Representing Abu-Ghazaleh Legal Services (ABLE), Mr. Rami Olwan, an E-Commerce Legal Consultant, attended the Berkman Center for Internet and Society’s Internet Law Program, which was held at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, May 13-15, 2004.
The Internet Law Program lectures addressed the most controversial cyber law issues being debated by lawmakers in the US and internationally. The lectures were designed to appeal to professionals from diverse backgrounds, including business, law, education, technology, policy, and journalism.
The Berkman Center has offered the Internet Law Program in Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, and Stanford, California. This year’s program has returned to Cambridge for an exploration of pressing issues like legal regulation of the Internet, information technology, security, privacy, close versus open source software, free speech, and the Internet and democracy.
Internet Law Program instructors included some of the world's most renowned experts in the field. Professor Lawrence Lessig from Stanford Law School examined the issue of pornography. Lessig stated that although there are different technical and/or legal mechanisms that have been put in place to protect minors from pornography on the Internet, such mechanisms need to be more effective.
He also tackled the issue of free culture. Lessig discussed how copyright law has radically changed over the past years and went far in protecting creativity and culture especially in relation to the code.
Professor Jonathan Zittrain from Harvard Law School discussed the issue of Internet governance and the role of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in administering the Internet. In his presentation, Zittrain also dealt with Intellectual Property aspects for software and the fight over software patents.
Other professors included Yochai Benkler from Yale Law School, William Fisher & Charles Nesson from Harvard Law School and John Palfrey, Executive Director of Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School.
Professors William Fisher & Charles Nesson jointly discussed the future of copyright on the Internet. The presentation dealt with legal and possible responses to the problem of entertainment industries and financial losses. The two professors discussed their approaches to this problem particularly alternative compensation systems and new models such as iTunes and others.
Meanwhile, Professor Yochai Benkler tackled the phenomena of peer production in cyberspace and the principle of End-to-End (e2e), which basically implies that information would flow from one place to another over Internet networks without any kind of restriction whatsoever.