International Journal of Communications Law & Policy

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL - THE BERKMAN CENTER
URL: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. The Center is a network of teaching and research faculty from the Harvard Law School and elsewhere - students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects from around the world who seek to identify and engage the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace. Directed by Professor Charles Nesson, the Center was established in 1997 with the generous support of Jack N. Berkman and Lillian R. Berkman.

Professor Nesson is joined by a growing core of Harvard Law School faculty who drive the Center's teaching and scholarship. Professors Arthur Miller and Charles Ogletree are co-directors of the Center. Professors Lawrence Lessig, William Fisher, Howell Jackson, and Anne-Marie Slaughter are involved in Center-sponsored teaching, research, and experimental projects. Executive Director Jonathan Zittrain oversees all Center activities and leads the team of fellows and Harvard Law students who round out the Center's research team. Center-supported Harvard Law School curriculum has included:

- The Law of Cyberspace: Social Protocols
- The Microsoft Case
- Truth, Evidence, Internet
- The High-Tech Entrepreneur
- Internet & Society
- Business and the Internet

Berkman Center faculty and fellows are engaged in research on a wide range of topics: Internet governance, social and technical norms in cyberspace, open code, the application of antitrust to cyberspace, disintermediation in electronic commerce, online Deliberative Polling, and the constitutional implications of content filtering.

Animated by a core belief that the best way to understand cyberspace is to actually build out into it rather than to simply read and talk about it, the Center combines experimental Internet projects with its more traditional teaching and scholarship. In its first year, the Center's projects included two experiments in teaching over the Internet: online lecture and discussion offerings on "Privacy in Cyberspace" and "Intellectual Property in Cyberspace," both of which were free and open to the public. The body of over 1,500 participants comprised an international mix including computer professionals, high school and college students, educators, retirees, and others. Participants were able to view course materials (cases, statutes, articles, video clips) online, discuss the materials with their professors, classmates, and Harvard teaching fellows in online discussion groups, and interact in online chat rooms, in which the professors attempted to replicate the type of Socratic exchanges that occur in Harvard Law School classrooms.

The Center also encourages Internet scholarship by sponsoring gatherings - ranging from informal lunches to international conferences - that bring together students, scholars, lawyers, activists, businesspeople, and policymakers. Recent Center-sponsored events have included Digital China/Harvard, a conference focusing on the Internet in China, and the Second International Harvard Conference on Internet & Society ( http://cybercon98.harvard.edu), an interdisciplinary conference at which over a thousand participants discussed a variety of topics springing from the central question, "Will the Net inevitably drive a deeper wedge between rich and poor?"

Over the past several months, the Center has been involved in the IFWP (International Forum on the White Paper) process: a series of conferences that brought Internet stakeholders together to establish a new, private nonprofit Internet coordinating body. Currently the Center is working with the initial board for ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), to facilitate the process by which the corporation can meet requirements set forth in the White Paper to take on this coordinating role.

With several ambitious projects in the works, the Center is actively seeking sponsorship and support for its technical and academic endeavors.

Donna Wentworth
Editorial Assistant Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Telephone: (617) 496-0747
Fax: (617) 495-7641


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