Academics

Welcome

Jonathan Zittrain is a Fellow by Special Election at Keble College and a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. He is also Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he co-founded Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 1996. From 2005 to 2008 he was the inaugural holder of the Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford. With students, he began Chilling Effects, a web site that tracks and archives legal threats made to Internet content producers. Google now sends its users to Chilling Effects when it has altered its search results at the behest of national governments.

His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education. He was co-counsel with Lawrence Lessig in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which challenged the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.  The case lost 7-2 at the U.S. Supreme Court.

He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia in 2002, and now as part of the OpenNet Initiative he has co-edited a study of Internet filtering by national governments, "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering."

His book about the future of the now-intertwined Internet and PC was released in spring 2008 from Yale University Press and Penguin UK -- and under a Creative Commons licence.

Papers may be found at <http://www.jz.org>.

Research Interests

• Cyberlaw
• Internet filtering
• Cryptography
• Privacy
• Technology in education
• Torts.

Recent Publications

• Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It (Penguin UK and Yale University Press, 2008)
• 'The Generative Internet' in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 119 (2006), p. 1974
• Internet Law: Technological Complements to Copyright
• Internet Law: Jurisdiction
• The Torts Game: Defending Mean Joe Greene
• 'China and Internet Filters' in Nieman Reports (2004)
• 'Be Careful What You Ask For: Reconciling a Global Internet and Local Law' in Who Rules the Net?, ed. (Cato Institute, 2003)
• 'Internet Points of Control' in Boston College Law Review (2003)
• 'Normative Principles for the Evaluation of Free and Proprietary Software' in University of Chicago Law Review (2003)
• 'The Copyright Cage' in Legal Affairs, ed. (2003)

Academic Biography

• Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford University (2005 - present)
• Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Harvard Law School (2005 - present)
• Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Assistant Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Harvard Law School (2001 - 2005)
• Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School (2000 - 2001)
• Co-founder and Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (1997 - 2000)
• JD, Harvard Law School; MPA, John F. Kennedy School of Government; BS, Yale University (None - present)