Technology & the Law

Fairness and discrimination in algorithmic systems is globally recognised as a topic of critical importance. Compared to humans, automated discrimination is unintuitive, subtle,… More

Kendra Albert shares their Cyberlaw Clinic story

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

A critical look at the consequences of framing legal education as it stands now: as law from the top down. More

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

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. More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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

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. More

Theft! A History of Music is a graphic novel laying out a 2000-year long history of musical borrowing from Plato to rap. More

“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… More

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… More

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… More

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

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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. More

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… More

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… More

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. More

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

Those responsible for technical design of the Internet are… More

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… More

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

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… More

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… More

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

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

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

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… More

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… More

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… More

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. More

On April 1st, the Copyright Office closed the initial comment period for a public study undertaken to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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,… More

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… More

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… More

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

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

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… More

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

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… More

“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… More

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)… More

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… More

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… More

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,… More

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,… More

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… More

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,… More

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… More

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

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… More

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… More

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,… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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

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. More

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,… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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. More

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

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… More

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… More

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. More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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. More

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

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… More

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… More

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. More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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,… More

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… More

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… More

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. More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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. More

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

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… More

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… More

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… More

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,… More

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… More

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

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

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

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… More

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. More

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… More

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

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

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

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

In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are… More

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

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… More

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… More

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… More

"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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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… More

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

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… More