Amar’s Blog

Tuesday, September 8, 7:00 pm
Pound Hall Room 102, Harvard Law School
Followed by a reception at the Berkman Center’s offices, 23 Everett Street, Second Floor
Free and Open to the Public
Tell us if you’re coming or see who is planning to attend on Facebook (Optional)

Come to our Open House to meet Berkman faculty, fellows, and staff and
to learn about the many ways you can get involved and learn with our
dynamic, exciting environment.

As a University-wide research center at Harvard University, our
interdisciplinary efforts in the exploration of cyberspace address a
diverse range of backgrounds and experiences. If you’re interested in
the Internet’s impact on society and are looking to engage a community
of world-class fellows and faculty through events, conversations, case
studies, and more please join us to hear more about our upcoming
academic year!

Paid research assistant positions will also be available in the fall. In
addition to Berkman courses and events, these positions provide a
wonderful way to join our community. People from all disciplines and universities are
encouraged to attend the Open House to learn about Berkman
opportunities. As a primer, visit
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/getinvolved/internships to see currently
available positions.

The Renegades at the New York ‘Times’ – The All New Issue — New York Magazine

“I just hope there’s a business model when we get there.”

Covered in the Boston Globe:

Is Charlie Nesson insane? I don’t think so. But he is definitely nonstandard material. One of the brilliant legal minds of his generation, Nesson merited an entire chapter in Jonathan Harr’s memorable book “A Civil Action.” That’s where Nesson earned the monicker “Billion Dollar,” by advising stripling lawyers Jan Schlichtmann and Rikki Kliman to go for the big bucks in their famous suit against W.R. Grace & Co. in Woburn.

Awesome piece in the NYTimes Magazine about Lewis Hyde:

In the course of writing “The Gift,” Hyde underwent an intellectual transformation on this subject. He began the work believing there was “an irreconcilable conflict” between gift exchange and the market; the enduring (if not necessarily the happy) artist was the one who most successfully fended off commercial demands. By the time he was finished, Hyde had come to a less-dogmatic conclusion. It was still true, he believed, that the marketplace could destroy an artist’s gift, but it was equally true that the marketplace wasn’t going anywhere; it had always existed, and it always would. The key was to find a good way to reconcile the two economies.

And, bonus, the event I helped organized is mentioned!

For all his activism, however, Hyde maintains that little of true political worth will be accomplished until the very terms of the “intellectual property” debate are changed. This was brought home to me one rainy evening last April, when Hyde and I met at a Harvard auditorium to attend a lecture on corruption in Congress by Lawrence Lessig. For a decade, Lessig has been the most-visible exponent of the position that institutions like Berkman were founded to promote: that the Internet should serve as a virtual communal space. In 2002, Lessig helped found Creative Commons, an organization that carves a middle path between the near-absolute stringency of intellectual-property law and absolute generosity by allowing creators to specify the level of control they want to maintain over their work.

Reports Study Actual, Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility Scores · Environmental Leader · Green Business, Sustainable Business, and Green Strategy News for Corporate Sustainability Executives

The U.S. findings show that corporate governance-ethics and transparency-are increasing in their importance to overall corporate reputation

Google.org

At Google.org, we believe maps are a powerful tool for non-profits of all kinds to communicate issues, understand needs, and create more effective implementation plans. Many of you have come to us with compelling ways that maps can help you and your organization increase impact, and we want to help you make your mapping ideas a reality. We’re offering a pilot program of Geo Challenge Grants to organizations working in areas related to our core initiatives.

Who else reads your e-mail? | csmonitor.com

What about purely domestic e-mail surveillance without a warrant? The Terrorist Surveillance Program processes domestic e-mail in cooperation with Internet service providers; the Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken the government to court. But eavesdropping occurs even for nonterror-related crimes.

Google: Monopoly or Marketplace.

Funny enough, Joe Nocera is speaking on a panel right now about the Microsoft antitrust trial and the media.

Beginning bits from David Boies:

Every trial is a search for truth and morality play.

When you have an antitrust trial, they’re interesting to mesh. The search for truth in an anti-trust case is ambiguous, complex, data driver. Morality play has to go on at a very high level. If you were designing a system, you probably would not design something intended on morality play. The way we do it is peculiar. What we’re stuck with is a method of dealing with these kinds of cases, in a forum that inevitably draws you to the dramatically – to making morality play. And teach the judge from your persepective.

David says that luckily in antitrust case you’re in front of a dudge and not a jury. If you give the judge all the tools of decision make (briefs, oral arguments). So most antitrust cases are private, tried in juries. So it becomes even more emphasis on the morality play and less on the data/science.

In government antitrust cases, at least you have a judge. Federal judges are designed to be general purpose jurists. Whenever we have tried to get judges that are particularly expert, what you find are troubling developments. You find the judge is losing the broader perspective.

In an antitrust case, you try to simplify the issues. When you have something particularly diffiucult and complex. The trial comes down to the issue of credibility. Because, if, someone is talking about how to make a sandwich, and the judge can bring to that decision a certain amount of knowledge, he doens’ have to exclusively rely on (?). For trials, each side tend to find people that agree with them. And because each side has this ability, and pick witnesses that agree with them, you almost always get two sets of witnesses, who say to the judge flatly inconsisten things. The judge chooses like most human beings — who do they believe. Part of that believe comes from admissions you get on cross examination, but a lot if it comes from who’s being candid and direct. When you have a witness that a judge concludes has a problem — and the more complicated the subject matter, the more credibility matters.

…

(Photo: Doc Searls)

Brad Smith is keynoting the United States v. Microsoft: 10 Years Later conference at Harvard Law School. Bits and pieces from his talk:

What were the mistakes we made? What did we learn? How did we change?

The real question for Microsoft is how did we change, and why did we change, as a result of this experience. And how did the industry change? It was clear that MS needed change. The changes they made fall into three principles categories, of which brad focuses on: Getting out and working it out. Getting out by listening better what people had to say, and build a more relationship based approach to dealing with a number of these issues. An imporant day for MS was the day Judge Nutelli’s decision was issued.

Between MS and Sun: ‘Sometimes it’s your differences that divide you, sometimes it’s your similarities that separate you’. Both companies were heavily driven by engineering cultures. Part of the problem between MS and Sun were these similarities — neither spent enough time talking with each other. By April 2004, they resolved those issues, and the same with Real Networks.

But it hasn’t always worked. They spent months trying to reach an agreement with the European Commission. Instead, they headed to court in Europe.

(3) We need to put together some principles that will tell people that this is what MS can be expected to do. “The Windows Principles” published in July 2006. They essentially said (1) even if the judgement expires, they would still operate in accordance w/ those principles. And (2) we’ll a0pply them to some other important areas as well. The principles have played an important role inside the company to help decision making.

The industry itself is changing. What are those significant changes in the past 10 years that have dramatically affected the industry? The internet and technology — which Brad refers to Bill Gates’ words — “The Internet Tidal Wave”. Internet distribution has profoundly changed the equation. Also, more and more developers are writing their applications for the

The ubiquity of the web has transformed computing.

A second change unfolding over the past 10 years are the changes in the nature of the PC market. In 1998, there were hundreds of companies selling significant numbers of PC in the US. Now, the PC market has consilidated. Two companies account for half the PCs being sold in the US. Ten years ago, people were concerned that the suppliers of critical components for PCs had a superior negotiating position when they sat down with a PC manufacturer.

A third change that Brad points to is the remedy in this case. The remedy has had an impact. Brad refers to JZ’s slide about ensuring that MS wouldn’t control all the aspects of (?). The remedy was designed not to only address issues related to the browser – but also messaging software, media, email.

Brad notes that it’s interesting there’s a market entrant a decade later — Google. The one interesting thing about the remedy, the implementation hasn’t been confined to those 5 specific areas. Including desktop search. Brad thinks that some of that reflects on how the trial itself was part of the remedy. For MS, and for every company in the country watching what MS went through, was an intense experience and a sobering reminder of solving small problems before they get bigger.

“We all live in a world today with far greater transparency than 15 years ago. We live in the world where a higher amount of conversations, actions are recorded today (IM, search history in Google). The world is starving to see more of that transparency in the trial.”

Another aspect of the trial that fascinated Brad was the role of the media. The pace of media coverage was accelerating, the media was fragmented. We’ll all remember the immediate news coverage, in part because of cable news channels, and internet news services wanted to push out news immediately. If you want to make your case in a court of law, you have to make it in the court of public opinion as well. In addition to living a public life, you have to get out and enage, and share your information.