Category Archives: Talks & Conferences

Off to the SF Bay Area

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Early Tuesday I’m off to the Bay Area, where I’ll be attending two conferences back-to-back: Privacy Law Scholars 2011 and Law & Society 2011.

As I concentrate more and more on thinking and writing about privacy issues, Privacy Law Scholars has become the most important conference in the season. The papers tend to be excellent, and the people running it have found a great conference formula: paper presentations are limited to 10 minutes — by the discussant, with a brief reply by the author. Attendees are expected to, and do, read the papers. Discussions are great. The only problem is that there are multiple tracks, and I want to be three places at once. I’m discussing an important new paper by Colin Bennett, one of the deans of privacy studies.

Law & Society is a great big barn of an event. It seems as if half the legal academy is there. There are an enormous number of papers in parallel, and it can be so overwhelming that I sometimes just give in to the temptation to meet people in the hallways and pick their brains. I’m moderating a panel on Cutting Edge Issues in Privacy Law — which they’ve put at 8:15 am on a Sunday morning. At that hour, I just hope the audience outnumbers the panel.

Maybe I’ll see you at one of these events?

Posted in Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Off to the SF Bay Area

CDT Publishes My “Lessons Learned Too Well” Talk

Posted on May 9, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

CDT has published my Lessons Learned Too Well: The Evolution of Internet Regulation talk as one of its “CDT Fellows Focus” postings.

Posted in Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on CDT Publishes My “Lessons Learned Too Well” Talk

Timing

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I remember flying up to DC shortly after they turned the air traffic control system back on post-9/11. People here in Miami were weird about it — they treated it as a very dangerous thing to do. For some reason I didn’t feel threatened at all. That said, the experience at the airport, in which a great effort was made to search everything, and in the air, in which for the first time we told to stay in our seats for the last 30 minutes of the approach to DC, was decidedly off-putting. The atmosphere on the plane was oddly strained.

Now, once again I’m flying early Tuesday to the DC area (although actually landing at BWI and spending the day in Baltimore), right when the airport security staff are likely to be at their jumpiest. Who can blame them?

Still, I cannot help but think that the giant security apparatus, and the huge dead-weight costs of people going to the airport early and wasting time, is one of the clearest signs that that we are not, despite recent events, succeeding in the ‘war on terror’ because we are letting our choices and expenditures be defined by those who do not wish us well. Maybe we’d be better off trusting those metal cabin doors to protect us from hijacks, and accepting that even so there can be no perfect safety in a complicated world.

I’d take the risk, but I’m not the one who would have to explain it if something went wrong, and those who do have gigantic institutional incentives to be, and even more to be seen to be, risk-averse. Thus, the FBI openly is being transformed into a domestic intelligence agency, one charged with preventing rather then solving crimes. In a perfect world, of course, prevention is better than cure, and punishment is not even cure. But there is no way an FBI or any other public agency can seriously undertake this mission without, and there is no other word for it, spying on a lot of people. I think history has a few things to teach us about how that works out for societies as a rule, and I wonder how much we are heeding those lessons.

On Wednesday, I’ll be in DC visiting family and friends. On Thursday and Friday I’m going to the GIGANet Doubleheader. My part of the talking will be about IP numbers on Thursday, and about ICANN on Friday. There’s a written paper for the Friday talk.

Posted in 9/11 & Aftermath, National Security, Talks & Conferences | 1 Comment

GIGANet Doubleheader in DC May 5-6

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

I’ll be speaking not once but twice at the GIGANet conference being held at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, D.C., May 5 & May 6. The title of the conference is Global Internet Governance: Research and Public Policy Challenges for the Next Decade. The first day is public-policy-oriented, and I’m on a panel at 11am on “IP addressing in the new age of scarcity” — an exciting topic given the warp-speed developments over at ARIN. (That link is a bit obscure, but trust me, this is a big deal.)

The second day is more academic, and I’ll be discussing my recent paper on ICANN’s “Affirmation of Commitments” on the first panel, at 9am, alongside presentations by Jonathan Weinberg and Konstantinos Komaitis, which I consider to be most excellent company.

The whole thing is almost a Who’s Who of governance-of-internet studies including many foreign speakers. There’s a keynote by Assistant Secretary for Commerce Larry Strickling at 12:30 on May 5. Admission to the event is free, but you should register if you plan to go. And they say that if you email icsis@american.edu before May 1, you can get free guest parking — otherwise parking is either difficult or expensive. There’s also going to be remote access, see details at the link above.

Posted in Internet, Law: Internet Law, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on GIGANet Doubleheader in DC May 5-6

Another Conference I’d Like to Go To

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

The Surveillance Studies Network has launched a call for papers for Cultures of Surveillance for an event to be held at UCL London Sept. 29-Oct. 1. Looks like I’d learn stuff — they’re very interdisciplinary.

Unfortunately I’m already planning to be in Oxford for the OII’s A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, Sept. 21-24, where I’m giving a paper. And I don’t think I can justify staying on in the UK for another week to go to both. Even if I were to crash on friends’ couches to hold down expenses — and I think I still have enough friends there to pull it off — I could never justify missing nearly two weeks of classes when I’m going to be teaching first-year Torts again.

Pity.

Posted in Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Another Conference I’d Like to Go To

Video of “Lessons Learned Too Well: The Evolution of Internet Regulation”

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

The law school has put the entire video of my installation into the Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein Endowed Distinguished Professorship up online. Unlike my prepared text, the video version allows you to see the other presenters, including my good friends Vice Dean Patrick Gudridge, Prof. Jonathan Weinberg and Cindy Cohn, as they do their job and vastly exaggerate my accomplishments. There’s even a surprise guest appearance by Prof. David Abraham at the end.


Posted in Personal, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Video of “Lessons Learned Too Well: The Evolution of Internet Regulation”