On Jan 2 2014 the Legal Hackers NYC meetup hosted a forum Revenge Porn – Hacking Legal Solutions at the Made in NY Media Center in Brooklyn. The issue is specifically the victimization of women via the dissemination of sexually explicit pictures, pictures they never expected the world to see. This disturbing, but not necessarily illegal, phenomenon has been labeled Revenge Porn and is at the crux of the ever-growing tension between free expression and privacy on the Internet. A distinguished panel explored possible solutions to this growing problem (legal, regulatory, technological, and market-based), as well as the challenges in ensuring these solutions are both effective and constitutionally sound. Speakers were: Derek Bambauer – Professor of Law, University of Arizona; Lee Rowland – Staff Attorney, ACLU; Mark Jaffe – Partner, Tor Ekeland, P.C.; Ari Ezra Waldman – Associate Director, Institute for Information Law & Policy, New York Law School; and Jeremy Glickman – Deputy Chief of the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau, New York County. Moderators were David Giller of the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic, and Bianca Bosker, Executive Tech Editor, Huffington Post. Video is sponsored by ISOC-NY.
On Monday December 9 2013, NYC Digital hosted a .NYC Public Workshop and Info Session at Brooklyn Law School. The event was an open forum where citizens and business could become familiar with, and give input to, the opportunities provided by the approaching launch of the City’s own top level Internet domain. The meetup began with a presentation on .NYC by NYC Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot and Neustar Vice President, Registry Services, Jeff Neuman. This was followed by group breakout sessions. Topics included: what is a TLD, .NYC launch plans, what .NYC means for your business or nonprofit organization, how to apply for a .NYC domain, and more. The event was webcast live on the Internet Society Chapters Livestream Channel. Video is below:
On Wednesday April 24 2013 the Internet Society’s New York Chapter will webcast the April Brooklyn Tech Meetup live from Brooklyn Law School. This months event features demos of iPhone video app Montaj, and moody journal app Feely, plus a presentation by Aswini Anburajan and Ky Harlin of BuzzFeed, one of the City’s most successful startups. Although right now there are a couple of slots open, this event will likely be sold out by the time doors open. No live captions.
Today, Thursday, January 31st, 2013, Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic (BLIP) and the New Networks Institute will host a Reverse ALEC Legal Hackathon at Brooklyn Law School. The invitation-only event, something of an emergency meetup, brings together experts, lawyers, advocates, technologists and competitors, who are concerned with the state of telecommunications in the United States. The goal is to create consensus and build a campaign to define principles for model regulation, pursue legal actions, and create a working path to accomplish the following goals
• Reverse the ALEC-state-based telecom and cable infrastructure deregulation, which has passed in varying degrees in multiple states.
• Stop the immediate threat: AT&T has petitioned the FCC to remove all telecom regulations and keep broadband networks closed, based on concepts in the ALEC-state based ‘model legislation’ that is now used in states and will be presented to Congress.
• Create a proactive, pro jobs and economic growth alternative model that is based on the principle that everyone in America is entitled to a very high speed broadband service that can handle cable, internet and phone services, where the customer selects the providers they want.
Participants include Susan Lerner (Common Cause), Bruce Kushnick (New Networks), Jonathan Askin (Brooklyn Law), Earl Comstock, and David Rosen. The morning plenary session will consist of three panels to outline the issues which, I am happy to report, ISOC-NY has arranged to webcast live via the Internet Society Chapters Webcasting Channel. There will be an opportunity to participate remotely via the livestream chat. No live captions, sorry.
What: Reverse ALEC Legal Hackathon webcast When: Thursday, January 31st, 2013 – 0930-1300 EST | 1430-1800 UTC Where: http://www.livestream.com/internetsocietychapters Twitter: #reverseALEC Agenda:
Panel 1: Opening Remarks.
Panel 2: Dialogues for Working Towards Consensus.
Panel 3: Panel 3: Reversing ALEC – What Do You Want to Discuss?
More information
AT&T, Verizon and Centurylink, working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, have been able to pass “model deregulatory legislation” in 23 states and there will be more attacks in the remaining states. While these bills vary, their target is to close down all major telecom regulations and obligations including ‘carrier of last resort’ –where the company no longer has to provide phone service, much less upgrade the networks. At the same time, on the federal level, AT&T has petitioned the FCC to use this ALEC-based approach to close down the networks nationwide and has got the FCC to set up a ‘task force’ to make this happen.
While couched as “Internet freedom”, in reality this is only freedom of regulation for the communications companies. 50% of the US will be pushed into ‘digital dead zones’ as AT&T and Verizon are not upgrading about half of their territories; even wireless services are impacted as most cell sites and Wi-Fi hot spots connect to a wire.
As of this writing
• AT&T has submitted a Petition to the FCC to start the process of ‘transitioning the networks’. Comments are due on Jan 28th, 2013; Reply comments February 25, 2013
• Greg Walden of the House Telecommunications Subcommittee has announced hearings starting February 5th, 2013. We expect he will be proposing legislation in Congress to finish the job.
Alongside this, 19 states legislatures have closed municipalities’ ability to offer competitive broadband services and more are expected.
Giving the wired companies monopoly controls over their wires also impacts everything from competition and innovation to the price of service – or even who gets service, and customers will have no recourse. It also means no plans for major upgrades, thus no cable or even broadband competition. And it gives control over all aspects of service, from Net Neutrality or bandwidth caps, to acting as a policeman of content or blocking innovative services.
On April 15, 2012, the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic (BLIP) hosted their first-ever Legal Hackathon. An all-day event, the Hackathon explorde how technology can improve the law and vice versa.
Hacking the Act: Why Do SOPA and PIPA Matter? Speakers: Lon Jacobs (News Corp), Derek Bambauer (BLS Professor), Robert Levine (Journalist/Author), and Amyt Eckstein (Moses & Singer)
Government 2.0: A Primer on Crowdsourced Policymaking and Fostering Civic Engagement Through Technology.
Speakers: Art Chang (Tipping Point), Sherwin Siy (Public Knowledge), John Bergmayer (Public Knowledge)
Plus Andrew McLaughin (Tumblr), Tim Wu (FTC), Nina Paley (Question Copyright), Tim Hwang (Robot Robot and Hwang), and Jonathan Askin (BLS Professor and director of the BLIP Clinic)
HACK THE ACT
A week-long competition beginning the day of the Hackathon, interested teams will tackle a discreet issue of IP policy and collaboratively propose a new policy reform through online collaboration tool Docracy.
WORKSHOPS
Docracy is challenging participants to use their service to translate a legalese agreement into plain English using their service.
PriView is hacking an assessment standard to help people better understand the privacy policies they deal with every day.
Wikipedia will discuss the role of crowdsourcing in legal research
WhyNot is brainstorming how to create a platform that will crowdsource the next Mayor of NYC.
The Calyx Institute is challenging participants to hack a model privacy policy for Internet service providers.
Creative Rights for Creative Children (CREATE) is hacking a new IP curriculum for students that properly accounts for creative privileges like fair use.
joly 10:59 am on October 13, 2014 Permalink |
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