.seltzer.org
I am a Fellow with Yale Law School's Information Society Project, previously a fellow with Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy; the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado; and with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. I was a Visiting Fellow with the Oxford Internet Institute, teaching a joint course with the Said Business School, Media Strategies for a Networked World. I have previously taught at American University's Washington College of Law, Brooklyn Law School, and Northeastern University School of Law, and served as staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before joining EFF, I taught Internet Law as an adjunct professor at St. John's University School of Law, and practiced intellectual property and technology litigation at Kramer Levin in New York.
Chilling Effects: I founded and developed the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a project to study and combat the ungrounded legal threats that chill activity on the Internet. In conjunction with the EFF and law school clinics across the country, we invite recipients and senders of cease and desist notices to submit these notices for analysis in issue-spotting FAQ-style memos and inclusion in our database. Chilling Effects offers resources for Internet users who face legal threats, and, through its collection of data, we hope to analyze the out-of-court effects of those threats to chill legitimate activity, or, conversely, the extent to which unlawful activity on the Net proves resistant to legal action. Chilling Effects has been featured in the New York Times and Boston Globe, as well as in many academic papers and court filings.
I serve on the Board of Directors of The Tor Project, supporting privacy and anonymity research, education, and technology, and the World Wide Web Foundation, dedicated to empowering people through Web technology. I served on the ICANN Board as at-large advisory committee liaison, and now sit on its GNSO Council.
I helped public interest ISP Online Policy Group to win the first case for damages under DMCA Section 512(f) for abusive copyright claims (OPG v. Diebold), and defended the privacy of Internet users as amicus in Verizon v. RIAA and Charter v. RIAA. As amicus in Lexmark v. Static Control, we helped to preserve interoperability, against the threat of overreaching DMCA claims. I led EFF's Digital Television Liberation Front and the Endangered Gizmos campaign.
My work at the Berkman Center focuses on the legal issues and intellectual property questions surrounding Free Software. I helped to start and now lead the Openlaw project, an experiment bringing the methods of open source and Free Software development to legal argument in the public interest. Openlaw's first case, Eldred v. Ashcroft was argued before the Supreme Court October 9, 2002. The Openlaw DVD forum has developed arguments in defense of 2600 Magazine's posting of DeCSS code, arguing that technological protections for digital media must accommodate free speech and fair use. Openlaw participants filed an amicus brief in the Southern District of New York in the DeCSS case Universal v. Reimerdes, and I drafted the cryptographers' amicus brief to the Second Circuit on appeal. Finally, I have been working with the Creative Commons project to offer the public a range of open licenses to promote sharing of creative non-software works.
Publications
- Infrastructures of Censorship and Lessons from Copyright Resistance, USENIX FOCI Workshop, August 8, 2011 (local copy)
- Exposing the Flaws of Censorship by Domain Name, IEEE Security and Privacy, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 83-87, Jan./Feb. 2011, doi:10.1109/MSP.2011.8 (local draft)
- Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment 24 Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 171 (2010) (local PDF).
- The Imperfect is the Enemy of the Good: Anticircumvention Versus Open User Innovation, 25 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 909 (2010) (local PDF).
- The Politics of Internet Control and Delegated Censorship, American Society for International Law (2008) (local PDF).
- The Broadcast Flag: It's not just TV, 57 FCLJ 209 (2005)
- "Why Open Source Needs Copyright Politics," in Open Sources 2.0, (O'Reilly, 2005)
- Death by DMCA, with Fred von Lohmann, IEEE Spectrum, June 2006
- "The Overloaded Activist," in She's Such a Geek, Seal Press, 2006
- Crafting Law, CRAFT 06, Jan. 2008
- Artistic License, CRAFT 07, April 2008
Invited Presentations:
"Openness in the Smartphone Ecosystem," Whittier Law Review Symposium, Nov 4, 2011 "Android's Openness" (keynote) and "Leveraging Openness", Android Open (O'Reilly), San Francisco, Nov. 2011 "Software Patent and/or Software Development," TPRC, Wash. DC, Oct. 2011; Yale ISP, Oct. 2011 USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communication on the Internet, San Francisco, August 2011 Workshop on Free and Open Communication on the Internet, Georgia Tech, Feb. 24-25, 2011 "Journalism and Social Network Privacy," Privacy and the Press, University of Colorado, Dec. 3, 2010 "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbor," TPRC Conference, Wash. DC, Oct 3, 2010 Keynote, "Making Privacy Visible," Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, Berlin, Germany July 21, 2010 Online Censorship -- Content Filtering At Home and Abroad, MAPping Change, Media Access Project, Washington, DC, June 11, 2010 Generation Copyright, ALAI Canada Colloquium, Montreal, CA, June 1, 2010 Internet Intermediary Liability, Consilience '10, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India, May 29-30, 2010 Patents and Free and Open Source Software, Silicon Flatirons, CU-Boulder, April 29, 2010 "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbors," CU-Boulder Colloquium, April 2, 2010 "Can You Copyright a Tweet?" South by Southwest Interactive, Austin TX, March 14, 2010 "Chokepoints and Chilling Effects, Intermediaries and Online Speech," Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, Nov. 30, 2009 Cyber Civil Rights: New Challenges for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in our Networked Age, commentator, Denver University Law Review, Nov. 20, 2009 "Chokepoints and Chilling Effects, Intermediaries and Online Speech," Whittier Law School, Nov. 11, 2009 Politics 101: The Making of Copyright, Cornell Institute for Computing Law and Policy, Ithaca, NY, July 22, 2009 Copyright, Technological Protection, and User Innovation, OII Summer Doctoral Program, Brisbane, Australia, July 7, 2009 Copyright and Technology, SouthEast LinuxFest, Clemson, SC, June 13, 2009 Intermediated User Innovation, MIT Open & User Innnovation Workshop, May 19, 2009 Free Speech and Chilling Effects on the Global Internet, PIR Advisory Council, April 18, 2009 Authorship, Appropriation, and the Fluid Text: Versions of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Colloquium, March 19, 2009 Peer-to-Peer2.0 (panel) SXSW Interactive, March 17, 2009 Fair Use panel, Copyright Society of the US, New York Chapter, February 26, 2009 Ten Years into the Digital Millennium, Virginia Tech, February 20, 2009 Social and Technical Architecture of the Internet, CNbloggercon. Guangzhou, China, November 16, 2008 Network Openness on Campus, Securing the eCampus. Dartmouth College, November 11, 2008 The Imperfect is the Enemy of the Good: Anticircumvention versus User TPRC, September 27, 2008, and Intellectual Property Speaker Series, Northeastern Univ., October 6 2008 "The Internet's Constitutional Moments," Supernova, San Francisco, CA, June 17, 2008 Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy Symposium, New York, NY, May 29, 2008 (excerpt from "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbor") Preserving Openness, Union College, Schenectady, NY, May 28, 2008 American Society of International Law, Washington, D.C. April 10, 2008 (talk abstract) "Preserving the Library of the Future," New England Archivists Annual Meeting, Newport, RI, March 29, 2008 Media Re:Public, Los Angeles, CA, March 28, 2008 Expectations of Privacy for a Database Age, Google Tech Talk, Kirkland, WA, Jan. 24, 2008 and Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society, Feb. 27, 2008 Legal Threats, Chilling Effects and Warming the Air, EDUCAUSE Live, Jan. 23, 2008 Digital Freedom University, Harvard and Northeastern, October 2007 Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies and Righting the Copyright Balance, Cornell University Computer Policy and Law Program, Ithaca, NY, Sept. 27 2007 Search and Privacy, Microsoft Faculty Summit, Redmond, WA, July, 2007 The University and The RIAA, IS2K7, Cambridge, MA, June 1, 2007 Search and Privacy, WWW2007, Banff, May, 2007 Section 230: At the Gates between Liability for Harmful Speech and Wikipedia (panelist), Wikimania 2006, Cambridge, MA, August 4, 2006 Keynote presentation, "Preserving Privacy as Technologies Change," 7th Annual IEEE Information Assurance Workshop, West Point, NY, June 22, 2006 DRM: Digital Rights Management or Digital "Restrictions" - DRM in the wake of the Sony "Rootkit" controversy, Association of the Bar of the City of New York, April 11, 2006 Wharton Technology Conference, February 24, 2006 Data Devolution: Corporate Information Security, Consumers and the Future of Regulation, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, UFL, February 3-4, 2006 UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process, Chapel Hill, NC, November 1, 2005 Why we care what happens in Paragon City, Austin Game Conference, October 28, 2005 (slides) Bloggers Rights, BlogHer, Santa Clara, CA, July 30, 2005 Ask EFF, DEF CON 13, Las Vegas, NV, July 29, 2005 Know Your Rights: Legal inoculation for contagious media, Eyebeam Contagious Media Workshop, New York, NY, May 7, 2005 Fear-to-Peer: A debate about filesharing on campus, Princeton, NJ, May 6, 2005 "Endangered Devices and How We Can Save Them," O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, San Diego, California, March 14-17, 2005 (presentation) (slides, website) and Computers, Freedom, & Privacy, April 12-15, 2005, Seattle, Wash. Vermont Law School Solutions Conference, April 8-10, 2005, South Royalton, Vermont Signal or Noise 2k5, April 8, 2005, Cambridge, Mass. "Can't we all just get along," South by Southwest Music Festival, March 19, 2005 International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism, and Security, Madrid, Spain, March 8-11, 2005 Not All Fun and Games, Santa Clara Law School Computer and High Technology Law Journal Symposium, February 11, 2005 Regulating Knowledge: Costs, Risks, and Models of Innovation, Brussels, Belgium, November 9-10, 2004 (presentation, software patents, small business, and the public interest) Internet Service Provider Best Practices, ISPCON, Santa Clara, CA, November 3, 2004 E-Lection 2004 Symposium, John Marshall Law School, Chicago, IL, October 1, 2004 (panel: What's Inside that Black Box, how intellectual property clouds the e-voting picture) DEF CON 12, Las Vegas, NV, July 30-August 1, 2004 (panels: Ask EFF, Digital Television Liberation) BlogOn: The Business of Social Media, Berkeley, Cal., July 23, 2004 (panel) Supernova 2004, Santa Clara, California, June 24-25, 2004 (panel, IP vs. IP: Intellectual Property Meets the Internet Protocol, June 24) Wizards of OS 3: The Future of the Digital Commons, Berlin, Germany, June 10-12, 2004 (alternative compensation systems panel and workshops June 12); workshop Where next for copyright in the new Europe?, June 13, 2004 Free Bitflows, Vienna, Austria, June 3-4, 2004 (compensation decentral panel June 4) "Copyright and the Library of the Future," AISTI, Forces of Innovation on Digital Libraries, Santa Fe, NM, May 11, 2004 (presentation)Computers, Freedom & Privacy, Chilling Effects and Suing File Sharers (panels), Berkeley, CA, April 20-23, 2004 Battling for Ownership of the Arts, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL., April 17-18, 2004 Interz0ne III, Atlanta, GA, April 16, 2004 ABA Intellectual Property Law Conference, Washington, DC, April 1-2, 2004 Panel, "Weblogs and the Law," SXSW Interactive, Austin, TX, March 15, 2004 "Reclaiming the Internet," National Education Association conference, Seattle, Washington, March 5, 2004 Panel, "Digital Music: What Does the Future Hold?" Santa Clara Computer & High Technology Law Journal Symposium, Santa Clara, CA, February 6, 2004 Panel, "Online Piracy," California State Bar Association, Beverly Hills, CA, February 2, 2004 Panel, Digital Independence, San Francisco, CA, January 31, 2004 The Freedom to Discover, IDLELO Conference on the Digital Commons, Cape Town, South Africa, Jan 11-15, 2004 Rip, Burn, Sue, (panel) iHollywood Music 2.0, Los Angeles, CA, December 8, 2003 Copyright and the Networked Computer, Washington D.C., November 6-8, 2003 ISPCon, October 20, 2003 What's Happening? Downloading Music, St. Albans Issues Forum, October 17, 2003 Privacy in the Age of Digital Copying, California State Bar Association, Cyberlaw Section, September 6, 2003 August 1-3, 2003 (presentation August 2) Search Engine Legal Issues, Search Engine Strategies, San Jose, California, August 19, 2003 Pacific Crest Technology Conference, Vail, Colorado, August 12, 2003 The Internet's Private Cops, DEFCON 11, August 1-3, 2003 (presentation August 2) Content: Tech, ILAW Stanford, 2003, July 2, 2003 (presentation) Open Source Content Management Conference, May 28-30, 2003 (presentation May 30 PPT or openoffice) "DRM in Practice: Rights, Restrictions, and Reality", O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, April 22-25, 2003 (panel April 23) Copy the Rights, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, February 26, 2003, 11:00-17:00, Rotterdam (presentation) "Reconciling the Commons and the Marketplace", The New Gatekeepers: A Conference on Free Expression and the Arts, Columbia University National Arts Journalism Program, November 20-21 2002 (presentation Nov. 21) (New York Times review, The Censor and the Artist: A Murky Border) "Mickey Mice? Potential Ramifications of Eldred v. Ashcroft", Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal Symposium, The State of Intellectual Property or the Intellectual Property State?, November 8, 2002 DIY Remix Forum, CMJ Music Marathon, Oct. 31-Nov. 2, 2002 (presentation Nov. 2) "Trademarks and Free Speech," International Trademark Association's Trademarks in Cyberspace, September 19, 2002 (Brussels), September 25, 2002 (New York) "Copyright Term Extensions, Opposing Views on the Eldred Case," Association of American Publishers, July 17, 2002 "The Politics of DVD," panelist, DVD Association's DVD 2002, June 3-4, 2002 (presentation June 3) "Chilling Effects Clearinghouse," Connectivity 2002, May 21-23, 2002 (presentation May 23) "Eldred v. Ashcroft," panelist, New York State Bar Association, Intellectual Property Law Section and Cardozo School of Law, May 22, 2002, 6-8 p.m., Weil Gotshal & Manges "Who Controls New Media? Open Art in Closed Systems", Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Peter B. Lewis Theater, March 21, 2002 "Are New Media Replacing Old Media?", panelist, St. John's Law School Communications Law Conference, March 22, 2002 Music and Theft: Sampling, Technology, and the Law, A Conference at Duke Law School, (participant), March 30, 2002 P (through ISP) to P: The Internet's Other Intermediaries, moderator, O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer and Web Services Conference, November 6, 2001 From Open Source to Openlaw: Public Collaboration on Legal Argument, Grassroots Use of the Internet, March 10, 2001 Digital Content Control and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, guest panelist, Internet & Society 2000, November 28, 2000 Multimedia and the Internet, N.Y. Software Summit, September 25, 2000 Copyright and Plagiarism (PDF), Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Regional Sponsors' Conference, September 22, 2000
I continue to work with the Berkman Center to develop an open-source courseware package for classroom use and for its distance lecture and discussion series. Read about the Bot, or see courseware version 1.0 in action in the 1998 Internet & Society Class. From time to time, I also update the annotation engine, a proxy that predates (and outlasted) ThirdVoice in allowing people to post and view notes on remote web pages.
While at Harvard, I led the Berkman Center's Representation in Cyberspace Study in conjunction with the ICANN Membership Advisory Committee, and helped to webcast three of ICANN's international public meetings. I also led the Center's cybercourse on Privacy in Cyberspace, with Prof. Arthur Miller and was a teaching fellow for Law of Cyberspace at UMass Amherst.
Last updated 2010
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