Stefan Bechtold (2005)

Monday March 28, 2005
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Room 271
Free and Open to all!
Lunch Served

Trusted computing architectures attempt to increase trust in networked computing environments. Since a few years, interest in research and implementation of trusted computing technologies has risen considerably. Initiatives such as the Trusted Computing Group, Microsoft's Next Generation Secure Computing Base and Intel's LaGrande could alter the IT infrastructure landscape as we currently know it in considerable ways. This talk describes the fundamental technological concepts on which trusted computing is based and presents an overview of their legal and policy implications. In particular, the talk focuses on the relationship between trusted computing and competition policy, open source software, patent licensing, privacy and copyright law. Furthermore, the talk investigates the value decisions that must be made when designing the infrastructure that surrounds any trusted computing architecture. On a more philosophical level, the talk looks at different approaches to establish trust in networked computing environments as an answer to the increasing complexity of computer networks.Stefan Bechtold graduated from the University of Tuebingen Law School,
Germany, in 1999. From 1997 to 2004, he was a research assistant to
Professor Wernhard Moeschel at the University of Tuebingen Law School. In
1999 and 2000, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California at
Berkeley School of Law. In 2001, he received a Dr. iur. (legal Ph.D.) from
the University of Tuebingen Law School. Supported by a Fulbright
scholarship, he received a master's degree (J.S.M.) from Stanford Law School
in 2002. Since 2002, he is a Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society
at Stanford Law School where he maintains a Trusted Computing Blog. From
2002 to 2004, he was a law clerk ("Referendar") at the regional court
("Landgericht") of Tuebingen, which is a mandatory part of German legal
education. As part of this training, he spent a three-month internship at a
telecommunications law unit of the European Commission's Directorate General
Information Society in summer 2004. In 2004, he was appointed to the expert
committee on copyright and publishing law of the "Deutsche Vereinigung fuer
gewerblichen Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht e.V. (GRUR)" (German professional
association for intellectual property law). Since January 2005, he is a
Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on
Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany, where he is writing his "Habilitation"
(post-doctoral thesis). More information can be found at his website.

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