Digital Public Library of America Conference; Media Law in the Digital Age; Doing Science in the Open

Digital Public Library of America Plenary Meeting

Friday, October 21, All Day, National Archives, Washington, DC. This event will be webcast live.

The first Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Plenary Meeting, convened by the DPLA Secretariat at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and hosted by The National Archives in Washington, DC, will bring together a wide range of stakeholders in a broad, open forum to present the history of and vision for the DPLA effort, to showcase the best ideas and models submitted to the Beta Sprint (an open call for code and concepts defining how the DPLA should operate), and to create multiple points of entry for public participation in the work of the DPLA. Registration Required. more information on our website>

Media Law in the Digital Age: The Rules Have Changed -- Again

Saturday, October 22, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA.

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 Age is a must-attend event for anyone who publishes online content, works in digital media, or studies the way in which technology has influenced journalism and law. Whether you are blogger, social media strategist, journalist, or media attorney, you know that the law governing digital media is constantly changing. The best way to protect your organization, your clients or yourself is to know what the rules are today. Join experts in the field of law, digital media, journalism and academia as they lead panel sessions in an intensive day-long conference. Registration Required. more information on our website>

Doing Science in the Open

Tuesday, October 25, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

From Michael: I'll start this talk by describing the Polymath Project, an ongoing experiment in "massively collaborative" mathematical problem solving. The idea is to use online tools -- things like blogs and wikis -- to collaboratively attack difficult mathematical problems. By combining the best ideas of many minds from all over the world, the Polymath Project has made breakthroughs on important mathematical problems. What makes this an exciting story is that it's about much more than just solving some mathematical problems. Rather, the story suggests that online tools can be used to transform the way we humans work together to make scientific discoveries. We can use online tools to amplify our collective intelligence, in much the same way as for millenia we've used physical tools to amplify our strength. This has the potential to accelerate scientific discovery across all disciplines. This is an optimistic story, but there's a major catch. Sci entists have for the most part been extremely extremely conservative in how they use the net, often using it for little more than email and passive web browsing. Projects like Polymath are the exception not the rule. I'll discuss why this conservatism is so common, why it's so damaging, and how we can move to a more open scientific culture. Michael Nielsen is an author and an advocate of open science. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Geopolitics of Internet Infrastructure

Tuesday, November 1, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, Cambridge, MA. This event will be webcast live.

The growth of the global Internet is still determined, in large part, by local factors: geography, politics, and the economics of interconnection and competition. We'll examine the paths along which Internet traffic flows, focusing on the emerging markets of the Middle East and Central Asia. We'll discuss ways in which the evolution of these paths dictates the choices available to information consumers, and the costs they must pay to interconnect with global information markets. A lot is at stake, as the countries that emerge as Middle Eastern regional transit hubs will play a significant role in the evolution of the region's post-oil information economy. James Cowie is the Chief Technology Officer at Renesys Corporation. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Intellectual Property Strategy

Monday, November 21, 6:00PM, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School Library and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Entrepreneurs, corporate managers and nonprofit administrators should look at intellectual property as a key strategic asset. Most managers leave intellectual property issues to the legal department, unaware that an organization’s intellectual property can help accomplish a range of management goals, from accessing new markets to improving existing products to generating new revenue streams. In his new book, Intellectual Property Strategy (MIT Press), intellectual property expert, head of the Harvard Law School Library, and Berkman Center faculty co-director John Palfrey offers a short briefing on intellectual property strategy for them. Palfrey argues for strategies that go beyond the traditional highly restrictive “sword and shield” approach, suggesting that flexibility and creativity are essential to a profitable long-term intellectual property strategy--especially in an era of changing attitudes about media. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Radio Berkman 185: The Next Generation Library

What would a digital version of your public library look like? There’s more to it than e-books and digital reading devices. Librarians, scholars, innovators, and techno-wizards are collaborating under the mantle of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to build a next generation public library. Such a thing could incorporate one or more of many different elements: a set of physical buildings; a purely digital archive with an open API layer for coders to play around with; a full fledged digital lending library. And when the DPLA converge on the National Archives in Washington, DC this Friday they’ll get to work out just a few of those ideas. Today, a special report from Benjamin Naddaf-Hafrey who spoke to a few of the minds behind the DPLA audio on our website>

Radio Berkman 184: Intellectual Property — Not Just For Lawyers Anymore

It’s time to stop thinking about intellectual property as something purely for your legal counsel to deal with. That’s the driving idea behind John Palfrey’s aptly titled new book Intellectual Property Strategy. Companies and institutions that have to worry about creative works, trademarks, or brands would be well-suited, Palfrey says, to seize the sword and shield from the attorneys (who tend to be aggressive and/or defensive about IP) and exercise a little more flexibility and creativity with intellectual property on their own. audio on our website>