IPITevents

Added on Mar 3rd, 2008

This is one of two internet law lectures Prof. Zittrain is giving at LSE on the first week of March.

The Internet is primed for a meltdown–and the most obvious cures are
just as bad.

The engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation - and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. iPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and Sky+ represent the first wave of Internet-centred products that can’t be easily modified by anyone but their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in extraordinary but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted - but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet - its “generativity” - is at risk.

Lecture I: The End of the Internet (Tuesday 4th March)
Time: 17:00-18:30
Venue: D.202 - Second Floor Clement House (at LSE)