[Itself] STS Special Seminar: Liberty by Design (fwd)

[anita chan]

Please feel free to pass this notice on to others who may be interested in
attending.

Liberty by Design: The Internet as a Technology of
Freedom and Control

Alan Davidson

Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology

  Sponsored by the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT

  Tuesdays: March 16 & 30 and April 13 & 27, 2004

  4:00 -- 6:00 p.m., Room E51-151, MIT

  Old conventional wisdom states that the Internet is an unstoppable force
for freedom. The new conventional wisdom is that the Internet can be a
powerful tool of control. Largely by happenstance, the original design of
the Internet open, decentralized, and extensible -- has supported Western
democratic ideals: free expression, individual privacy, and participation
by a diversity of speakers, creators, and technology developers. Today many
of these values are now threatened by policy choices being debated in
government and technology choices being debated by product developers and
technology standards bodies.

  How do we reconcile these competing visions of the Internet''s potential?
This series will explore the ways in which the Internet's potential as a
technology of freedom is being influenced by current technology and policy
debates -- and seek to chart a path for developing an Internet designed
with liberty in mind.

  Seminar 1 - Tuesday, March 16, 2004
    * Free Speech by Design: Next Generation Internet Content Regulation
Seminar 2 - Tuesday, March 30
    * Privacy by Design: The Golden Age of Government Surveillance
Seminar 3 - Tuesday, April 13
    * Privacy by Design: Corporate Data Collection in the Digital Age

  FINAL SESSION THIS WEEK --Tuesday, April 27

Fair Use by Design: Copyright and Creative Production

The threat of digital piracy is leading to calls for new technological
locks over copyrighted works -- threatening to constrain valuable uses of
information and create new gatekeepers over content online. This session
will examine the policy debate over the -- broadcast flag -- and other
forms of digital rights management, and the possibilities for designing
systems that reconcile content protection with the public's interest in
innovation and access to information.

  Alan Davidson is Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, a Washington, DC public interest organization working to
promote civil liberties and human rights on the Internet.  Mr. Davidson is
a Visiting Scholar this semester at STS.