Stanford Center for Internet and Society

... and Microsoft is really willing to add Linux support to Virtual Server 2005, as this news states, it would mark a surprising shift in the business strategy of the monopolist who always denied any requests for interoperability. Is the tide changing? Does the giant kowtow to the raging success of OS?

... from the day Russia deposits its ratification with the UN and the Kyoto Protocol (KP) will enter into force (see Art. 25(1) KP). The Russian Parliament, the Duma, just has ratified the treaty which was concluded in 1997. After the U.S. had disappointed the rest of the world with a clear No, everybody courted Russia’s favor. Finally, they've got it (better not ask what the Russians were promised behind closed doors!). Now the required quorum of signatories accounting for more than 55% of the total carbon dioxide emissions in the reference period (the year 1990) is met; Russia alone causing 17.4% of the emissions of all industrialized countries.

As one of the main competitors in the international race to protect every sort of investment in intangibles, the EU had adopted the Database Directive in 1996. Yet, the scope of the newly created property right in a database is still "under construction". But the European Court of Justice will soon have to decide a bunch of cases (C-444/02, C-203/02, C-338/02, C-46/02) raising some fundamental questions concerning the extension of a database owner's rights.
The plaintiffs provide fixture lists for soccer matches and organize horse races. They compile detailed data of the sport events and store them electronically in databases. Before the events take place the information is made available to various media (radio and television broadcasters, magazines and newspapers) on the basis of licenses. The defendants are bookmakers using the information for the purpose of taking sporting bets. They do not hold any licenses from the organisators but obtain the data from public media. The plaintiffs consider that the bookmakers have infringed their sui generis right under the Database Directive. Are they right?

At the end every question concerning the information habitats may indeed boil down to a decision between freedom v. control. The legitimate function of this harsh and simplistic alternative is to remind us that there are always normative implications luring behind the surface of technology. The way we shape technology shapes the way it shapes us. But what are the main structures underlying present information technology that shapes the flow of information in society? If we ask for the normative consequences of informational design, what are the parameters the further development of the information environment will have to pivot around? Identifying these structural parameters may help us to refine our normative questions when we go on working to solve the conflicts between freedom and control in the concrete.

Late April the European Council of Ministers has finally approved a Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights that will harmonize the remedies and procedures available to right holders throughout the EU. The Council's approval was the last step in the legislative process which was surrounded by fierce debates about the directive's impingement on consumers' and citizens' rights. The Member States will now have two years to implement the IPED.
The directive aims at providing a level playing field for actions brought by right holders against counterfeiting and piracy in any part of the EU. The text compromised among Parliament, Council and Commission is now limited to civil and administrative measures, procedures and remedies. It will be up to the Member States to decide whether they want to impose criminal sanctions against infringers. But what remains is tough enough.

I have written an article about this issue which is published in the February issue of the European Competition Law Review. I perceive the two key information technologies, the computer and the Internet, as modularized systems in which higher applications depend on standard platforms. Dominance in one layer can leverage into adjacent layers and respective product markets as the cases of Intel and Microsoft demonstrate. To address the risks for competition and technological evolution the law needs to coordinate

The comment by Juergen makes a good point. It is not just about having a critical public. We also have to institutionalize values of public interest in the operation of search engines. Above all there must be transparency. A search engine is a tool for selection. So I want to know what are the criteria for the selection. In the form of a disclosing requirement this could even be imposed on search engines run by private entities such as Google. Another – complementary - approach is to let the search engine be run by a public or quasi-public institution. Like every other activity of such institution the operation of a search engine must comply with the public interest standards set forth in the institution’s charter.

Search engines are a crucial part of the Web’s architecture. They open the gates to the Web’s universe of information and operate as guides through the paths of the network. But what if the guide you are depending on is biased in what sites he will show you? That would indicate a flaw in the Web’s ideology of openness and informativeness.
An interesting article by Susan Gerhart in First Monday asks whether Web engines suppress controversy. She suggests that simple queries tend to overly present the "sunny side" of these topics, with minimal controversy. Certainly, “search advice” literature exists and offers some key rules to compensate for those deficiencies. But consumer surveys about paid placement in search results reinforce a common theme: The general public that is growing increasingly dependent upon search engine technology has relatively low understanding of how the technology works or their responsibilities for its proper use.

Are you interested in legislation on mass email in the US, the European Union, and other countries? Spam Laws is a useful site covering both enacted laws and proposed legislation.

Civil Society is among those concepts which were developed in the context of the nation state. In the post-absolutist order it was invoked as an intermediary zone through which it seemed possible to reconcile both the new realm of private freedom and the imperative of the common or public good. Given the role of the law as a central steering mechanism and powerful regulator of human behavior, law’s particular relationship to civil society was always a much debated topic on the agenda of modern social thought. In the context of globalizing economic governance, what is the relationship between law and the emergent phenomenon of a transnational civil society? Is the law capable of compensating for the susceptibility to colonisation and capture of institutions by dominant economic and political interests, or, in the alternative, does it necessarily serve to entrench the normative bias inherent in the economic and political structure of such post-state entities? These questions are raised in a special issue of the European Law Journal devoted to the subject of law and transnational civil society. The governance institutions scrutinized in particular are: the EU with its relatively broad mandate, the more functionally limited WTO, and the specifically sectoral case of ICANN’s regulation of the Internet domain name system.