Yale to Host Conference about the Internet and Free Speech

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 9-11, the Information Society Project at Yale Law School, with the generous support of the Knight Foundation, will present a conference on speech and regulation on the Internet titled “Private Censorship/Perfect Choice.”

Members of the media are welcome to attend. The panel on journalism and the Internet, Saturday, 3-5 p.m., in Room 127 of the Law School, 127 Wall St., may be especially interesting to reporters.

At the conference, legal scholars, historians and Internet experts will present their views in a series of panels on topics including Internet governance, the future of speech on the Internet, the concepts of “Property” and “Contracts” on the Internet, filtering and regulating Internet content, and journalism and the Internet.

Conference panelists include: Philip E. Agre, associate professor of information studies at U.C.L.A. and author of Computation and Human Experience; John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that promotes freedom of expression in digital media; Wendy Gordon, the Paul J. Liacos Scholar in Law and professor of law at Boston University; Lawrence Lessig, the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and noted expert in cyberlaw and antitrust; Charles Mann, author of @Large; David Post, associate professor of law at Temple University Law School and co-founder and co-director of the Cyberspace Law Institute; Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; and MacArthur Fellow Pam Samuelson, professor at U.C./Berkeley and a leading scholar of digital intellectual property law.

Yale Law School faculty participating in the conference include: Ian Ayres, the William K. Townsend Professor of Law; Jack M. Balkin, the Knight Professor in Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, director of The Information Society Project at Yale Law School and author of Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology; James D.A. Boyle, visiting professor of law and author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society; and Robert Ellickson, the Walter E. Mayer Professor of Property and Urban Law.

All events are free and open to the public. All sessions will take place at Yale Law School, 127 Wall St., New Haven. See the accompanying schedule for details. For further information and conference papers, consult the conference website at www.law.yale.edu/censor/

Schedule: “Private Censorship/Perfect Choice”

Yale Law School
127 Wall Street
April 9 - 11, 1999

Friday, April 9
2-3:45 p.m., Room 127
Net Governance: Order With and Without Law
Moderator: Robert Ellickson
Panelists: Phillip E. Agre, David Post, Marc Rotenberg

4-5:45 p.m., Room 127
The Future of Speech on the Net
Moderator: Jack M. Balkin
Panelists: John Perry Barlow, James D.A. Boyle, Lawrence Lessig

Saturday, April 10

9:30 - 11 a.m., Room 122
Property and Censorship Roundtable I: Databases and the Public Domain
Moderator: James D.A. Boyle
Panelists: Yochai Benkler, Wendy Gordon, David Lange, Jamie Love

11:15 a.m. - 1 p.m., Room 122
Property and Censorship Roundtable II: Filters and Digital Fences
Moderator: Lawrence Lessig
Panelists: Peter Jaszi, Jessica Litman, Pam Samuelson

3-5 p.m., Room 127
Journalism and the Net: Changing Structures of Constraint
Moderator: Jack M. Balkin
Panelists: C. Edwin Baker, Amy Harmon, Charles Mann, Joshua Micah Marshall

Sunday, April 11, Room 127

10 a.m.-Noon
Property and Censorship Roundtable III:
Private Censorship/Perfect Choice – Contract in Cyberspace
Moderator: Ian Ayres
Panelists: Julie Cohen, Terry Fisher, Douglas Lichtman