Jonathan Zittrain

Selected Publications

Periodical Publications

• “Answering impossible questions: content governance in an age of disinformation” The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, Vol. 1 Issue 1, January 2020.
• “John Perry Barlow’s Call for Persuasion over Power,” 18 Duke Law & Tech. Review. 137 (2019).
• “Intellectual Debt: With Great Power Comes Great Ignorance,” Medium, July 24, 2019
• “Adversarial attacks on medical machine learning,” Science, March 2019.
• “How to Exercise the Power You Didn’t Ask For,” Harvard Business Review, September 2018.
• “The Science of Fake News,” with David Lazer, Matthew Baum, Yochai Benkler, Adam Berinsky and others, Science, March 2018.
• “CDA 230 Then and Now: Does Intermediary Immunity Keep the Rest of Us Healthy?” The Recorder, November 2017.
• “’Netwar’: The unwelcome militarization of the Internet has arrived,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, August 2017.
• “Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren’t Whistleblowing, They are at Odds With It,” Just Security, Oct. 19, 2016.
• “A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy?” with Jack Balkin, The Atlantic, Oct. 2016.
• “The Good News and the Troubling News: We’re Not Going Dark,” Lawfare, Feb. 1, 2016.
• “A Few Keystrokes Could Solve the Crime. Would You Press Enter?,” Just Security, Jan. 12, 2016.
• “The Future of the Internet: Balancing Security With Openness in the Internet of Things,” The Future of Quality Report, 2015
• “Reflections on Internet Culture,” Journal of Visual Culture, Dec. 2014.
• “The Case for Kill Switches in Military Weaponry,” Scientific American Forum, Sept. 3, 2014
• “Why Libraries [Still] Matter,” Medium, Sept. 10, 2014.
• “Facebook Could Decide an Election Without Anyone Ever Finding Out: The scary future of digital Gerrymandering—and how to prevent it,” New Republic, June 1, 2014. (link to republishing in New Statesman)
• “Engineering an Election,” Harvard Law Review Forum, June 2014.
• “Will the Web Break?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, March 2013.
• “Did Steve Jobs Favor or Oppose Internet Freedom?” Scientific American, Dec. 2011.
• “Better Data for a Better Internet,” with John Palfrey, 334 Science 1210 (2011).
• “Response to Duncan Hollis, An E-SOS for Cyberspace,” Second Harvard International Law Journal/ Opinion Juris Symposium, July 13, 2011.
• “Freedom and Anonymity: Keeping the Internet Open,” Scientific American, March 2011, at 13.
• “Will the U.S. get an Internet ‘kill switch’?” with Molly Sauter, MIT Tech Review, March 4, 2011.
• “Net Neutrality as Diplomacy,” 29 Yale and Policy Review, Inter Alia (2010).
• “Everything You Need to Know about Wikileaks,” w/ Molly Sauter, MIT Tech Review, December 9, 2010.
• “The Fourth Quadrant,” 78 Fordham Law Review 2767 (2010).
• “The Internet and Press Freedom,” 45 Harv. Civ. Rts. – Civ. Liberties L. Review 565 (2010).
• “Book Review,” 460 Nature 575 (2009) (book review).
• “Google’s Cloud: How to Cope with the Disappearance of the PC,” Newsweek, July 9, 2009.
• “Law and Technology: The End of the Generative Internet,” 52 Communications of the ACM 18 (2009).
• “How to end the copyright wars,” 457 Nature 264 (2009) (reviewing Lawrence Lessig, Penguin, Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008)).
• “Web Tactics,” with Robert Faris, 38 Index on Censorship 90 (2009).
• “The Internet is Closing to Innovation,” Newsweek, December 8, 2008.
• “The End is Near: The Future of the Net Probably Won’t Be As Bright As We Think,” Playboy, June 2008.
• “Spam Works: Evidence from Stock Touts and Corresponding Market Activity,” with Laura Frieder, 30 Hastings Communications & Entertainment Law Journal (Comm/Ent) 479 (2008).
• “The Web’s Dark Energy,” Technology Review, Vol. 111 Issue 4, July 2008.
• “Privacy 2.0,” 2008 University of Chicago Legal Forum 65 (2008).
• “Ubiquitous Human Computing,” 366 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 3813 (2008).
• “Saving the Internet,” Harvard Business Review, June 2007, at 49.
• “A History of Online Gatekeeping,” 19 Harvard Journal of Law and Technology 253 (2006).
• “The Generative Internet,” 119 Harvard Law Review 1975 (2006).
• “Normative Principles for the Evaluation of Free and Proprietary Software,” 71, No. 1 University of Chicago Law Review (2004).
• “The End of Hide and Seek,” CIO Magazine, Fall/Winter.
• “The Copyright Cage,” Legal Affairs, July/August 2003, at 26.
• “Internet Filtering in China,” with Ben Edelman, IEEE Internet Computing, March/April 2003, at 70.
• “Internet Points of Control,” 44 Boston College Law Review 653 (2003).
• “Can the Internet Survive Filtering,” CNET, July 2002.
• “Beware the Cybercops,” Forbes, July 8, 2002.
• “Policy Matters,” 2 AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies 10 (2002).
• “Too Much of a Good Thing,” World Economic Forum Worldlink, January/February 2002. (Paywall)
• “What’s in a Name?” 55 Federal Communications Law Journal 153 (2002) (reviewing Milton L. Mueller, The MIT Press, Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (2002).
• “Welcome to Second Class,” CIO Magazine, March 2001.
• “Balancing Control and Anarchy on the Internet,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 2000.
• “Lost in a Cyber Campus,” World Economic Forum Worldlink, May/June 2000.
• “How to Think About the Net Sales Tax Quandry,” The New Republic Online, May 4, 2000.
• “Privicating Privacy: Reflections on Henry Greely’s Commentary,” 52 Stanford Law Review 1595 (2000).
• “Panel Discussion: Policing Obscenity and Pornography in an Online World,” with Anne Beeson, 8 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 693 (2000).
• “What the Publisher Can Teach the Patient: Intellectual Property and Privacy in an Era of Trusted Privication,” 52 Stanford Law Review 1201 (2000).
• “Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Taxing Internet Commerce,” with Austan Goolsbee. 52 National Tax Journal 413 (1999).
• “ICANN: Between the Public and the Private,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 1999, at 1071.
• “Digital Crime: Policing the Cybernation,” 10, No. 2 European Journal of International Law (1999) (reviewing Neil Barrett, Kogan Page, Digital Crime: Policing the Cybernation (1997)).
• “The Un-Microsoft Un-Remedy: Law Can Prevent the Problem That It Can’t Patch Later,” Connecticut Law Review, 1999, at 1361.

Newspaper Publications

• “A start-up is using photos to ID you. Big tech can stop it from happening again,” The Washington Post, April 2020.
• “The Hidden Costs of Automated Thinking,” The New Yorker, July 2019.
• “From Westworld to Best World for the Internet of Things,” The New York Times, June 3, 2018, Opinion Pages.
• “Mark Zuckerberg Can Still Fix This Mess,” The New York Times, April 7, 2018, Opinion Pages.
• “Apple’s Emoji Gun Control,” The New York Times, August 16, 2016, Opinion Pages.
• “The Right to be Forgotten Ruling Leaves Nagging Doubts,” Financial Times, July 13, 2014. (Paywall)
• “Confidential info threatened, but technology can help,” Boston Globe, June 8, 2014, Opinion Pages.(Soft Paywall)
• “Don’t Force Google to ‘Forget’,” The New York Times, May 14, 2014, Opinion Pages.
• “Encourage More Hackathons,” The New York Times, June 15, 2011, Room for Debate.
• “The Lightning Effect,” The New York Times, September 23, 2011, Room for Debate blog.
• “Let Consumers See What’s Happening,” The New York Times, December 2, 2011, Room for Debate.
• “Who watched my cheese?” livemint.com, Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2010.
• An Impenetrable Web of Fees (part of “Who Gets Priority on the Web?”),” New York Times, Aug. 10, 2010, Room for Debate.
• “A Fight Over Freedom at Apple’s Core,” Financial Times, Feb. 3, 2010, (Op-Ed). (Paywall)
• Lost in the Cloud,” The New York Times, July 19, 2009, (Op-Ed).
• “Facebook Rules,” The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2009, Room for Debate Blog.
• “A Simple Way to Avoid Being the Next Star Wars Kid,” The Sunday Times, May 4, 2008. (Soft Paywall)
• “Companies Need Guidance to Face Censors Abroad,” with John Palfrey, CNET, August 14, 2007.
• “Deploying the Wisdom of the Crowds Against Badware,” with John Palfrey, CNET, July 29, 2006.
• “Reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision in Eldred v. Ashcroft,” Washington Post, January 16, 2003.
• “Calling Off the Copyright War,” Boston Globe, November 24, 2002.
• “Taming the Consumer’s Computer,” New York Times, March 11, 2002.

Working Papers

• “Evidence of Decreasing Internet Entropy: The Lack of Redundancy in DNS Resolution by Major Websites and Services,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper with Samantha Bates, John Bowers, Shane Greenstein, and Jordi Weinstock,(2018).
• “A Mutual Aid Treaty for the Internet,” Future of the Constitution Series (Brookings ), No. 8,(2011).
• Documentation of Internet Filtering Worldwide with Benjamin Edelman,(2003).
• Statement of Issues and Call for Data on Differential Google Filtering with Benjamin Edelman,(2003).
• Software Application to Collect Filtering Data with Benjamin Edelman,(2003).
• Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China with Benjamin Edelman,(2002).
• “Evaluating the Costs and Benefits of Taxing Internet Commerce,” Social Science Research Network Working Paper Series with Austan Goolsbee,(1999).

Reports & Studies

• “Interventions over Predictions: Reframing the Ethical Debate for Actuarial Risk Assessment,” with Chelsea Barabas, Karthik Dinakar, Joichi Ito and Madars Virza (2018).
• “The Shifting Landscape of Global Internet Censorship,” with Justin Clark, Rob Faris, Ryan Morrison-Westphal, Helmi Noman and Casey Tilton (2017).
• “Don’t Panic: Making Progress on the ‘Going Dark’ Debate,” with Matt Olsen, Bruce Schneier and others, The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (2016)
• “Algorithmic Allegories,” with Marcus Comiter and Ben Sobel, Harvard Law School Case Studies (2015).
• “Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World”, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (Urs Gasser & Jonathan Zittrain eds., 2014).
• “From Sony to SOPA: The Technology-Content Divide”, with John Palfrey, Kendra Albert & Lisa Brem, Harvard Law School Case Studies (2013).
• “Open Internet Advisory Committee 2013 Annual Report”, The Open Internet Advisory Committee Federal Communications Commission (co-author, 2013).
• Internet Monitor 2013: Reflections on the Digital World”, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (Urs Gasser & Jonathan Zittrain eds., 2013).
• Game Changers: Mobile Gaming Apps and Data Privacy”, with Susan Crawford and Lisa Brem, Harvard Law School Case Studies (2012).
• The Smart Grid”, with Sonia McNeil, Paul Kominers, and John Palfrey Harvard Law School Case Studies (2012).
• The WikiLeaks Incident: Background, Details, and Resources”, with Alan Ezekiel and John Palfrey, Harvard Law School Case Studies (2012).
• “Accountability and Transparency at ICANN: An Independent Review (Final Report)”, with Urs Gasser, Herbert Burkert and John Palfrey, Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2010-13. (2010).
• “Internet Filtering Series” with John G. Palfrey, Derek Baumbauer, Rafal Rohozinski, Ronald Deibert and Nart Villeneuve (2005). (See Books for more)
• Survey of Usage of the “.BIZ TLD” with Benjamin Edelman, (2002).
• “Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia” with Benjamin Edelman,(2002).

Other

• Book chapter for “A History of Intellectual Property in 50 Objects,” Cambridge University Press (2019).
• “Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State,” postscript, Columbia University Press (2017).