Organizations that develop open source software are often inherently fragmented and loosely-networked, which can make governance and decision-making a challenge. In addition, as the open source community grows and becomes more global, so too ha

Michel Bauwens: Are We Shifting to a New Post-Capitalist Value Regime?

May 24th, 2016

Every 500 years or so, European civilization and now world civilization, has been rocked by fundamental shifts in its value regime, in which the rules of the game for acquiring wealth and livelihoods have dramatically changed. Following Benkler

Vikki S. Katz on How Lower-Income Families Respond to Digital Equity Challenges

May 17th, 2016

While 94% of parents raising school-age children below the U.S. median household income have an Internet connection, more than half are “under-connected,” in that their Internet connection is too slow, has been interrupted in the past year due

Ellery Biddle on The Internetish Things of Cuba: Open Source and ‘in the Clear’

May 11th, 2016

What is it like to use the Internet in fits and starts? How do communities with limited access to the global Internet use digital tools? Beyond sensational media narratives about Havana’s WiFi hotspots and the paquete semanal, there is a comple

Brittany Seymour on Social Communication Strategies for Public Health

May 10th, 2016

The social nature of today’s Internet is creating new public health and policy challenges. For example, the US in 2014 experienced the largest measles outbreak in nearly a generation, which led to the passing of the nation’s most conservative v

Dr. Michel Reymond on Finding Common Standards for the Right to be Forgotten

May 4th, 2016

Following the 2014 Google Spain decision rendered by the European Court of Justice of the European Union, search engines – and, first among them, Google – are tasked with the delisting of search results leading to outdated or inaccurate informa

Carl Williams on Black 2.0: the New Liberation Movement

May 3rd, 2016

Carl Williams joins us to speak about the current Black Liberation movement. What and who it is, how it started, and how Twitter, Facebook (yes, Facebook) and other social media played a part. About Carl Carl joined the ACLU of Massachusetts as

Susan Crawford on Why the Right Digital Decisions Will Make America Strong

Apr 28th, 2016

The U.S. still lags behind much of the developed world in terms of the speed and density of its internet infrastructure. In the 21st Century this disparity in access to high speed internet could stand as a critical challenge to competitiveness

Jon Penney on “Chilling Effects”: Insights on How Laws and Surveillance Impact People Online

Apr 28th, 2016

With Internet censorship and mass surveillance on the rise globally, understanding regulatory “chilling effects” — the idea that laws, regulations, or state surveillance can deter people from exercising their freedoms or engaging in entirely le

Alan Weinberger on Three Decades of IT Channel Evolution and the Continued Importance of Small IT Companies

Apr 21st, 2016

In this talk, Alan Weinberger — founder of The ASCII Group, Inc. and Harvard Law School alum — addresses the development of the information technology marketplace over the past three decades and the continued importance of small IT companies. A

Peter S. Menell: Copyright Law Year in Review

Apr 19th, 2016

What ties together cheerleader outfits, monkey selfies, the Batmobile, a chicken sandwich, Yoga, and Yoda? In this talk, Professor Peter S. Menell — Koret Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law and a Director of the Berkeley Center for L

A Burglar’s Guide to the City: On Architecture and Crime

Apr 18th, 2016

The relationship between burglary and architecture is far from abstract. While it is easy to focus merely on questions of how burglars use or abuse the built environment — looking for opportunities of illicit entrance — burglary, in fact, requi

Sanna Kulevska & Michael Rustad: Reconceptualizing Right to Be Forgotten for TransAtlantic Data Flow

Mar 22nd, 2016

In October 2015, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) struck down the U.S./EU Safe Harbor agreement that enabled data to be freely transferred from Europe to the United States. In February 2016, the EU/U.S. Privacy Shield was proposed as a repl

Jessie Rossman and Kade Crockford on Student Privacy in Massachusetts K-12 Schools

Mar 15th, 2016

In 2013, the ACLU of Massachusetts set out to get a snapshot of student privacy policies in diverse communities statewide. Almost across the board, schools told students they had “no expectation of privacy” on school networks, using school emai

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