Marvin Ammori

House Subcommittee hearing teases out some of the issues related to a proposed universal service reform bill.

Yahoo hopes to pull the kind of comeback John Travolta pulled with Pulp Fiction: it wants to be “cool” again.

Kevin Coleman of Defense Tech reports on the use of a worm by Tariq ibn Ziyad, a “cyber jihad group,” to wreak havoc on several US companies last week.

I have written a lot about the cable companies’ likely anti-competitive attempts to stifle new, more consumer-friendly ways to distribute TV. If this story is right, it looks like Time Warner Cable is punishing Epix (partners are Lionsgate and Paramount) for a distribution deal making shows available online through Netflix.

The cable provider will not carry the premium movie channel in large part because of the  splashy $1 billion distribution deal that the pay-TV channel signed with Netflix this summer, a spokesperson told TheWrap

AT&T’s uses familiar arguments to fight possible ban on paid prioritization. Via Benton.

An open Internet is necessary for progressive speech, argues Mark Weisbrot, of Center for Economic and Policy Research. “We the people need the Internet as we know it is the essential tool in ongoing battle of ideas.”

Which is the primary driver of telecom investment: strategic opportunities or deregulation? Rob Frieden argues for strategic opportunities and argues deregulation has had little historic effect of investment

Several of us at Nebraska Law have been busily organizing a conference in DC, at the Newseum, next Thursday and Friday. I forgot how much work putting together a conference was.

But, with the DC conference right around the corner, I figured I’d post something on my thoughts at the moment.

Main thought: This. Will. Be. Awesome.

The setting of the Newseum is a  start—-beautiful, with French windows overlooking the Capitol.

But the strength of any conference rests on the speakers sharing their expertise and engaging one another. Our speakers include the Vice-Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Cartwright; the cybersecurity man, myth, and legend that is Bruce Schneier; the former top lawyer for the National Security Agency, Stewart Baker; the current top lawyer for U.S. CyberCommand, Gary Brown; and (not least) the NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. Then you have Pamela Meredith, Jim Lewis, Marc Sachs, and many others.

Can’t even think of a synonym for “awesome” that does these folks justice.

But here’s a synonym for gratitude. “Thanks.” We have had help on panels and in getting out the word from Center for Strategic and International Studies, Federal Communications Bar Association, New America Foundation, U.S. CyberCommand, Council on Foreign Relations, and others. We have received help organizing speakers from a lot of friends across DC.

Thanks again. To our speakers, thanks in advance. See you in D.C.

To attend: it’s free, and register here.

I just got off the phone with a law scholar whose research focuses on innovation. He told me that, on his desk, at the top of his short stack of new books to read, is Barbara van Schewick’s celebrated new book, Internet Architecture and Innovation. I wasn’t very surprised: it seems everyone interested in Internet law and policy or innovation is talking about the book. Harvard’s Larry Lessig recommended it in the New York Times; Cardozo’s Susan Crawford, formerly a top White House advisor, recommended it in an op-ed; Brad Burnham, a venture capitalist who was an early investor in Twitter and Flikr, praised it on his blog; and MIT engineering professor David Reed, and co-author of the original end-to-end arguments, endorses the book on its jacket.

So I wanted to flag this book even for those among you who tend not to read the latest book on Internet policy, but who would be interested more broadly in an important book on law, economics, architecture, and innovation.

I have already posted a longish review of the book for a general audience, on my (only sometimes-updated) personal blog. Mainly I explain why general readers should not be scared of an academic book–something about which I needn’t worry for law professors and law students.

The framework and arguments of the book have broader applicability to legal thinking, even beyond Internet issues.  

First, it’s the best example of a “law and architecture” book.  A few years ago, Larry Lessig published a paper called “The New Chicago School.” The paper (playfully) built on the “Chicago School,” a school of legal analysis grounded in economics. Lessig’s “new” school proposed four categories of constraints on human behavior–law, economics, norms, and architecture. He developed the importance of the last, architecture, in his seminal book about software and the Internet, called Code. By architectural constraints, Lessig meant “the world as I find it”: walls are a constraint on snooping, the weight of large objects is a constraint on stealing. (Of course, economics is also at play; if I had enough money, in theory, I could buy the wall and tear it down, or hire strong thieves. But for most of us, that’s not a realistic option.) He discussed how markets and law interact with, and shape, online architecture to yield particular constraints on individuals, or to enable particular liberties. For the Internet, architecture is even more malleable than in the real world; you can add or remove a “wall” to affect snooping with just a few key strokes. We can architect “cyberspace” (in the language of 1999) or the technologies of the Internet to promote certain social values, like free speech, innovation, or privacy. Or we can architect the technologies to undermine those values.

Barbara’s book is the best analysis built on an analysis of architecture, economics, and law. She analyzes how the original architecture of the Internet–built according to particular, open design principles–promotes one particular, important value, innovation.

Second, the book is interdisciplinary of necessity, incorporating deep insights from computer engineering (Barbara has a phd in computer science), law (she is a law professor at Stanford), management science, and economics.  Since she is expert in all these areas, she can see and make connections that other scholars, focused in one discipline, will overlook. And since she is writing for so many different audiences, her book is fascinatingly informative for all of us who wondered how the Internet actually works.

Finally, her economic analysis of innovation is among the most interesting law and economics analysis I’ve come across. It rests on the leading research in innovation economics and succeeds in disproving several economic arguments previously considered conventional wisdom to some economists, especially those discussing telecommunications. Her framework clarifies thinking on the one monopoly rent theory as well as assertions on where competition should and should not lead to optimal public interest outcomes–using the example of competition among cable and phone companies, which, she proves, should not ensure an open Internet, despite industry arguments to the contrary.

And the website for her book is here.