Upcoming Events and Digital Media Roundup

The Open Technology Initiative: How Geeks, Wonks, & Field Operatives are Fighting to Transform Inside-the-Beltway Policy-Making

Tuesday, July 26, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St., Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

Since its founding in 2009, the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative (OTI) has been a catalyst for innovative technology and telecom interventions. OTI's formulates policy and regulatory reforms to support open architectures and open source innovations and facilitates the development and implementation of open technologies and communications networks. OTI is committed to maximizing the potentials of open technologies, particularly for poor, rural, and other underserved constituencies. Through its work, OTI promotes affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks. This talk will focus on three projects that have captured substantial attention over the past year: 1. OTI is working in Philadelphia and Detroit to build community wireless networks in areas underserved by broadband providers. 2. OTI coordinates MeasurementLab.net (M-Lab), an open, distributed, global platform for Internet measurement tools. 3. Commotion Mesh Wireless Project (a.k.a., "Internet-in-a-Suitcase") -- as recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have illustrated (and Myanmar demonstrated several years prior), democratic activists around the globe need a secure and reliable platform to ensure their communications cannot be controlled or cut off by authoritarian regimes. Sascha Meinrath is the Director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative and Research Director of the Foundation's Wireless Future Program. Sascha has been described as a "community Internet pioneer" and an "entrepreneurial visionary" and is a well-known expert on community wireless networks (CWNs), municipal broadband, and telecommunications policy. In 2009 he was named one of Ars Technica's Tech Policy "People to Watch". RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Michele Martinez Campbell on the Internet and the Commerce Clause through the Prism of the Federal Kidnapping Act

Should kidnapping be a federal crime if use of the Internet or other telecommunications facilities is central to the crime's execution? Even if the physical act itself takes place within the borders of a single state? Michele Martinez Campbell — Assistant Professor of Law at Vermont Law School (and accomplished crime novelist — presents case studies that illuminate a uniquely 21st century legal question about federalism, technology and criminal law. download the video/audio>