Michael Zimmer.org

Building on last year’s success, I’m pleased to announce Milwaukee’s 2009 OneWebDay events:
On Monday, September 21 (7:00pm, UWM Union Theater),  UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Information Policy Research and School of Information Studies is hosting a free screening of the Girl Talk-produced documentary Good Copy/Bad Copy. The film (featuring appearances by Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, and Lawrence Lessig) examines the state of copyright in today’s tech-savvy and dynamic remix culture. The film also features music by RJD2, Santogold, Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, Gnarls Barkley, De La Soul, and more.
The event will also …

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently received 2 years worth of grading data from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. You can search the data here, which provides specific grading details (but not student names or identifiers) for any particular class or instructor from fall 2006 to fall 2008. Here’s a sample listing in the database:

I’ve already written about the limited usefulness of such grading data for students looking to organize their curriculum, and there are a variety of possible explanations for why certain courses/majors/schools have particular GPAs. But what concerns me about …

News reports indicate that Google will begin providing free music downloads in China.
Apparently Chinese Internet users have grown so accustomed to downloading music online, that piracy and illegal downloading has impacted music sales there more than even what the RIAA claims to be such a huge problem here in the U.S. Relatedly, Google has been struggling to take market share away from Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine.
The win-win solution seems to be for the music companies to join forces with Google to create a free music download option for …

Just in time for the sections on intellectual property and fair use in my “Information Technology Ethics” class, the Israeli artist Kutiman released a brilliant collection of YouTube video mashups called “Thru You” (his site has been down due to traffic, but the mashups are also available here and here).
Kutiman has taken existing YouTube videos of people playing music alone, sampled, looped, mixed and mashed them together to make absolutely amazing new music. Here’s a sample:

These songs are genius. They are original. Yet, most interpretations of existing copyright laws would …

A collection of information and communication companies, advocacy groups, and academic centers have announced the formation of the Global Network Initiative, aimed at protecting free expression and privacy on the Internet on a global scale.
From the announcement:
In an effort to protect and advance the human rights of freedom of expression and privacy, a diverse coalition of leading information and communications companies, major human rights organizations, academics, investors and technology leaders today launched the Global Network Initiative.
From the Americas to Europe to the Middle East to Africa and Asia, companies in …

A group of legal, cultural, and social scholars have published a “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video”, providing an important framework to help address the growing challenge of allowing fair use of online content in the face of more-and-more-powerful DRM and intellectual property right regimes, which inevitably over-protect content and often restrict valid fair uses.
Here is the introduction:
WHAT THIS IS
This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright …

In preparation for next month’s Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference on “Technology Policy ‘08“, the Yale Information Society Project has released “9.5 Theses for Technology Policy in the Next Administration“:
1. Privacy. Protect human dignity, autonomy, and privacy by providing individuals with control over the collection, use, and distribution of their personal information and medical information.
2. Access. Promote high-speed Internet access and increased connectivity for all, through both government and private initiatives, to reduce the digital divide.
3. Network Neutrality. Legislate against unreasonable discrimination by network providers against particular applications or content …

The German Constitutional Court, ruling on the constitutionality of secret online searches of computers by government agencies, has created a new “basic right to the confidentiality and integrity of information-technological systems” as derived from the German Constitution. The AP reports:
The Karlsruhe-based Federal Constitutional Court said in a precedent-setting decision that data stored or exchanged on a personal computer is effectively covered under principles of the constitution that enshrine the right to personal privacy.
“Collecting such data directly encroaches on a citizen’s rights, given that fear of being observed … can prevent …

The call for papers for the 2008 Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference has been released. This year’s theme is “Technology Policy ’08“. Details below:
COMPUTERS, FREEDOM, AND PRIVACY: TECHNOLOGY POLICY ’08
http://cfp2008.org/
18th Annual CFP conference
May 20-23, 2008
Omni Hotel
New Haven, CT
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
This election year will be the first to address US technology policy in the information age as part of our national debate. Candidates have put forth positions about technology policy and have recognized that it has its own set of economic, political, and social concerns. In the areas of privacy, intellectual …

This spring I am running a reading group at the Yale Information Society Project (but open to all) titled “Technology, Law, Society, Values and Design.” The description and draft syllabus are below — comments and suggestions are welcome!
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 …

In many of my recent presentations on privacy and information policy, I’ve drawn on differences in the legal and regulatory frameworks applied to the flows of personal information in the United States compared to the European Union. In short, the EU takes a paternalist approach to data protection policy, aiming to preserve a fundamental human right of its citizens through preemptive governmental action (see, for example, the EU Directive on Data Protection), while the governance of privacy in the US typically emerges only after some particular informational harm has occurred, …

In what should not come as that big of a surprise, AP reports:
The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.
And for three years the FBI underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.
…The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also …

A federal judge ruled that the police must stop the routine videotaping of people at public gatherings. Reversing (and clarifying) an earlier ruling, the judge stated that such public surveillance is allowable only if there was an indication that unlawful activity may occur. From the NYTimes report:
Four years ago, at the request of the city, the same judge, Charles S. Haight Jr., gave the police greater authority to investigate political, social and religious groups.
In yesterday’s ruling, Judge Haight, of United States District Court in Manhattan, found that by videotaping people …

27B Stroke 6 outlines four important pieces of privacy-protecting legislation that have either been recently introduced or received new life in the Democratically-controlled House of Representatives:
* The Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, introduced by Dingell and Ranking Member Joe Barton (R-TX), and 24 original cosponsors, to prohibit pretexting of phone records and to enhance security requirements for customer proprietary network information.
* The Social Security Number Protection Act of 2007, introduced by Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet and …

Wired details the potential impact the Democratic takeover of Congress will have on technology devopment, use and policy. Specific attention is paid to privacy and surveillance technologies:
[I]t’s unlikely that Democrats — facing a presidential election in 2008 and fearful of looking soft on terrorism — will be rewriting the Patriot Act any time soon. Instead, they will probably save their ink for subpoenas and opening statements at hearings into the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies.
Voters issued a pink slip to Ohio’s Dewine and Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, two high-profile supporters …