John Palfrey

We’ve got representatives from Cisco (UK) and Freeserve here at the Oxford Internet Institute’s summer programme today to talk about how collaboration can and should work between industry and academics.  It’s a topic that we’ve thought a lot about at the Berkman Center, as we see such partnerships as holding out substantial promise.  For instance, we’ve worked closely with researchers at Gartner|G2 this year on digital media matters, with positive results and an exciting plan for moving forward.  But we’re also focused on avoiding the obvious potential problems with such arrangements.

“Links with faculties are among the keys to our success,” says a gentleman from Cisco (UK).  Why do they spend money on research collaboration with universities? “It’s enlightened self-interest.”  He went well out of his way to ensure that we knew that none of the partners permitted any meddling in results by Cisco, and that it was as it should be.  He discussed in some detailed the much-celebrated Cisco Networking Academy program, quoting Prof. Michael Porter of HBS on the primacy of this project.

Freeserve’s executive, Dr Norman Lewis, actually the Director of Technology Research at Wanadoo, said that research with universities is “near and dear to my heart.”  He started with the idea of innovation and the need to fight against technological determinism, a struggle in which university partners can be quite helpful to industry.  They’re involved in supporting the World Internet Project.  He worries about cutbacks by industry in long-term research during leaner times.  Those companies that can leverage 20 or 30 years of long-term research are the pathbreakers, he contends.  He suggests, with real passion, that universities ought to create their own agenda and pursue unique research and new insight – resisting agenda-setting by corporate interests.  “The pursuit of knowledge without fear or favor,” he says, should be the mantra for university researchers.  Sounds just right to me.

Things got more exciting during the question period, though.  Dr Lewis took issue with the direction of the academy generally and with the training that students are getting (”it’s terrible,” he says) before they head out into the workforce.  It’s hard to know precisely what heated things up, but it likely had something to do with his critique of what he described as the unfortunate political imperative of putting too many forms of knowledge on equal footing as one another.  So much comes back to a question of funding, everyone agreed, whether coming from the government or industry, and what requirements come along with the use of those funds.

Steve Ward, who’s published a series of important papers with Rachel Gibson on political participation and the Net, talked today about how he thought ICTs have changed the political process.  He describes a broadening of the field of active participants; an increase in available information about NGOs and candidates and the like (with no comment as to quality); and a “difficult democracy” that ensues.  In response to a good question, he came out in a somewhat different place than Cass Sunstein does in Republic.com.  Ward was very provocative, and seeking, helpfully, to get past the presumption that the Net must be altogether good for democracy.

Kris has just done a quite interesting presentation, here at the OII summer programme, about his research project re: weblogs and public access to information.  His project, at INCITE at the University of Surrey, is sponsored by Sapient Corporation, a Boston-based consultancy, much to their credit.  We’re talking about how to be properly skeptical when talking about the greatly-hyped blogs space.  The question of how to run an academically-responsible research project when sponsored directly by industry is also on the table, which is terribly important by my lights.  He’s got a cool model about how and where people access the Net as well.

The Berkman Center is proud to be participating in the Oxford Internet Institute’s program for graduate students.  Among the attendees: Karen Coppock and Urs Gasser, affiliates of the Berkman Center.  Also in the group: a blogger, Kaye Trammell, who just posted about BloggerCon.

I enjoyed, from abroad, reading my newsclips from the last few days.  There were three good ones: a clever NYT piece about the backtalk from audiences at conferences and in classrooms, which raises the tricky questions here; a nice commentary in CNET about the RSS 2.0 release via (cc) license and other matters along similar lines; and even positive words from the vigilant Harvard Crimson about the university’s emerging place in the blogs world.

Via my terrific brother, Quentin Palfrey, who knows a thing or two about discourse in politics: Joanna Weiss of the Boston Globe has a piece
on blogs and politics this morning.  She notes: “…[A]s the
presidential campaign gains speed, many politically oriented blogs are
thick with news from the trail — and some people have set up
unofficial blogs to support particular candidates. Nearly all of them
operate outside the official campaign structure, the work of ordinary
voters who hawk their candidates with sarcasm and passion. And most are
free from the talking-point tendencies of contemporary political
rhetoric, railing gleefully on enemies in every direction.”  It
reminds me of an idea that Dave Winer, Mike Clough and others
have been kicking around to encourage citizen blogging in the
lead-up to the New Hampshire primary.  Ms. Weiss introduces some
healthy skepticism into the discussion as well, which is A Good Thing.

Today, as discussed elsewhere by Dave Winer and Dan Gillmor, UserLand Software is transferring all right, title and interest in the RSS 2.0 specification to the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, and we are re-releasing it, verbatim, to the public via Creative Commons‘ Attribution/ShareAlike license.  We believe that this simple, elegant step is an important one toward eliminating some of the fractiousness that has befallen the debate over the future of the RSS format.

Why is the Berkman Center involved in this matter?  After lots of careful consideration, we decided that by serving as a holder, in essence as a trustee, of the specification — no claim is made to the format itself, of course — and releasing the document via a public-spirited license, we could help at the margins in the development of important technologies.  We saw also a chance to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Creative Commons license system, something that we believe is critical to the future of the Net.

What is the Berkman Center not doing?  Lots, of course.  We expect to stay involved in debates that we consider important to the development of the Net, pursuant to our mission, but we’re not trying to become a standards-making body.  Nothing of the sort.  We know that there are many people who know much more about this matter — Dave Winer, to be sure, one of our own, among them — and that the development of formats for syndication should be left to the community at large.

Ever wanted to know how to start your own blog radio operation?  Check out what Bob Doyle, with inspiration from Dave and others, has set up for Chris Lydon.

The SCO deal with Microsoft is detailed in its most recent 10-Q. 
Looks as though MSFT plus one other will spend $8.25 MM plus another up
to $5 MM on SCO products, plus has the option to exercise warrants
valued at $500,000 (according to a Black-Scholes calculation by
SCO).  The MSFT deal seems to have put SCO in the black for the
quarter.

“Although we have always had a vibrant patent system, we’ve managed to strike a balance between the need to encourage innovation and the need to foster competition.  As Benjamin Day [founder of the New York Sun], Henry Ford, and Sam Walton might attest, American corporations have thrived on innovative ideas and new business methods, without owning them, for two centuries.  In the past decade, the balance has been upset.  The scope of patents has been expanded, copyrights have been extended, trademarks have been subjected to bizarre interpretations.”  So says James Surowiecki in The New Yorker’s July 14 - 21, 2003 edition.

It’s a spin on the meme that cyberlaw profs all hate copyright (which, of course, is an overstatement).  Most cyberlaw profs think business methods patents have gone too far, just as Mr. Surowiecki appears to, in his New Yorker piece.  In fact, he quotes Prof. James Boyle, one of the best in the business, as saying, “‘Under this logic, one could get a patent on the idea of fast food — not a different way to broil the burger but the idea of fast food itself.’”  True enough.  The real frontier, though, is not in the fast food business, but on the Internet.

Many people who study cyberlaw for a living often see two things happening at once: 1) the extension of monopolies on forms of expression, and indeed monopoly over use of ideas while 2) the Net promises increasingly good opportunities for making great things happen by sharing and building upon the expressions — and ideas — of others.  Consider that promise not just in the developed world, in which the Net has already proliferated, but also the developing world, which is, by and large, yet unnetworked but working hard on it.  I don’t think that most cyberlaw scholars would abandon protections for copyrighted materials or patentable inventions (or trademarks, though that’s a different kettle of fish), but rather seek restoration of a better balance than we have today – and greater chance that more of the promise of the Net can be realized.