Posted on February 15th, 2008 by William McGeveran
Ars Technica has reported that a chain reaction resulting from the death of Congressman Tom Lantos may mark a significant improvement in the line-up of chairmanships influential on Info/Law issues. (It may seem a bit ghoulish to speculate on the spoils right after the death of a great legislator like Lantos, a towering figure [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Education & Copyright, Internet & Society, Network Neutrality, Open Access, Open Standards, Patents, RIAA, Trademarks, Voting
Posted on September 24th, 2007 by Derek Bambauer
On Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 12:15PM in Room 2249 at Wayne State University Law School, Prof. Jon Weinberg will debate Diane Katz, Director of Science, Environment, and Technology at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy on net neutrality. The Wayne State Federalist Society is kindly sponsoring the debate, which includes free food! I’m moderating, so [...]
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Filed under: ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Law School, Network Neutrality
Posted on February 12th, 2007 by William McGeveran
Activists and policy wonks who work with environmental issues take it for granted that private corporate activities and markets lie at the center of both the problems and the potential solutions (like this and this) to issues such as water pollution, global warming, and habitat destruction. Organizations like Ceres work with businesses to help [...]
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Filed under: Anonymity, Berkman, Digital Media, Filtering, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, NSA, Network Neutrality, Privacy, Security, Spam, international
Posted on January 18th, 2007 by William McGeveran
There is a great paper just posted on SSRN (hat tip to Larry Solum, of course) that consists entirely of a bloggy debate between info/law profs Christopher Yoo and Tim Wu about network neutrality. A version of their exchange originally appeared last spring as part of the late, lamented Legal Affairs Debate Club (indeed, [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Digital Media, ISP, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Media, Network Neutrality, Peer Production, Software, Virtual Worlds, VoIP
Posted on November 8th, 2006 by William McGeveran
Now that yesterday’s elections are over, punditry focuses on the impact of the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives and the increasingly likely (at this writing) Democratic majority in the Senate. Not much of it considers the impact on intellectual property and internet policy, though, does it? That’s why you come to [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Digital Media, Education & Copyright, Internet & Society, Network Neutrality, Patents, Voting
Posted on September 20th, 2006 by William McGeveran
Public Knowledge reports that today’s scheduled Judiciary Committee markup of the copyright bill I discussed here was cancelled. That’s the second time the committee has postponed consideration of the legislation, although last week the reason was purportedly lack of time.
Given the incredible list of pressing legislative business that is now stalled (including appropriations bills [...]
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Filed under: Copyright, Digital Media, Network Neutrality, Patents, RIAA, Trademarks
Posted on June 14th, 2006 by Derek Bambauer
One of the Internet’s chief virtues is inefficiency.
“Best effort” packet routing - as Jonathan Zittrain describes it, the “bucket brigade” where each link in the network tries to pass packets to the next hop, but without guarantees - is less efficient than a protocol that seeks to guarantee transmission and thereby minimizes bandwidth used to [...]
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Filed under: ISP, Intermediaries, Network Neutrality, Notes, Spam
Posted on June 1st, 2006 by Derek Bambauer
Network neutrality - “treating all bits alike” - has been top-of-mind for Congress and for many geeks / lawyers / telco companies. I’m hoping some of you who are smarter / better-informed than I can help me answer this question: at a technical level, how does one define or implement network neutrality?
I approach this [...]
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Filed under: Filtering, ISP, Intermediaries, Network Neutrality, Spam, VoIP
Posted on May 28th, 2006 by William McGeveran
My soon-to-be hometown newspaper, the Star Tribune, has run a story on net neutrality that makes the complex subject comprehensible to non-geeks. Not perfect, but a pretty good model for the hardworking activists promoting net neutrality in Congress. The story’s “lede” paints a nice picture:
Imagine if the Internet were like cable TV.
You pay $40 a [...]
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Filed under: Intermediaries, Network Neutrality
Posted on May 25th, 2006 by William McGeveran
The Harvard Law Review just published Jonathan Zittrain’s “The Generative Internet,” 119 Harv. L. Rev. 1974 (2006). Given the standing of Zittrain (or, as everyone at the Berkman Center calls him, “JZ”) in the internet law community and the scope of his article, it immediately becomes a must-read.
There is much more to say about this [...]
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Filed under: Anonymity, Berkman, Intermediaries, Internet & Society, Network Neutrality, Peer Production, Scholarship, Security