{"id":3,"date":"2008-12-27T07:44:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-27T12:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/?p=3"},"modified":"2009-01-01T14:36:42","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T19:36:42","slug":"does-changegov-mean-real-change-for-internet-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/2008\/12\/27\/does-changegov-mean-real-change-for-internet-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Change.gov Indicate Real Change for Internet Law?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Change.gov<\/a>.\u00a0 This website\u2014the president-elect’s new space for providing transition and policy information\u2014is a symbol of the new age ushered in by President Obama’s election in 2008.\u00a0 Newspapers make the claim that he is younger and “hipper” than previous presidents because he lives on his Blackberry<\/a>\u00a0and will probably be the first to have a computer in the Oval Office, but the transition website is a sign of true change.<\/p>\n

Why, you may ask?\u00a0 At the most immediate level, Change.gov promises to bring accountability and openness to the White House.\u00a0 Through the site, President-elect Obama asks the American public for ideas and participation, and provides them a forum to interact with one another as they comment on policy and provide feedback.\u00a0 This creation alone should be lauded as a breakthrough in American politics.<\/p>\n

However, many<\/a> groups<\/a> have praised Change.gov for an entirely different reason, one worth examining in of itself:\u00a0 its use of a Creative Commons Attribution license<\/a>.\u00a0 With this license, the Obama transition team has given the American public the freedom to copy, share, and even remix the website’s content as long as they attribute the work to its original source. \u00a0<\/p>\n

As seemingly unimportant as this policy might seem, Obama’s use of Creative Commons is a powerful symbol of the changes to come once he takes office in 2009.\u00a0 Where government was once closed, opaque, and slow-moving, it is now open, transparent, and innovative.\u00a0 Under President Bush, a policy suggestion site would have been unimaginable\u2014could we imagine Bush or Cheney or Karl Rove listening to public input on national security or Iraq?\u2014but today, it has already occurred.\u00a0 Moreover, the President-elect’s rapid embrace of a (relatively) new concept like Creative Commons represents his willingness to transform policy in arenas previously ignored, such as copyright law on the internet. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Hopefully, Obama will follow through on this promising start once he takes office in January.\u00a0 Only time will tell.\u00a0 In the hopes that he will, in fact, focus on Internet law (he has promised to appoint a\u00a0Chief Technology Officer<\/a>, which could help guide him in such a complex and rapidly-changing field), we have created a blog that provides suggestions for his administration. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Over the next few weeks, “The Internet Ahead” will discuss some of the key issues that the Obama administration will face in cyberspace.\u00a0 Although the blog couldn’t begin to cover every issue that needs to be addressed in the upcoming years, we will discuss in depth some of the most salient topics of Internet law.\u00a0 During his campaign, President-elect Obama personally addressed some of these issues\u2014for example, Net Neutrality\u2014and has put forth ideas for policy change.\u00a0 Other topics such as online privacy he has not directly addressed.\u00a0 Regardless, we will examine the various sides of each issue that his administration will face; then, we will recommend a particular course of action that will best ameliorate the problems that exist today.\u00a0 By doing this, we hope to open a dialogue on the importance of Internet law to our country’s future in a rapidly-changing world.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Change.gov.\u00a0 This website\u2014the president-elect’s new space for providing transition and policy information\u2014is a symbol of the new age ushered in by President Obama’s election in 2008.\u00a0 Newspapers make the claim that he is younger and “hipper” than previous presidents because he lives on his Blackberry\u00a0and will probably be the first to have a computer in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2003,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/internetahead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}