The ten things that define you
I’ve written an op-ed for the New York Times about the European Court of Justice’s ruling finding a “right to be forgotten.” After that and my initial blog post in reaction to the court’s ruling, I...
View ArticleTime capsule crypto can help us commit our secrets to history
More than a decade ago, researchers at Boston College interviewed people from both sides of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, promising each contributor to the “Belfast Project” that his or her...
View ArticleRighting the right to be forgotten
The F-T just published a piece I wrote about the implementation of the right to be forgotten in Europe. Here is a draft from which the op-ed was drawn: Last week Google formally launched a blue-ribbon...
View ArticleWhy Libraries Matter
I’ve written up a piece on Medium on why libraries matter — you can find it here: Vital parts of the Web are censored, poisoned, and lost amidst truthiness. Libraries are our unusual defense. With...
View ArticleEverything you should know about … warrant canaries
Guest post by Naomi Gilens, J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School [I'm pleased to feature on the blog some of the best work undertaken by HLS students on Internet-related topics. --JZ] In 2002, the FBI...
View ArticleDoes Santa Exist? A Chat with Eric Kaplan
Eric Kaplan is a writer and producer of the Big Bang Theory. He’s also a student and teacher of philosophy. Put the two together and you get Does Santa Exist?, an exploration of metaphysics, life, and...
View ArticleDoes Santa Exist? A Chat with Eric Kaplan (Transcript)
Jonathan Zittrain: This is Jonathan Zittrain speaking. I’m on the line, wherever that is, with one Eric Kaplan, author of “Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Investigation,” a book that I had the...
View ArticleShould the director of OPM be fired over its massive data breach?
I participate in a regular poll by the Christian Science Monitor on Internet policy topics. This week’s question was about the recent data breaches at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management: As you...
View ArticleThe Future of the Internet: Five Years Later
In 2008, The Future of the Internet called attention to a “sea change” in the way consumer devices interact with the Internet. “The future is not one of generative PCs attached to a generative...
View ArticleRethinking Online Culpability: The Amazon “Keep Calm” Shirts Controversy...
In early March, the online retailer Solid Gold Bomb provoked outrage when customers discovered that its Amazon store, which featured apparel bearing dozens of variants on the “Keep Calm [and Carry On]”...
View ArticleRethinking Online Culpability: The Amazon “Keep Calm” Shirts Controversy...
In early March, the online retailer Solid Gold Bomb provoked outrage when customers discovered that its Amazon store, which featured apparel bearing dozens of variants on the famed “Keep Calm [and...
View ArticleRethinking Online Culpability: The Amazon “Keep Calm” Shirts Controversy...
In early March, the online retailer Solid Gold Bomb provoked outrage when customers discovered that its Amazon store, which featured apparel bearing dozens of variants on the famed “Keep Calm [and...
View ArticleRethinking Online Culpability: The Amazon “Keep Calm” Shirts Controversy...
In early March, the online retailer Solid Gold Bomb provoked outrage when customers discovered that its Amazon store, which featured apparel bearing dozens of variants on the famed “Keep Calm [and...
View ArticleThe generativity of programming languages: Why “open source” about expressive...
[I feature this thoughtful contribution from Leonid Grinberg, who's been working with me this summer at the Berkman Center.] In his famous dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell conceived...
View Article“The Big Brother Problem” WEF panel :: Future of the Internet – And how to...
“The Big Brother Problem” is a timely, difficult, and sweeping topic, at WEF ’14, covering digital surveillance by both public and private actors and its implications for human rights. I’ll be...
View ArticlePerma: Scoping and addressing the problem of “link rot”
Kendra Albert and I are finishing up a study of link rot — the phenomenon by which material we link to on the distributed Web vanishes or changes beyond recognition over time. (Wiki discusses link rot...
View ArticleJoining Team Archive: Perma and the Ongoing Effort to Preserve the Web
The accessibility and flexibility of the Internet is a double-edged sword. A distributed web makes it easy to publish content and link to it, but it also means that this content is by no means...
View ArticleHumanizing the Web
I wrote this in April of 2008 for The Times, and don’t think I ever posted it here – Humanizing the Web The Web’s design reflects the open ethos of its early users: it has no central managers, no main...
View ArticleNew Harvard Law School Library Project Manager Positions for Innovative...
The HLS Library, in conjunction with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, is pleased to announce two new project manager positions. The newly posted Library Technology (LT) Project Manager...
View ArticleReconciling lifestreaming and privacy: tech-facilitated negotiations
I’ve long thought that, as tough as privacy against government intrusion and corporate surveillance are, the most novel and complex privacy challenges will be peer-to-peer. With gov’t and corporate...
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