E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
Ian Ayres ian.ayres at yale.edu
Corey Brettschneider corey_brettschneider at brown.edu
Mary Dudziak mary.l.dudziak at emory.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Abbe Gluck abbe.gluck at yale.edu
Mark Graber mgraber at law.umaryland.edu
Stephen Griffin sgriffin at tulane.edu
Jonathan Hafetz jonathan.hafetz at shu.edu
Jeremy Kessler jkessler at law.columbia.edu
Andrew Koppelman akoppelman at law.northwestern.edu
Marty Lederman msl46 at law.georgetown.edu
Sanford Levinson slevinson at law.utexas.edu
David Luban david.luban at gmail.com
Gerard Magliocca gmaglioc at iupui.edu
Jason Mazzone mazzonej at illinois.edu
Linda McClain lmcclain at bu.edu
John Mikhail mikhail at law.georgetown.edu
Frank Pasquale pasquale.frank at gmail.com
Nate Persily npersily at gmail.com
Michael Stokes Paulsen michaelstokespaulsen at gmail.com
Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at yu.edu
Rick Pildes rick.pildes at nyu.edu
David Pozen dpozen at law.columbia.edu
Richard Primus raprimus at umich.edu
K. Sabeel Rahmansabeel.rahman at brooklaw.edu
Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Neil Siegel siegel at law.duke.edu
David Super david.super at law.georgetown.edu
Brian Tamanaha btamanaha at wulaw.wustl.edu
Nelson Tebbe nelson.tebbe at brooklaw.edu
Mark Tushnet mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
Adam Winkler winkler at ucla.edu
I have posted a short essay, The Future of Free Expression in a Digital Age, on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In the twenty-first century, at the very moment that our economic and social lives are increasingly dominated by information technology and information flows, the judge-made doctrines of the First Amendment seem increasingly irrelevant to the key free speech battles of the future. The most important decisions affecting the future of freedom of speech will not occur in constitutional law; they will be decisions about technological design, legislative and administrative regulations, the formation of new business models, and the collective activities of end-users. Moreover, the values of freedom of expression will become subsumed withing a larger set of concerns that I call knowledge and information policy. The essay uses debates over network neutrality and intermediary liability as examples of these trends.
Freedom of speech depends not only on the mere absence of state censorship, but also on an infrastructure of free expression. Properly designed, it gives people opportunities to create and build technologies and institutions that other people can use for communication and association. Hence policies that promote innovation and protect the freedom to create new technologies and applications are increasingly central to free speech values.
The great tension in twentieth century free speech theory was the increasing protection of the formal freedom to speak against the background of mass broadcast technologies that reserved practical freedom to a relative few. The tension in twenty-first century free speech theory is somewhat different: New technologies offer ordinary citizens a vast range of new opportunities to speak, create and publish; they decentralize control over culture, over information production and over access to mass audiences. But these same technologies also make information and culture increasingly valuable commodities that can be bought and sold and exported to markets around the world. These two conflicting effects- toward greater participation and propertization - are produced by the same set of technological advances. Technologies that create new possibilities for democratic cultural participation often threaten business models that seek to commodify knowledge and control its access and distribution. Intellectual property and telecommunications law may be the terrain on which this struggle occurs, but what is at stake is the practical structure of freedom of speech in the new century. Posted
8:05 AM
by JB [link]