Silicon Flatirons - Platform Policy for Networks, Infrastructure, and Applications

In early 2002, Silicon Flatirons convened one of the first symposia on internet platform governance, setting the stage for a long-running battle for the governance of discrimination by internet service providers and network neutrality. Nearly two decades later, the focus has expanded to the gatekeeping power of social media, search, app store, online retail, and platforms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple, and a new array of infrastructural providers of content delivery, web hosting, payment processing, denial-of-service prevention and more, yielding a firestorm of debates over the proper scope of public and private platform governance that have spilled over into the mainstream U.S. political arena.

This conference examined contemporary platform policy debates over intermediary liability, competition, free expression, and copyright law. Expert panels and speakers scrutinized reignited battles over network neutrality, the quickly forming governance of infrastructural providers, and ongoing battles over the reform to Section 230 of the Communications and Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.