intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338191 In vitro meat for sale in US before 2020]

*[[User:ayelet|Ayelet]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338214&userId=63546#U2_performs_in_Boston_by_the_end_of_2009 U2 performs in Boston by the end of 2009]

* Shubham: [http://intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338216#New_HLS_Dean_to_be_named_by_June_15%2C_2009 New HLS Dean to be named by June 15, 2009]

*[[User:Jgruensp|JG]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338506#Autopilot_becomes_standard_by_12/31/2020 A major world airline switches the default pilot for its flights over to computer (i.e. perhaps human copilot, but no human pilot) by 2020]

*[[User:Hoellra|Rainer]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338524 IPv6 traffic makes up at least 1 percent of all internet traffic by the end of 2010.]

*[[User:Cooper|Cooper]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338698 Red Sox win 2009 World Series]

*[[User:drood|Dharmishta]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=338697#Android_phone_sales_surpass_iPhone_sales_by_2012 Android phone sales surpass iPhone sales by 2012]

*[[User:Gwen|Gwen]]: [http://www.intrade.net/market/detail/?contractId=341716#Intrade.com_/_Intrade.net Intrade.com confused with Intrade.net by someone else in the class besides me.]

From a technological perspective, the first part of the experiment worked. Most students were able to create the markets easily and the diversity of proposals was interesting. But the markets had almost no trading on them and did not yield any useful information. The reasons they failed, though, were revealing about prediction markets -- which is why we somewhat optimistically labeled the experiment a successful failure. Here is why we suspect the markets did not work. First, they were on the play money side of Intrade, Intrade.net. Although some experiments have found [http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/DoesMoneyMatter.pdf play money markets to be as accurate as real money markets], that finding assumes that the play money markets have similar volume. Of course, the play/real money distinction has an impact on how much volume each market has, and the lack of a financial incentive may have proved lethal here. Second, the topics were mostly obscurethe type of stuff that law students and tech enthusiasts found interesting, but not a lot with a broader audienceand this definitely could have impacted trading volume. Third, the user-created area on Intrade.net is a quiet alcove, so it does not get much traffic period. Fourth, beyond trading volume, the Intrade markets were quirkily designed with a binary input (more likely or less likely) rather than a large probability scale. This reduced the ability to indicate bet specificity, which, as we have discussed, is one primary benefit of prediction markets over voting. Fifth, and relatedly, the binary input, as opposed to a price, did not allow for the money (or simulation of money) psychology to workin short, there was no way to express investor confidence. So for all these reasons most of the markets got nowhere. In setting up the markets, we focused on making sure everyone understood the technology and could get their experiment started. But if we had watched our own test markets for a while, we would have realized that the experiment was unlikely to produce any useful information. Now perhaps we could have planned the failure in advance as a teaching tool, but it would have been more interesting to find a way to create markets that actually worked.

== Class-Generated Applications of Prediction Markets for Law and Government ==

The Task

As part of our discussion of novel uses of prediction markets, we hope not only to entertain critical perspectives but also to be constructive. To that end, we're asking everyone in the class to come up with a suggestion for how to use prediction markets in law or government. The suggestion can be subject-specific (e.g., using prediction markets to guide [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1118931 crime policy] or to help the DOJ and FTC [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?p=64 analyze the risks of proposed mergers]) or can cut across subjects and focus on institutions or modes of decisionmaking (e.g., using prediction markets in [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?p=37 small claims court adjudication]). But it should be specific enough that we can analyze drawbacks or advantages (e.g., not just something like, Congress should use prediction markets to help determine legislative priorities). See the Applications section of http://predictocracy.org/index.html for models and ideas. Please send your (brief) ideas to Elisabeth and Matt by Sunday the 26th at 5 pm; we'll likely discuss some in class and will definitely post them on the site later on.

 The Ideas, Grouped in Loose and Overlapping Categories

Predicting Whether Policies Will Be Successful
*My idea is for the government to use prediction markets to gauge public opinion on how likely it is that a given statute, rule, or action would accomplish its purpose. For instance, prior to Congress voting on a bill a prediction market could analyze whether the bill would have significant positive effect in the real world. The results could inform Congressional debate on whether to pass the bill, modify it, or reject it.
*I'm not a political scientist, but I easily believe that public confidence is a meaningful and desirable quality in any government program, and I can easily believe that confidence-inspiring programs are, all things being equal, better than those that don't inspire confidence. With that in mind, the FDIC, the the US Dept. of Treasury, and others, could use these markets to predict the confidence-inspiring factor of proposed bailout packages. Among those that roughly tend to distribute moneys in the same ways, we might prefer the ones that the public votes "will fix the financial crisis by the end of YYYY". This concept can broadly be applied to any proposed program. E.g., "If immediately implemented in full, Pickens plan will improve our economy, national security, and environment in a cost-effective manner by 2012." Granted I would hardly advise *anybody* to rely on the prediction market to choose between alternative programs except in the extremely narrow case that the programs' expert-predicted outcomes, and their methods of achieving their results, are highly similar.
*U.S. government agencies fund a small galaxy of projects, some of which are overlapping, and many of which never come to fruition. One person I've talked to spent more than 15 years working for contractors for a sub-cabinet agency, and not one of the half-dozen or more projects this person was assigned to was completed. These contractor staff knew which projects were more likely to be completed than others. Therefore we propose a market aimed at predicting which projects will be completed, versus many others that are cancelled after wasted spending.

Deciding Whether Particular Policies or Decisions are Politically Viable
*I wonder if there's a prediction market for nominations to federal government positions, like federal judgeships and cabinet appointments. If the public could make their views known that candidate X has sufficient support from the public, perhaps the current, overly-hostile environment surrounding confirmations could be alleviated somewhat. Of course, the extent this is true is dependent on something I don't quite understand, which is the prediction market's ability to alter the very prediction it is "about." In other words, will the bettors just be betting on whether or not the current, hostile Congress will be able to confirm potential nominee X? If so, that's not very useful. But if the prediction market could alter things somewhat, so that X is more confirmable since members of the general public have more input, then it could be useful.
*Have an internal prediction market limited to Congress and congressional staffers that would sell contracts on the likelihood of passage of particular pieces or legislation, judicial nominations, or other legislative actions. For instance, a market could be put in place for just the Senate and its staffers as to whether Judge Hamilton will be voted out of the judiciary committee within a specified timeframe (e.g. 1 month) and whether he will be confirmed to the 7th circuit within a specified timeframe (e.g. 2 months). In contrast to a public market, such internal markets will likely be more accurate since virtually all the relevant information is held by these few individuals. Such markets would ideally assist legislative leaders in setting legislative agendas by providing information as to whether it is sensible to even schedule a vote on a particular legislative action.
*A second prediction market idea would be to have a market identical to the legislator market proposed above except that it would be limited to members of the political media. Having both markets would enable (1) a comparison of the reliability of media (i.e. how much media market prices differed from legislator market prices), and (2) the direction of causation between media stories and legislator perceptions (i.e. whether media market prices lead legislator market prices or whether legislator market prices lead media market prices). If there were also public nationwide markets, further comparisons could be made as to how far apart public perceptions are from media and political perceptions. The information that can be gleaned from comparing prediction markets covering the same subjects but with different participants could prove quite interesting.

Aggregating or Obtaining Information Useful as an Input in Policymaking
*I think we should use prediction markets to determine the solvency of the various financial institutions for which the government is currently performing stress tests. By utilizing these markets (which can more accurately reflect the binary condition of solvency than can equity markets which include "option values" for scenarios where solvency emerges through some other means), the government can use the markets to evaluate whether these institutions are solvent. Any "stress test" must make a number of assumptions about the future state of the world and financial markets and a liquid market of educated investors would be more effective at making these assumptions than any one body.
*The government should use prediction markets to assign an initial price on carbon dioxide under a cap-and-trade regime. By canvassing the market through a prediction methodology, the government would reduce initial price volatility and mitigate the amount of money that it "leaves on the table" in selling the first batch of credits.
*The current outbreak of swine flu caught many people, especially the Mexican government, off guard. Would it be possible to use prediction markets to help determine when a pandemic were likely to occur? Could they help determine where to devote resources in the most efficient way, and to the areas that need it most? Or is health care fundamentally different than other fields, making government intervention fruitless?
*My proposed use of prediction market is to fix common misconceptions about crime rates. It was shown that usually people over-estimate the current crime-rate (thus supporting a "law and order" policy suggestions). I think we could use prediction markets to ask people and policy makers to assume how the crime rates will increase or decrease in their area. I think it will flash out misconceptions (if such do exist) and will contribute to promoting better-informed policies.
*Maybe we could use prediction markets to predict what the next stage of our energy market will look like? For a question on energy efficiency, we could ask what the most popular/wide reaching advancement in energy efficiency will be in 5,10, etc. years OR which technology will be responsible for cutting the most carbon emissions in the year 5,10, etc. years from now? hybrids? electric cars and the infrastructure to support them? zero energy or highly efficient homes? other? For a question on alternative energy, we could bet on which source of energy will be of highest use in 5,10, etc, years: wind, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, etc.?
*Prediction markets could be used to predict threats to cyber-infrastructure. The cyberwarfare idea is overhyped, but cybercrime is very real, and often, specialists and hobbyists both can see which technologies are exploitable without actually having a concrete answer as to how to exploit them. If the spread of new technologies were accompanied by a market in which people could make bets as to where the next major virus, worm, or targeted installation were to take place, the public and private sectors could concentrate their research dollars on addressing concerns with that code. The major problem: ensuring accurate reporting of "success" cases in order to properly reward winners: companies who have fallen prey to attack are rarely eager to share that information.

Prediction Markets as a Partial Substitute for Elections
*So here's my use of a prediction market by gov't - as an input for a "middle ground" solution between appointing and electing state judges. AFAI understand it, the basic impetus for electing state judges was that it was thought (god knows why) that the judicial system should better reflect prevailing public sentiment in the state and/or that state judges should be more accountable to the people. Yet as the recent Caperton case shows, there are some problems with judicial elections. My proposition would be to use an appointment system combined with a prediction market, which would give the governor (he's the one that appoints state judges, right?) a way of determining whom the public would like to see in office. If he rejects the public choice, he would have to face them at the next election, giving the public some credible clout (ie. the prediction market would not be meaningless) in determining the judicial choices. This would follow a standard winner-takes-all market structure.

Deciding Whether to Investigate Internal Government Wrongdoing
*I think there should be markets for investigations of government officials for corruption. I think Ted Stevens provides a good example of this. Despite being ultimately vindicated, I think quite a number of people believed that he was crooked and would have been willing to wager that he’d eventually be investigated. The idea being that there exists wisdom amongst the electorate and contractors of which politicians are ultimately more crooked than others. The main reason why people might not be willing to bet against someone like Stevens is that he’s too powerful to be taken down. Yet were Inspectors General and others willing to take advantage of prediction markets, that might change. So a market that said “I believe that charges will be brought against elected official X” would reflect more than anger from party opponents, it would be a way for a distributed understanding amongst the electorate that some official is corrupt to have an impact on information gathering that could lead to a prosecution. It would also make conspiracy theorists pay for their ideas. A market for “I believe Obama was not born in the US and ought to be investigated” would result in a wealth transfer from the crazies to those willing to bet against them.
*Using a normative prediction market to determine the desirability of investigating or prosecuting members of the Bush administration (or any administration) for war crimes. A prediction market might be desirable because it would present a picture of how the average legislator would view such actions, isolating the extent to which they would be perceived as purely ideological.

Prediction Markets for Law Firms and Litigants
*Law firms have a hard time making human resources decisions. Sometimes their summer classes are oversubscribed, sometimes undersubscribed. Sometimes they are too litigation-heavy, sometimes too corporate-heavy. Sometimes a lot of people in a class take a year for a clerkship, other times only a few. What about using prediction markets to help with recruiting decisions. There are many different possibilities. You could think of a law firm opening a prediction market to its summer class to get a sense of how many may end up doing a clerkship, etc. You could have a prediction market open to all of a firm's associates to get a prediction on what the firm's attrition rates will be in the upcoming years. You could have a prediction market open to all law students from top 20 schools to get a sense of whether litigation or corporate law is in vogue, whether students are leaning towards firm jobs or government jobs, etc.
*How about a prediction market for law firm layoffs? The real decision-makers would never participate, but lowly associates probably would, and in aggregate would have a lot of useful predictive information. It would work particularly well for the firm world since it's component firms are so readily comparable, but in principle it could apply to any industry.
*Using prediction markets in high-stakes commercial litigation to help parties determine both outcome and expected damages in potential jury trials. This scenario would be limited to big cases, where a critical mass of people who are knowledgeable about the facts of the case (and perhaps who could also be jury members absent this knowledge - which would exclude people with substantive ties to either party) can participate in the market.

Why Prediction Markets Won't Work
*I'm very skeptical of the idea of using prediction markets in law and government. I'm fixated on two main objections: (1) if everyone knows that government decisions will be based on a prediction market, an interested party could and in most cases would simply invest lots of money in his desired outcome and thereby effectively buy policy; and (2) even apart from the issue of interest group influence, I don't see how these markets can be depended upon to generate clear (how to translate a price or a percentage into a yes or no?) or reliable (how to attract informed betters and exclude uninformed ones?) answers. Working from this perspective, I was not able to come up with any aspect of law or government in which I could imagine use of a prediction market being a good or even feasible idea. I have therefore decided instead to give an example of a bad idea for use of prediction markets in government: FDA approval of pharmaceuticals. I think this example illustrates both of my objections. Drug companies desiring approval would use their considerable financial resources to move the market in their favor, and other potential market participants would lack both the information and the expertise necessary to weigh in in any meaningful way. I have trouble imagining casual betters reading through pages and pages of witness statements as suggested in the Predictocracy small claims adjudication example, and I find it even less likely that a better would be interested in perusing the lengthy and technical records of clinical trials. Though this example is perhaps extreme (USPTO issuance of patents would play out similarly), I think the problems it illuminates are endemic to any attempts at basing law and government decisions on prediction markets.

= Class Session Recap =

The class got underway with a brief presentation by Professor Wolfers, setting up discussion, and a response by Professor Fisher. After a response to that by Professor Wolfers, we opened up discussion and questions to the class. Below is a summary of some of the major themes that drove discussion.

 Empirics and Design 

As Professor Wolfers noted, and discussed more fully [http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Predictionmarkets.pdf here], whether and when prediction markets generate accurate forecasts is an empirical question. Their efficacy should be measured comparative to the available alternatives, not comparative to a baseline of perfection. And the markets should be considered and evaluated in a context-specific way. They are unlikely to be very effective at predicting low-probability events, for example, but may be better as a corporate management tool.

Accordingly, many of the toughest questions surrounding prediction markets are questions of design. Though design problems can be resolved, it may be easier or less costly to resolve them when applying prediction markets to some circumstances; it may be difficult or prohibitively costly to resolve them in others. A few of the design problems the class discussed are as follows. First, it may be difficult to create a contract with winning conditions that map onto desired policy outcomes. A betting market about which team will win the World Series is easy to formulate; it may be harder to reduce predictions about crime patterns to a contract, especially because of difficulties of measuring the underlying data or outcomes. Second, the markets may be subject to manipulation by the most interested parties. Third, markets rely on the participation of the uninformed, and so attracting those people is key to success. But since the markets also rely on punishing the uninformed, it becomes harder to recruit participants. Prediction markets may work best where biases that might lead the uninformed to bet are common, but mild.

Finally, we discussed the relevance of the recent failure to regulate economic markets, with attendant disastrous consequences. Is it especially questionable given that experience to increase reliance on market mechanisms like prediction markets or other kinds of futures markets?

 Applications to Legal Questions 

We intended the class to focus in a rough way on how prediction markets might be useful for government or law. The upshot of much of the discussion was that those uses may be limited. Prediction markets work poorly in situations where information is secret and the information holders have strong reasons to keep it secret, where participants are subject to many biases, and where the existence of the market may itself affect the policy outcome (Professor Fisher likened this last problem to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). These characteristics may obtain with respect to lots of legal issues. At the same time, however, problems like policy feedback loops may be solved with the right kind of design. Further, to the extent we have no particularly promising solutions to any particular problem for government, prediction markets while flawed might be comparatively superior.

 Tradeoffs With Democratic Values 

More generally, even if prediction markets work well, they may sacrifice other characteristics of decisionmaking that are of centrally high value. Professor Michael Abramowicz has proposed using prediction markets as a substitute for [http://predictocracy.org/blog/?p=37 legal decisionmaking] by judges or juries, but adjudication may be a desirable mode of decisionmaking for non-instrumental reasons. Prediction markets may crowd out public deliberation and other types of decisionmaking that promote community rather than just the aggregation of individual bits of knowledge. At the same time, it may be possible to come up with ways to use prediction markets that retain the benefits of discussion -- the class suggested that the deliberative aspects of making a decision might center on what values or metrics the community wishes to maximize, and the markets will help the community determine whether its policies have reached the desired goal.

A recurring example throughout the class was the possible use of prediction markets as a replacement for academic hiring discussions at faculty meetings. The market would predict, for example, the likelihood that a candidate would become a productive scholar; the decision could then track that or other metrics directly (or, alternatively, the market's results might be a useful data point at the faculty meeting). On one hand, prediction markets are unlikely to be able to predict all the information relevant to faculty hiring, like whether someone would be a good colleague. And the information generated about potential productivity, especially in small fields, might be relatively thin. On the other, prediction markets in such a context may actually help avoid some of the recurrent problems with deliberative systems -- namely that they tend to marginalize voices who are afraid to speak publicly. That problem may have unwelcome distributional consequences, and so in some sense prediction markets may do even better than democratic deliberation, on its own terms. In the corporate governance context, it was pointed out, prediction markets help give voice to lower-level workers whose ideas or views are crowded out by middle management. Of course, prediction markets may have their own unwelcome distributional consequences given participation trends.

= Teacher's Guide =

== Evaluation of the Class ==

 Topic 

The question we wanted the class to focus on was whether and in what circumstances prediction markets might be useful tools in law and government. We assigned one short paper offering a basic explanation of how prediction markets work generally, but most of the remainder of our readings were less technical -- they described and proposed new applications, suggested circumstances in which prediction markets might fail, and gave a flavor of how policymakers have responded to some proposed uses of prediction markets (especially the DARPA proposal). We faced the following tradeoff in assigning readings and setting up the class. To really understand where prediction markets can work and whether it is possible to design any particular market to avoid fatal flaws, one likely needs a fair bit of background on technical aspects of the markets -- as we discussed in class, much of any discussion of their efficacy must rely on empirical and technical details. But the more background we assigned, the less we could assign on more cutting-edge questions about prediction markets. As a result, some of the Q&A/class discussion parts of the seminar focused on technical issues that might have been resolved with different background reading.

That said, the combined comments of Professor Wolfers and Professor Fisher did a great job of fleshing out some of the answers to our large-scale questions on a theoretical level. Overall the speakers and the class discussion were lively and engaging and we felt that we were successful in covering the relevant ground and in moving to new questions in the rare moments when discussion lagged. The topic itself was pretty broad; we might have focused the class more narrowly on analyzing a particular case study or area where prediction markets might be a useful tool. But we think that participants did leave with a solid grasp on how to analyze and think about prediction markets in the future.

 Discussion Framework 

As was typical with IIF seminars, the discussion with our guest and questions from the class filled up a lot of time, and the two hours flew by. We did not end up getting to discuss the class's own proposals for applications of prediction markets, or even to discuss very many specific proposals by academics -- we mostly stayed at a theoretical level (with the notable exception of the running example of prediction markets for faculty hiring). This may not have been a bad thing; the students were all prediction market amateurs and so generating our own ideas may have been more useful as a tool for learning than as a tool for making progress on thorny issues related to prediction markets.

Professor Wolfers' engaging opening statement focused on a few big-picture points, rather than detailing how prediction markets work in general, which was what we had wanted (the latter would probably have consumed most of the class period on its own). Professor Fisher's response highlighted two issues: first, that we can identify a series of conditions under which we expect prediction markets to work well and to work poorly; and second, that even when the markets work well, we might be wary of extending them to legal arenas for reasons described above. Professor Wolfers then offered a brief response, and then we turned it over to the class.

This basic framework -- an expert presentation, a response, a brief reply to that, and then class discussion -- worked well. One snag along the way was that we did not have much debate or disagreement on some of the more fundamental issues (perhaps with the exception of the value of non-instrumental modes of decisionmaking). But Professor Zittrain stepped in to liven things up and challenge our guest, and by the end we had more questions and comments than we could get to before time was up.

 Class Participation and Use of Technology 

With the exception of one minor mid-class glitch, having our guest appear by videoconference worked quite well. We banned computers and did not make use of tools like Twitter or the Berkman Question Tool, but members of the class seemed to have plenty of questions to ask. We may have benefited from being the last class of the semester, and so students were more comfortable and more active as questioners than they might have been toward the beginning of the semester absent an anonymizing tool.

A few months before the class session, we asked students to create their own fake-money prediction market contracts on intrade.net. As described [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/iif/Prediction_Markets#Creating_a_Market_on_Intrade.net above], this didn't work out because no one bet on the contracts. As a teaching tool, it may not have been that effective either, because it didn't force anyone to actually learn about prediction markets; rather, students just came up with a semi-random topic to bet on. We had also hoped that the experiment might help us draw some conclusions about what kinds of topics are likely to generate interest or prediction market activity. Generating any useful information of an experimental nature was likely an unrealistic goal for a class of amateurs, however.

Our second pre-class experiment was much more successful. Asking people to come up with ideas for prediction market applications required them for the most part to engage with the readings and to think about the circumstances in which the markets might be useful. The exercise generated a lot of creativity (though some students thought the markets were unlikely to be successful at all). One trouble, as noted above, was that we didn't end up having time to discuss the proposals; another is noted in the suggestions section below.

== Suggestions for Future Iterations ==

I. Conceptual Basics First

How prediction markets work may not be intuitive to the non-economists in the room. For example, the idea that, in a market with sufficiently high volume, random bets or bets attempting to rig might actually make the market more accurate (by serving as a subsidy and creating a financial incentive for investors with actual knowledge to bet even more) seemed difficult for some students to grasp, at least initially. So before class--and, most importantly, before any simulations, the students need to be briefed on how a simple market like Intrade actually works. Here are some basic principles students should understand before getting into the articles or simulations. (There are undoubtedly many other basic principles relevant to understanding the markets. But these are a few that stood out from the class discussion as perhaps responsible for some misunderstandings.)

* First, prediction markets differ from voting! They allow the investors to indicate their confidence level (on the analogy to voting, you might think of it as strength of preference, but for an outcome's likelihood of occurring rather than the desirability of it occurring). In fact, it is important to emphasize (as obvious as this might seem) that a rational investor will be just as willing to bet on outcomes she sees as revolting as outcome she sees as favorable.

* Second, prediction markets avoid the bottleneck problem. That is, information does not have to be screened through any layers where decision-makers may have a non-truth-tracking agenda. This is especially important in creating internal markets in organizations. The whole advantage is getting unfiltered access to people "on the ground," which explains (as Prof. Wolfers pointed out in our discussion) why they can be threatening to hierarchy.

* Third, prediction markets are only as good as the information that goes into them. Prof. Wolfers emphasized this point repeatedly. The relevant, comparative question in evaluating prediction markets is always, is this market better than the other means we have available for collecting this information? Often all prediction markets can do is give an unbiased account of the conventional wisdom, but that is still useful! When markets predicted Obama would win the New Hampshire primary, it was not a fatal blow to those their usefulness. The relevant question was, did they outperform polls? The answer to that is yes, they generally do (see confidence level explanation above).

II. Readings 

In addition to an understanding of how a basic betting market works, the class might have benefited from a more in-depth understanding of prediction market design principles. The readings we assigned on applications generally did not venture down into the trenches. Michael Abramowicz's proposals on predictocracy.org are more thought experiments than fully thought-out proposals. Fearing we were overloading on the reading, we only asked students to look at the introduction to the paper on how government might use prediction markets to forecast crime, not the details of how the market would be designed. We assigned layman's reactions to and descriptions of the DARPA failure (from the mainstream press and Senate speeches); we might instead have assigned Robin Hanson's paper on [http://hanson.gmu.edu/realterf.pdf Designing Real Terrorism Futures]. We might have made the wrong choice along this axis; in any event, it is something for future classes to consider.

III. Better Simulations and Experiments 

From a technological perspective, the first part of our experiment -- creating a contract on intrade.net -- went well. Most students were able to create the markets easily and the diversity of proposals was interesting (they can be found above). But the markets didn't generate any betting activity, as we explained above. Here are some possible alternative methods of experimentation.

* We might have familiarized the class with a working market. That is, our first simulation was designed in part to get students used to Intrade, but in practice it introduced them to a part of Intrade that actual traders do not frequent. Most of those active markets cost money, but we might have asked students to propose how they would bet on a live market and then to follow it throughout the semester -- the idea being that experiencing first-hand the ups and downs of being a trader would give a greater sense of what prediction markets can do now and how accurate they are. Failing that, it might have been useful to have a guest who had traded extensively in Intrade describe her strategies and experiences. If the class was lacking one element, it was a grounded view of how the prediction markets that we have now are actually doing, and of their strengths and weaknesses.

* We might have made use of existing academic or corporate experiments. Google [http://www.bocowgill.com/GooglePredictionMarketPaper.pdf opens its internal prediction market results to researchers]; and more generally there is a lot of experimentation going on out there by experts. Instead of trying to start from the ground up, we might have seen whether the class could assist or partner with existing academic experts or with corporations already making use of prediction markets. Rather than coming up with random contracts in a vacuum, for example, we might have been more focused -- asking class members to come up with innovative contract ideas that might be helpful for a particular company that was already running an internal market, and seeing whether the company would ask employees to bet on our contracts along with the ones they were already running. This kind of idea would involve a lot of advance planning, of course, but might be fun and the prospect of results useful in a real-world sense might get the class really invested in learning about the markets.

IV. Making Better Use of the Proposed Applications of Prediction Markets

Our second simulation involved the class coming up with its own novel ways to apply prediction markets to law and government. Some students may have come up with their ideas before doing the assigned readings, as they were due a day before the seminar took place. Whatever the reason, though, conceptual basics were an issue for some of the proposals; others were probably unrealistic. And we didn't end up having time to discuss them (though this isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on the length of the class. We have three suggestions for how to improve the class proposal process.

* First, have some sort of feedback mechanism that creates an incentive to craft realistic proposals -- perhaps some sort of contest, with a prize for the most viable idea. The evaluation could be done by class vote, or by our outside guest -- or of course by prediction market.

* Second, design the pre-class activities so that some short basic reading is done before the proposals are due, rather than giving the students the whole reading list yet having an early deadline for the proposals, which was the unrealistic route we took here.

* Finally, the proposals might actually work better as a post-class activity. After listening to our in-class discussion (particularly the concerns raised by Professor Fisher), students would have been much more likely to come up with well-thought-out ideas within the constraints we discussed.

V. Improving the Discussion and the Topical Focus 

Overall, we were really pleased with how the discussion went; we mostly attribute the success to picking a great guest! But future generations might consider the following tweaks:

* In a sort of unplanned fashion, our class discussion ended up taking as its running example the possibility of prediction markets for academic hiring. The example usefully highlighted and made concrete some of the advantages and problems of prediction markets. But sometimes the discussion became sidetracked on the specific difficulties of academic hiring rather than the general principles the example intended to elucidate. We had available to us some excellent class-suggested ideas for new applications (see the corruption market above, for an example), but we never got to them before class time ran out. For future discussions it would be useful to reserve time to discuss specific applications, so that the interesting but irrelevant details of working out one type of market do not dominate the goal of getting a broader sense of how prediction markets might be applied in different areas.

* Alternatively, we might try the opposite tack: going for narrow depth rather than breadth. That is, rather than starting on a meta level and reserving time to discuss applications, we might focus the discussion around a single, well-chosen, law and policy-related example, say DARPA or prediction markets for crime. We'd then try to apply existing theories about situations in which prediction markets work well or poorly to our example, to brainstorm how it might be tweaked, and to figure out whether it might work in the end. The trouble with this suggestion is that our class isn't qualified to do any real design of a potential prediction market, so we would risk losing the breadth of discussion without gaining all that much in depth.

Policies

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== Introduction ==

''Wherein we learn How This Class Works.'' (Note: The content of this page may eventually migrate to the [[Main Page]].)

== Preferences for use of attributed material ==

* Please indicate your preference on [[Permissions]] for usage of material.

== Session design ==

Class sessions are designed and run by student groups; see [[Scheduling]] for details.

See [[Session checklist]] for things you might want to look at if you are a group planning a session or debriefing afterwards.

== Food ==

We aim to feed people during class, to make up for weird evening times and a somewhat ambitious workload.

Food will be handled by the group that ran the previous week's class; the last group will handle the first group's food. The budget is $200 (but less preferred; we'll review this number in a week to check for sanity), and you are feeding 30 people, some of whom may be veg(etari)an (groups should feel free to make a more exhaustive survey of dietary needs).

Main Page

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{{TOCright}}

== Introduction ==

This is the course wiki for the Spring 2009 Harvard Law School seminar [http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/courses/2008-09/?id=6444 The Internet: Issues at the Frontiers], LAW-99045A (abbreviated name: iif). It is taught by Professors William Fisher and Jonathan Zittrain and meets Mondays from 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM in Hauser 105.

Course description:

''This seminar explores frontiers question involving the Internet. Anticipated issues involve innovation, copyright, new uses of the wiki form, prediction markets, democratic polarization, and collective intelligence. Students will be expected to participate actively in innovative course design, and we might attempt to involve numerous people all over the world in the course through the Internet.''

== Schedule ==

Unless otherwise indicated, dates given are for normal class meetings from 5-7PM on Monday nights.

* [[2008-11-21]] Optional wiki tutorial
* [[2008-11-24]] Monday 12-1pm (class)
* [[2008-12-01]] Monday 12-1pm (class)
* [[2009-02-02]] Monday 5-7pm (REALLY class!)
* ''TBA'' ([[Tech demo]])

== Resources ==

* [[Policies]]
* [[Syllabus]]
* [[Studying this class]]
* [[Scheduling]] for class slots
* [[Tools]]
* [[Topics]]
* [[Readings]]
* [[People]]
* [[Dietary notes]] for ordering food
* [[Links]]
* [[Supplementary interviews]]

Note: Every page of the IIF wiki is public and indexed by search engines, although only registered users may edit entries. Thus, your posts may be read by people outside the Spring 2009 IIF class.

Links

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[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU An Anthropological Introduction To YouTube]

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE Web 2.0...The Machine Is Us/ing Us]

[http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/ NY Times: The Medium]

[http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/ Global Ideas Bank]

Internet Governance Brainstorming

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==Brainstorming==

Much like open-source software,

:'''You'll want to be clear about using "free" vs "open-source," depending on what you mean and who your audience is! [[User:JZ|JZ]] 15:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

the Internet can be considered a collection of servers, pipes, and users spread all over the world.

:'''How is this much like open source sw? (Not disagreeing, just trying to understand.) [[User:JZ|JZ]] 15:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

How does it keep working? One easy answer is that the United States (through actors public and private) just sort of gets its way.

:'''Unpack. What does it mean for US to get its way? Gov't, culture, people? [[User:JZ|JZ]] 15:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

This isn't really a satisfying answer descriptively or normatively, though.

:'''What was the question? "How does the Internet keep working?" Are there those who say the answer is "Because the US controls it?" [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

With the rest of the world contributing more and more to the Internet as a whole, is it time for a change?

:'''Do you mean Internet protocols and infrastructure, or apps, or content, or ... ? [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Guests: Susan Crawford?

:'''She can certainly speak to the cluster of issues commonly called "Internet governance"! [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Some questions:
:What are the options for internet governance? An ad-hoc system, or something more formalized? What should the regulations cover - everything or only the vital areas, such as cybercrime and technical standards? Should it be local or international in scope? --[[User:AMehra|AMehra]] 19:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

::'''An upstream question would be: What are the specific problems that Internent governance proposals are meaning to solve? [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=== International Regulation ===
*The UN's [http://www.itu.int/wsis/index.html World Summit On the Information Society] has come up with the [http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/aboutigf Internet Governance Forum] to help tackle some of these issues - is this a good idea?

:Possible reading: [http://publius.cc/2008/12/02/internet-governance-under-the-un-part-1/ The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under the UN] - a series of three essays recently published on the Berkman Center's Publius Project.

:Possible speakers: staff members of the IGF? --[[User:AMehra|AMehra]] 18:52, 6 December 2008 (EST)

::'''Sure, might be interesting to get to the bottom of the IGF. Milton Mueller at Syracuse could be a good guest for this. He has [http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/8/6/3142881.html strongly criticized] (though I might say not fully grasped) my own views on Internet governance and the IGF. [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:00, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=== Local/national Regulation ===
*Efforts by the FCC - in conjunction with and separate from the UN efforts.

:Possible speakers: Kevin Martin --[[User:AMehra|AMehra]] 19:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

::'''It will be helpful to differentiate between governing the Internet -- controlling its infrastructure, protocols, or evolution -- and governing use of the Internet. You could pick a hot topic from the FCC's docket, though, and some there are about Internet deployment, such as the free wireless proposal just abandoned. [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=== Rights of Minors ===

Minors have long been recognized to not have free speech rights that are co-extensive with adults. But with the Internet, how do we define those rights? And what, if any, regulation should the government enact to protect minors on the Internet, while also respecting their rights?

There are two traditional categories where minors' free speech rights have been restricted. The first is with respect to pornography, the second with respect to the school environment. These two areas raise different concerns.

'''[[User:Jgruensp|Jgruensp]]''' (fun topics, all: we could invite [http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_progj/task,view/id,1117/ the CSIS commission] which has been grappling with all these issues and is desperate for legal guidance)

:'''Sure; you could take this topic a step further by looking at existing scholarship on the topic and/or the just-about-to-be-released report from the Palfrey Commission, chartered by 49 state Attorneys General to discuss protection of minors online. Given its Berkman Center connections, we'd have a good chance of getting the main players in that process to discuss. [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=== Internet Dependency (What if someone somehow takes down the net?) ===

We have come to rely on the Internet for almost every aspect of our lives. If the Internet somehow suddenly went "down" (through either a cyberattack or physical attack on key backbone pieces of infrastructure), the result would likely be calamity, as well as hordes of people who wouldn't know what to do with themselves. Can we even imagine what the world would look like the morning after such an attack if it was successful? Are we wrong to rely so heavily on a single tool whose detailed technical inner workings so few people truly understand? Are we setting ourselves up to be ruined when someone compromises this tool? What about the tradeoffs between keeping the Net free+open vs. regulation to ensure that it retains its functional integrity in the face of attack?

We can invite Dan Kaminsky, who recently discovered a flaw in the inner-workings of the Net that could have caused some serious damage. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/technology/09flaw.html?hp
(or we could invite will smith, who defeated the aliens in independence day with the help of cyber-attack).

* I vote Will Smith. Unless everyone wants to get into the desirability of a DNS nonce of sufficient bitlength, in which case... no, still Will Smith. That guy's an elliptic curve cryptography fiend. However, if we do want to talk about design issues in the internet, and the failure of the marketplace to handle externalities created by poor software design, leading to the perpetual crisis of bugginess, we could do worse than to invite [http://cr.yp.to/djb.html Daniel Bernstein]. Plus, as an added bonus, he saw the issues that gave rise to the Kaminsky bug coming down the pike [http://cr.yp.to/djbdns.html a long] [http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/forgery.html time ago]. --[[User:Jgruensp|Jgruensp]]

:'''It might be interesting to see if there are contingency plans by various parties -- business, gov't, etc. -- to weather and respond to an Internet outage. We could ask the cybersecurity team from the DoD joint staff to present their most difficult problem here -- they're still in the early stages of thinking this through -- or perhaps cue to the new cybersecurity czar that is rumored to be brought on by the new Administration. (Then again, it might be too soon for that person to want to spend time interacting with a class.) [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=== Internet as International Conflict Zone ===

In light of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberattacks_on_Estonia_2007 recent events in Estonia], have we finally reached the long-predicted era of cyberwarfare? Is cyber-espionage a counterintelligence problem or something more? ([http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20080531_6948.php This article from the National Journal] talks bluntly about perceived threats, although is perhaps a little too willing to attribute causation of certain events to Chinese actors on dubious evidence)

:'''There is much sound and fury about "cyberwarfare"; I could see a class designed to see if there's a there there on the topic, and whether any of the theory applied to traditional warfare can be deployed to help us understand the phenomenon. [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=== Internet as an Extension of National Infrastructure ===

It is easy to define the borders of the nation in realspace (ports, airports, land crossings), and the tradeoffs between private propertyholders' rights and national security interests (making those tradeoffs? Not always so easy). But what are the national borders in cyberspace? Given the dangers described in the two topics above, what kind of role, if any, should national government play in monitoring and regulating major backbone communications links? What about the networks of semi-public industries such as utilities? Private corporations that store government secrets? Financial systems? Other types of privately owned networks?

--[[User:Jgruensp|Jgruensp]] 23:54, 30 November 2008 (EST)

:'''There's a lot of interesting stuff to be mined about interexchange policies among Tier 1 internet service providers, and some fun/confusing economics about such interconnections which would be good for the economist types among us. Ramesh Johari at Stanford is doing good work here, and David Clark down the street at MIT would be a natural for this. [[User:JZ|JZ]] 16:14, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

=====Case study: a look at the Comcast BitTorrent controversy=====
By now, everyone is most likely familiar with the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Network_Neutrality controversy] that arose after Comcast was alleged to have throttled BitTorrent traffic. The FCC decided [http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080108-fcc-to-investigate-comcast-bittorrent-blocking.html to get involved], ultimately deciding that Comcast violated the FCC's [http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-151A1.pdf Internet Policy Statement] and ordered it to [http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/system/files/FccComcastOrder.pdf. stop].

''Issues to Discuss:''
*The FCC claims jurisdiction, though it is unclear. Regardless, should the FCC have jurisdiction?
*If not the FCC, who would be the proper governing authority? Should there be one at all?
*What issues should we consider when determining how/if to regulate technical standards?
**What does the net neutrality debate illustrate that could help us reach an answer?

=====Case Study: Congressional, judicial, and private attempts to regulate content on the Internet through laws (like COPPA) and private action=====

There has long been a recognition that there is a legitimate need to regulate content on the Internet, however many attempts to do so have met with resistance. Often, legislative attempts to regulate meet with criticism and challenges from Free Speech activists and organizations.

Beyond direct regulation, another possibility would be the creation of standards to allow private entities to provide effective content control. But would mandating certain technologies lead to effects similar to the V-Chip had on TV? i.e. would it just stifle innovation and limit the introduction of better and more useful technology?

A final possibility would be to allow the market to regulate itself. The government has at times encouraged this option through incentives to help resolve certain issues. For example, the ''Internet Tax Freedom Act'', [http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode47/usc_sec_47_00000151----000-notes.html 47 USC 151 note], places a moratorium on taxation of Internet access provided that protections are put in place to protect minors. Perhaps as a result, perhaps due to market forces, ISPs offer filtering technology to those who want it. Like many ISPs, [http://www.comcast.com/Shop/Buyflow/default.ashx?Popup=true&RenderedBy=Products&FormName=ProductDetails&ProductID=20951 Comcast] offers McAfee parental controls as standard in its Internet packages.

''Issues to Discuss''
*How should the Internet be ''shaped''?
*What is the best way to achieve the stated goals?
*What areas, if any, should be encouraged? What areas should be discouraged? how?

===Possible Readings===
*Speta, J., FCC Authority to Regulate the Internet: Creating It and Limiting It, 35 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 15 (2004). [http://heinonline.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/luclj35&men_hide=false&men_tab=citnav&collection=journals&page=15 HeinOnline]
*Lessig, L., Law Regulating Code Regulating Law, 35 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 1 (2004). [http://heinonline.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/luclj35&men_hide=false&men_tab=citnav&collection=journals&page=1 HeinOnline]
*[http://publius.cc/2008/12/02/internet-governance-under-the-un-part-1/ The Path Towards Centralization of Internet Governance Under the UN] - a series of three essays recently published on the Berkman Center's Publius Project.
*[http://www.institut-gouvernance.org/en/analyse/fiche-analyse-265.html The Politics and Issues of Internet Governance] - an essay by Milton Mueller at the Institute for Research and Debate on Governance
*Mueller and JZ discussing ICANN and top-level domains (TLDs) on the Internet Governance Porject blog: [http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/8/6/3142881.html One], [http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/8/7/3145104.html Two].
*ICANN's [http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-23oct08-en.htm process] for applying for a new TLD, including the full [http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/draft-rfp-24oct08-en.pdf draft applicant guidebook] (warning: PDF).
*[http://www.wgig.org/WGIG-Report.html The 2005 WGIG Report] (PDF/MS Word links on page)
*[http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/hyderabadprogramme Panel discussion transcripts] - from the IGF's latest meeting during Dec. 3-6, 2008 in Hyderabad.
**[http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops_08/wrkshplist.php List of Workshops] from the 2008 IGF meeting.

====Regulation and Control of Technical Structures and Standards====

=====Case Study: ICANN's top-level domain name ("TLD") expansion=====

This summer, the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icann Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] (ICANN) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7475986.stm voted] to expand the possible [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-level_domain top-level domain names] (TLDs) such that individuals, businesses, governments, and other entities can register TLDs composed of any combination of letters in any script, so long as they can show a "business plan and technical capacity" to back up their desired domain. The new TLDs will cost in the six figures to register, and will likely start going online in 2009. While there will be an arbitration process for disputed domains (particularly in cases of trademark infringement and geographic domains), most domains will end up going to the highest bidder in an auction process.

''Issues to discuss:''
*Should we be concerned about control of generic domains, like ".news" or ".shop," by a few wealthy individuals or groups?
*Many corporations are [http://www.pcworld.com/article/155542/domain_sale_dangerous.html?tk=rss_news opposed] to this expansion because they already have established .com domains for their purposes and are worried about a potentially huge number of infringing domains, including in foreign languages, which may require them to spend millions to register additional domains. Is this a valid concern?
*How should disputes involving geographic domains be resolved if both parties are government entities? If one party is a private actor (an individual or business) and the other a government entity?
*On a larger scale, should we worry that ICANN is the sole body setting the standards for TLDs and resolving disputes?
*Although the US has supported worldwide participation in the management of country-specific TLDs, it is [http://www.ntia.doc.gov/comments/2008/ICANN_080730.html not willing] to give up oversight of the authoritative [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_root_zone root zone] file. Who should control the root zone file, and why?

====Regulation and Control of Substance====

=====Case Study: The Internet Governance Forum=====

The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Group_on_Internet_Governance Working Group on Internet Governance] (WGIG) was set up during the first phase of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Summit_on_the_Information_Society United Nations World Summit on the Information Society] (WSIS) in 2003 in order "to investigate and make proposals for action, as appropriate, on the governance of the Internet by 2005." In its final report, the WGIG provided the following [http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/pc3/html/off5/index3.html working definition] of Internet governance:

:''Internet governance is the development and application by Governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.''

Based on the report, the UN Secretary-General established the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Governance_Forum Internet Governance Forum] (IGF) in 2006 with multiple stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, and civil society. The [http://www.intgovforum.org/mandate.htm mandate] of the IGF declares that the forum's purpose is to discuss Internet governance-related public policy issues and advise stakeholders on such issues, but it does not have any real decision-making authority. The IGF held its [http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/hyderabadprogramme/hyderabadmainsessions third meeting] during Dec. 3-6, 2008 in Hyderabad, India, in which panels explored topics such as expanding Internet access to the next billion people, promoting cyber-security, and global arrangements for managing critical internet resources.

''Issues to discuss:''
*Should the IGF have direct decision-making authority? If so, what substantive areas should this authority cover, how far should it go, and should it be binding? If not, what good does the IGF really do?
*A review of the organizations moderating [http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops_08/wrkshplist.php the many workshops] that took place at the most recent IGF meeting shows a mix of government groups, corporations, and civil groups. Should we expect all these groups to have an equal say in setting the agenda for the IGF? If not, how do we ensure proper representation of all interested groups, regardless of power and influence?
*Is global governance of Internet use a good idea in any respect? If so, is the IGF the best form of this governance?

2009-02-02

2014-05-21T14:40:47Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1309109400

(Help on these notes are welcomed, btw.)

== Welcome ==

=== Scheduling ===

We are still on for Mondays, thanks to extensive feedback.

=== People ===

(ok, we'll update this with names later)

* lots of professors
* iif-team

== Overview ==

Let's go through what people think they're doing this semester. Let's go through the process of putting together a syllabus.

=== Briefing papers ===

To differentiate this from a survey course, and get some background out of the way, we might want to prepare (for each topic)
* Briefing paper to get people up to speed
* What are the questions at the frontier that remain unresolved?

=== Deadlines ===

In general, things (readings etc) should be locked down by the start of the preceding week's class. (Ex: if your date is Feb 9th, readings should be locked by Feb 2nd.)

Mapping out how you are going to use your time in advance is good.

=== Things to consider ===

* How do we Deploy Our Guests? (Operation: Deploy-A-Guest)
* Taking Guests To Dinner (Operation: Feed-A-Guest)

=== Technologies to learn about ===

Groups that advise the usage of certain technologies for their session are responsible for training and providing resources and otherwise making sure that the class is ready to use that technolog for their session.

=== Food ===

We'll do it on our own, with groups sourcing food for various weeks.

2008-11-03

2014-05-21T14:40:46Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1309109400

tech facilitated deliberation

dialogue around a subject
as small as the class
or as large as whatever

practices
especially good for ?
nobody can speak twice until everybody has spoken once
simple rules
robert's rule of order--parliamentary

wiki in the mix!
"which could be good or not"-jz
timing
what we ask people to do before
during
like the question tool or other stuff

peter's role is helping after the sessions
"our greatest opportunity to contribute is after the fact"
but stuff could be relevant during too

Mel got a wiki page going!
woohoo!

sources about different practices (could go on the wiki?)

there prob. arent readable/exciting scholarly resources. boo :(

at most 3 sessions (and maybe two)
between now and dec.

how to structure those two sessions?
hmm.

ALSO
substantitive reading:
?
case studies about how people (one from bc) revamping the voting system
applied things like this
yeaaah
this is a book
we need that book digitized (@505 grizwold/berkman?!)

deliberation day--colorado
more polarized after the conversation!

wikipedia chapter from the future of the internet jz
talks about
practice next to technology
"you dont' just throw a wiki in the middle of things and expect things to get good"jz

looking for deliberation--
wikipedia lit
applications without using the word deliberation

wellcome platform
engaged issues (bigthink is in touch with them)

offer the welcome platform something to talk about with our students

they're nervous that welcome will flop?

gergory bernarda

Dharmishta--going to talk to C4FCM

Mel--design research lab
communication
engineers and design groups

they would design technologies and try them out
would analyze them in sociological ways

wikipedia chapter
stuff from cass about group deliberation
case study from british columbia
??

(add hj post about what is civic media to the wiki)

next meeting could (should) be demo day

examples:

we could show a slashdot moderated conversation
and view different levels
show wikipedia from the inside
demo the question tool

google just came out with an app that does this
cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions

twitter use in conferences

also add delicious!

heat map for gpl 3

campaign we're calling what's your plan
role call magazine
plans of action that are going to be presented in role call magazine
letting users submit their own plans

prototype launched in three weeks

popularizing

demo an annotation engine
www.reframeit.com ?

lets you annotate web pages in the margins
essentially put post its

have a group seize upon that tool--then later in week 5 use it to annotate something

range of tools--to get these people thinking

20 people in the seminar

break them up into groups

Additional annotation platforms: Diigo, Fleck, Stickis, ShiftSpace, TrailFire, Disqus, FriendFeed (has an annotation component)

Sessions

Google books deal
Guests: Harvard lawyers who hate it; Alex MacG who negotiated for GOOG; Jeffrey Cunard from Debevoise; maybe Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive)

Corruption and Change Congress
Guest: Lessig

Cultures of cooperation
Guests: Jimbo, joint w/Yochai class

has mark sageman done things since 2004?
this would make him a good candidate

Diana mutz
interesting work on activism

Henry Ferrell

google wiki
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/03/google-wiki-prepares-to-launch/

user generated news
korea
political organization (fundraising/obama campaign or facebook)
chris hughes consulst for obama about facebook

people from causes on facebook
(get this into demo day)
chris kelly or zuckerman

is this interesting from an advocacy and activism standpoint
the uses of facebook

something anonyminty wise?
- Aaron Swartz presents proposal for Berkman to host Tor node

problem solving!

students do a big think session onone of the questions of the week
produce content around each (week?)

dharmishta idea:
in every class, do a (collaborative?) activity on the topic of the week, rather than have a presentation about how other people are doing these things...

jz idea
no paper
but do a thing on the website/project

international
internet governence

olpc!
(week)

open source software
coleman
schoben omahoni?
siobhan o'mahoney
reading: Karl fogel how open source software projects run

eric raymond
politics and problems

mobile technologies
huge in the developing world
(dharmishta thoughts: one of the most hopeful but also one of the most closed platforms! aaah!) (mel: on this note, it would be neat to see how projects like android and openmoko are trying to turn their phone platforms into generative ones... how do you start a development/user community from scratch?)
two possibilities: 1.
2. carrier problem google, fcc

citizen journalism week
editor of the globe come in
craig from craigslist
josh marshall

jeff jarvis did a site about news innovation
newsinnovation.com

Populous project

open planning project
social collaborative platform
they want to change transportation politics in new york city
one for streets and one for schools (evantually)
bloggers and filmmakers

collaborative textbooks
http://www.ck12.org/aboutus.html
combined with the open access initialte
john palfrey
sandeep chiramandi (sp?)

Science Collaboration
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS134542+18-Sep-2008+MW20080918

http://www.peertopatent.org/

google chat translator bots
translate
cyberlaw class in india!

ed markey

files taken down on youtube
possible censorship (youtomb?)
http://youtomb.mit.edu/

accessibility
who has internet and who doesnt

and also
the accessibility we all thought of:
http://dotsub.com/

google--text of closed captioned tv shows

copyright
(could this be the one to talk about copyright?)

how does copyright apply to anything we've mentioned?
google books!

organizations that form online trying to do things in real life
how do we do this?!
(legally and otherwise)
just for fun: mp3experiment.com

web science research initiative
sir tim berners lee
pannels about web science
(we have funding for this!)
web science
"what web science is"
where ethics belongs in technology
is technology neutral?
tim
wendy hall
danny whitezner (sp?)
"this should be like what do you see yourselves doing?"

a week on voting machines! (?)
alternative voting systems
(asign cass' paper for that week...)

go team collaboration!

go team process...

jz picks who is in the course

dan first session--settle on reading
2-3 good articles that are directly relevant to what we're talking about
only stuff that really matters! (excerpts are wonderful things...)
make twitter #thing for the @class
mel demo day
ppl will have laptops with them
videoconference in peter and elizabeth
present and videochat dim dim--free for under 20 users
also look into google search 'wiki'

peter- figure out videochatting
Dim Dim platform that allows for presentations to be viewerd

mindjet
mindmanager
collaborative!
(everybody gets a [mindjet]!)

elizabeth-- ask the berkman ctr to make a wiki

dharmishta-- talk to C4FCM and Henry Jenkins

invitations--who will do this and when?

isites or not survey monkey

make a doodle calendar
or when is good.com

no later than tuesday the 18
or 19 or 20th of November

everyone: make a good title for the class

teh collaboration! icanhascollaboratez?

deadline for doing things: the end of this week meaning fri nov. 7

5:15 on Monday November 10

<hr>
Dan's notes:
<pre>Grab the best books
Cass' paper
Wikipedia from JZ's book
Malcolm's conference paper?
Davos "Wellcome" Melanie Rogers and Gregory Bernarde
MIT Ctr for Civic Media Henry Jenkins
Design Research Lab mostly targeted on collab fabrication
Change Congress

People to look up for assg'd reading
Henry Farrell "good new paper" on blogs
Diana Mutz work on activism
Mark Sageman has he done something on internet terrorism since 2004?

Some sense of the subject-matter, even more so a sense of the process
Scheduling some fall meetings to charter subgroups, each of which is responsible for a week of the class itself (in the spring)

The idea everybody will design a delib. procedure for a group as small as the class, as big as unbounded

Practices in class
Technologies the same as a practice, but using tech
Timing what happens between class?
Big Think after the fact, but there might be some things in

Open the wiki page to the class after a first meeting

2-3 sessions during Fall Semester

Meeting 1: Assign some bg readings, talk about what deliberation is
Meeting 2: "Demo Day" e.g. Slashdot, Wikipedia, Question Tool (Berkman), Del.icio.us, Twitter, other conference stuff, BT's "What's Your Plan?" (with Roll Call mag), ORG's Consult, Google SearchWiki, Facebook Causes (FB activism generally), Knol, Ask Metafilter, MindJet

Guests:

Lessig - on Change Congress
Jimbo, Benkler, "Cultures of Cooperation"
Diana Mutz -
Chris Hughes (FB -> Obama) (Maybe Zuckerberg?)
Negroponte OLPC
FOSS random benevolent dictator (Eric Raymond - OSI)? Biela Coleman, Siobahn O'Mahoney, Carl Vogel,
Mobile Technologies Zuckerman? access via phones (development), or carrier problem (Google spectrum)
Citizen Journalism Josh Marshall (TPM), Craig from Craigslist, Dharmishta's college nwsp project, Open Planning Project (Mark Gordon Lang Group)
Collab textbooks with Harvard's open access program - Palfrey, Stor Schieber, Sandeep Chiramandi
Peer to Patent
Systran Google Translation bots (Bangalore cyberlaw class)
Network Neutrality Rep. Ed Markey, Kim Wu
DMCA takedowns McCain's Youtube takedowns must be down for 10 days

Idea: do a collaborative activity for each class, for BT's question of the week

TBL - Web science grants
Mako Hill? TBL himself? Wendy Hall? Danny Witzener from W3C?

</pre>

Calendar Example

2009-01-06T23:52:06Z

BerkmanSysop: calendar plugin example

== Calendar ==

<calendar/>

== Calendar Only ==

<calendar>upcoming=off</calendar>

== Events Only ==

<calendar>calendar=off</calendar>

[[Category:Events]]

[[Category:2009/10/20]]

The event of the century!

MediaWiki:Common.js

2009-01-06T23:49:15Z

BerkmanSysop: added calendar ajax js

/* Any JavaScript here will be loaded for all users on every page load. */

/*** Place in MediaWiki:Common.js ****/
function makeRequest(url) {
var httpRequest;

if (window.XMLHttpRequest) { // Mozilla, Safari, ...
httpRequest = new XMLHttpRequest();
} else if (window.ActiveXObject) { // IE
try {
httpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
} catch (e) {
try {
httpRequest = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
} catch (e) {}
}
}

if (!httpRequest) {
alert("Giving up :( Cannot create an XMLHTTP instance");
return false;
}
httpRequest.onreadystatechange = function() { alertContents(httpRequest); };
httpRequest.open("GET", url, true);
httpRequest.send(null);
}

function alertContents(httpRequest) {

if (httpRequest.readyState == 4) {
if (httpRequest.status == 200) {
document.getElementById("p-calendar").innerHTML = httpRequest.responseText;
} else {
document.getElementById("p-calendar").innerHTML = "There was a problem with the request.";
}
}
}

MediaWiki:Common.css

2009-01-06T23:45:49Z

BerkmanSysop: added calendar styles

/* CSS placed here will be applied to all skins */

/*** Place in MediaWiki:Common.css ***/

.calendar {
border: 1px solid #bbbbbb;
font-size: 9px;
line-height: normal;
background-color: #dddddd;
}

.calendar a {
color: #000000;
}

.calendar td {
text-align: center;
padding: 4px;
margin: 0;
}

.calendarTop td {
background-color: #bbbbbb;
font-weight: bold;
}

.calendarTop a {
color: #000000;
}

.calendarDayNames {
background-color: #dddddd;
}

.calendarupcoming {
border: 1px solid #bbbbbb;
font-size: 10px;
line-height: normal;
margin-top: 6px;
}

.calendarupcomingTop {
padding-top: 2px;
padding-bottom: 2px;
padding-left: 3px;
padding-right: 3px;
background-color: #bbbbbb;
font-weight: bold;
}

.calendarupcomingBottom {
padding: 2px 3px 2px 3px;
background-color: #bbbbbb;
font-weight: bold;
}

.calendarupcomingBottom a {
color: #000000;
}

.calendarupcoming-today {
font-weight: bold;
}

.calendarupcomingRow1 {
padding: 3px;
}

.calendarupcomingRow2 {
padding: 3px;
border-top: 1px dotted #bbbbbb;
}

.calendarupcomingRow1 a {
color: #000000;
}

.calendarupcomingRow1 a:visited {
color: #000000;
}

.calendarupcomingRow2 a {
color: #000000;
}

.calendarupcomingRow2 a:visited {
color: #000000;
}

.cal-weekend {

}

td.cal-today {
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #BBBBBB;
}

td.cal-eventday {
font-weight: bold;
}

td.cal-eventtoday {
background-color: #ff8800;
}

td.cal-eventtoday a {
color:#ffffff;
font-weight: bold;
}

Main Page

2007-09-24T20:51:13Z

BerkmanSysop: New page: <big>'''Welcome to your new Berkman Center wiki!'''</big> Consult the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents User's Guide] for information on using the wiki software. When you are...

<big>'''Welcome to your new Berkman Center wiki!'''</big>

Consult the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents User's Guide] for information on using the wiki software.

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