NYC LOCAL: Tuesday 11 November 2008 Information Law Institute: Alfred Kahn on Antitrust Law and Network Neutrality

[secretary]

<blockquote
  what="official Information Law Institute announcement"
  note="second event listed further down page"
  main-issue="the right of free public, business, tribal, and private use of 
our Net"
  right-name-of-net-neutrality="common carriage"
  edits="some odd characters removed">

Subject: Two events from Information Law Institute at NYU

            Date: 12:00 - 2:00 PM Tuesday, November 11, 2008
            Speaker: Dr. Alfred Kahn, NERA Economic Consulting
            Discussants: Professor Nicholas S. Economides, NYU Stern School of 
Business;
            Professor C. Scott Hemphill, Columbia Law School;
            Professor Michael Katz, NYU Stern School of Business
            Title: Antitrust Law and Network Neutrality
            Location: Snow Dining Room, 40 Washington Square South

      Dr. Alfred E. Kahn is the Robert Julius Thorne Professor of
Political Economy, Emeritus, at Cornell University and is a
Special Consultant to NERA. He has been Chairman of the New York
Public Service Commission, Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics
Board, Advisor to the President (Carter) on Inflation, and
Chairman of the Council on Wage and Price Stability. Dr. Kahn
received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from New York
University and earned his doctorate in economics from Yale
University. Following service in the US Army, he served as
Chairman of the Department of Economics at Ripon College in
Wisconsin .  He later moved to the Department of Economics at
Cornell University, where he remained until he took leave to
assume the Chairmanship of the New York Public Service
Commission. He has also served as a court-appointed expert in
State of New York v. Kraft General Foods, Inc., et al., US
District Court, SDNY, Advisor to New York Governor Carey on
Telecommunications Policy, and as a consultant to the Attorneys
General of New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, the Ford
Foundation, the National Commission on Food Marketing, the US
Federal Trade Commission, the Antitrust Division of the US
Department of Justice, the US Department of Agriculture, and the
City of Denver. For 15 years, he was a regular commentator on
PBS's "The Nightly Business Report."

      Nicholas S. Economides, Professor of Economics, Stern
School of Business, NYU. Nicholas Economides is an
internationally recognized academic authority on network
economics, electronic commerce and public policy. His fields of
specialization and research include the economics of networks,
especially of telecommunications, computers, and information, the
economics of technical compatibility and standardization,
industrial organization, the structure and organization of
financial markets and payment systems, antitrust, application of
public policy to network industries, strategic analysis of
markets and law and economics. He holds a PhD and MA in Economics
from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a BSc
in Mathematical Economics from the London School of
Economics. His papers on Net Neutrality include Net Neutrality on
the Internet: A Two-sided Market Analysis,
http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/Economides_Tag_Net_Neutrality.pdf
and "Net Neutrality," Non-Discrimination and Digital Distribution
of Content through the Internet,
http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/Economides_Net_Neutrality.pdf. His
website on the Economics of Networks,
http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/site.html, has been ranked as
one of the top four economics sites worldwide by The Economist
magazine.  Professor Economides is Executive Director of the NET
Institute, http://www.NETinst.org, a worldwide focal point for
research on the economics of network and high technology
industries.

      C. Scott Hemphill, Associate Professor of Law, Columbia Law
School. Articles Editor, Stanford Law Review. Law clerk to Judge
Richard A. Posner, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit,
2002-2003. Law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court of
the United States, 2003-2004. John M. Olin Fellow, Columbia Law
School, 2004-2006. Joined the Columbia faculty in 2006. Current
areas of teaching and research interest include antitrust and
regulation of industry, intellectual property, the economic
structure of legal practice, and statutory interpretation.

      Michael Katz joined New York University Stern School of
Business as a Harvey Golub Professor of Business Leadership and a
Professor of Management in July 2007. Professor Katz teaches
courses in competitive and corporate strategy. Before joining NYU
Stern, Professor Katz held the Sarin Chair in Strategy and
Leadership at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School
of Business. In addition to his academic service, Professor Katz
has twice held positions in government.  He served during the
second Bush Administration as Deputy Assistant Attorney General
for Economic Analysis in the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust
Division from September 2001 through January 2003. He served
during the Clinton Administration as Chief Economist of the
Federal Communications Commission from January 1994 through
January 1996.  Professor Katz has published numerous articles on
the economics of network industries, intellectual property,
telecommunications policy and antitrust enforcement. Professor
Katz earned his A.B. from Harvard University and a D.Phil. from
Oxford University, both in Economics.

      Abstract: This group of distinguished scholars will have a
moderated discussion, starting from Professor Kahn's discussion
of the issue, as set forth in his recent paper, The Threat of
Latter Day Progressives to an Authentically Liberal Economic
Policy,
http://aei-brookings.org/admin/authorpdfs/redirect-safely.php?fname=3D../=
pdffiles/WP08-03_topostv1.pdf. In so doing, they will reference
their own prior work (Hemphill's Network Neutrality, Rent
Extraction and the False Promise of Zero-Price Regulation,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3D1119982, and
Katz's The Economics of Product Line Restrictions, With An
Applications to the Network Neutrality Debate,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3D1003391 as
well as other relevant discussions of the issue, see, e.g.,
Thomas Rosch, Broadband Access Policy: The Role of Antitrust,
http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/rosch/080613broadbandaccess.pdf, and
Jonathan Nuechterlein, Antitrust Oversight of an Antitrust
Dispute: An Institutional Perspective on the Net Neutrality
Debate,
http://www.reg-markets.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=3D1257). In
so doing, they will evaluate the potential role for antirust law
as a check on the behavior of broadband providers, discussing the
relevant economic issues, the institutional challenges for
antitrust courts vis a vis a specialist regulator, and the
potential hurdles posed by the Trinko case.



            Date: 12:00 - 2:00 PM Tuesday, November 18, 2008
            Speaker: Professor Neil W. Netanel, UCLA School of Law
            Title: Copyright's Paradox - Exploring the Tensions between
Copyright Law and Free Speech
            Location: Room 202, 40 Washington Square South

      Neil W. Netanel, is a Professor of Law at the University of
California at Los Angeles School of Law. He teaches and writes
extensively in the areas of copyright, international intellectual
property, and media and telecommunications. His recent and
forthcoming books include Copyright's Paradox (Oxford University
Press, 2008); The Development Agenda: Global Intellectual
Property and Developing Countries (Neil Weinstock Netanel ed.,
Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2008); and From Maimonides
to Microsoft; The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of
Print (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010) (with David
Nimmer).

      Abstract: Neil Netanel will discuss his new book,
Copyright's Paradox, which explores the tensions between
copyright law and free speech. The United States Supreme Court
famously labeled copyright "the engine of free expression"
because it provides a vital economic incentive for much of the
literature, commentary, music, art, and film that makes up our
public discourse. Netanel argues that copyright can still serve
this vital function in the digital age. Yet today's greatly
expanded copyright law often does the opposite-it is used to
quash news reporting, political commentary, church dissent,
historical scholarship, cultural critique, artistic expression,
and new media platforms for greater expressive diversity. Netanel
provides concrete illustrations of how copyright often prevents
speakers from effectively conveying their message, tracing this
conflict across both traditional and digital media and
considering current controversies such as the YouTube and MySpace
copyright infringement cases, Hip-hop music and digital sampling,
and the Google Book Search litigation. The author juxtaposes the
dramatic expansion of copyright holders' proprietary control
against the individual's newly found ability to digitally cut,
paste, edit, remix, and distribute sound recordings, movies, TV
programs, graphics, and texts the world over. He tests whether,
in light of these developments and others, copyright still serves
as a vital engine of free expression and he assesses how
copyright does--and does not--burden speech. Taking First
Amendment values as his lodestar, Netanel argues that copyright
should be limited to how it can best promote robust debate and
expressive diversity, and he presents a blueprint for how that
can be accomplished.


      Information Law Institute at NYU
http://www1.law.nyu.edu/ili/colloquia/index.html

</blockquote>


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