Why the Information Society made a good bunch of Law obsolete

On 14 May 2012 I imparted a seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property at the University of Alicante, Spain, kindly invited by Aureio López-Tarruella, expert and professor on Intellectual Property.

The purpose of my session was to provide a frame to explain while Law is nowadays having more trouble than usual in trying to solve many of today’s problems. In other words, the goal was not to enter in specific issues that Law can difficultly fix, but to reflect on how the foundations of our industrial society are being challenged by digitization and Information and Communication Technologies and, thus, how the Law that was built upon those foundations is shaking from head to toes.

The (long!) session was split in three parts

  1. The Network Society, or how industrial institutions’ feet became of clay, which explains how the end of scarcity and transaction costs in the areas of knowledge is questioning most of our institutions — Law amongst them.
  2. The Web 2.0, or how individuals became mass media, which explains how the addition of the social layer to the World Wide Web has transformed communication, culture and creation as we knew it.
  3. The Internet, or how Law became (even) more complicated, where some specific practices and malpractices are identified on a typical task done through the Internet — and challenging the concepts of who or what is the sender, the receiver, the message, the channel or the code.

Here follow the materials that I used in the session and a short collection of bibliographic references.

The Network Society, or how industrial institutions’ feet became of clay

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Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2012). The Network Society, or how industrial institutions’ feet became of clay. Seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property, University of Alicante, 14 May 2012.
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Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2012). The Network Society, or how industrial institutions’ feet became of clay. Seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property, University of Alicante, 14 May 2012.

The Web 2.0, or how individuals became mass media

[click here to enlarge]

Downloads:

logo of Prezi presentation
Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2012). The Web 2.0, or how individuals became mass media. Seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property, University of Alicante, 14 May 2012.
logo of PDF file
Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2012). The Web 2.0, or how individuals became mass media. Seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property, University of Alicante, 14 May 2012.

The Internet, or how Law became (even) more complicated

[click here to enlarge]

Downloads:

logo of Prezi presentation
Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2012). The Internet, or how Law became (even) more complicated. Seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property, University of Alicante, 14 May 2012.
logo of PDF file
Prezi slides:
Peña-López, I. (2012). The Internet, or how Law became (even) more complicated. Seminar at the Magister Lvcentinvs on Intellectual Property, University of Alicante, 14 May 2012.

Further reading

Benkler, Y. (2002). “Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm”. In The Yale Law Journal, 112 (3), 369–446. New Haven: The Yale Law Journal Company.
Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. Lecture presented on April 18, 2006 at Harvard Law School. Cambridge: Harvard Law School.
Berners-Lee, T. (2010). Linked Data. Cambridge: World Wide Web Consortium.
Castells, M. (2000). “Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society”. In British Journal of Sociology, Jan-Mar 2000, 51 (1), 5-24. London: Routledge.
Castells, M. (2004). “Informationalism, Networks, And The Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint”. In Castells, M. (Ed.),
The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Castells, M. (2007). “Communication, Power and Counter-power in the Network Society”. In International Journal of Communication, 1, 238-266. Los Angeles: USC Annenberg Press.
Dutton, W. H. (2007). Through the Network (of Networks) – the Fifth Estate. Inaugural Lecture, Examination Schools, University of Oxford, 15 October 2007. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute.
Introna, L. D. & Nissenbaum, H. (2000). “Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters”. In The Information Society, 16 (3), 169-185. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.
Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture. New York: The Penguin Press.
Peña-López, I. (2010a). “Policy-making for digital development: the role of the government”. In Proceedings of ICTD 2010. 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. London: IEEE.
Peña-López, I. (2010b). “Towards a comprehensive model of the digital economy”. In Proceedings of ICTD 2010. 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. London: IEEE.
Peguera, M. (Coord.) (2010). Principios de Derecho de la Sociedad de la Información. Madrid: Aranzadi.
Raymond, E. S. (1999). The Cathedral & the Bazaar. (revised edition: original edition 1999). Sebastopol: O’Reilly.
Zittrain, J. (2007). “Saving the Internet”. In Harvard Business Review, Jun 1, 2007. Cambridge: Harvard University.

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