Michael Zimmer.org

I’m attending the Library 2.0 Symposium organized by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. We’re only an hour into the agenda, and it has already been an incredibly provocative and enlightening event.
You can follow the Twitter stream at #Lib20, and the ISP is liveblogging here.
The remarks I gave on the Ethics and Politics of Library 2.0 panel can be downloaded in PDF form: Library 2.0, Access to Knowledge and Patron Privacy: Avoiding a Faustian Bargain.
Update: The video for this panel has now been posted to YouTube.

I’m pleased to announce my involvement in the “Library 2.0 Symposium”, hosted by the Yale Information Society Project, to be held on April 4, 2009 at Yale Law School. From the press release:
Library 2.0 Symposium to Explore the Future of Digital Collections
The Yale Information Society Project will host the Library 2.0 Symposium on Saturday, April 4, 2009, at Yale Law School. The confluence of book digitization projects, user-generated content, and social networking applications is forcing us to rethink the role of libraries.  This symposium will bring together leading thinkers …

The Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School is seeking applicants for 2009-2010 postdoctoral fellowships.  The ISP resident fellowships are designed for recent graduates of law or Ph.D. programs who are interested in careers in teaching and public service in any of the following areas:  law and innovation; Internet and telecommunications law and policy; intellectual property law; access to knowledge; first amendment law; media studies; privacy; civil liberties online; cybercrime and cybersecurity; social software; standards and technology policy; bioethics, biotechnology, and law and genomics; and law, technology, and culture …

This spring I am running a reading group at the Yale Information Society Project (but open to all) titled “Technology, Law, Society, Values and Design.” The description and draft syllabus are below — comments and suggestions are welcome!
Technology, Law, Society, Values and Design
The starting point of this reading group is the position that the spheres of technology, society, law, and values are engaged in an eternal dance, each guiding, influencing, and reacting to the other. Technologies are socially constructed, but also shape society. Values are embedded in technologies and …

Reminder: The deadline for applications to be a fellow at the Yale Information Society Project for 2008-2009 academic year is February 1. Scholars outside of law are welcome (this year, the number of communication and STS PhDs heavily outnumber the JDs). Details below:
Information Society Project Resident Fellowships for 2008-2009
The ISP resident fellowship is designed for recent graduates of law or Ph.D. programs who are interested in careers in teaching and public service in any of the following areas: Internet and telecommunications law, intellectual property law, access to knowledge, first amendment …

The Yale Information Society Project held the Reputation Economies in Cyberspace symposium this weekend at Yale Law School. The speakers’ position papers are available here, and various participants’ notes have been posted on the conference wiki. The conference has also been blogged by Rebecca Tushnet (1, 2, 3, 4), Eric Goldman, Urs Gasser, Frank Pasquale (1, 2), James Grimmelmann, Aldon Hynes, Jenny Ambrozek, and others. (More at Madisonian.net)
As one of the organizers, I spent much of the day either running around, or, when sitting in the room, thinking …

Just a friendly reminder that the Reputation Economies in Cyberspace symposium hosted by the Yale Information Society Project is coming up (my original post on the symposium is here). It is being held on December 8, 2007 at Yale Law School in New Haven , CT.
Spots are still available, but filling up quickly. You can register here, and we’ve added a new discounted student registration fee of $45.
I hope to see many of you there!

The Information Society Project at Yale Law School is proud to present Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. The symposium will be held on December 8, 2007 at Yale Law School in New Haven , CT.
This event will bring together representatives from industry, government, and academia to explore themes in online reputation, community-mediated information production, and their implications for democracy and innovation. The symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Microsoft Corporation.
A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of reputation economies in four panels: (1) …

One of my duties at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School has been to organize our weekly lunch speaker series.
Last week we welcomed Samir Chopra, a philosopher who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at Brooklyn College. Prof. Chopra provided a stimulating presentation of his latest work, “Toward a Legal Theory for Artificial Agents” (some background material is here).
This week (Sept. 19), we welcome Adam Greenfield, an Instructor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and author of “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous …

Motivated by recent events, I’m pleased to announce that I have completed and filed my dissertation, “The Quest for the Perfect Search Engine: Values, Technical Design, and the Flow of Personal Information in Spheres of Mobility.” All that awaits is the oral defense (please be kind, Siva).
Assuming the defense goes well (/knocking on wood), I’m also thrilled to announce that I will be joining the Information Society Project at Yale Law School as the Microsoft Fellow for the 2007-2008 academic year. While at ISP, I hope to continue to explore …

Jack Balkin has posted his opening remarks at the Access to Knowledge conference at Yale Law School. In them, he makes three points about the theory of access to knowledge:

First, Access to Knowledge is a demand of justice.

Second, Access to Knowledge is both an issue of economic development and an issue of individual participation and human liberty.

Third, Access to Knowledge is about intellectual property, but it is also about far more than that.
Continue reading his talk here. Other conference panels will be blogged about here, and you might also find …

This weekend I will be attending an international conference on Access to Knowledge hosted by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. From their site:
In the digital era, most multinational corporations and policymakers are of the view that the current trend characterised by increasing intellectual property rights and corporate control over knowledge best serve society’s interests. At the same time, however, a growing number of commentators believe that widespread access to knowledge (A2K) and the preservation of a healthy knowledge commons are the real basis for sustainable human …

I’m attending the “Regulating Search?” symposium hosted by the Yale Information Society Project today. The first panel was on “The Search Space,” and Robin Sloan, co-producer of the (in)famous “EPIC 2014″ movie on “the future history of media,” posed an interesting thought experiment:
What if Google (or any equivalent search company) enabled Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests?
There are many interesting implications with this idea. On one hand, the ability to search and have instant access to all government information (that is generally subject to FOIA) is of great public interest. …

The Yale Information Society Project is hosting a symposium on “Regulating Search: A Symposium on Search Engines, Law, and Public Policy”:
Search is big business, and search functionality increasingly shapes the information society. Yet how the law treats search is still up for grabs, and with it, the power to dominate the next generation of the online world. How will this potential to wield control affect search engine companies, their advertisers, their users, or the information they index? What will search engines look like in the future, and what is the …