Stanford Center for Internet and Society

Each day the stock markets trend lower, seeking floors, comfort. A sense of how bad it could get leads to further erosions of global equity values and banks unwilling to lend. Already Silicon Valley VC funds are sounding the alarm to portfolio companies: tighten up on spending, pare plans, boost revenue-production.

Last week, eBay's social conscience companion, World of Good, announced an amazingly simple act of goodness: They would encourage products, producers and sellers to display in a coherent way the ethical dimensions of the marketplace.

This morning I read the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Lopez Torres, holding that New York State's obviously manipulated state judicial nominating conventions are constitutional under the First Amendment.

As Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion (p.4) cautions:

The power of simple graphics on the Web is hard to beat.

Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff lays out what's at stake for consumers if they choose wisely, poorly or let others choose for them.

I've been reading through a study of Google's patents prepared by Stephen Arnold entitled Google Version 2.0: The Predator.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Board of Elections v. Lopez Torres.

Thomas Friedman's NY Times article today Marching with a Mouse provides vivid tribute to the financial market power of transparent accountability.

Most days the Web seems about "buy, buy, buy" or "sell, sell, sell." Many a Web tourist peers through a Web-content window, framed by a virtual (and invasive) Times Square-like advertising zipper, stalking their online prey like sidewalk barkers of olden days.

I miss Zero Mostel. I wonder how he'd use laughter to ponder and probe our Web World of today and tomorrow, and how Zero would raise concerns about the Web's privacy protections. But that's a blog for another day...

This morning I came across Stacy Cowley's article GPL 3: An Open Source Earthquake?. As a member of OGC Consortium, the group responsible for developing geospatial interoperability standards, I've suggested review of their standards' ownership, branding and licensing.