Tag: Recommended Reading

  • Recommended Reading: Crime-Facilitating Speech

    Eugene Volokh has an interesting new paper about Crime-Facilitating Speech (abridged version): “speech [that] provides information that makes it easier to commit crimes, torts, or other harms”. He argues convincingly that many free-speech cases pertain to crime-facilitating speech. Somebody wants to prevent speech because it may facilitate crime, but others argue that the speech has…

  • Regulation by Software

    The always interesting James Grimmelmann has a new paper, Regulation by Software (.pdf), on how software relates to law. He starts by dissecting Lessig’s “code is law” argument. Lessig argues that code is a form of “architecture” – part of the environment in which we live. And we know that the shape of our living…

  • Analysis of Fancy E-Voting Protocols

    Karlof, Sastry, and Wagner have an interesting new paper looking at fancy voting protocols designed by Neff and Chaum, and finding that they’re not yet ready for use. The protocols try to use advanced cryptography to make electronic voting secure. The Neff scheme (I’ll ignore the Chaum scheme, for brevity) produces three outputs: a paper…

  • Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Decision Architectures

    Tim Wu has an interesting new draft paper on how public policy in areas like intellectual property affects which innovations are pursued. It’s often hard to tell in advance which innovations will succeed. Organizational economists distinguish centralized decision structures, in which one party decides whether to proceed with a proposed innovation, from decentralized structures, in…

  • Recommended Reading

    Following the lead of other bloggers, I’ll be writing occasionally to recommend books or articles that I found interesting. Today, I’m recommending two books that could hardly be more different in topic and tone. The 9/11 Commission Report This book was a real surprise. I started reading from a sense of obligation, but I was…