You can follow the Twitter stream at #Lib20, and the ISP is liveblogging here.

The remarks I gave on the Ethics and Politics of Library 2.0 panel can be downloaded in PDF form: Library 2.0, Access to Knowledge and Patron Privacy: Avoiding a Faustian Bargain.

Update: The video for this panel has now been posted to YouTube.

Library 2.0 Symposium to Explore the Future of Digital Collections

The Yale Information Society Project will host the Library 2.0 Symposium on Saturday, April 4, 2009, at Yale Law School. The confluence of book digitization projects, user-generated content, and social networking applications is forcing us to rethink the role of libraries.  This symposium will bring together leading thinkers from libraries, academia, and legal practice to lay out a vision for the future of the library and digital collections; the ethical implications of Library 2.0, including data retention and patron privacy; intellectual property rights in user-generated and traditional digital library content; and the future of book digitization projects. Featured speakers will include Ann Wolpert, head of MIT libraries and the MIT press; John Palfrey, Professor of Law and Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School; Josh Greenberg of the New York Public Library; Jeff Cunard of Debevoise and Plimpton; and a host of other luminaries.
The Library 2.0 Symposium will take place in Room 127 of Yale Law School located at 127 Wall Street, New Haven, Connecticut. This event is free and open to the public but is expected to fill up quickly. Please register at your earliest convenience at http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=705106.  More information about the symposium is available on the Yale ISP web site at http://isp.law.yale.edu.

The Library 2.0 Symposium is made possible by the generosity of the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School.

Panel discussions will include “The Future of the Library”, “Ethics and Politics of Library 2.0″ (which I’ll be on), “The Challenge of Copyright”, and “Digitizing Collections”.

The event is free and open to the public.

The time I spent at the Yale ISP was amazing. You are surrounded by world-class colleagues, brilliant & motivated students, and rarely go a day without learning new things and having what you thought you knew rightly challenged.

Information about applying is available here.  Applications for 2009-10 ISP fellowships must be postmarked no later than Feb. 1, 2009.

Technology, Law, Society, Values and Design

The starting point of this reading group is the position that the spheres of technology, society, law, and values are engaged in an eternal dance, each guiding, influencing, and reacting to the other. Technologies are socially constructed, but also shape society. Values are embedded in technologies and reflected in law. Laws react to technologies and form the basis for society. Where these spheres intersect rests the notion of design, the ways in which technologies are built, laws are crafted, values are embedded, and society is shaped.

This reading group will map the terrain of the complex interrelationships between technology, society, law, values, and design, bringing together disparate theories from law, philosophy, ethics, sociology, media theory, science and technology studies, and information science. The reading group will cover key readings selected on the basis of: 1) their depth, rigor, aspirational ideals, contribution to foundational thinking, influence on discourse, etc. and 2) their coverage of as broad a range of topics as possible, including privacy, social software, information policy, information intermediaries, sustainable technologies, digital rights, and Internet governance.

Recognizing that each topic could itself fill a semester, the reading group aims for a broad overview of issues and perspectives, and a sufficient grasp of basic concepts and principles, providing a solid foundation for independent future explorations, and an ability to apply these concepts and principles to innovative research questions.

Schedule
(subject to change)

Feb 5: Foundational Concepts: Values in Technology

• Friedman, Batya, and Nissenbaum, Helen. “Bias in Computer Systems.” ACM Transactions on Information Systems 14, no. 3 (1996): 330-47.
• Mumford, Lewis. “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics.” Technology and Culture 5, no. 1 (1964): 1-8.
• Shneiderman, Ben. “Human Values and the Future of Technology: A Declaration of Responsibility.” ACM SIGCHI Bulletin 23, no. 1 (1991): 11-16.
• Winner, Langdon. “Do Artifacts Have Politics.” Daedalus 109, no. 1 (1980): 121-36.

Feb 12: Foundational Concepts: Technology as Law

• Grimmelmann, J. “Regulation By Software.” Yale Law Journal 114 (2005): 1719-58.
• Lessig, L. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. New York: Basic Books, 1999. (chapters 1-2)
• Wu, T. “When Code Isn’t Law.” Virginia Law Review 89, no. 4 (2003): 679-751.

Feb 19: Foundational Concepts: Technology and Society

• Heilbroner, R. “Do Machines Make History?” In Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, edited by Merritt Roe Smith, and Leo Marx, 53-65. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
• Heilbroner, R. “Technological Determinism Revisited.” In Does Technology Drive History? The Dilemma of Technological Determinism, edited by Merritt Roe Smith, and Leo Marx, 67-78. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
• Postman, Neil. “Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change.”
• Sunder, Madhavi. “IP3.” Stanford Law Review 59 (2006)

Feb 26: Foundational Concepts: Design Pragmatics

• Flanagan, Mary, Daniel Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum. “Values in Design: Theory and Practice.” In Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, edited by Jeroen van den Hoven, and John Weckert, Cambridge University Press, in press.
• Friedman, Batya, Kahn, Paul, and Borning, Alan. “Value Sensitive Design: Theory and Methods.” (Technical Report 02-12-01) (2002)
• Manders-Huits, N. & Zimmer, M., Values & pragmatic action: The challenges of engagement with technical design communities

March 4: Information Intermediaries

• Elkin-Koren, Niva. “Let the Crawlers Crawl: On Virtual Gatekeepers and the Right to Exclude Indexing.” University of Dayton Law Review 26 (2001): 180-209.
• Goldman, E. “Search Engine Bias and the Demise of Search Engine Utopianism.” Yale Journal of Law & Technology (2006): 188-200.
• Introna, Lucas, and Nissenbaum, Helen. “Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters.” The Information Society 16, no. 3 (2000): 169-85.

March 11: Social Software

• Agre, Philip. “P2P and the Promise of Internet Equality.” Communications of the ACM 46, no. 2 (2003): 39-42.
• Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. (pp. 356-377)
• Madison, Michael. “Social Software, Groups and Governance.” Michigan State Law Review 1 (2006): 153.
• Shirky, C. Social software and the politics of groups

March 25: Sustainable Technologies

• Selected position papers from Workshop on Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values
• Additional reading: TBD

April 1: Privacy

• Cohen, Julie. “A Right to Read Anonymously: A Closer Look At ‘Copyright Management’ in Cyberspace.” Connecticut Law Review 28, no. 4 (1996): 981-1039.
• Kang, Jerry. “Information Privacy in Cyberspace Transactions.” Stanford Law Review 50, no. 4 (1998): 1193-294.
• Microsoft Corporation, Privacy guidelines for developing software products and services
• Rotenberg, M. “Fair Information Practices and the Architecture of Privacy (What Larry Doesn’t Get).” Stanford Technology Law Review Review 1 (2001):

April 8: Digital Rights

• Balkin, Jack. “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society.” New York University Law Review 79, no. 1 (2004): 1.
• Balkin, Jack. “Virtual Liberty: Freedom to Design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds.” Virginia Law Review 90, no. 8 (2004): 2043-98.

April 15: Internet Governance

• Crawford, Susan. The Radio and the Internet
• Mueller, Milton. Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002. (excerpts)

Information Society Project Resident Fellowships for 2008-2009

The ISP resident fellowship is designed for recent graduates of law or Ph.D. programs who are interested in careers in teaching and public service in any of the following areas: Internet and telecommunications law, intellectual property law, access to knowledge, first amendment law, media studies, privacy, cybercrime, cybersecurity, social software, standards and technology policy, cultural evolution, bioethics, biotechnology, and law and technology generally.

Fellows receive a salary of approximately 42,250 USD plus Yale benefits. Fellows are expected to work on an independent scholarly project as well as help with administrative and scholarly work for the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. A small number of special ISP visiting fellowships are also available for persons who provide their own sources of funding.

More information on the ISP is available at: http://www.law.yale.edu/isp/

Application materials should include the following:

(1) A brief (one to five page) statement of the applicant’s proposed scholarly research;
(2) A copy of the applicant’s resume;
(3) A law school (or graduate school) transcript;
(4) At least one sample of recent scholarly writing (samples in English are strongly preferred);
(5) Two letters of recommendation.

Applications for the 2008-9 ISP fellowship must be postmarked no later than Feb. 1, 2008. Awards will be announced at the end of March 2008. For additional information please contact Deborah Sestito at deborah.sestito@yale.edu

Application materials should be sent (in hard copy) to:

Information Society Project Fellowship Program
c/o Deborah Sestito, Room 333
Yale Law School
127 Wall Street
P.O. Box 208215
New Haven CT 06520-8215

As one of the organizers, I spent much of the day either running around, or, when sitting in the room, thinking about what I needed to be running around for next, so I wasn’t able to take extensive notes or blog about it myself.

I did, however, have the great pleasure of chairing an amazing panel on Privacy and Reputational Protection, featuring Alessandro Acquisti, Danielle Citron, William McGeveran, Dan Solove, and Jonathan Zittrain. Rebecca has an excellent summary here. My key takeaway points from the discussion were:

• How do we manage the paradox between users’ stated privacy preferences and their actual actions?
• How do we (or should we) make online spaces safe from malicious group attacks (i.e., the dog poop girl and Kathy Sierra cases). How would we reconcile this with the desire to support free expression online?
• Should technological or regulatory steps be taken to make it difficult to find certain information, especially old reputational data (i.e., should databases learn to “forget” that a person made a mistake some years ago that has little bearing on her current reputation)?
• What duties do information aggregators or intermediaries have in providing a feedback loop to allow subjects to correct, annotate, or provide context to items which impact one’s reputation (i.e., the ability for subjects of news articles to provide comments at Google News)?
• Finally, what is the magical mix of law, regulation, and technological solutions to all these concerns?

Thanks to everyone for helping make this conference a great success.

Spots are still available, but filling up quickly. You can register here, and we’ve added a new discounted student registration fee of $45.

I hope to see many of you there!

This event will bring together representatives from industry, government, and academia to explore themes in online reputation, community-mediated information production, and their implications for democracy and innovation. The symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Microsoft Corporation.

A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of reputation economies in four panels: (1) Making Your Name Online; (2) Privacy and Reputation Protection; (3) Reputation and Information Quality; and (4) Ownership of Cyber-Reputation. See below for more detail on each panel; a current list of confirmed speakers is available at the conference website.

Online registration is available now at: https://wems.worldtek.com/RepEcon. There is a $95 registration fee, which includes lunch. Yale students and faculty and embers of the press may attend for free.

Panel I: Making Your Name Online

Moderator: Jack Balkin
Panelists: Michel Bauwens , Rishab A. Ghosh, Hassan Masum, Beth Noveck

This panel will discuss the shifts in the reputation economy that we are witnessing, largely the transition from accreditation to participatory, community-based modes of reputation management. Some of the questions the panel will address include:

• What are the new norms for cyber-reputation?
• How do these depart from offline models?
• How can reputation in one online system be transported to another?
• How do SNS and reputation connect?
• How do you bootstrap and cash out?

Panel II: Privacy and Reputational Protection

Moderator: Michael Zimmer
Panelists: Alessandro Acquisti , Danielle Citron, William McGeveran , Dan Solove , Jonathan Zittrain

Cyber-reputation management is based on transactions in information that is often sensitive and is always contextual. This brings up many questions about the need to protect one’s privacy and reputation within and outside this system. Some of the questions the panel will address:

• How is participation in cyber-reputation systems related to defamation and free speech?
• What happens when cyber-reputation spills over into offline activities and relationships like the political process, job applications, or school admissions?
• What happens when your second life meets your first?
• Requiring divulgence of real name or other personal data. Is opting out possible?

Panel III: Reputational Quality and Information Quality

Moderator: Laura Forlano
Panelists: Urs Gasser, Ashish Goel, Auren Hofman, Darko Kirovski , Mari Kuraishi

Evidently, unlike traditional reputation mechanisms that relied on small group acquaintances and formal accreditation mechanisms, the cyber-reputation economy is heavily mediated by technology. This raises the risk of breaking the delicate checks and balances that are necessary for the system to ensure quality of both the informational outcomes and the participants’ reputation. This panel will try to highlight the connections between the way the new systems are built, and the outcome they produce. Some of the questions the panel will address:

• How can we assure quality in online reputation economies?
• What is the connections between the system design and the quality information?
• How good are the alternative accreditation mechanisms and how easy are they to hijack?
• How can employment discrimination law adapt to the realities of online reputation?

Panel IV: Ownership of Cyber-Reputation

Moderator: Eddan Katz
Panelists: John Clippinger , Eric Goldman, Bob Sutor, Mozelle Thompson , Rebecca Tushnet

The data and information that are collected in online reputation systems are both valuable and powerful. The ability to control this information, store it, process it, access it, and transport it are crucial to the maintenance of the reputation economy. This panel will address the important set of questions that concern the ownership of this information. Some questions the panel will address:

• Who owns one’s online reputation? Who owns the metadata?
• How portable is online reputation? Should it be transportable from one system to another?
• How is reputation connected to the interoperability question? Should we have international standards governing reputation?

Last week we welcomed Samir Chopra, a philosopher who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at Brooklyn College. Prof. Chopra provided a stimulating presentation of his latest work, “Toward a Legal Theory for Artificial Agents” (some background material is here).

This week (Sept. 19), we welcome Adam Greenfield, an Instructor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and author of “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing“. The title of Mr. Greenfield’s talk is “Everyware: Notes on the Social and Ethical Implications of Ubiquitous Computing,” and more details can be found here.

Future speakers for the fall term include Clay Shirky, Dan Kevles, Alondra Nelson, Johannes Britz, Wendy Seltzer, Roberta Kwall, Rob Faris, John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain, and Francis Grodzinsky.

If you’re in the northeast, please try to join us. If you have suggestions for the spring semester, let me know.

Assuming the defense goes well (/knocking on wood), I’m also thrilled to announce that I will be joining the Information Society Project at Yale Law School as the Microsoft Fellow for the 2007-2008 academic year. While at ISP, I hope to continue to explore the social, cultural, and ethical implications of web search engines, as well as support ISP’s larger efforts in the crucial Access to Knowledge initiative (there is an A2K conference next weekend, for those interested).

Exciting times ahead.