What is the future of free speech on the Internet? Should copyright laws apply to materials on the World Wide Web? Do we really need a "V-chip" for the Net? How will the web affect journalism and contract law?

These and other questions will be debated during a conference titled "Private Censorship and Perfect Choice: Speech and Regulation on the Net," which will be held Friday-Sunday, April 9-11, at the Law School, 127 Wall St. The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Law School's Information Society Project and the Knight Foundation.

The growth in the scope and popularity of the Internet has spawned myriad debates about the proper use and governance of the medium. The conflict between those who would attempt to regulate web use and those who would keep the medium free of such restrictions is reflected in the following passage from John Perry Barlow's "The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace":

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. ... I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear ... Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter. There is no matter here."

The Yale conference will bring together legal scholars and web experts from across the country to consider how the field of law could affect, and be affected by, the Internet.

"Private Censorship and Perfect Choice" will open on Friday at 2 p.m. with a panel titled "Net Governance: Order With and Without Law" in Rm. 127 of the Law School. Panelists will consider whether it is possible for the state to govern a medium that transcends geographic boundaries, and whether the Internet needs regulating, or is -- as some contend -- a self-ordering system.

The next panel, "The Future of Speech on the Net," will be held at 4 p.m. that day, also in Rm. 127. This session will focus on whether it is unconstitutional, or even possible, to regulate the content of web pages, and will explore best- and worst-case scenarios for free speech on the Internet. A reception will follow this panel at 6 p.m. in the second-floor faculty lounge.

Saturday's program will begin at 9:30 a.m. with a roundtable discussion on "Property and Censorship -- Databases and the Public Domain," in Rm. 122. Participants will look at the impact of "private" arrangements on the web that constrict access to information and consider what should constitute "public domain" on the Internet.

The discussion of access on the Internet will continue in a second roundtable, "Property, Self-Help and Architecture -- Filters and Digital Fences," to be held at 11:15 a.m. in Rm. 122. This session will examine the efficiency and appropriateness of the technical solutions -- such as various kinds of blocking and filtering software -- that have been created in response to such concerns as keeping indecent materials from children or preventing unauthorized use of copyrighted material.

The final Saturday session, "Journalism and the Net: Changing Structures of Constraint," will be held at 3 p.m. in Rm. 127. Panelists will discuss concerns that cyberspace is undermining journalistic standards and will examine how the Internet is affecting the ways in which people get their news.

The conference will conclude at 10 a.m. on Sunday with a roundtable titled "Private Censorship/Perfect Choice -- Contract in Cyberspace," in Rm. 127. This discussion will explore how the changes that the Internet is bringing to society and culture may alter the basic rules governing contracts.

Further information about "Private Censorship and Perfect Choice: Speech and Regulation on the Net" is available online at www.law.yale.edu/censor.

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