About the Initiative
Silicon Flatirons has, since its inception, fostered thought leadership in telecommunications and internet regulation. We have developed a reputation as a place where leading thinkers in policymaking, industry, and academia come together to discuss well-known and not-so-well-known issues created by a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
Silicon Flatirons’ annual conference has contributed significantly to national discourse on the topic. “Net neutrality,” the concept describing a non-discrimination regime for internet traffic, was first introduced at a Silicon Flatirons conference by Professor Tim Wu in 2003. The following year, FCC Chairman Michael Powell brought net neutrality to the policy agenda with his “Four Freedoms” speech. At Silicon Flatirons in 2015, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the FCC’s plans to institute new rules just days before the FCC approved them.
In 2020, Silicon Flatirons formalized the Telecommunications and Platforms Initiative as the home for these important conversations. The initiative will focus on telecom and platform issues, ranging from broadband deployment to long-simmering network policy debates to platform dominance and governance.
Director
Blake E. Reid is Director of the Silicon Flatirons Telecom and Platforms Initiative. He is a Clinical Professor at University of Colorado Law School, where also directs the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law and Policy Clinic (TLPC), where he and his students advocate for policy change in the public interest on issues of telecommunications, intellectual property, privacy, accessibility, and more. Prior to joining Colorado Law, he worked as a staff attorney and clinical teaching fellow in First Amendment and media law at the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law. He earned an LL.M in Advocacy from Georgetown Law and a JD from Colorado Law. He also holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado’s College of Engineering.
Blake E. Reid
Publications & Media
Related Projects
The Encryption Compendium
The Encryption Compendium, available at encryptioncompendium.org, is a comprehensive collection of research and materials related to encryption policy. It serves as a central hub for policy makers, practitioners, and the public to understand the issues and equities related to ongoing debates around the ability to develop and use encryption.
“No rule can perfectly stamp out all undesirable behavior. The point of the network neutrality principle is to make interference with the application markets much harder.”
– Timothy Wu, at a Silicon Flatirons Conference
