Internet Policy Wars 3.0: Is the Past a Prologue to the Fight for Web3?

As I get older, it seems I’m becoming less a historian and more a fact witness. Confirming that trend, the Congressional Internet Caucus hosted a fun discussion on emerging Web3 policy battles, with Kevin Werbach and me assigned to draw parallels, contrasts, and lessons from the first wave of Web 1.0 fights in the 1990s - the era of the Communications Decency Act, the codification of Section 230, the first skirmishes over cryptography and key escrow, and so on. Sparking the panel, I suspect, was the clumsy cryptocurrency language in last year’s landmark Infrastructure Bill, suggesting some gaps in Congressional understanding of the latest stack of distributed and decentralized Internet-based technologies that is being referred to as Web3. There’s a lot more — good and bad — coming our way than cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Our moderator was Danny O’Brien of the Filecoin Foundation, and our new-generation co-panelists were Cleve Mesidor of the Blockchain Association and the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain and Carlos Acevedo of Brave Software — all terrific thinkers and nimble panelists. Great conversation, part of the Caucus’s 2021 rich lineup of events. Thanks to Tim Lordan for the kind invite!

Governance 3.0

My first big conference post-COVID was the excellent Unfinished Live, held at The Shed in NYC in October 2021. I put together what turned out to be a brisk and (for me, anyway) entertaining discussion on “Governance 3.0” with Kickstarter co-founder, artist and all-around brilliant thinker Perry Chen, Georgetown professor of philosophy and director of its ethics lab Maggie Little, and technologist, decentralization architect, and Unfinished Labs president Braxton Woodham. The video is below; a transcript is here.

The pithy take-away comment was Maggie’s, about complex, morally-anchored, emergent human behavior: ‘You can’t just engineer it away”.

HBD, C-Span

In honor of the network’s 40th anniversary, here was my first appearance on C-Span, back in 2004. The obscurity and, um, specificity of this event shows the remarkable dedication of C-Span to bring anything and everything in and around Congress right into any American’s living room, no matter how boring. The event was, AFAIK, the very first time "net neutrality" was uttered in public in the US Capitol. Along with Tim Wu, Larry Lessig, Michael Copps, Mark Cooper, and others, we laid out the policy rationale for net neutrality, and argued for FCC action and Congressional legislation to protect the Internet from control by the big carriers. Happily, these ideas went from a handful of network policy nerds to national policy, thanks to an amazingly diverse and effective coalition of activists working hard for more than a decade. The Obama administration implemented a truly groundbreaking set of protections for net neutrality, and the next administration will certainly reinstate them, hopefully in partnership with Congress.

AI Superpowers: A Conversation with Kai-Fu Lee

Thanks to the Asia Society for hosting a fantastic evening with Kai-Fu Lee, my former colleague and partner at Google. His new book, AI Superpowers, is genuinely terrific, both in explaining artificial intelligence, its possibilities, pitfalls, and implications for the future, and in laying out the relative strengths and weaknesses of China and the United States in technology and innovation.

New America: Who's Afraid of Online Speech?

Characteristically awesome event at the New America Foundation today. I spoke on “How Can Platforms Fix Online Speech?”, which: not simple. Co-panelists were:

• Caroline Sinders, @carolinesinders Product Analyst, Wikimedia Foundation

• Whitney Phillips, @wphillips49 Assistant Professor of Literary Studies and Writing, Mercer University Author, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things Co-author, The Ambivalent Internet

• Dipayan Ghosh, @ghoshd7 Public Interest Technology fellow, New America Joan Shorenstein Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Former Technology & Economic Policy Advisor, The White House Former Privacy & Public Policy Advisor, Facebook

• Moderator: April Glaser, @aprilaser Staff writer, Slate

Our part starts around 1’10'“. Other speakers at the event:

REGULATING POLITICAL SPEECH IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL DISINFORMATION

• Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), @amyklobuchar Chair, Senate Democratic Steering Committee Ranking Member, Rules Committee

• Dan Gillmor, @dangillmor Director and co-founder, News Co/Lab at Arizona State University Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University Author, Mediactive and We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

• Moderator: Cecilia Kang, @ceciliakang National Technology Correspondent, The New York Times

DOES THE INTERNET REQUIRE US TO RETHINK FREE SPEECH?

• Rep. Ted W. Lieu (D-Calif.), @reptedlieu Member, House Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs

• Jennifer Daskal, @jendaskal Associate Professor of Law, Washington College of Law at American University

• Kate Klonick, @klonick Future Tense fellow, New America PhD Candidate, Yale Law School Resident fellow, Information Society Project at Yale Law School

• Moderator: Cecilia Kang, @ceciliakang National Technology Correspondent, The New York Times

Stanford: Digital Platforms and Democratic Responsibility

Excellent event to mark the launch of Stanford’s new Global Digital Policy Incubator, led by the incredible digital human rights leader Eileen Donahoe.

Co-panelists:

• Moderator: Larry Kramer, President of the Hewlett Foundation

• Juniper Downs, Global Head of Public Policy and Government Relations, Youtube

• Daphne Keller, Director of Intermediary Liability, Center for Internet & Society, Stanford Law School

• Nick Pickles, Senior Public Policy Manager, Twitter

• Mike Posner, Director, NYU Stern Center for Business & Human Rights, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Stanford Law: Law, Borders, and Speech Conference - Big Picture Panel

Really fun conference, excellent and diverse participants, provocative policy brawls. Hosted by Stanford Law’s Center for Internet & Society.

The panel set-up: “Which countries’ laws and values will govern Internet users’ online behavior, including their free expression rights? In 1996, David G. Post and David R. Johnson wrote that “The rise of the global computer network is destroying the link between geographical location and: (1) the power of local governments to assert control over online behavior; (2) the effects of online behavior on individuals or things; (3) the legitimacy of the efforts of a local sovereign to enforce rules applicable to global phenomena; and (4) the ability of physical location to give notice of which sets of rules apply.” They proposed that national law must be reconciled with self-regulatory processes emerging from the network itself. Twenty years on, what have we learned? How are we reconciling differences in national laws governing speech, and how should we be reconciling them? What are the responsibilities of Internet speakers and platforms when faced with diverging rules about what online content is legal? And do users have relevant legal rights when their speech, or the information they are seeking, is legal in their own country?”

Speakers:

• Bertrand de la Chapelle - Co-Founder and Director, Internet & Jurisdiction Project

• David Johnson - CEO, argumentz.com; Producer, themoosical.com

• David Post - Professor of Law (ret.), Temple University Law School; Contributor, Volokh Conspiracy

• Paul Sieminski - General Counsel, Automattic

• Nicole Wong - Ex-Obama White House, Twitter, Google

• Me

NYU: Tyranny of the Algorithm? Predictive Analytics & Human Rights

With Michael Posner (Professor, NYU Stern School of Business, Co-Director, Stern Center for Business and Human Rights) and Sarah Labowitz (Co-Director, NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights).

SxSW: How Silicon Valley Looks From Inside the White House, and Vice Versa

A conversation the most marvelous Nicole Wong, from whom I have learned more than I can measure. We were colleagues in the trenches at Google; and then Nicole succeeded me as Deputy CTO of the US. She is the greatest, and here we were both at SxSW.

Fight for the Future: Libraries, Tech Policy, and the Fate of Human Knowledge

Librarians + technology = a personal nirvana.  There is no more awesome set of people doing more important work than the librarians and their nerd allies at the bleeding edge of library tech -- they are engaged in an underappreciated struggle to work out how mankind is going to preserve, extend, share, and democratize the sum of human knowledge in our increasingly digital age.  So I was really psyched to go a do a talk at the 2012 Library Technology Conference about the technological forces driving the great policy issues of our age, along with an argument about why and where the library community should be engaged.  Bonus for me: The event was at Macalester College, where I spent my high school summers taking Russian while trying to look like something other than the huge dork I was.

Here's my keynote, "Fight for the Future: Libraries, Tech Policy, and the Fate of Human Knowledge."

Andrew McLaughlin @ Library Technology Conference 2012 from Library Technology Conference on Vimeo.

 The Prezi is here.

Stanford Law: From Public Squares to Platforms: Free Speech in the Networked World

The set-up: “From local issues like the BART protests to national and international movements like Occupy and the Arab Spring, individuals and organizations are increasingly utilizing the Internet, social networking, and mobile devices to communicate and connect. This diverse panel from academia, public interest, and private practice, will discuss the opportunities and challenges for free speech as it increasingly moves from the town square to the networked world. Co-sponsored by the California State Bar Cyberspace Committee and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.”

Co-panelists:

• Dorothy Chou Senior Policy Analyst, Google Dorothy Chou is a Senior Policy Analyst and leads Google's policy efforts to increase Transparency. She manages the day-to-day operations of the Central Public Policy team at Google's headquarters, and handles government relations for Google's Crisis Response/Disaster Relief projects as well as the Data Liberation Front. Dorothy began working for Google in the Washington, D.C. office four years ago, managing issues around China, free expression and child safety before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area last summer. Dorothy holds a B.S. in International Politics from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service.

• Linda Lye Staff Attorney, ACLU of Northern California Linda Lye joined the ACLU-NC as a staff attorney in 2010 after serving 5 years on its Board of Directors and 7 years on its Legal Committee. She was formerly a partner at Altshuler Berzon, a San Francisco law firm specializing in labor and employment law, as well as constitutional, civil rights, and environmental law. Early in her legal career, she clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Supreme Court. Prior to law school, she was a policy analyst for the fiscal committees of the Assembly in the California Legislature, and also worked as a death penalty investigator at the California Appellate Project. She has an undergraduate degree from Yale University and a JD from Boalt Hall, at the University of California at Berkeley.

• Philip Hammer Of Counsel, Hoge Fenton Jones & Appel Philip Hammer is Of Counsel to the law firm of Hoge Fenton Jones & Appel in San Jose, California. Mr. Hammer successfully litigated the right to circulate petitions in privately owned shopping centers in the California Supreme Court (1979) and the United States Supreme Court: Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980).

• Laurence Pulgram Partner and Chair of Commercial and Copyright Litigation Group, Fenwick and West LLP Lawrence Pulgram is a Partner in the Litigation and Intellectual Property Groups of Fenwick & West LLP, counsel in intellectual property and complex commercial disputes. His practice emphasizes technology related litigation and frequently involves novel legal issues generated by cutting-edge information technologies.

• Moderator: Nicole Ozer Co-Chair- California State Bar Cyberspace Committee, Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California Nicole A. Ozer is the Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director at the ACLU of Northern California. She works on the intersection of new technology, privacy, and free speech and spearheads the organization’s online privacy campaign, Demand Your dotRights (www.dotrights.org). Nicole is the co- chair of the California State Bar Cyberspace Committee and a founding board member of the Bay Area Legal Chapter of the American Constitution Society (ACS).

Duke Law: Law.gov - A View From Government

One of my all-time heroes is Carl Malamud, rogue archivist and tireless activist for the public domain. He’s been organizing a series of conferences at law schools around the US to build the case for full, free public, online access to all elements of the laws and regulations that govern us. That sounds like an obvious goal, but it is much, much harder than you might think. Huge thanks to our host Prof. James Boyle, who leads Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and also was my (fantastic) 1L torts professor.

Here’s what happened at the Duke Law.gov conference: