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Internet, Law, & Politics Spring Semester 2007, Prof. John Palfrey

Official Syllabus

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Debate 1: "Resolved: The Internet enables citizens to have a greater voice in politics and is, on balance, already a tremendous force for strengthening participatory democracies around the world."

Debate 2: "Resolved: E-Government is a lot like Al Gore’s ‘reinventing government’ initiative when he was Vice-President: sounds like something that governments should obviously do, but no one much cares and the impact on society, after lots of effort, is negligible. There’s no special magic to governing in a digital age."

Debate 3: "Resolved: United States technology companies should stay out of regimes that force them to sacrifice the civil liberties of citizens as the cost of doing business in those states."

Debate 4: "Resolved: The outcome of the digital intellectual property crisis is crucial to whether or not the use of the Internet ultimately has a positive impact in terms of strengthening democracies."

Class Notes

Politics and Network Effects (Feb. 13, 2007)

Internet, Law, & Politics in the News

  • Embattled Edwards Blogger Quits Campaign, Computerworld, Feb. 13, 2007.
  • On free copies, Benkler, and open books: "Yochai Benkler is a prominent academic. His widely praised book about the network economy, The Wealth of Networks, was published by Yale Press – a publisher not known for its radicalism. Yet with his publisher’s approval Benkler’s book is available for free online under a Creative Commons license. Instead of paying $40 one can simply download the book. Its sales are reportedly in the top rank of academic books. Benkler is delighted with the additional 20,000 readers who have downloaded it."
  • In case there's anybody that has not seen it, this is a cool video that explains the power of Web 2.0.
  • Blogger as Lobbyist? "if you're not for net neutrality, then the blogs will kick your" rear. The grass-roots groups that strongly favor it are relatively small but very noisy, she said, "and you just don't want to have to deal with that."

Other Interesting Topics

  • I just found out that there will be a discussion on "Can the internet save democracy?" at Berkman Center on Feb 14, 2007, at 6 PM which subject might be in line with our course. More information can be found on http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/