On Tuesday night, a group of us had a nice little side-event/chat on “the legacy of Lessig” (blurb here). This session - which was my proposal and my only real organisational contribution to the variety of ’self-organised’ events - took its lead from Lawrence Lessig’s statement: Required Reading - the next 10 years. In that statement, which was a longer version of a speech, Lessig sets out his ‘new direction’ in research. Our challenge in our discussion was to review his work in cyberlaw, copyright etc and consider this new direction, and reflect on how we use Lessig’s work in our own research. All sorts of disciplines were represented in our discussion group.

We were particularly delighted to have Prof. Charles Nesson in the room. Nesson (aka Charlie or indeed Eon, the Dean of Cyberspace), founder of the Berkman Center and the person to whom the first edition of Code (Lessig’s first book) is dedicated, is a remarkable teacher and scholar and shared some reflections, ideas and funny stories with us. (I should note that he also taught a larger group how to play - and think about - poker that same evening). Towards the end, Jonathan Zittrain joined the conversation and chipped in with his own thoughts on Lessig’s new work on ‘corruption’ and more. The discussion ranged from the future of the Creative Commons movement to the status of cyberlaw in the law school to the importance of the Eldred case to the importance of politics and governance and (of course) the connection between all of the above and the game of poker….

Thanks to all who attended and contributed. It was a fun, controversial and educational discussion.

Engineer Chintan Vaishnav of the Communciation Futures programme at MIT spoke about “The End Of Core” (and a lot more besides) in the same session as my own presentation. I said in my own introduction that I was looking forward to Chintan’s presentation more than my own, and it was quite a presentation, as it turned out. His own focus is on regulation of VoIP (voice over internet protocol) but includes a complicated model (system dynamics) and a strong interest in the interactions between the regulator, the developers, the users and the various players.

 
Although I found some of the wonderful diagrams a little difficult to follow, it was clear to me that this is important work, and with similar sensibilities to my own (but starting from a different place, of course). The specific examples given included the regulatory desire to provide for things like 911 and wiretaps, and how this has an impact on different classes of VoIP (e.g. interconnection PC-to-phone vs ‘pure’ PC to PC). Really relevant issues and also highlighting some general principles about regulation and regulators.

The slides/diagrams are well worth seeing, and I’ll add the link when he publishes them!

My favourite term was ‘circum-innovation’, or the role of technology in evading/sidestepping regulation; I wondered whether looking at regulatory arbitrage / regulatory flight might throw up some interesting results.

I picked up copies of Kembrew McLeod’s updated Freedom of Expression: Resistance and Represssion in the Age of Intellectual Property and Christopher Finan’s brand new history of free speech in the US (this one at a third of the cover price!) today. Coming out of the store, a streetside bookseller had a copy of Stanley Fish’s classic There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech…and it’s a Good Thing, Too (which cost me two whole dollars). There’s a story or a moral in there somewhere, but I can’t work it out.

Well, you didn’t think that I’d leave out my own presentation, did you?

Here are the slides from my own talk at the Berkman Center today (slightly compressed images, and quite text-light, so I’d be happy to clarify anything in comments). Jonathan Zittrain was the faculty member assigned to the seminar - he made a point of trying to coax a view/argument/narrative out of me, which was helpful. Of anything, I’d take a special pleasure in making my work more argumentative - but the feedback was still very helpful. A pleasant surprise was the attendance of Doc Searls (also of the Berkman Center) who, as well as offering useful comments, wanted to know what I’d do about net neutrality in the US. (Soapboxes are great). The ever-reliable superblogger Ismael has added his impressions/summary in the usual place.