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SAVE THE DATE +++
are
proud to announce the following short course:
“Law and economics of shared infrastructure”
Prof.
Brett M. Frischmann
Politecnico
di Torino, 25-28 June 2013, 9-12AM
SCHEDULE
AND TOPICS:
Day One: Overview of Infrastructure Economics and Key
Concepts from Microeconomics (Chapters 1-3)
Day Two: Economics of Infrastructure Commons (Chapters 4-5)
Day
Three: Supply & Incentives; Congestion (Chapters 7-8)
Day
Four: Applications (Two or three chapters from second half of
the book; perhaps communication, transportation, and Internet)
(could have each student choose a chapter and be prepared to
give short presentation and raise questions for class to
discuss)
REFERENCES:
1. Infrastructure - The Social Value of Shared Resources
(Oxford University Press, 2012)
BIOGRAPHY:
Brett
Frischmann is Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo
School of Law, Yeshiva University, where he teaches
intellectual property and Internet law. He is currently the
Director of Cardozo's IP and Information Law Program, an
Affiliated Scholar of the Center for Internet and Society at
Stanford Law School, and an Affiliated Faculty Member of The
Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and
Policy Analysis, Indiana University. He received a BA in
Astrophysics from Columbia University, an MS in Earth
Resources Engineering from Columbia University, and a JD from
the Georgetown University Law Center. After clerking for the
Honorable Fred I. Parker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit and practicing at Wilmer, Cutler &
Pickering in Washington, DC, he joined the Loyola University,
Chicago law faculty in 2002.
ABSTRACT:
There
is a debate raging concerning the merits of private control
over (or conversely, open access to) various types of
resources. It takes place in a number of fields, including
the intellectual property and cyberlaw literatures, as well as
broader public debates concerning propertization,
privatization, deregulation, and commercialization of such
diverse things as communications networks, government
services, national forests and scientific research. On the
private control side, there is robust economic theory in
support of the market mechanism with minimal government
regulation. By contrast, on the open access side, there is a
frequent call for protecting the “commons,” but the
theoretical support for this prescriptive call is
underdeveloped from an economics perspective. In fact, many
that oppose propertization, privatization, deregulation, and
commercialization view economics (the discipline) with sincere
suspicion and doubt.
In this
short course, Professor Brett Frischmann will discuss insights
from his recent book, Infrastructure: The Social Value of
Shared Resources (Oxford 2012). He will explain why there are
strong economic arguments for managing and sustaining
infrastructure resources in an openly accessible manner.
Professor Frischmann will help students obtain a better
understanding of how these fundamental resources generate
value for society and how decisions regarding access to such
resources affects social welfare.
The key
insights from this analysis are that infrastructure resources
generate value as inputs into a wide range of productive
processes and that the outputs from these processes are often
public goods and social goods that generate positive
externalities that benefit society as a whole. Managing such
resources in an openly accessible manner may be socially
desirable from an economic perspective because doing so
facilitates these downstream productive activities. For
example, managing the Internet infrastructure in an openly
accessible manner facilitates active citizen involvement in
the production and sharing of public and social goods. Over
the past decade, this has led to increased opportunities for a
wide range of citizens to engage in entrepreneurship,
political discourse, social network formation and community
building, among many other activities.
For
more information: Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin, E-mail:
demartin@polito.it, phone: 011-090-7217
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Giuseppe Futia
Communication Manager
Nexa Center for Internet & Society
Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino