The freedom of expression that was once available to users of the Internet Protocol is being stripped away. Our freedom to play, experiment, share and seek inspiration from the creative works of others is increasingly restricted so that large companies can lock our culture down for their own profit. [...] governments and corporations around the world are making a concerted effort to dismantle the open Internet and replace it with a regulated and regulable one that will allow them to impose an “architecture of control.”

[via Slashdot]

For nearly three centuries since the enactment of the world’s first copyright statute, individuals have been free to travel the kingdom of copyright as countrymen, enjoying the delightful objects to be found there, in private and without any notice taken. Historically, neither copyright law nor copyright holders have interfered with individuals’ freedom to enjoy copyright works in private. This centuries-old relationship between copyright and privacy has changed dramatically in the recent past.

Copyright and privacy have increasingly come into conflict over the course of the past decade. This conflict has led to a diminishment of individuals’ privacy and autonomy in connection with their enjoyment of copyright works. Digital rights management (DRM) technologies that use surveillance and restrict individuals’ activities are a prime example of this conflict.
Failure to gain a richer understanding of the conflict and relationship between copyright and privacy may leave us with little or no room to travel our vibrant copyright kingdoms in private. Permitting privacy to be diminished in the name of copyright may also lead to the impoverishment of the very copyright kingdoms that we purport to be enriching in so doing.

This short ID Trail Mix briefly discusses why, quite apart from its intrinsic worth, authors’ intellectual privacy is and has historically been instrumental in furthering the goals of copyright. This ID Trail Mix raises the question of whether the rationale behind authorial privacy’s historical utility in promoting the goals of copyright can provide arguments in support of protecting individuals’ intellectual privacy in connection with their enjoyment of copyright works. The ultimate question posed here is what role individuals’ intellectual privacy could or should play in the copyright balance.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Identity and Identification in a Networked World:
A Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium

When: September 29-30, 2006
Where: New York University
Submission deadline: July 5, 2006

Increasingly, who we are is represented by key bits of information scattered throughout the data-intensive, networked world. Online and off, these core identifiers mediate our sense of self, social interactions, movements through space, and access to goods and services. There is much at stake in designing systems of identification and identity management, deciding who or what will be in control of them, and building in adequate protection for our bits of identity permeating the network.

The symposium will examine critical and controversial issues surrounding the socio-technical systems of identity, identifiability and identification. The goal is to showcase emerging scholarship of graduate students at the cutting edge of humanities, social sciences, artists, systems design & engineering, philosophy, law, and policy to work towards a clearer understanding of these complex problems, and build foundations for future collaborative work.

In addition to presenting and discussing their work, students will have the opportunity to interact with prominent scholars and professionals related to their fields of interest. The symposium will feature a keynote talk by Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa.

Submission Information:

We invite submissions on the function of identity, identifiability and identification in the following general areas:

• Media & communication: DRM systems, e-mail & instant messaging, discussion forums

• Online: Identity 2.0, web cookies, IP logging, firewalls, personal encryption

• Social interaction: online social networks, blogging, meetups

• Consumer culture: RFID product tags, reputational systems, commercial data aggregation

• Mobility: electronic tolls, auto black boxes, RFID passports, SecureFlight, V-ID cards

• Security: video surveillance, facial recognition, biometric identification systems, national ID cards

Please submit abstracts, position pieces, demos or full papers for a 10-15 minute presentation to michael.zimmer@nyu.edu by July 5, 2006. Include contact and brief biographical information with your submission. Notification of submission acceptance will be given by July 17, 2006. Limited travel stipends will be available for presenters. Students in need of travel funds should indicate so with their submission.

Program chairs:

- Tim Schneider, JD Student, NYU School of Law
- Michael Zimmer, PhD Candidate, Dept. of Culture & Communication, NYU

Faculty advisor:

- Helen Nissenbaum, Dept. of Culture & Communication, NYU

Sponsors:

- Coordinating Council for Culture and Communications, Journalism, and Media Studies, New York University
- Department of Culture and Communication, New York University
- Information Law Institute, New York University School of Law

(download PDF version here)

…Google’s famous “don’t be evil” motto, and customers’ general trust that the company won’t be evil, may get Google into trouble. As more and more data builds up in the company’s disk farms, the temptation to be evil only increases. Even if the company itself stays non-evil, its data trove will be a massive temptation for others to do evil. A rogue employee, an intruder, or just an accidental data leak could cause huge problems. And if customers ever decide that Google might be evil, or cause evil, or carelessly enable evil, the backlash would be severe.

Privacy is for Google what security is for Microsoft. At some point Microsoft realized that a chain of security disasters was one of the few things that could knock the company off its perch. And so Bill Gates famously declared security to be job one, thousands of developers were retrained, and Microsoft tried to change its culture to take security more seriously.

It’s high time for Google to figure out that it is one or two privacy disasters away from becoming just another Internet company. The time is now for Google to become a privacy leader. Fixing the privacy issues in its video DRM would be a small step toward that goal.