How control over information creation, processing, flows, and use has become the most effective form of power: theoretical foundations and empirical examples of information policy in the U.S., an innovator informational state.
Late nineteenth-century Britain saw an extraordinary surge in patent disputes over the new technologies of electrical power, lighting, telephony, and radio. These battles played out in the twin tribunals of the courtroom and the press. In Patently Contestable, Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday examine how Britain’s patent laws and associated cultures changed from the 1870s to the 1920s. They consider how patent rights came to be so widely disputed and how the identification of apparently solo heroic inventors was the contingent outcome of patent litigation.
New findings in neuroscience have given us unprecedented knowledge about the workings of the brain. Innovative research—much of it based on neuroimaging results—suggests not only treatments for neural disorders but also the possibility of increasingly precise and effective ways to predict, modify, and control behavior. In this book, Robert Blank examines the complex ethical and policy issues raised by our new capabilities of intervention in the brain.
"The book is exceptionally to the point—and useful. I’ve recommended it to our senior staff for themselves and for the faculty they deal with. Despite the title limiting it to “Biomedical”, I found it more widely applicable. The examples are all “biomedical”, but the rest is not limited."
-Lita Nelsen, Director, Technology Licensing Office, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The gradual disappearance of paper and its familiar evidential qualities affects almost every dimension of contemporary life. From health records to ballots, almost all documents are now digitized at some point of their life cycle, easily copied, altered, and distributed. In Burdens of Proof, Jean-François Blanchette examines the challenge of defining a new evidentiary framework for electronic documents, focusing on the design of a digital equivalent to handwritten signatures.
Government regulation is ubiquitous today in rich and middle-income countries--present in areas that range from workplace conditions to food processing to school curricula--although standard economic theories predict that it should be rather uncommon. In this book, Andrei Shleifer argues that the ubiquity of regulation can be explained not so much by the failure of markets as by the failure of courts to solve contract and tort disputes cheaply, predictably, and impartially. When courts are expensive, unpredictable, and biased, the public will seek alternatives to dispute resolution.
Most managers leave intellectual property issues to the legal department, unaware that an organization’s intellectual property can help accomplish a range of management goals, from accessing new markets to improving existing products to generating new revenue streams. In this book, intellectual property expert and Harvard Law School professor John Palfrey offers a short briefing on intellectual property strategy for corporate managers and nonprofit administrators.
Openness is not a given on the Internet. Technical standards--the underlying architecture that enables interoperability among hardware and software from different manufacturers--increasingly control individual freedom and the pace of innovation in technology markets. Heated battles rage over the very definition of "openness" and what constitutes an open standard in information and communication technologies.
At the end of the twentieth century, intellectual property rights collided with everyday life. Expansive copyright laws and digital rights management technologies sought to shut down new forms of copying and remixing made possible by the Internet. International laws expanding patent rights threatened the lives of millions of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS by limiting their access to cheap generic medicines.
The Internet's remarkable growth has been fueled by innovation. New applications continually enable new ways of using the Internet, and new physical networking technologies increase the range of networks over which the Internet can run. Questions about the relationship between innovation and the Internet's architecture have shaped the debates over open access to broadband networks, network neutrality, nondiscriminatory network management, and future Internet architecture.
Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous "Great Firewall of China" is one of the first national Internet filtering systems. Today the new tools for Internet controls that are emerging go beyond mere denial of information.
Gaëlle KrikorianAmy KapczynskiA movement emerges to challenge the tightening of intellectual property law around the world.
Joseph Keim CampbellMichael O'Rourke
Attempting to reconcile the law's need for workable rules of evidence with the views of scientific validity and reliability.
How control over information creation, processing, flows, and use has become the most effective form of power: theoretical foundations and empirical examples of information policy in the U.S., an innovator informational state.
Ruck's innovative approach makes Ancient Greek: A New Approach useful not only in the classroom but for general self-instruction as well.
Charlotte HessElinor OstromLooking at knowledge as a shared resource: experts discuss how to define, protect, and build the knowledge commons in the digital age.
Gaëlle KrikorianAmy Kapczynski
Joseph Keim CampbellMichael O'Rourke
Charlotte HessElinor Ostrom
