Marcelo Thompson

Law Tech Talk | Law and Technology Centre

Mr. Marcelo Thompson, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong

Abstract: When the United States Federal Communications Commission released its Memorandum Opinion and Order on the Comcast case last year, more than the future of the Internet was at stake. What was at stake was the very future of law; of the law we want for our information environment. The Internet so far has developed based on a decentred model of rules, on a pluralist conception of law that is as much a cause of the Internet’s architecture as it is a reflex of such architecture. Rules have been found in many places on the Internet, in and with regard to all of its layers. Freedom to tinker has been entrenched in the Internet’s code, but also in its model of rules. As the FCC now promises to move the network neutrality debate further, a more in-depth questioning of its legal significance seems timely. Network neutrality is the idea that Internet Service Providers must not discriminate packages of bits on the Internet according to their source, content or destination. This presentation will suggest that network neutrality reverses the plural configurations that have so far characterized the Internet by prompting the Internet – in its code and in its law – to assume a monolithic structure. In this sense, it will argue, network neutrality puts legal pluralism under siege.

About the speaker: Mr. Marcelo Thompson is a Research Assistant Professor in Law & Information Technology at the Department of Law of The University of Hong Kong. He holds a Master of Laws (Law and Technology) from the University of Ottawa and is a Doctorate of Philosophy Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.

Date: Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Time: 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Venue: Room 303, 3/F KK Leung Building, HKU
RSVP: Lydia Bute via email: lbute@hku.hk