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

Official Syllabus

News & Updates:

  • The final essay will be due on May 11, 2007 (the last day of exams).

Group Projects

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

Internet, Law, & Politics in the News

  • Hello class. In response to the Zittrain article's discussion about how pornography helped fuel the internet boom, I refer you all to this article from Macworld[1] discussing how pornography played a role in VHS winning out over Beta and how pornography may contribute to Blu-ray winning out over HD-DVD. Notice that the article states that the pornography industry is a $57 billion industry. - Scott Lesowitz
  • 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."
  • Wi-Fi Cloud Covers Rural Oregon "While cities around the country are battling over plans to offer free or cheap internet access, this lonely terrain is served by what is billed as the world's largest hotspot, a wireless cloud that stretches over 700 square miles of landscape so dry and desolate it could have been lifted from a cowboy tune."
  • Free Speech Battle Over Online Parody of “Colbert Report”: MoveOn and Brave New Films reacted by filing suit against Viacom for illegal takedown of YouTube Video. Here is the link to watch "Stop the Falsiness" video
  • 'Web Giants' seek US Government resolution to Debate 3 - includes lots of good links relevant to today's debate.

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/
  • The Internet is a Series of Tubes...awesome video. You can listen to Senator Stevens unaccompanied here.

Related Events

Event Responses

Scott's Response to the Institute of Politics Event: http://perspectives.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=138638&forum_id=4