Intellectual Property Law

Berkman@10: The Challenge of Openness

By Wendy Seltzer

As one of those who knew the Berkman Center before it was “Berkman,” I’m particularly pleased to be helping to celebrate its 10th Anniversary season.

When we launched “The Berkman Center for Internet & Society” in 1998, some wondered whether we were just talking about the “law of the horse,” but the intervening 10 years have shown us that horse has legs. The Internet’s distributed communication systems have taught us something new about speech, creativity, and culture — showing the economic flourishing of all these in a distributed, open network.

Berkman’s founding visionary, Charlie Nesson, recognized openness as a core principle early, and others have gradually caught on: freedom at the core means more opportunities to generate value elsewhere in the network. Free software supports better-specialized hardware, user-optimized development, and electronic commerce. Open-access non-discriminatory networks support both commerce and communities.

The challenge for the next 10 years will be to preserve that openness. Join us in person or online as we work to meet that challenge!

Full post as published by Legal Tags on May 14, 2008 (boomark / email).