“Professors at Harvard Law School’s influential Berkman Center for Internet & Society consistently take positions on hotly debated business issues in support of companies like Google, which favor a free-wheeling Internet culture and less control over intellectual property, and against companies like Apple and AT&T, which—at least when it comes to hardware like the iPhone—favor closed digital systems and stricter intellectual property rights,” Brill reports. “For example, a week after the iPad announcement last January, The Financial Times published an op-ed by Berkman Center founder and star professor Jonathan Zittrain critical of Apple, declaring: ‘iPhone thus remains tightly tethered to its vendor—the way that the Kindle is controlled by Amazon … Mr. Jobs ushered in the personal computer era and now he is trying to usher it out.'”
Brill reports, “What most readers don’t know is that the Berkman Center and many of its leading professors have financial and personal ties to Google and other tech companies—ties that are not disclosed when these academics speak or publish, and that I discovered after auditing a class with Zittrain.”
“The class, it turned out, was funded by “a special grant from Microsoft,” according to Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer. Students were not made aware of Microsoft’s involvement,” Brill reports. “After finding out about the Microsoft grant, I became more curious about how academic work about the Internet is funded, and began asking the Berkman Center and Zittrain for more details. According to a statement provided on June 10 by Berkman co-directors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Google is the center’s top corporate backer and its fourth-largest donor…”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Follow the money.
Well there’s a surprise one of these days we will come across an academic who is actually honest but I won’t be putting my house on it.
It’s more than a little embarrassing that a Harvard Law Center has such a well-documented history of supporting positions that would make its backers proud. It’d be slightly less glaring if their positions resembled common sense in any way.
These centers should disclose their affiliations the same way responsible media outlets do.
No different from, for example, those scientists and politicians that disavow anthropogenic global warming whilst taking money from oil companies and their lobbyist front-organisations.
I thought everyone here was pro-free market, so why shouldn’t academics get the same opportunities as celebrity spokepeople.
Bill Gates and Microsoft donate MILLIONS to various Ivy League schools to keep PC’s as the preferred computer. Cornell is another. Hey, you have to “sell” computers somehow.
http://cornell.elliottback.com/gates-donate-25-million-to-cornell-cis/
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/annual_report/computing_facilities.htm
http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0508/Microsoft.html
If you’re staff you have to beg for a Mac—and you still rarely get one. Must be a professor making mucho dollars to demand to use one. And the tech employees. just gives snarky remarks about Macs when possible.
Further propaganda:
http://www.microsoft.com/Casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004658
Dear MCCFR – Apparently you have no problem when scientists that advocate human caused global warming take funds from progressive/leftist groups; are caught in gross exaggerations, and; squelch peers who disagree with their position? Maybe you need to adjust your tinfoil hat?
Company Donations – the downside of capitalism…
Ahh, the politicization of science.
Facts have gone from being objective reality to nothing more than subjective political opinions.
I see a bright future ahead for the USA.
MDN Magic World of the day: ill.
I love how those ivory tower snotty academics who deride corporations but yet are all happy to take those dollars 😐
Harvard Law School can hold an open debate with Harvard Business School, which consistently put Jobs up as one of the foremost innovators and capitalists of our time.
Universities should be funded independently. Industry money should not be allowed to find it’s way into these institutions. We trust academe to be truly independent in it’s search for truth. Without a source for truth, we are subject to opinion and manipulation. With a few exceptions the news media has become just such a tool and the fear and animosity in the political and social arenas show this to be true! It is almost insane. It is certainly dysfunctional.
That’s kind of evil Google.
“Astro-Ivying”?
“No different from, for example, those scientists and politicians that disavow anthropogenic global warming whilst taking money from oil companies and their lobbyist front-organisations.”
Let ME have a go at your statement (above):
“No different from, for example, those scientists and politicians that promote the unproven and dubious concept of anthropogenic global warming whilst taking grants from “greenie” government agencies and their progressive front-organisations.”
THERE. That’s much better.
Hmmm. It’s “rain”-ing “Zitt”-s.
Sorry folks, no science here. This is Harvard law school, where our future legislators are trained. Explains a lot doesn’t it?
“Ivy-turfing”?
This article is interesting not merely from a tech standpoint, but from the perspective of corporate influence in academia. I am speaking as a public policy professor.
I am regularly courted by representatives of major publishers who offer desk copies of their very expensive texts (and other little perks) to influence my decisions about which texts will be adopted for my courses. While this is not on the wider scope as discussed in the article, I merely want to highlight that objectivity in the academic community doesn’t truly exist.
Just my .02.
Articles like this one make a logical error, what philosopher Jamie Whyte calls the “motive fallacy.” This means that someone may have a motive to state something, but the mere fact that they are motivated to say it doesn’t make that statement incorrect. I’m neither agreeing with nor arguing against Zittrain’s statements, although personally I feel Apple’s approach is preferable to Google’s or Microsoft’s, but one can’t dismiss those statement out of hand just because they have a motive to say them. You have to make counter-arguments against the statements.
So climate scientists, who have been telling us for years about global warming, may be backed by “progressive/leftist groups,” and they still may be telling the truth. Rush Limbaugh may have strong motives for the things he says on his show, but you have to accept them as fact unless you can otherwise disprove them.
Make sense?
@aka:
Logically, you are correct, but my bias is that Rush is absolutely wrong until he’s proven right.
@The coward who doesn’t use his/her/its own screenname @ 12:25.
“No different from, for example, those scientists and politicians that promote the unproven and dubious concept of anthropogenic global warming whilst taking grants from “greenie” government agencies and their progressive front-organisations.”
Well, if you don’t believe the climate is changing, you’re an idiot and if you’d rather do nothing about the environment than adopt a precautionary principle, you’re irresponsible. Would you prefer that your car still used leaded petrol or that it didn’t have a catalytic converter?
Those were steps that were taken to control emissions and protect public health and they don’t – despite all the opposition and scare-stories that existed at the time – appear to have led to the end of the American economy or the obsession with ludicrously inefficient vehicles..
But then you obviously have a problem with a progressive agenda, so presumably you think that Deepwater Horizon is a price worth paying for personal mobility. After all, it’s only the environment and people’s livelihoods.
I am so happy Emily Brill has found an audience she deserves.
And an audience that deserves Emily Brill.
Hopefully we will see more of her journalism here at MDN.
Those evil people at gawkermedia just make fun of her. What do they know?
http://gawker.com/tag/emily-brill/
http://gawker.com/5040164/emily-brill-is-the-ultimate-narrator
http://gawker.com/5064678/emily-brill-is-not-too-young-for-a-pearl-necklace
OK, here’s the scoop. When I was a kid in Grad School, professors were judged by the rule “publish or perish”.
Then State govts began cutting the support to state institutions, and they had to find operating revenue elsewhere. The rule became “get grants or perish”.
In addition to that rule is a more modern one “get money anywhere or perish”.
Since we have forced this situation on the faculty, you can see the result. Universities are greedy and hungry for money. That overides gathering and dissemination of information – the primary reason for universities to exist.