Julien Mailland

Biography

Research interests

• Technology platforms: history, law, economics, and policy
• Telecommunications-networks-ecosystems design, law, and policy
• Video game industry
• International communication
• Financial technologies
• History of online ecosystems
• Minitel and videotex networks

I’m also an Associate Editor for The Information Society

Education

• Ph.D., Communication, University of Southern California (Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism), 2013
• LL.M., New York University School of Law, 2000
• M.C.J., LL.B., University of Paris (Assas School of Law), 1999, 1998
• Research Associate, Berkeley Law, 1997
• Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme, 2011
• Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute (Oxford University, University of Pennsylvania), 2007
• Research Scholar, Internet History Program, Computer History Museum, 2015-2019

Selected publications

I’m currently writing my next book, a legal history of the video game industry, under contract with MIT Press Game Histories series.  Along the way, I produced a fun oral history of Atari’s first General Counsel and Nolan Bushnell’s personal lawyer Lon Allan: Julien Mailland, “’Nolan, with Respect, This is Really Lousy Pizza’: Conversations with Lon Allan, Original General Counsel for Atari and Pizza Time Theatre / Chuck E. Cheese,” ROMchip Vol. 2 No. 1: July 2020

My latest article on net neutrality argues that U.S. congressional reform mandating net neutrality would past First Amendment muster – the piece is interdisciplinary and draws from computer science, economics, history, and constitutional law: Julien Mailland, For an Anti-discrimination Act for Cyberspace: Two-Sided Pricing, Walled Gardens, and the Depletion of the Marketplace of Ideas, 44 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L.J. 41 (2021).

In this other net neutrality article, I argue that U.S. policymakers should draw from non-U.S.-centric histories of the Internet, and I trace the net neutrality debate to the early 1980s in Europe: Julien Mailland, “Building Internet policy on history: lessons of the forgotten 1981 network neutrality debate,” Internet Histories Vol 2 Issue 1-2 (2018)

My first book, published by MIT Press, Minitel: Welcome to the Internet (with Kevin Driscoll, 2017) is an exploration of the technology, culture, and policy that sustained the world’s first mass-scale online system for more than thirty years. As today’s internet is being broken up into an archipelago of walled gardens, the French Minitel offers a compelling counter-example of a platform that balanced private innovation with the public interest. Minitel was shut down in 2012, but its history should continue to inform our thinking about Internet policy, today and into the future.

Julien Mailland & Kevin Driscoll, Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web, IEEE Spectrum, July 2017

Julien Mailland, “Roman Polanski and the ‘Artists’ Minister’: American Criminal Law v. French Cultural Diplomacy,” Sports and Entertainment Law Journal (Spring 2016)

Julien Mailland, “101 Online: American Minitel Network and Lessons from its Failure,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, (January – March 2016) (email me if you’d like a copy of the article)

Julien Mailland, “French National Values, Paternalism, and the Evolution of Digital Media,” in Monroe Price & Nicole Stremlau (eds.), Speech and Society in Turbulent Times: Freedom of Expression in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp.274-292

Julien Mailland, “Minitel,” in Bill Maurer and Lana Swartz (eds.), Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff (MIT Press, 2017), pp.167-184

More publications

Recently in the press

I was interviewed on French national broadcast TV for a new documentary about Minitel: Le 3615 ne répond plus (September 2022)

My research was featured on Our Friend the Computer podcast (2022)

My research was featured on the Command Line Heroes podcast (2021)

I went on Computer History Museum Live, with Kevin Driscoll, to talk to Marc Weber about Minitel (2018)

My Minitel performance and exhibit at the Ace Hotel (with Kevin Driscoll) was featured in IEEE Spectrum (2018)

I wrote a piece about net neutrality and network openness for the Atlantic: Julien Mailland, Minitel, the Open Network Before the Internet, The Atlantic, June 16, 2017

I was interviewed in France’s Le Monde: Aux Etats-Unis, le “modèle Minitel” surprend toujours (Damien Leloup, Le Monde, France)

Minitel Research Lab, USA

I co-founded the Minitel Research Lab, USA, with Kevin Driscoll.  The mission of the Lab is to create a comprehensive, independent digital Minitel museum and resource center; explore the technical, social, political and legal significance of the Minitel network; and make creative use of the machines to incite critical thinking about network design.  We maintain the world’s largest digital Minitel musem at www.minitel.us.  We tweet from @minitelresearch.  Our work and collections have been featured in Wired, ARS Technica, Fox Business News (U.S.), Le Monde, Libération, NEON (France), and Computer Magazine (Ukraine).