Paula’s E-Musings

I spent most of last week on the Cornell University campus with about 75 campus IT leaders and university legal counselors at the EDUCAUSE/Cornell Institute for Computing Policy and Law. The Institute was a four-day seminar which examined the impact that widespread use of the Internet has on college university policies, procedures, and judicial systems. 

Speakers addressed issues of Internet law, FERPA, privacy, intellectual property ownership and copyright, and social computing and file sharing. I participated in many rich and stimulating discussions and have gained a broader perspective and a renewed awareness of the importance of having up-to-date policies and a university-wide program to educate the campus community..

I learned about Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society whose mission is “to explore and understand cybersapace, its development, dynamics, norms, standards and the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions.” I discovered Standford University’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS) comprising scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers, and scientists  who study “the interaction of new technologies and the law and examine how the synergy between the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, privacy, public commons, diversity, and scientific inquiry.” Larry Lessig, who is involved with CIS and teaches Law at Stanford, has a website devoted to cyberspace policy and law. Larry Lessig has written a downloadable book Codev2 which was created through a wiki by readers of his earlier book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

We spent a lot of time talking about FERPA and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) as they relate to privacy. We discussed the implications for college and universities of E-Discovery legislation. And of course there was animated conversation about peer-to-peer file sharing, the RIAA and MPAA and the Reid Amendment that was recently defeated by a Senate vote but is open for debate and possible vote in the House.

I came away from the Institute with new insights and a renewed appreciation of the complexity and nuances related to policy and law in our evolving electronic information environment.