Current projects, issues, and research interests:

• Speech intermediaries. ISPs are central intermediaries for massive quantities of communications in the modern world, and face and have built a complex patchwork of legal rules and industry practices to negotiate these issues. From their own efforts to police spam with trespass to chattels doctrine, to the contingent safe harbors of the DMCA § 512, the actions of Internet access & service providers shape our communications landscape.

  • ISP Practices & Policies research (ongoing).
    • "Intellectual Property and Free Speech in the Online World: How Educational Institutions and Other Online Service Providers Are Coping with Cease and Desist Letters and Takedown Notices" (with Marjorie Heins), Public policy report from the Fair Use Network, NYU Brennan Center for Justice (2007) (PDF).

  • Chilling Effects & DMCA § 512 research (ongoing; with Jennifer Urban, USC IP Clinic).
    

    • Jennifer Urban and Laura Quilter, "Undue Process: Challenges for Rightsholders and Service Providers in Implementing Section 512's Notice and Takedown Provisions". TPRC 2009: Copyright, DMCA and IPRs. (2009). (Summary by Rebecca Tushnet.)
  
  
  • Fair Use Network - providing information and resources for recipients of trademark and copyright cease and desist letters. A project of the Free Expression Policy Project, NYU Brennan Center for Justice.

• Democracy, representation, and alternative voices. Those excluded from power are often the first to use new and alternative means of communication. Unfortunately, archival and preservation efforts generally lag behind the technology, learning to understand the value of the speech, and then rushing to capture and preserve it. Digitization offers unparalleled opportunities to capture, document, and preserve alternative voices, the subaltern, feminist and radical histories that express themselves in a variety of media that would otherwise be lost. Digitization, however, is only the first step in preserving these histories. Without public dissemination and access, the hidden and forgotten histories may stay hidden. To facilitate digital distribution and reproduction in a permissions culture, traditional legal norms and library practices need to be retrofitted.

  • Ohio Secretary of State Review of Electronic Voting Machines. Patrick McDaniel, Kevin Butler, William Enck, Harri Hursti, Stephen McLaughlin, Patrick Traynor, Matt Blaze, Adam Aviv, Pavol Cerny, Sandy Clark, Eric Cronin, Gaurav Shah, Micah Sherr, Giovanni Vigna, Richard Kemmerer, David Balzarotti, Greg Banks, Marco Cova, Viktoria Felmetsger, William Robertson, Fredrik Valeur, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, and Laura Quilter, EVEREST: Evaluation and Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards and Testing. Public Report, Ohio Secretary of State, 2007. [pdf of public report]
  • California Secretary of State Top-to-Bottom Review of Electronic Voting Machines. Joseph Lorenzo Hall and Laura Quilter, ""Documentation Review of the Hart InterCivic System 6.2.1 Voting System: Top-To-Bottom Review of California Voting Systems", California Secretary of State, July 20, 2007. [pdf of public report]
  • Preservation of digital resources.
  • Archives best practices for digitization and republication.
  • An Oral History Project: Radicalization and Activism
  • Anarchist Biographical Novels