"When Code Meets Place" / "Reputation in a Networked World" / "Broadband and the Public Interest"

"When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots" - Laura Forlano of Yale ISP

Abstract

Mobile and wireless technologies – including mobile phones, wireless fidelity (WiFi), radio frequency identification tags (RFID) and wireless sensors – are rapidly being innovated, adopted and used.  These technologies comprise an “invisible” information layer in physical spaces however, there has been little theoretical or applied research conducted to shape the ways in which they are designed and used.  This project analyzes the socio-cultural, economic and political dimensions of mobile and wireless technologies, focusing on the ways in which they privilege local innovation, use and community-formation.

The current research has identified a number of important findings, which contradict much thinking about the socio-economic dimensions of the Internet.  This is because much research focuses primarily on the virtual and networked aspects of the Internet rather than the local significance.  WiFi provides an excellent opportunity to learn more about the Internet’s more local dimensions.  The focus on localism emerged from an ongoing research project, which was organized into three parts:  1) a four-year ethnographic study of community wireless organizations and their role in building, using and innovating local infrastructures in the United States and abroad; 2) a 40-question online survey on the use of WiFi in public spaces that was conducted simultaneously in New York, Montreal and Budapest, and garnered over 1300 responses; and, 3) 29 in-depth interviews with mobile professionals who use WiFi in public spaces including parks, cafes and other public spaces.

First, community wireless organizations are significant in that they were early adopters of WiFi technology, having innovated open source software for managing wireless networks.  These groups exemplify peer-to-peer production with one significant difference; rather than organizing their activities merely online, they must work face-to-face, climbing towers and rooftops, in order to build their networks.  Second, community wireless networks were important forerunners to the municipal wireless networks that are currently being proposed and implemented. One challenge that municipal wireless networks face is that they know very little about the ways in which wireless networks are currently being used.  The survey on the use of WiFi, conducted in three cities, aims to better understand the way WiFi use differs from Internet use. The wireless network at Bryant Park in New York, which was sponsored by Google for two years, emerged from the survey as one of the most frequently used wireless networks.  Research findings illustrate that the availability of WiFi is a significant factor in determining where people go and that the majority of people surveyed use WiFi to search for information relevant to their geographic location.  However, to date, few business models have capitalized on the possibility of using ‘splash pages’ on wireless networks for featuring content and advertising.  Finally, the in-depth interviews with mobile professionals expand upon the survey findings by offering qualitative descriptions of the ways in which communities that form around WiFi hotspots in cafes, parks and other public spaces enable social support, knowledge-sharing and collaboration.  In sum, this project argues that WiFi interacts with socio-economic factors to support local innovation, use and community-formation, an argument that could be adopted for the analysis of other mobile and wireless technologies.

This project has important business and public policy implications. From a business perspective, it helps to define the kinds of content, services and applications – including advertising and search -- that might be designed for mobile and wireless technologies.  From a public policy perspective, it provides empirical evidence for specific policy recommendations with respect to municipal wireless networks, spectrum regulation, and network neutrality.

Bio

Laura Forlano is a Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and a Ph.D. Candidate in Communications  at Columbia University. Her research interests include organizations, technology (in particular, mobile and wireless technology) and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation. Forlano is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Design and Management department at Parsons and the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School. She serves as a board member of NYCwireless and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association. Forlano received a Master's in International Affairs from Columbia University, a diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor's in Asian Studies from Skidmore College.

"Broadband and the Public Interest: New Relevance for Old Principles?" - Steve Shultze, MIT CMS

Abstract

The contours of "the public interest" have never been cleanly delineated, and they have been even less consistently articulated. Nevertheless, there is a principle, originating in English common law and persisting in current American statute, that "businesses affected with the public interest" take on certain social responsibilities enforceable by the law.  Something special about these businesses in particular caused courts to superimpose a degree public jurisdiction over the private.  Some have described how examples to date include an element of common calling—that they in some way "hold out" service to the public at large.   Many of these services became known as "common carriers," in a distinction that persists today.  Other scholars have discussed how these special businesses all exhibit a degree of potential monopoly control, acting as exclusive gatekeepers that suppress competition.  Despite this difficulty of definition, American communications law places the public interest at its core.

The challenge for regulators, innovators, and citizens is to understand what this all means in the context of an ever-convergent communications landscape.  Regulators can make mistakes both when they overbear and when they forbear.  Innovators can be stifled by ill-conceived restrictions in the name of public interest, and can be blocked by ill-meaning competitors.  Citizens can miss their participatory potential in a consumption-focused environment or a read-only mentality.  A rich sense of the public interest requires understanding its well-worn history as well as the unique affordances of our burgeoning network society.

The internet offers a fresh opportunity to consider the relevance of the public interest in communication policy.  Early regulators struggled to describe what it was that imbued radio waves and telegraph wires with public significance.  The internet exists on top of some of these technologies but it also transforms the ways they are used.  Both copper and coax provide telephone, video, and web service through a unified Internet Protocol.  Wireless and fiber fill out different extremes of the broadband speed spectrum.  By some measures, competition and convergence have brought us into an age of boundless abundance.   By other measures, we are still a far cry from a universal virtual agora, and the forces of control threaten the public benefits we are just beginning to realize.  What principles of public interest are worth maintaining or transforming in the current communications landscape?

Bio

Stephen J. Schultze holds a 2002 BA in computer science and philosophy from Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI).  He is currently a Masters student in MIT's Comparative Media Studies program.  From 2002-2006 he served as a project director for nonprofit startup Public Radio Exchange and collaborated on projects at the MIT Media Lab. He organized the 2007 Beyond Broadcast conference which brought CMS together with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Yale Information Society Project. In the summer of 2007, he worked as a Legal Assistant for Google's Public policy team in Washington, DC. His research interests focus on the changing nature of communications regulation in the broadband era.

"Reputation in a Networked World: Implications for Defamation and Invasion of Privacy in the Internet Age" - David Ardia, Citizen Media Law Project

Abstract

The law provides a number of tools to protect reputation, including
defamation, invasion of privacy, and some forms of intellectual property. But each of these tools relies on a certain conception of what reputation is.  With the advent of the Internet and pervasive digital capture devices and databases, our understanding of reputation is changing.  Whether and how this change should impact these doctrinal areas is a vital question, as the use of these legal tools often implicates competing interests between individuals and between individuals and society.

Reputation has historically been viewed solely as an individual interest.  Legal doctrines that seek to protect reputation do so by providing remedies - almost exclusively financial - that account only for injuries to the affected individual without regard to societal interests. Yet injuries to reputation are not borne exclusively, nor even perhaps primarily, by the affected individual.  In many ways, reputation is a quintessential societal good.  We cannot have a reputation except insofar as it is created in cooperation with others and relative to our relationships with them.  Reputation is an emergent property of human interactions.  It serves as an important signaling device by communicating complex social information about the individual and about the individual's place within society.  When the individual's reputation is improperly maligned, it degrades the value and reliability of this information and, therefore, causes injury to all those who rely upon it.

This Article suggests that we need to reconceptualize reputation as a societal interest. In doing so, the Article raises difficult normative questions about the appropriateness - and efficacy - of existing legal doctrines that seek to protect reputation and provide recompense for reputational injuries.  The Article suggests that existing monetary remedies should be deemphasized while alternative remedies, which seek to correct inaccurate information and provide opportunities for additional contextualization, should be emphasized.

Bio

David S. Ardia is a fellow at the Berkman Center and the director of the Citizen Media Law Project, which provides legal education and resources for individuals and organizations involved in citizen media.

David received his J.D. degree, summa cum laude, from Syracuse University College of Law in 1996 and received an LL.M. from Harvard Law School in June 2007.  Prior to coming to Harvard, he was assistant counsel at The Washington Post where he provided pre-publication review and legal advice on First Amendment, newsgathering, intellectual property, and general business issues.  Together with legal counsel from other major media organizations, he helped develop strategies for dealing with important media law issues, including court access, prior restraints, and the reporter’s privilege.

Before joining The Post, David was an associate at Williams & Connolly in Washington, DC, where he handled a range of intellectual property and media litigation.  David is a former member of the Newspaper Association of America’s Legal Affairs Committee and is a current member of the First Amendment and Media Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association, the Media Law Committee of the District of Columbia Bar, and the New England Media Lawyers Group.

David is admitted to practice law in New York, District of Columbia, United States Supreme Court, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and United States District Court for the District of Maryland.