Technology & the Law

Guide provides pragmatic guidance for navigating today’s uncertain legal landscape

Mason Kortz discusses an amicus brief filed on behalf of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic

Network of Centers discussion focuses on uses of data to combat COVID-19

Founded in 1999, the first-of-its-kind clinical program based at the Berkman Klein Center celebrates two decades of perpetual adaptation

Kendra Albert shares their Cyberlaw Clinic story

VIDEO & PODCAST: Examining the direct and indirect legacy of Napster over the past two decades

Read more about the Re-Framing the Frame Workshop here.  This talk takes a critical look at…

A new guide for preservationists who want to take advantage of the legal exemption to archive software

40 million pages of U.S. court decisions made available free and in-full online for the first time

A proposal for a statutory safe harbor from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and DMCA for security research activities.

Copyright in AI-generated works, the need for a shared understanding of what is and isn’t up for grabs in a license, and how forward-thinking contracts can prevent AI developers…

Join founding members of the CryptoKitties team, Dieter Shirley and Alex Shih, as they discuss the unique governance, legal, and regulatory challenges of putting cats on the…

Artificial intelligence is already starting to change our lives. Over the coming decades, these new technologies will shape many of our daily interactions and drive dramatic…

When do Harvard law students perceive digital file sharing (and piracy) as fine?

Join us as we celebrate 20 years of the Laws of Cyberspace and the ways in which it laid the groundwork for our Center's field of study.

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“Cheap speech” has massively increased ordinary people’s access to mass communications -- both for good and for ill. How has the system of remedies for defamatory, privacy…

Please join the Harvard Italian Law Association and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society for a discussion on several legal and regulatory issues concerning digital…

Jennifer E. Rothman discusses her book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World (Harvard University Press 2018). She challenges the conventional story of the…

This timely, groundbreaking volume explores how law promotes or discourages the use of big data in the health care sphere.

The following open letter — signed by Harvard and MIT-based faculty, staff, and researchers — is directed to the Massachusetts Legislature to inform its consideration of risk…

Health spending continues to outpace wages and GDP, while some new insurance designs transfer greater shares of that to patients’ own out of pocket costs. What is driving health…

Can non-human animals own copyrights? Can artificial intelligence machines? Join the Berkman Klein Center, the Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Program, and the HLS Student…

Who owns your ideas? How are cultural icons created and who gets to control their image and message? Orly Lobel’s new book You Don’t Own Me is about how intellectual property both…

Our examination of advertised prices shows that community-owned fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks in the United States generally charge less for entry-level broadband service than…

The paper reviews current societal, moral, and legal norms around explanations, and then focuses on the different contexts under which an explanation is currently required under…

CopyrightX is a networked course that explores the current law of copyright; the impact of that law on art, entertainment, and industry; and the ongoing debates concerning how the…

This open letter — signed by Harvard and MIT-based faculty, staff, and researchers— is directed to the Massachusetts Legislature to inform its consideration of risk assessment…

In March of 2016, a diverse group of stakeholders gathered to discuss the use of zero rating as a means to improve Internet adoption in the developing world and how and when it…

The municipally owned fiber-optic network of Ammon, Idaho provides one model for U.S. public entities and policymakers seeking to increase service competition and innovation.

With the Berkman Klein Center and  MIT Media Lab as academic anchor institutions, the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund announced today funding for nine…

We as a society are only beginning to understand the ethical, legal, and regulatory challenges associated with AI, as well as develop appropriate governance models and responses.

This report codifies responsible privacy-protective open data approaches and processes that could be adopted by cities and other government organizations.

Those responsible for technical design of the Internet are…

The future of transportation may include Google's autonomous vehicles, Uber's flying cars, and Amazon's delivery drones--all bound together by a high-speed hyperloop backbone. You…

Can we observe the emergence of a new fundamental right that is protecting the Internet? Can such a constitutionalisation process originate from civil society?

In this case study, the authors describe the municipal smart grid and fiber-to-the-home Internet access project in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, and quantify early paybacks…

After building a fiber optic network throughout its service territory, the city-owned electric utility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2010 became the first U.S. company to offer…

Free Independent Health Records are an important use-case for self-sovereign technology that links individual people with licensed practitioners and connected services. Blockchain…

Several foundations and funders today announced the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, which will support interdisciplinary research to ensure that AI develops…

This paper investigates the role public attention plays in determining the effect that campaign contributions funded by interests groups have on legislators’ policy positions.

CopyrightX is a networked course that explores the current law of copyright; the impact of that law on art, entertainment, and industry; and the ongoing debates concerning how the…

There are a growing number of examples that point toward a change in the way public policy is made in the digital age. This new context, which we refer to as networked…

This white paper explores NYPD's adoption of Twitter and an ideation platform called IdeaScale that was aimed at allowing community members to nominate "quality of life" issues…

A new case study from the Berkman Center's Municipal Fiber Initiative profiles a group of Western Massachusetts towns who have created a new model for last-mile connectivity.

This new toolkit provides school system leaders the guidance to understand and leverage the federal E-rate program, which provides up to $3.9 billion annually to subsidize the…

Harvard Law School 1Ls and 2Ls should now be aware that clinical registration for the 2016-17 academic year takes place this week, starting at 9:00 am on Wednesday, March 30 and…

The idea of an “Internet Bill of Rights” is by no means a new one: in fact, serious efforts to draft such a document can be traced at least as far back as the mid-1990s. In this…

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, together with the Global Network of Internet and Society Research Centers (NoC), is pleased to announce the release of a new publication…

Holyoke Gas & Electric’s telecom division provides high-speed Internet access to local businesses and public agencies, bringing in revenue and profits while aiding in local…

The Berkman Center is pleased to announce the publication of a new paper, "Interoperability in the Digital Ecosystem." The paper builds upon our previous interoperability work,…

Update, April 14, 2015: this course has been indefinitely postponed. This intensive three-day executive education course is designed for lawyers who would like to deepen their…

This project examines the rapidly changing landscape of online intermediary liability at the intersection of law, technology, norms, and markets, and is aimed at informing and…

The project explores existing multistakeholder governance groups with the goal of informing the future evolution of the Internet governance ecosystem. The research effort…

Join Assistant Attorney General for National Security HLS alumnus and Heyman Fellow John Carlin, together with moderator Jonathan Zittrain, for a conversation about significant…

This study, the first of its kind to perform a quantitative examination of media credentialing in the United States, surveys the experience of journalists throughout the country…

Ethereum: smart contracts, distributed autonomous organizations, and the law. Can the dreams of an autonomous decentralized society be implemented through the tyranny of code?

In this paper, Urs Gasser and David O'Brien synthesize findings from a multi-year cloud computing research initiative led by the Berkman Center in close collaboration with the…

“Cloud Innovation and the Law: Issues, Approaches, and Interplay,” authored by Berkman Center Executive Director and Harvard Law School Professor of Practice Urs Gasser, draws…

Following the four primary applications of interoperability theory laid out by Palfrey and Gasser, this paper is organized into five Parts: (1) Part One introduces the topic; (2)…

The Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, engages Harvard Law School students in a wide range of real-world client counseling, licensing and…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

The event will explore the quickly expanding world of citizen journalism: how technology is fueling its growth; how that growth is changing the way we see our world, enact change,…

This course explores a variety of legal issues relating to the creation, exploitation, and protection of music and other content. The seminar focuses on traditional legal regimes…

The Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, engages Harvard Law School students in a wide range of real-world licensing, client counseling, advocacy,…

The Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, engages Harvard Law School students in a wide range of real-world licensing, client counseling, advocacy,…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

The paper reviews evidence from eight wireless markets: mobile broadband; wireless healthcare; smart grid communications; inventory management; access control; mobile payments;…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser - Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

The Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, engages Harvard Law School students in a wide range of real-world licensing, client counseling, advocacy,…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

In Interop, technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser explore the immense importance of interoperability—the standardization and integration of technology—and show how this…

Urs Gasser and John Palfrey have continued to contribute to the World Trade Institute’s NCCR Trade Policy project with a particular focus on the interoperability as an enabler of…

Urs Gasser and John Palfrey have continued to contribute to the World Trade Institute’s NCCR Trade Policy project with a particular focus on the interoperability as an enabler of…

Urs Gasser and John Palfrey have continued to contribute to the World Trade Institute’s NCCR Trade Policy project with a particular focus on the interoperability as an enabler of…

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser discussed their new book on Interoperability book and its themes.

In this talk, Dries shares his experiences on how he grew the Drupal community from just one person to over 800,000 members over the past 10 years.

Rethink Music is a hands-on conference designed to bring music stakeholders together to discuss business models for the future, examine copyright challenges in the digital era,…

In this talk, Dennis will discuss our intuitions about knowledge domains and the methods by which such intuitions could be modeled empirically. Along the way, we will have the…

Until and unless there is action in Congress to facilitate tax exemptions for journalism non-profits, news organizations seeking 501(c)(3) status must learn how to structure their…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

This case study is part of an ongoing series developed in support of a larger text on interoperability by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly…

Building upon a process- and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and…

In this talk, Jerome Hergueux will engage the audience in a discussion about the specificities, limitations and promises of web-based behavioral experiments for advancing social…

In this talk Andres Monroy-Hernandez presents a framework for the design and study of an online community of amateur creators. This event will be webcast live at 12:30PM ET.

In the context of multiple crises – ecological, political, financial and geopolitical restructuring – large mobilizations are taking place in several countries. In the Spanish…

Co-produced by the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Kennesaw State's Center for Sustainable Journalism, Media Law in the Digital…

In his new book, Yochai Benkler uses evidence from neuroscience, economics, sociology, biology, and real-world examples to break down the myth of self-interest and replace it with…

Benjamin Mako Hill will present some preliminary findings from a qualitative, inductive, case-study based analysis of 8 early projects to create online collaborative encyclopedias.

The Online News Association, Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy present Law School for Digital Journalists, part of the…

Yochai Benkler draws on cutting-edge findings from neuroscience, economics, sociology, evolutionary biology, political science, and a wealth of real world examples to reveal how…

On May 16-17, 2011, the Berkman Center together with Open Knowledge Commons and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam convened a group of technical and…

For the Berklee College of Music's Rethink Music conference, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University hosted a Call for Papers seeking policy proposals that…

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to present this briefing book to participants in the Rethink Music conference. The book includes the Center’s own framing…

This paper presents the results of an experiment comparing the effects of social, financial, and hybrid incentive schemes on worker performance in an online labor market (Amazon's…

The Berkman Center's Cyberlaw Clinic and Harvard Law School's Journal of Law and Technology present a conversation about 2008's landmark "Cablevision" case, in which the Second…

In August 2010, selected faculty and researchers at the Berkman Center initiated an independent, exploratory study analyzing ICANN’s decision-making processes and communications…

In this talk Dave Rand will describe how to go about designing and running experiments using Mechanical Turk, some successful experiments that have been run (mostly involving…

We're pleased to announce that the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard's Berkman Center and the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University are co-hosting a…

Traditional law school casebooks are expensive, bulky and stagnant. With the support of the HLS Library, Berkman has been updating our suite of classroom tools, H2O. In this…

This white paper attempts to answer the question of whether news aggregators violate current law by examining the hot news misappropriation and copyright infringement claims that…

The Cyberlaw Clinic undertook this study to help the Massachusetts Trial Court work toward a comprehensive, holistic strategic plan for maximizing technology’s role in the Access…

This document addresses legal and practical issues related to the practice colloquially known as sexting. It was created by Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, based at the…

This paper's main objectives are: to raise awareness about issues related to digital safety for youth in developing nations; to provide a tentative map of these issues and give…

Carolina Rossini, Berkman Fellow, will report initial findings and conclusions from the Industrial Cooperation Project...

Statement by danah boyd, Urs Gasser, and John Palfrey, urging consideration of the gap between the intentions of COPPA and how children and their parents perceive its…

This paper compares the practices of discursive production and participation among top U.S. political blogs on the left, right, and center during the summer of 2008 and finds…

The scope of this literature review is to map out what is currently understood about the intersections of youth, reputation, and privacy online, focusing on youth attitudes and…

The Berkman Center's Citizen Media Law Project and Cyberlaw Clinic are pleased to announce a one-day symposium and CLE program to celebrate the launch of the Online Media Legal…

In this talk, Jeff will consider some of the myths commonly held about deception, and use the intersection of technology and deception to surface and rethink our assumptions about…

Matt Dunne, former State Senator, Head of Community Affairs for Google and current candidate for Vermont Governor will share his vision for Vermont becoming the first truly 21st…

Rebecca Bliege Bird will discuss the question "Why do Martu women hunt cooperatively when they don't seem to benefit economically from doing so?" and suggests that demonstrating a…

The response synthesizes current research and data on the media practices of youth, focusing on three main areas -- 1) Risky Behaviors and Online Safety, 2) Privacy, Publicity and…

Research shows that peoples’ facial appearance influences impressions of their honesty and judgments of their culpability, effects that have been shown to bias decisions in the…

The FCC announced that the Berkman Center would conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world…

Researchers from diverse disciplines have suggested that rituals and other religious behaviors serve as signals of an individual's commitment to a religious group, and some have…

In this talk, Jeremy will describe a series of projects that explore the manners in which avatars (representations of people in virtual environments) qualitatively change the…

Different brain systems are used when one produces lies in different ways, such as by fabricating lies spontaneously "on the fly" versus fabricating them on the basis of a…

Property rights provide incentives to create information but they also provide incentives to hoard it prior to the award of protection. Marshall Van Alstyne will propose a…

Sam Bowles will discuss how an evolutionary model and computer simulations will show how systems of property rights might respond to the challenges of the weightless economy.

Petabytes of data about human movements, transactions, and communication patterns are continuously being generated by everyday technologies such as mobile phones and credit cards…

The Berkman Center Law Lab is a project devoted to investigating and harness the varied forces — evolutionary, social, psychological, neurological and economic — that shape the…

This project undertook to examine the copyright licensing policies and practices of a group of twelve private foundations. In particular, it looked at the extent to which…

Aaron Shaw will discuss who's using Amazon's Mechanical Turk, its implications for social scientists, the future of labor markets, and life on the Internet as we know it.

In his lunchtime talk, Lewis Hyde will trace the roots of the second enclosure (it goes back at least to the invention of printing); he will describe traditional forms of…

Aaron Shaw - Polanyi's Penguin? Commons-Based Industry in the Neoliberal Knowledge Economy; Colleen Kaman - The World in the Network; Rasmus Kleis Nielsen - Mundane Tools and…

David Bollier will discuss the rise of the commons paradigm in the digital environment, the subject of his new book, "Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of…

Professor Richard Susskind predicts that the legal profession will be driven by two forces in the coming decade: by a market pull towards the commoditization of legal services,…

Gillian K Hadfield on how and why our legal infrastructure is outdated and ill-suited to the new economy, looking mostly to the non-market or protected-market mechanisms on which…

People often favor members of their own group, while discriminating against members of other groups. Such in-group favoritism has been shown to play an important role in human…

Ashifi Gogo will discuss the growing demand for information services on GSM and the innovative services being developed around mobile phones in the developing world.

John Palfrey, danah boyd, Dena Sacco, Laura DeBonis, directors of the recently concluded Internet Safety Technical Task Force, discuss the findings and recommendations from the…

This course addresses the complex legal, technological, and social questions created by the rapidly increasing distribution of both child and adult pornography on the Internet…

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the "Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety" announced in January…

This course is intended for students who are already familiar with the main contours of intellectual property law and would like to explore the subject further.

Creative Commons and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society present "The Commons: Celebrating accomplishments, discerning futures" tonight.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger is a Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT, where he is involved in multi-disciplinary research and teaching activities focused on how…

Join Jeffrey Cunard, one of the lead counsel for McGraw Hill and other publishers in their landmark copyright lawsuit against Google for its Google Library book search project, as…

Now is a critical moment for defining and reinforcing the best features of our communications platforms. What do we value about the internet and what should be the focus of the…

We all want to make the world a better place, but we're discouraged from giving money and volunteer time to charities due to several layers of obstacles: transparency, efficacy,…

Christian Hicks, founder of Elysium Digital, discussed the case StorageTek v. CHE. This talk was co-sponsored by the Berkman Cyberlaw Clinic, the Harvard Computer Society, and the…

The Berkman Center hosted a day and a half-long public meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force.

Using a variety of cyberlaw-related case studies drawn from recent, actual controversies, along with targeted readings, court filings, real-life testimony, deposition videotapes…

This year's Cyberone will begin with empathic argument and programming from scratch, then segue immediately to projects.

David Ardia, Sam Bayard, and Tuna Chatterjee of CMLP discussed trends in online publishing and previewed the CMLP database of subpeonas, cease-and-desist letters, and other…

Lewis Hyde, Berkman Fellow, spoke on "The Pros and Cons of an 'Educational Fair Use' Project" and how fiar use can be reclaimed as an expressive right.

This joint report followed the Roadmap to Open ICT Ecosystems released in 2005, as it navigates the nuanced territory of consumer, corporate, and governmental interests in the…

Using a variety of cyberlaw-related case studies drawn from recent, actual controversies, along with targeted readings, court filings, real-life testimony, deposition videotapes…

Wendy Seltzer, founder of Chilling Effects, discussed "Sacked by Copyright: DMCA Takedowns and Free Expression."

General Counsel of Microsoft, Brad Smith, discussed ", Interoperability, and IP"

This paper maps out multiple dimensions of interoperability in the emerging digital identity management infrastructure, with a view to promoting openness in this infrastructure…

Book Description, from Amazon: With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an…

Berkman Luncheon Series: 7/12/05 - Berkman H2O team on H2O Playlists Public Beta Release

When the National Archives needed new vaults to protect the country’s most precious documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights – it…

The eye-catching conference title, Preventing the Internet Meltdown, brought a number of experts and Internet pioneers to Los Angeles recently to discuss the future of the…

The Berkman Briefing, Inside the Courtroom, gives a firsthand look at Wednesday's hearing in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts for one of the nearly 3000 lawsuits that the…

"Social Networks" was the hot topic at this year's Texas-based Internet conference, SXSW Interactive. The conference brought together leaders and innovators in the field on online…

In a low-lit auditorium at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig leaned against the podium and clicked a remote…

If Eben Moglen's recent address at Harvard could be condensed to bumper-sticker format, it might read: Free Software, It isn't just source code—It’s a way of life. Moglen is a…

I went to see Darl McBride’s presentation, “Defending Intellectual Property in the Digital Age,” because I wanted to learn more about his company, SCO, and its challenge to open…

In terms of size alone, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a stunning achievement: 11,000 official participants representing 176 nations convened in Geneva for…

Berkman Luncheon Series: 12/4/03 - Colin Maclay on ICT and Education in Panama

Professors Lessig and Zittrain will teach a research seminar on the Microsoft case. The seminar will meet at least once a week, beginning the week of 9/21. It will review the…