At The Leading Edge of Internet Law

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (HLS) has a vision of the future, and it's networked.

The center, home to Harvard's leading experts on law in cyberspace, does research on subjects ranging from academic uses of the Internet to protecting privacy rights on-line.

The center is run by HLS faculty and staffed by HLS students, but it has affiliates around the world. Its location at Harvard may help the University stay on top of legal issues that are becoming increasingly urgent with the proliferation of electronic communication and commerce.

But like so many institutions that push the envelope, the center has stirred controversy within the University community.

Harvard at Your Desktop?

According to its director, Weld Professor of Law Charles R. Nesson '60, the center has been developing educational software that provides all Internet users with access to on-line courses provided by the center and taught by Harvard faculty.

The future of learning may be long-distance, but for now, these courses are not-for-credit and do not entail registering with the University.

Nesson says that tying a Harvard certification to on-line educational offerings would be "a big risk"--one he doesn't intend to take.

"We are operating with the Provost's [Harvey V. Fineberg '67] warning in mind," Nesson says. "We don't want to damage the Harvard name by associating it with on-line product."

The University may be justifiably concerned about faculty making courses publicly available on the Web.

Jonathan L. Zittrain, the center's executive director and an HLS lecturer, explains that the Harvard administration has "gotten worried over ownership issues."

Among the courses being offered through the center this semester are "Homer's Poetic Justice," taught by Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature Gregory Nagy, and "Privacy in Cyberspace" with Bromley Professor of Law Arthur R. Miller.

The center is calling each course a "lecture and discussion series" so that they will not be mistaken for real Harvard classes.

The Wonders of Open Code

One of the distinctive features of the center's academic software is its openness, explain Nesson and Zittrain.

To serve its goal of integrating academics and technology, the center has developed a "rotisserie model" for conducting on-line discussions and promoting interaction over the Web. Rotisserie essentially means that center affiliates can add their own input to the site and have its displayed.

The center's educational software is non-proprietary, meaning that users of the center's Web sites can change the actual programming of educational software downloaded in order to make them better serve their needs.

Nesson describes the focal point of the open code work, a plan to create an "H2O" consortium that would "benefit from a commons of open code teaching and learning tools."

The water metaphor illustrates the ease of flow and transparency that Nesson identifies with open code.

In a recent e-mail message to legal and Internet scholars across the country, Nesson, Zittrain and Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies Lawrence Lessig laid out their vision of the Internet's potential for revolutionizing education.

"The Net offers amazing prospects for transforming the way we teach, both adjunct to physical-world classrooms and in its own right as a teaching medium," the message read.

Recipients of the e-mail have been invited to a conference on May 20 at which the formation of a new non-profit organization will be discussed.

The message states that "membership and leadership [of the new organization will be] open to all individuals, research centers, and universities who wish to contribute to its vision and/or actively sponsor the development of open software for pedagogy."

Other Priorities

Along with open code, Nesson lists open content, open governance, security and open commerce as the center's chief areas of research.

Nesson says content issues lie within Lessig's domain at the center, as Lessig specializes in the field of intellectual property rights.

The primary example of the center's content work is its involvement in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Eldritch Press, an on-line provider of scholarly texts and classic works.

According to Zittrain, who joined Nesson, Lessig and two Boston attorneys in signing the Eldritch filing, the case is "about openness" and is being discussed on-line thanks to open code.

The "open governance" component of the center deals with the regulation of domain names--Web site addresses--around the world that are all currently entrusted to a non-profit company known as ICANN.

Zittrain says the center is preparing a study that outlines how ICANN might become subject to oversight by Internet users.

On the security front, Nesson distinguishes three different levels of concerns.

At the personal level, the center is investigating ways to protect individual privacy in network environments.

To address corporate interests, Berkman researchers are focusing on the demands of adjusting to an increasingly open business climate on the Web, especially for companies accustomed to operating under a veil of secrecy.

In the realm of national security, the center is planning initiatives to limit America's exposure to Internet terrorists.

Nesson explains that as the "leader in technology, we've built our own economy more on technology than anyone else, so to the extent that the Internet is vulnerable, we are very vulnerable."

Finally, the open commerce focus of the center relates to the development of trade on the Web.

"We're furthest behind on that," Nesson admits, but he offers the idea of a joint program between the Berkman Center and Jamaica as an example of how the Net might help boost the economies of developing nations.