In this talk Julie Cohen will discuss the discourse of information policy reform that has been organized principally around the themes of “access to knowledge” and “network neutrality.” Some information policy problems, however, cannot be solved simply by prescribing greater “openness” or more “neutrality.” In particular, the legal specification of information rights and the design of information architectures should be guided by the need to preserve room for play in the use of cultural resources, the performance of identity, and the ongoing adaptation of artifacts to everyday needs.
Bio:
Julie E. Cohen is a Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. She teaches and writes about intellectual property law and privacy law, with particular focus on copyright and on the intersection of copyright and privacy rights in the networked information society. She is the author of Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2011) and a co-author of Copyright in a Global Information Economy (Aspen Law & Business, 3d ed. 2010), and is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge.