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Important Cyberlaw & Info-Tech Policy Books (2012 Edition)

by Adam Thierer on December 17, 2012 · Add a Comment

The number of major cyberlaw and information tech policy books being published annually continues to grow at an astonishing pace, so much so that I have lost the ability to read and review all of them. In past years, I put together end-of-year lists of important info-tech policy books (here are the lists for 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011) and I was fairly confident I had read just about everything of importance that was out there (at least that was available in the U.S.). But last year that became a real struggle for me and this year it became an impossibility. A decade ago, there was merely a trickle of Internet policy books coming out each year. Then the trickle turned into a steady stream. Now it has turned into a flood. Thus, I’ve had to become far more selective about what is on my reading list. (This is also because the volume of journal articles about info-tech policy matters has increased exponentially at the same time.)

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to discuss what I regard to be the five most important titles of 2012, briefly summarize a half dozen others that I’ve read, and then I’m just going to list the rest of the books out there. I’ve read most of them but I have placed an asterisk next to the ones I haven’t. Please let me know what titles I have missed so that I can add them to the list. (Incidentally, here’s my compendium of all the major tech policy books from the 2000s and here’s the running list of all my book reviews.)

Phi Beta Iota: A total “WOW.”

Includes, in this order (click here to read reviews, below to reach Amazon page):

Rebecca MacKinnon – Consent of the Network: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom

Susan Crawford – Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age

John Palfrey & Urs Gasser – Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems

Christopher Yoo – The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Transforming the Network

Brett Frischmann –Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources

and others.

2012/12/182012/12/18

Rickard Falkvinge: Banks and Credit Cards Company Blockade of WikiLeaks Illegal and Now Being Fought

Culture, Economics/True Cost, Money

Pirate Party Presses Charges Against Banks For WikiLeaks Blockade

Corruption: Today, the Swedish Pirate Party filed formal charges against Swedish banks for their discrimination against WikiLeaks, which has been systematically denied donations by payment providers since 2010.

Numerous payment service providers, including Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, have blocked donations to WikiLeaks and other legal operations since 2010. Banks have been a part of the network of these service providers, which means that the banks actively participate in stopping donations without legitimate grounds. The Swedish Pirate Party says that this behavior is unacceptable and cause for grave concern, and has filed charges against the Swedish banks in question to try this behavior in court.

The charges were filed eariler today with the Swedish Finansinspektionen, the authority which oversees bank licenses and abuse of position. This follows an earlier initiative from the Pirate Party to regulate credit card companies on the European level in order to deny them the ability to determine who gets to trade and who doesn’t.

Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Banks and Credit Cards Company Blockade of WikiLeaks Illegal and Now Being Fought”

2012/12/13

Graphic: Public Governance & Feedback Loop Integrity Enhanced by Public Intelligence

Analysis, Citizen-Centered, Corruption, Earth Orientation, Economics/True Cost, History, ICT-IT, Leadership-Integrity, Multinational Plus, Policies-Harmonization, Political, Processing, Reform, Resilience, Strategy-Holistic Coherence, Threats, Tribes, True Cost, United Nations

Source: 2013 Public Governance in the 21st Century: New Rules, Hybrid Forms, One Constant – The Public

2012/12/132012/12/13

Event: 31 May – 2 June 2013 San Francisco Governance and Utopian Imagination (Public Administration Theory Network)

Economics/True Cost, Governance, Politics

2013 Conference “Governance and the Utopian Imagination”

Though the term is most famously associated with Thomas More's Utopia (1516), the basic idea of imagining another, better world (eutopia, good place) that does not yet exist on Earth (utopia, no-place) is one with a long, rich history that touches perhaps all human societies and cultures. However over the course of the twentieth century, in some discourses utopianism and the utopian imagination came to be viewed as dangerous. They became associated not with dreams of a better world but with the most nightmarish, violent aspects of modernity and state-led efforts to make those dreams an actuality. In the wake of the collapse of state socialist projects and the rise in recent decades of what some call “market utopianism,” there has been a resurgence of interest and debate in the social sciences and humanities regarding utopian thought and the practical construction of “real utopias.” These efforts reconsider the role of utopian thought in human life in light of this history and seek workable alternatives to contemporary political, social, and economic governance.

This year's meeting of the Public Administration Theory Network seeks to re-engage “the utopian imagination” and invites contributions from across the social sciences, humanities, and fields of professional and community practice that critically explore the intersection of contemporary governance, utopia, and the human impulse to make better worlds.

I. Theoretical re-engagements with “utopia” that explore questions, such as:
–Can “utopia” be productively rehabilitated in light of history and critique? Or is it inextricably linked with Western hegemony and violence?
–How can or should traditions from the Global South, indigenous and native peoples, Asia, and elsewhere inform a re-examination of “Western” theories and experiences of utopianism?
–What role can or should government and public administration play in today's utopian imaginings?

II. Historical and/or genealogical analyses that explore utopia's intersection with: democracy, capitalism, liberalism, dystopia, colonialism, human nature, race, gender, sexuality, (anti-)globalization, innovation.

III. Critical explorations of contemporary sources of “utopian” and “dystopian” narrative and imagery and their relationship to matters of governance, such as: technology, management, environmentalism, economics, film, literature, philosophy, religion.

IV. Theoretically informed case studies that analyze the practical and institutional possibilities of moving from “utopian imagination” to building and governing “real utopias” and “intentional communities.”

RFP Flyer-short.pdf (99k) RFP Flyer-long.pdf (137k)

ACCEPTED FOR PRESENTATION: 2013 Public Governance in the 21st Century: New Rules, Hybrid Forms, One Constant – The Public

2012/12/072012/12/07

Michel Bauwens: Rebirth of the Guilds

Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy

220px-Michel_Bauwens_crop — Michel Bauwens

Essay of the Day: Rebirth of Guilds

A return to guilds as an organizing force for the worker of the future will bring with it another medieval institution: a return of ownership of means of production to the individual. In our surveys of distributed workers over the years, we have noted a consistent finding. Workers report that the technology they have in their home offices is more advanced and sophisticated than what their employers provide in the central office.

Dr. Charles Grantham, Norma Owen and Terry Musch have written a five part article series reconsidering the Guilds as an appropriate form for current organisations in the p2p age:

“This series of blogs traces the history of guilds and the modern forces driving their re-emergence: failure of industrial institutions, technology that speeds up learning, a search for intimate community and the de-evolution of power from the central state. Further, the need for social change is discussed along with a prescription of the functions these new guilds can perform, and those they cannot. We conclude this series with a brief discussion of how modern guilds can offer ownership of the means of social preservation to workers of the future.”

EXTRACT

Driving Forces

There are several forces, which are driving the rebirth of guilds as a way of organizing talent pools. While there are a myriad of social, economic and political pressures on the 21st Century global economy. We feel four are of particular interest.

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Rebirth of the Guilds”

2012/11/282012/11/28

Penguin: Trans-Pacific Partnership – Corporate Legalized Theft in 3 Parts

Economics/True Cost

Spengler salivates for the continuing sell-out of Prols whose grandparents built, with the direct support of government, the infrastructure he thinks “entrepreneurial innovation” will rebuild. Try activating the cement-mixers.

Part 1: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: This is What Corporate Governance Looks Like

Part 2: Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Corporate Coup

Part 3: The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What “Free Trade” Actually Means

Phi Beta Iota: Integrity and Truth are coming back into style.

2012/11/282012/11/28

Gold Transformer: Post-US world born in Phnom Penh — But See Also CELAC Etcetera

Economics/True Cost

Post-US world born in Phnom Penh

By Spengler

Asia Times, Nov 27, 2012

It is symptomatic of the national condition of the United States that the worst humiliation ever suffered by it as a nation, and by a US president personally, passed almost without comment last week. I refer to the November 20 announcement at a summit meeting in Phnom Penh that 15 Asian nations, comprising half the world's population, would form a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership excluding the United States.

President Barack Obama attended the summit to sell a US-based Trans-Pacific Partnership excluding China. He didn't. The American led-partnership became a party to which no-one came.

Instead, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, will form a club and leave out the United States. As 3 billion Asians become prosperous, interest fades in the prospective contribution of 300 million Americans – especially when those Americans decline to take risks on new technologies. America's great economic strength, namely its capacity to innovate, exists mainly in memory four years after the 2008 economic crisis.

Continue reading “Gold Transformer: Post-US world born in Phnom Penh — But See Also CELAC Etcetera”

Category: Economics/True Cost

Mike Nelson: Adam Theirer’s Annual Cyberlaw and Info-Tech Policy Book Review