Opening lecture at Edinburgh

This year's opening lecture at the AHRC Centre for studies in IP and Technology Law at the University of Edinburgh was held last night. Professor Jonathan Zittrain, the new Chair of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, gave an excellent talk entitled "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It".

The lecture took us through some of the most problematic aspects of the internet, namely the many security concerns about the network, and its often troublesome interaction with operating systems. Professor Zittrain commented that we are witnessing the death of the PC and the growth of purpose-specific net-aware appliances such as game consoles, BlackBerry and TiVos, and that the reason for this is the existence of network vulnerabilities.

This was a thought-provoking lecture, and a good opening to our public events year.