Computer Prodigy Settles Down at HLS

As lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argue his case at the Moakley federal courthouse in downtown Boston, Benjamin G. Edelman ’02 looks nonchalant, occasionally scrawling a word or two on the notepad in his lap.

Edelman is seeking court permission to investigate Seattle-based software company N2H2’s Internet filtering software, which is used in libraries and schools to block pornography and other offensive sites.

He says the filtering software threatens free speech by weeding out harmless sites—like ones promoting breast cancer awareness—along with offensive sites, without telling the consumer.

The ACLU lawyers are, with difficulty, holding off a motion to dismiss the case brought by N2H2’s lawyers.

The case, Edelman v. N2H2, is just one stage in Edelman’s crusade to protect free expression on the Internet, he says.

The young crusader, whose career began when he started fixing his parents’ and neighbors’ computers at the age of 13, is now widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts in Internet law.

His clients have included the National Football League and The New York Times, and he’s been quoted in media around the world, ranging from Reuters to The South China Morning Post.

He’s often cited as a “Harvard researcher,” an ambiguous title that conjures up the image of a middle-aged professional test-tube-mixer or survey-taker.

Edelman is anything but.

He’s a self-conscious but sharp 22-year-old who graduated from Harvard College last year, an economics concentrator and a huge fan of punk rock and roller coasters. Edelman, a shy, soft-spoken first-year law student who could pass for a high school senior, says he doesn’t know what he wants to do after he graduates from Harvard Law School (HLS).

But he does know what he wants to do when he gets home from court: his homework.

The Road Less Travelled

The son of two lawyers, Edelman grew up in a TV-free household, he says, and as a child he was out of step with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-loving classmates.

Like many members of Generation X, his interest in computers began with his family’s personal computer.

When he was in his early teens, other kids his age were mowing lawns and delivering newspapers to make extra cash.

“I didn’t like doing those sorts of chores,” Edelman says. But he did enjoy fixing his parents’ and neighbors’ computers.

“At some point I made it my business to fix them,” Edelman says.

Around the same time, Edelman also used some of the money from his Bar Mitzvah to start trading stocks, which he soon found he had a knack for. According to the Wall Street Journal, at peak his portfolio was worth $300,000, but he recently sold off his stock to buy a condo near Porter Square.

During his sophomore year of high school, his aunt, the well-known activist and president of the Children’s Defense Fund Marian Wright Edelman, called him up and asked him to help her organize a huge demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial called Stand for Children.

He organized the group’s computer system and databases, and Stand for Children evolved into an influential child advocacy organization.

“I was their second employee, building this organization from the ground up,” Edelman says.

Directly after high school, even before he moved into the Yard, Edelman spent his summer as an intern at HLS’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

He says he spent most of his time as an undergrad north of the College—where he was an economics concentrator in Currier House—at the Berkman Center.

During the winter of his sophomore year, Edelman testified as an expert witness for the first time.

The National Football League (NFL) hired him to investigate the security flaws of a Canadian website from which users downloaded American television.

“It was scary,” Edelman remembers. “I was focused on the scariness and I talked too quietly.”

But the NFL prevailed in a preliminary hearing, and the case was ultimately settled out of court.

The Later Years

Edelman graduated from the College last year, started this year at HLS and has just been accepted as a Ph.D.-candidate in economics at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Despite his move of several blocks, his extracurriculars haven’t changed much.

This fall, he co-authored a report on Google’s censorship in France and Germany with Assistant Professor of Law Jonathan Zittrain, whom he met at the Berkman Center.

He’s also a running fanatic, who has gone running every day of his Harvard career, regardless of the weather.

Despite his complaints about the music scene in Boston, Edelman—who reluctantly admits to enjoying heavy metal as well as punk—also goes to the occasional rock show, particularly at T.T. The Bears, a club in Central Square.

He says he sleeps “eight hours of night, unnegotiably.”

“I try to keep everything on schedule,” Edelman says.

Although he admits enjoying all the media attention he’s been getting over the past few years, he says that it isn’t his goal.

“It’s nice to see your picture in the paper, but its not a reason to get up in the morning,” he says. “My goal with media attention has been not just to see my name in lights, but to explain to the public a set of topics of interest and concern.”

Despite his unusually prominent and successful career to date in Internet law—according to the Wall Street Journal, Edelman pulled down a six-figure salary last year with his consulting work— he says he’s not sure what he wants to do with his life.

“I’m concerned I appeared so certain,” he says.

He says he’s considering careers in law, teaching and research.

“Certainly I can imagine myself as an economist, though its not the most likely outcome,” he says.

Going Home

Monday’s hearing didn’t end as well as Edelman and his lawyers had hoped.

The judge finished by saying that he was inclined to dismiss, which would mean an end to Edelman’s suit, and to some, including Edelman, a blow to free speech on the Internet.

“That was rough,” Edelman says after the judge left the court room.

After the hearing, Edelman stands around outside the courtroom talking to his lawyers and to Seth Finkelstein, an independent researcher who shares many of Edelman’s interests.

“I wanted to keep the Internet free, but its unsustainable in the face of these legal problems,” Finkelstein says after the hearing.

But Edelman doesn’t spend much time on post-mortems.

After briefly talking to Finkelstein and his lawyers, he takes the T back to Harvard to go running and do his homework.