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Upcoming Events: The Coming Swarm (10/29); Authorship in the Digital World (10/30); MS GC Brad Smith (11/4)

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Upcoming Events / Digital Media
October 29, 2014
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book launch

The Coming Swarm

Wednesday, October 29, 6:00pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 2012. Free and Open to the Public.

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In her new book, The Coming Swarm: DDoS, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet, Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. Together in conversation with journalist and activist Laurie Penny, Molly will discuss the use of disruptive tactics like DDoS, online civil disobedience, and the role of the internet as a zone of political activism and speech. There will be a book signing following the discussion.

Molly Sauter is a research affiliate at the Berkman Center, and a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal. She holds a masters degree in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, where she is an affiliate researcher at the Center for Civic Media at the Media Lab. Laurie Penny was born in London in 1986 and is not dead yet. She is, in no particular order, a writer, a journalist, a public speaker, an activist, a feminist, a reprobate and a geek. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

co-sponsored event

Authorship in the Digital World: How to Make It Thrive

Thursday, October 30, 3:30pm ET, Harvard University, Lamont Library, Forum Room. Co-sponsored by The Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the Authors Alliance

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The internet has had disruptive effects on many aspects of the ecosystem in which authors reach readers. The roles of publishers, retailers, libraries, and universities, and other participants in this ecosystem are evolving rapidly. Amazon.com, in particular, has been the source of considerable controversy in its dealings with authors and publishers.

In order for authors to navigate these turbulent waters, they need to be strategic in their partnerships and careful in contracting. Copyright is supposed to help even authors with no legal expertise, but how good a job does it do? Could some changes in that law help authors reach readers more effectively? Looking beyond the law, what steps can authors take now to realize the full impact of their writings?

With these questions in mind, the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society are co-sponsoring the Authors Alliance in bringing a panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities facing authors in the digital age to the Harvard campus.

The discussion will be preceded by remarks from Katie Hafner, a journalist, the author of six books, and a member of the Authors Alliance and advisory board.

Jonathan Zittrain will moderate a panel that will include: Rachel Cohen, a Cambridge-based author and creative writing professor at Sarah Lawrence College; Robert Darnton, university librarian at Harvard and member of the Authors Alliance advisory board; Ellen Faran, director of MIT Press; Mark Fischer, a copyright lawyer at Duane Morris LLP; Katie Hafner, a journalist, memoirist, and nonfiction writer; Alison Mudditt, director of UC Press; Sophia Roosth, a Harvard historian of science; and Pamela Samuelson, Authors Alliance co-founder and law professor at U.C. Berkeley. Registration Required. more information on our website>

luncheon series

General Counsel of Microsoft, Brad Smith, in conversation with Professor Jonathan Zittrain

Tuesday, November 4, 12:00pm ET, Harvard Law School. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology. This event will be webcast live.

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One of the enduring issues in cyberspace is which laws apply to online activities. We see this most clearly today in the reaction to revelations about government surveillance: on one hand, individuals are increasingly seeking assurances that their content is protected from government overreach, while governments want to ensure they have access to information to enforce their laws, even if that content is stored outside their borders. We see this same tension in debates over privacy protection for data placed on line by consumers. This discussion will explore the role of law in protecting our rights in the physical world online, the complementary roles of law and technology in achieving this protection, and the need for governments to come together so that companies (and customers) don’t face conflicting legal obligations.

Brad Smith is Microsoft's general counsel and senior vice president, Legal and Corporate Affairs. He leads the company's Department of Legal and Corporate Affairs (LCA), which has just over 1,000 employees and is responsible for the company's legal work, its intellectual property portfolio, and its government affairs and philanthropic work. He also serves as Microsoft's corporate secretary and its chief compliance officer.

Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at the Harvard Law School Library, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

co-sponsored event

Creativity without Law Conference

Friday, November 7, Case Western University. Sponsored by the Center for Law, Technology & the Arts, Arthur W. Fiske Distinguished Lecture Series and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

The event will focus on the growing body of scholarship examining the on-the-ground practices of creators and innovators. That scholarship challenges intellectual property orthodoxy by suggesting that incentives for creative production often exist in the absence of, or in disregard for, formal legal protections. Instead, many communities rely on evolving social norms and market responses to ensure creative incentives. From tattoo artists to medical researchers, Nigerian filmmakers to roller derby players, these communities demonstrate how creativity can thrive without legal incentives, and perhaps more strikingly, that some creative communities prefer self regulation to law. We will consider both the merits and limitations of this line of research. We expect the conference to offer important practical insights for lawyers who represent clients in creative fields, helping them understand doctrinal limits on IP protection as well as the non legal considerations that shape client motivations, expectations, and business decisions.

Registration Required. more information on the conference website>

berkman luncheon series

Unpacking open data: power, politics and the influence of infrastructures

Tuesday, November 25, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

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Countries, states & cities across the globe are embracing the idea of 'open data': establishing platforms, portals and projects to share government managed data online for re-use. Yet, right now, the anticipated civic impacts of open data rarely materialise, and the gap between the promise and the reality of open data remains wide. This talk, drawing on a series of empirical studies of open data around the world, will question the ways in which changing regimes around data can reconfigure power and politics, and will explore the limits of current practice. It will consider opportunities to re-imagine the open data project, not merely as one of placing datasets online, but as one that can positively reshape the knowledge infrastructures of civic life.

Tim Davies is a social researcher with interests in civic participation and civic technologies. He has spent the last five years focussing on the development of the open government data landscape around the world, from his MSc work at the Oxford Internet Institute on Data and Democracy, the first major study of data.gov.uk, through to leading a 12-country study on the Emerging Impacts of Open Data in Developing Countries for the World Wide Web Foundation. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

video/audio

Emily Horne & Tim Maly on The Inspection House: An Impertinent Field Guide to Modern Surveillance

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In 1787, British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham conceived of the panopticon, a ring of cells observed by a central watchtower, as a labor-saving device for those in authority. In French philosopher Michel Foucault's groundbreaking 1975 study, Discipline and Punish, the panopticon became a metaphor to describe the creeping effects of personalized surveillance as a means for ever-finer mechanisms of control. Years later, the available tools of scrutiny, supervision, and discipline are far more capable and insidious than Foucault dreamed, and yet less effective than Bentham hoped. Shopping malls, container ports, terrorist holding cells, and social networks all bristle with cameras, sensors, and trackers. But, crucially, they are also rife with resistance and prime opportunities for revolution. In this talk authors Emily Horne -- a creator of the webcomic A Softer World -- and Tim Maly -- writer and Fellow at Harvard’s metaLAB -- discuss their new book The Inspect ion House, and paint a stark, vivid portrait of our contemporary surveillance state and its opponents. video/audio on our website>

Other Events of Note

Local, national, international, and online events that may be of interest to the Berkman community:

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