Cyberlaw: Difficult Issues Winter 2010 - User contributions [en]

Talk:Future of Wikipedia

2024-08-14T20:02:06Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

'''Meta info:'''

We welcome external participation in our wiki. We are already grateful for the contributions people have been doing especially in the sorts of problems Wikipedia is facing. We have been reading some of [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28144 the comments some people are making about our course] and we would like to have everybody's help giving feedback on some of the ideas we had to address the problems listed.

Our first challenge is to pick a manageable set of problems to work. If we don't focus we run the risk of not achieving anything by trying to solve too many issues. Tonight and tomorrow we'll be posting our ideas of what issues we'd like to tackle and what the potential solutions would look like. Your feedback here would be more than welcome.

==Final list of Problems for the Group==

We'll focus on these two problems:

* Quality and reliability of content (e.g. factual errors on Wikipedia lowers the reliability and credibility of its content)

* Wikipedia's editor base is decreasing (existing editors are losing interest and it is difficult to recruit new editors)

These are ''legal'' problems??? [[User:Jon Awbrey|Jon Awbrey]] 18:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The aim of the course was never to tackle only ''legal'' problems. On the contrary, we were always stimulated to address general problems regardless of their field. I realize this was not clear for outside participants, because a lot of this was discussed in class and not on the wiki. [[User:Brunomagrani|Brunomagrani]] 04:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that many of us outside observers understood "cyberlaw" in a very broad sense, something like "the impact of distributive information technology on society", but — again, purely from a distance — it seemed that most of the activity revolved around "patches for apps", that is, more ''cyber'' than ''law''. [[User:Jon Awbrey|Jon Awbrey]] 05:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

==Background on Wikipedia==

Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.<ref name="History of Wikipedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia],History of Wikipedia.</ref> It represented a new development in the collaborative, web-based creation of bodies of knowledge. Initially it was a complement to the expert-written encyclopedia project âNupedia,â<ref name="Nupedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia], Wikipedia Entry on Nupedia.</ref> in order to provide an additional source of articles. Wikipedia soon outpaced Nupedia and grew to be arguably the most successful example of collaborative content creation. Today Wikipedia boasts that it contains several million articles and pages in hundreds of languages worldwide contributed by millions of users.

Wikipedia is arguably the most successful online collaboration but it is not the first. One early predecessor was Interpedia, initiated in 1993,<ref name="Interpedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpedia], Wikipedia Entry on Interpedia</ref> although the project never fully left the planning stages.<ref name="Joseph Reagle Article on Interpedia & Wikipedia Background">[http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html#heading5], Joseph Reagle Article on Interpedia & Wikipedia Background.</ref> Free Software Foundationâs Richard Stallman described the need for a free universal encyclopedia in 1999, although the Free Software Foundation didnât launch its GNUPedia to compete with Nupedia until January 17, 2001, two days after the start of Wikipedia.<ref name="The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource">[http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html],The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource.</ref> And Wikipedia itself grew out of Nupedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia. On January 10, 2001, Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki, but reputedly Nupediaâs expert volunteers did not want to participate, so Wikipedia was established as a separate site.<ref name="History of Wikipedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia], History of Wikipedia.</ref> Wikipediaâs vision: ''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Thatâs our commitment.''<ref name="Wikimedia Foundation">[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home], Wikimedia Foundation</ref>

===Growth of Wikipedia===

The growth of Wikipedia depended on the contribution of numerous lay users, a departure from the Nupedia tradition of using expert contributors. Nupedia was founded upon the use of highly qualified expert contributors and a multi-step peer review process, but despite its interested editors, the process was slow, and only 12 articles were written in the first year.<ref name="Early History of Nupedia">[http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213&tid=95&tid=149&tid=9], The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir - Part I" and "Part II", Slashdot, April 2005.</ref> Wikipedia, in contrast, generated over 1,000 articles in its first month of operation and over 20,000 articles in its first yearâa rate of 1,500 articles per month.<ref name="History of Wikipedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia], History of Wikipedia.</ref> In March, 2001, Wikipedia expanded into multilingual sites, beginning the development of Wikipedias for all major languages.<ref>http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000049.html</ref>

===Wikimedia===

Initially, Wikipedia was managed by Bomis, a commercial web portal headed by Jimmy Wales. In March 2002, during the dot-com bust, Bomis withdrew funding for Wikipedia.<ref name="Schiff, Stacy">[http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact].(July 31, 2006). Schiff, Stacy. "Know It All". The New Yorker.</ref> At that time, Larry Sanger left both Nupedia and Wikipedia. He returned briefly to academia, then joined the Digital Universe Foundation and founded Citizendium, an alternative open encyclopedia that uses real names for contributors to discourage vandalism and expert guidance to ensure accuracy of information.<ref name="Anderson, Nate">[http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/citizendium.ars], Anderson, Nate (February 25, 2007). "Citizendium: building a better Wikipedia". Ars Technica.</ref>

Meanwhile, after substantial consultation with Alex Roshuk, Jimmy Wales created the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in St. Petersburg, FL, later moved to San Francisco, CA.<ref name="Wikimedia Foundation">[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home], Wikimedia Foundation.</ref> Announced on June 20, 2003, the WMF serves as an umbrella body that includes several other types of wiki collaborative information sharing sites:

* Wikipedia
* [http://www.wiktionary.org/ Wiktionary]
* [http://www.wikiquote.org/ Wikiquote]
* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikibooks] (including [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior Wikijunior])
* [http://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikisource]
* [http://commons.wikimedia.org/ Wikimedia Commons]
* [http://species.wikimedia.org/ Wikispecies]
* [http://en.wikinews.org/ Wikinews]
* [http://en.wikiversity.org/ Wikiversity]
* [http://incubator.wikimedia.org/ Wikimedia Incubator]
* [http://meta.wikimedia.org/ Meta-Wiki]

The foundation's by-laws declare a statement of purpose of collecting and developing educational content and to disseminate it effectively and globally.<ref name="Wikimedia Foundation bylaws">[http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws&oldid=20641#ARTICLE_II_-_STATEMENT_OF_PURPOSE], Wikimedia Foundation bylaws. Archived from the original on 2007-04-20.</ref> Wikimedia is managed by a Board of Trustees. The Foundation and a team of local volunteers also organize [http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal Wikimania] every year, a conference for users of the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

==Academic Studies of Wikipedia==

Academic studies of Wikipedia have mainly used Wikipedia as a tool to analyze other phenomena. The users on Wikipedia provide a large database of subjects which the researchers use to test their hypotheses or as a social network which can be manipulated and observed. The majority of studies focus on either semantic relatedness<ref>M Strube et al,[http://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2006/AAAI06-223.pdf WikiRelate!], Computer Semantic Relatedness Using Wikipedia, Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2006)</ref><ref>E Gabrilovich et al, [http://www.aaai.org/Papers/IJCAI/2007/IJCAI07-259.pdf Computing Semantic Relatedness Using Wikipedia-Based Explicit Semantic Analysis](2007)</ref><ref>Zesch et al, Analyzing and Accessing WIkipedia as a Lexical Semantic Resource, Data Structures for Linguistic Resources (2007).</ref> or online coordination and conflict resolution techniques.<ref name="Coordination">Viegas et al, [[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.84.6907&rep=rep1&type=pdf Talk Before You Type: Coordination in Wikipedia], Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)</ref><ref name ="Kittur">Kittur et al, [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1240624.1240698 He Says, She Says; Conflict and Coordination in Wikipedia], Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Computing (2007)</ref><ref name="Wilkonson">D Wilkonson & B Huberman, [http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0702140 Assessing the Value of Cooperation in Wikipedia, Computers and Society], arXiv:cs/0702140v1 [cs.DL] (2007).</ref>

There is a persistent and widespread failure of academic studies to address the realities of Wikipedia, as opposed to the wishful pipe-dreams of armchair speculators and the uncritical recycling of Wikipedian promotional claims. There is a pressing need for the application of disciplined field study methods and qualitative research based on systematic participant observation.

==Academic Reflections on Wikipedia==

* Cummings, Robert E. (12 Mar 2009), "Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?", ''Inside Higher Ed''. [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings Online].

* Jaschik, Scott (26 Jan 2007), "A Stand Against Wikipedia", ''Inside Higher Ed''. [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki Online].

* Lih, Andrew (16 Dec 2009), "Ron Livingston, Growth, and Wikipedia". [http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/12/16/ron-livingston-growth-and-wikipedia/ Online].

* Matetsky, Ira (May 2009), "Thoughts on Wikipedia", ''The Volokh Conspiracy''. [http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1242098183.shtml Online].

* Schumacher, Mary Louise (30 Apr 2009), "Deconstructing Wikipedia", ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel''. [http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/44035017.html Online].

* Wilson, Mark A. (01 Apr 2008), "Professors Should Embrace Wikipedia", ''Inside Higher Ed''. [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/01/wilson Online].

==List of Potential Problems and discussion==

===Difficult Problems : Three Big Questions===

This section addresses the following questions:

# What is the mission of the Wikipedia project?
# What are the methods of the Wikipedia project?
# Are the methods adequate to the mission?

====What is the Mission?====

=====Education=====

======Aspects of Education======

* Education in Citizenship

* Education in Scholarship

======Issues in Education======

What are the effects of the Wikipedia environment on the critical thinking, information literacy, and research skills of its participants?

'''Critical Reflective Thinking'''

'''Balancing Content and Process'''

Too much commentary on what students learn from Wikipedia stops with the content of articles and fails to examine what students learn from participating in the culture of Wikipedia. Educators know that education is as much about process as it is about product. They understand that students âlearn by doingâ, by taking part in communities of practice. What do students learn by playing the Wikipedia online game?

=====Information=====

* The role of an informed citizenry in democratic societies

=====Socialization=====

* The preservation and transmission of culture

====What are the Methods?====

====Are the Methods Adequate to the Mission?====

===Difficult Problems : Effects of Wikipedia Subculture on the External Society===

What are the effects of the Wikipedia environment on the critical thinking, information literacy, and research skills of its participants?

Too much commentary on what students learn from Wikipedia stops with the content of articles and fails to examine what students learn from participating in the culture of Wikipedia.

Educators know that education is as much about process as it is about product. They understand that students âlearn by doingâ, by taking part in communities of practice. What do students learn by playing the Wikipedia online game?

The effects of using Wikipedia as a source of information is a research question.

The effects of participating more broadly in Wikipedian activities, from the editing game to the policy-making game, is another research question.

Even a bad source of information and a bad guide to the norms of research methodology can serve the ends of critical thinking and information literacy — '''''if''''' the user is afforded the opportunity to reflect on its deficiencies.

Whether Wikipedia helps or hinders the user in gaining that capacity is yet another research question.

Educators are aware that learners have many different paths to knowledge. Among the most obvious are these:

# Learning by being told.
# Learning by doing things for oneself.
# Learning by watching what others do.

What do people learn from participating in the full range of activities provided by the Wikipedia website, considered with regard to each of these modes?

Some of the questions that educational researchers would naturally think to ask about the Wikipedia experience are these:

# What do people learn about the ethical norms of journalism, research, and scholarship?
# What do people learn about the intellectual norms of journalism, research, and scholarship?

For example, questions that one might ask under the indicated headings are these:

# What do people learn about the relative values of primary and secondary sources from reading the relevant policy pages in Wikipedia?
# What do people learn about plagiarism from watching what others do in Wikipedia?

===Difficult Problems : The Bridgespan Strategy===

Following Wikimania 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation (in cooperation with The Bridgespan Group) created a [http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page strategy wiki] that identifies major concerns for the future of the WMF and its projects, and this wiki permits users to contribute and comment on proposed solutions, so long as the contributions meet with approval. A number of contributors have been blocked.<ref>[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&limit=100&type=block&user=Philippe&month=&year= Block log] of coordinator Philippe Beaudette</ref> The problems presented below have been highlighted as the most significant and challenging problems facing the WMF and its projects.

====Identity and Growth of the Contributing Community====

There are three main concerns relating to the contributing community that sustains Wikipedia:

# Size of the contributing community — is it sustainable and is it sufficient?
# Identity of the contributing community — does population bias create content bias?
# Inequality within contributing community — does Wikipedia really represent contributions of the many, or is it moving towards an elite system?

It needs to be appreciated that no statement about the demographics of Wikipedia editors is verifiable according to the usual standards of statistical research. The relationship between real people and editor accounts is known to be many-to-many, but the extent of its deviation from a one-to-one correspondence is simply not assessable on the grounds rules of the site. Furthermore, many editors are actively deceptive about their identities.

=====Size=====

Several studies and articles have suggested that Wikipedia's contributing community has slowed growth, stopped growing, or is even declining (see [http://prawo.uni.wroc.pl/~kwasnicki/EkonLit6/WikipediaSoul.pdf Battle for Wikipedia's Soul]"; "[http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-1-slowing-growth-of-wikipedia-some.html Slowing Growth of Wikipedia]"; or "[http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/23/wsj-volunteers-log-off-as-wikipedia-ages/ Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages]" for a sample). Others, such as Oded Nov, have looked at [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10 "What Motivates Wikipedians"] and concluded that the majority are motivated by fun. But is Wikipedia "fun" enough to maintain its contributing community? A [http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-1-slowing-growth-of-wikipedia-some.html study] by the Palo Alto Research Centre found that the number of new articles added per month flatlined at 60,000 in 2006 and has since declined by a third. Wikimedia Australia's Vice-President, Liam Wyatt explains this: "Because the project is much more filled out and more complete, it's increasingly harder for new users to be able to add something without some level of expertise."

=====Identity and Bias=====

Studies on Wikipedia's contributing population determine that the majority are white males (Oded Nov says 92.7% male, another [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/31/only-13-of-wikipedia-contributors-are-women-study-says/ 87%]). If this is the case, does Wikipedia truly represent an unbiased cross-section of global (or even American) knowledge? How does the identity of the contributing community bias Wikipedia regarding politics? Consider claims that Wikipedia needs to be further censored or is being [http://state-ethics.blogspot.com/2009/07/censoring-wikipedia-2.html manipulated by Nazis] seeking to control the flow of information in Germany, or that its editors are [http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:How_Conservapedia_Differs_from_Wikipedia far more liberal than the American public].

=====Inequality=====

Within the Wikipedia contributing community, there has been a rapid divide between "contributors" and "editors", with editors determining much of the style, tone and occasionally content of articles. One study found that âelite usersâ were pushing out new contributors, with 25% of occasional wiki editorsâ changes being erased or reverted by established editors. This was up from 10% in 2003.<ref>[http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2008.333 Editors as Elite Users]</ref>.

Once again, Wikipedia has editor accounts only. It is possible to predicate properties of editor accounts based on their contribution histories, but it is not possible to extrapolate those predicates to real persons with any degree of verifiability. The accountability of the distinction claimed above is thoroughly undermined by the fact the same person may be editing under many accounts and many persons may be editing under the same account.

====Quality Control : Perceived and Actual====

It is important to distinguish between concerns about the actual quality of Wikipedia articles and concerns about the perceived quality of the articles. The one should be approached as a contributor and technical problem, and the other should be addressed as a publicity problem. Also, the concept of quality is intentionally broad and includes everything from accuracy of information, to degree of citation provided, to the quality of images and prose.

=====Actual Quality of Wikipedia=====

On October 24, 2005, ''The Guardian'' published an article entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" where a panel of experts were asked to critically review seven entries related to their fields.<ref name="Guardian">[http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,16541,1599325,00.html], Can you trust Wikipedia?, ''The Guardian'', 2008.</ref> One article was deemed to have made "every value judgement … wrong", the others receiving marks from 5 to 8 out of a notional ten. Of the other six articles reviewed and critiqued, the most common criticisms were:

# Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)
# Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key omissions in some articles (3 mentions)
# Poor balance, with less important areas being given more attention and vice versa (1 mention)
The most common praises were:
# Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4 mentions)
# Much useful information, including well-selected links, making it possible to "access much information quickly" (3 mentions)

''Nature'' reported in 2005 that science articles in Wikipedia were comparable in accuracy to those on ''Encyclopedia Britannica'''s web site. Out of 42 articles, only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', although more than a hundred lesser errors and omissions were found in each and Wikipedia's articles were often "poorly structured."<ref>P.D. Magnus, [http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/36449903/On-Trusting-WIKIPEDIA On Trusting Wikipedia], Britannica.</ref>

On March 24, 2006, ''Britannica'' provided a rebuttal of this article, labeling it "fatally flawed",<ref name="Nature Flawed BE">[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Journal_Nature_study_%27fatally_flawed%27%2C_says_Britannica], Journal Nature study "fatally flawed" says Britannica, March 24, 2006, Wikinews. </ref> to which ''Nature'' responded.<ref name="Nature Responds">[http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf], Encyclopedia Britannica and Nature: A Response, March 23, 2006.</ref>

Among Britannica's criticisms were that excerpts rather than the full texts of some of their articles were used, that Nature composited parts of different Britannica texts to make a text for review in one case, that Nature did not check the factual assertions of its reviewers, and that many points which the reviewers labeled as errors were differences of editorial opinion. Nature responded that any errors on the part of its reviewers were not biased in favor of either encyclopedia, that in some cases it used excerpts of articles from both encyclopedias, and that Britannica did not share particular concerns with Nature before publishing its "open letter" rebuttal.

Three subsequent studies -- a 2006 web-based survey,<ref>[http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/wikieval], Larry Press, Survey of Wikipedia accuracy and completeness, Professor of Computer Information Systems, California State University (2006)</ref> a 2004 comparison of ''Brockhaus Multimedial'', ''Microsoft Encarta'', and the German Wikipedia, <ref>Michael Kurzidim: Wissenswettstreit. Die kostenlose Wikipedia tritt gegen die MarktfÃ¼hrer Encarta und Brockhaus an, in: ''c't'' 21/2004, October 4, 2004, S. 132-139.</ref> (repeated in 2007 <ref>Dorothee Wiegand: "Entdeckungsreise. Digitale EnzyklopÃ¤dien erklÃ¤ren die Welt." c't 6/2007, March 5, 2007, p. 136-145.</ref>), and a 2007 review by Australian magazine ''PC Authority''<ref>[http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/93908,wikipedia-uncovered.aspx/1], PC Authority:'Wikipedia Uncovered'.</ref> -- concluded that Wikipedia was generally as reliable as other traditional encyclopedias.

However, Wikipedia may not be as reliable in technical or specialized fields. A peer-reviewed 2008 study<ref>[http://www.theannals.com/cgi/reprint/aph.1L474v1.pdf] KA Clauson et al., Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug Iinformation in Wikipedia, 42 Annals Pharmacotheraphy 1814 (2008).</ref>examined 80 Wikipedia drug entries. The research team found few factual errors but determined that these articles were often missing important information, like contraindications and drug interactions. One of the researchers noted that "If people went and used this as a sole or authoritative source without contacting a health professional...those are the types of negative impacts that can occur." The researchers also compared Wikipedia to Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), by looking for answers to 80 different questions covering eight categories of drug information, including adverse drug events, dosages, and mechanism of action. They have determined that MDR provided answers to 82.5 percent of the questions, while Wikipedia could only answer 40 percent, and that answers were less likely to be complete for Wikipedia as well. None of the answers from Wikipedia were determined factually inaccurate, while they found four inaccurate answers in MDR. But the researchers found 48 errors of omission in the Wikipedia entries, compared to 14 for MDR. The study noted that Wikipedia articles improved significantly over time. The lead investigator concluded: "I think that these errors of omission can be just as dangerous [as inaccuracies]", and he pointed out that drug company representatives have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe.
:However, omission of drug information is intended by Wikipedia's style guidelines to specifically prevent articles being used for medication advice. This shows that the scope of Wikipedia's intended content may not be realised, so it may be at fault with an outside view, but correct within its own guidelines. <ref>[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medmos#Drugs]]</ref>

Another informal but systematic study of one calendar quarter's worth of edits to Wikipedia's one hundred articles about the 100 senators of the United States determined that these articles were interspersed with incorrect information or defamation about 6.8% of the time.<ref>[http://www.mywikiâbiz.com/Wikipedia_Vandalism_Study Vandalism study of U.S. senators], analyzing data from 4th Quarter, 2007.</ref>

In addition to these potential omissions (or purposeful deletions), the structure of Wikipedia lends itself to several [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#cite_note-50 potential vulnerabilities]:

#Information citation loops
#Vandalism
#Anonymity of authors lending to false information (see e.g. the [http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1062 Essjay controversy])

In 2007, XKCD created a humorous [http://xkcd.org/285/ comic] illustrating a feature (references and citations) designed to ensure greater accuracy in articles.

=====Perceived Quality of Wikipedia=====

Whether or not Wikipedia actually is accurate, its reception as a trusted source has been plagued by doubts regarding the trustworthiness of its content as the product of mass collaboration by anonymous authors.

Years ago, the perception of Wikipedia in the average population was relatively high. In a web-based survey conducted in spring 2006, fifty participants rated Wikipedia articles: 76% agreed that the article was accurate, and 46% agreed it was complete. The same survey compared Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica: of 18 responses, 6 favored Britannica, 7 favored Wikipedia, and 11 found Wikipedia more complete.<ref>Larry Press, "[http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/wikieval/ Survey of Wikipedia accuracy and completeness]," Professor of Computer Information Systems, California State University (2006).</ref>

However, Wikipedia's '''reception by academia''' has been less than stellar, and current popular perception of the compendium is on the decline. (Note the January 10 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Rollercoaster_%28The_Cleveland_Show%29 episode] of ''The Cleveland Show'', where Cleveland Brown, Jr. asks his sister (disguised as "Tyra Obama") if it's true "you guys can clap your breasts together like a seal", and when she says "No", he deadpans to the camera, "Thanks a lot, Wikipedia".)

Even if Wikipedia itself doesnât intend to be used as a course for academic works, it is often used by students and researchers as a starting point. However, the open-source collaborative and anonymous efforts that produce Wikipedia have led to wide-spread skepticism of its accuracy. Most of the angry responses targeted at Wikipedia have been aimed at its claim to be an encyclopedia. Such claims are thought to establish greater expectations of accuracy than are or possibly can be achieved by non-expert collaboration. Academics have also criticized Wikipedia for its perceived failure as a reliable source, and because Wikipedia editors may not have degrees or other credentials generally recognized in academia.

Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief for the Encyclopedia Britannica, describes Wikipedia as the âFaith-Based Encyclopedia.â He describes the âcrucial and entirely faith-based stepâ in the Wikipedia process: âSome unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.â This step, he argues, is a completely unwarranted leap of faith. Rather, âContrary to the faith, the article has, in fact, been edited into mediocrity.â<ref name=McHenry>[http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111504A], Robert McHenry, The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Blinks, Dec 14, 2005 (2008).</ref>

Andrew Orlowski accuses Wikipedia of being a âvanity exerciseâ for calling itself an encyclopedia, and writes that the use of the term "encyclopedia" to describe Wikipedia may lead users into believing it is more reliable than it may be. He points out (describing a libel case against Wikipedia) that âIf what we today know as "Wikipedia" had started life as something called, let's say - "Jimbo's Big Bag O'Trivia" - we doubt if it would be the problem it has become.â The public begins to expect trustworthy information from Wikipedia and instead gets a âking-sized cocktailâ of bureaucracy and âspontaneous graffiti.â <ref>[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/12/wikipedia_no_responsibility/page2.html], Andrew Orlowski, "Who's responsible for Wikipedia?" The Register, Dec 12, 2005.</ref>

Middlebury College went so far as to [http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.1/rosenzweig.html?pr=jah931 ban the citation of Wikipedia] in papers in its history department. On this note, however, consider the fact that Wikipedia itself states in its guidelines that Wikipedia is not suitable for academic citation because Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is a tertiary source. The use of Wikipedia is not accepted in many schools and universities in writing a formal paper, and some educational institutions have banned it as a primary source while others have limited its use to only a pointer to external sources.<ref name=Duke>[http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/03/28/News/Several.Colleges.Push.To.Ban.Wikipedia.As.Resource-2809247.shtml], Lysa Chen, "Several colleges push to ban Wikipedia as resource," Duke Chronicle, March 28, 2007</ref><ref>"[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki A Stand Against Wikipedia]", ''Inside Higher Ed'' (January 26, 2007). Retrieved on January 27, 2007.</ref><ref name=McHenry>

Some academic journals do refer to Wikipedia articles, but do not elevate it to the same level as traditional references. For instance, Wikipedia articles have been referenced as "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in the journal Science. The publisher of Science states that these enhanced perspectives "include hypernotes - which link directly to websites of other relevant information available online - beyond the standard bibliographic references."<ref>[http://www.aaas.org/publications/books_reports/CCLI/PDFs/01_D_Perspectives.pdf], Yolanda S. George & Shirley S.Malcolm, "Perspectives from AAAS|publisher=American Association for the Advancement of Science."</ref>

=====Improving Wikipedia's Perceived Accuracy=====
One study presented at the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Work explored whether a visualizations system could improve readersâ perceptions of trustworthiness in a wiki by exposing hidden article information.<ref>
Kittur, Suh & Chi, Can You Ever Trust a Wiki?: Impacting Perceived Trustworthiness in Wikipedia, in PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACM 2008 CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK (2008) 477-480. [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1460639&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=56978117&CFTOKEN=87505552Abstract].</ref> The results suggest that surfacing information that is relevant to the stability of the article and patterns of editor behavior can have a significant impact on usersâ trust. This should be considered in conjunction for proposals on color-coding articles by age, editing contribution etc that are being considered to improve article accuracy.

Other suggestions include:

*Reputation-based text coloring. Each article could display a button labeled "check text reputation": upon clicking the button, a user would be led to a copy of the page, where the text background color reflects the reputation of the author of each portion of text, as well as the reputation of authors who vetted the text, editing the page while leaving the text in place. The appeal of this method is that reputation is displayed in an anonymous way, associated to the article text. This avoids placing blame or praise directly on the authors: the impersonal character of this feedback could be well-suited to a collaborative forum such as the Wikipedia.<ref>T. Cross. Puppy smoothies: Improving the reliability of open, collaborative wikis. First Monday, 11(9), September 2006.</ref>
*Restricting edits. Highly controversial articles could be protected, so that only authors with sufficiently high reputation are able to edit them. This is currently employed by Wikipedia as part of its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_policy Protection Policy] but it could be expanded.
*Reputation-based alert system. Wikipedia Editors keep a watchful eye on most controversial articles, and in fact, on a large portion of the Wikipedia, improving content and undoing poor-quality revisions. A reputation system could be used to alert them whenever a crucial or controversial article is modified by a low-reputation author. A reputation system provides an incentive for high-quality contributions. A reputation system could provide an additional incentive for authors to provide high quality contributions to the Wikipedia.<ref>P. Resnick, R. Zeckhauser, E. Friedman, and K. Kiwabara. Reputation systems. Comm. ACM, 43(12):45{48, 2000. C. Dellarocas. The digitization of word-ofmouth: Promises and challenges of online reputation systems. Management Science, October 2003.</ref>
*Content-Driven Reputation system. Study by Adler & de Alfaro proposes a content-driven reputation system for Wikipedia to allow readers to determine reliability of an article based on the reputation of the contributors and editors. The reputation of authors would be based on how their contribution to Wikipedia fares: the longer an article or edit remains un-edited or un-altered, the better the authorâs reputation. This can be, however, much less accurate than a user-driven reputation system. Author contributions can be deleted for a variety of reasons, including reorganizations and thorough rewrites of the articles. Alder & Alfaro address these issues in that the reputation of authors whose edits are reverted to the original text suffers; reputation of authors whose edits are further refined later on do not suffer.<ref>B. Thomas Adler & Luca de Alfaro, [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=luca_de_alfaro A Content-Driven Reputation System for the Wikipedia].</ref>
*Zeng et al. also propose a mechanism wherein the revision history of the Wikipedia article is used to compute a trust value for the article.<ref>H. Zeng, M.A. Alhoussaini, L. Ding, R. Fikes, and D.L. McGuinness. Computing trust from revision history. In Intl. Conf. on Privacy, Security and Trust, 2006.</ref>

* It could also prove interesting to explore combinations of user and content reputation devices.

====Sustainability of the Wikimedia Model====

The strategy discussions at Wikimania 2009 raised the question of whether Wikimedia, as it stands today, is sustainable: both from a technological and organizational standpoint.

* Is a platform that both supports numerous users and serves less tech savvy contributors possible?

* How can Wikimedia ensure its financial stability?

* How can Wikimedia re-structure its institutional organization to allow oversight without creating too many levels of hierarchy such that the bureaucracy becomes ungainly?

=====Emerging Strategic Priorities=====

* Optimize Wikimediaâs operations

* Identify roles volunteers are best suited to perform and what are the most effective uses of paid staff

* Create alliances and partnerships with other institutions and organizations to advance the mission: also, what are the necessary preconditions to such alliances? How support similar projects?

=====Obstacles to Sustainability=====

* Persistent lack of accountability

* Inability to respond to widespread critical feedback

====Expansion and Questions of Scope====

Since the founding of Wikipedia in 2001, there has been substantial growth in user-generated online content.<ref>Geist, M. Mapping the digital future. OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 254 (2006), 36â37.</ref><ref>Dunn, J., Byrd, D., Notess, M., Riley, J., and Scherle, R. Variations2: Retrieving and using music in an academic setting. Commun. ACM 49, 8 (Aug. 2006) 53â58.</ref> According to one Nielsen rating, user-generated content drives 50% of the top fastest growing internet brands.<ref>Nielsen NetRating. [www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/PR_060810.PDF User-generated content drives half of U.S. top 10 fastest growing Web brands], (Aug. 10, 2006).</ref> Consider just the popularity of collaborative site such as YouTube, Flickr, or Slashdot.org. Traditional media outlets such as BBC News.com have also added areas for collaboration.<ref>Eltringham, M. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4900000/newsid_4900400/4900444.stm Citizen journalists challenge BBC], BBC NewsWatch (2006).</ref> User-generated content appears to be the way forward â but is Wikipedia a good model upon which to base that progress? Can the system used for Wikipedia be applied in other scenarios?

==Lay Questions for Scholars Concerned with the Role of Law in Society==

The Law of any given Land is frequently out of sync — now leading, now lagging — the collective common sense of what it takes to constitute a just society. With that in mind, let us address the questions of justification:

# What is and what should be the obligations of interactive media site owners and interactive media site participants toward their fellow citizens, toward the larger communities of inquiry from which they derive their justification, and toward the world at large?
# It is possible to debate the current dictates of the Law at great length — this has already been done at great length and will no doubt continue to be done at even greater length. But the ordinary citizen in danger of becoming roadkill on the Internet Autobahn will be concerned with the broader horizon, longer haul issues of where the Law is bound to go if it is designed to achieve and maintain a just society.

===Freedom of Speech, False Witness, Truth in Advertising===

===Legal and Social Justification for Tax Incentives===

===Unsafe @ Any Speed?===

* Need to consider the very real possibility that Wikipedia is an inherently defective social-technical product that cannot be fixed by any means even remotely feasible given the present conditions of its existence.
* Technical infrastructure needs to be improved

===Critical Reflective Self-Study and Institutional Research?===

* The difficulties, if not impossibilities, of continuous quality improvement in a system that is hostile to critical feedback and resistant to the principles of learning organizations. It would be possible to make a very long list of previous efforts along these lines that have been aborted or gutted by the prevailing dynamics of the Wikipedian subculture.

* If crowdsourcing is so great, why does the Wikimedia Foundation need to hire professional strategic planning ''cum'' public representation agencies like the Bridgespan Group to do its institutional research?

=== The Laborious Way That Decisions Are Made? ===

* Process vs. Substance

=== Newbies? Editing Interface ===

:* Is maintaining a higher complexity level in the editing interface a mechanism for quality control? (e.g. users needs to be at least nominally computer literate to be able to edit/operate within wikipedia)
:* Breaking through the glass ceiling - how can newbies be encouraged to contribute?

=== Online harassment or defamation problem in Wikipedia? ===

* Ron LIvingston v. Mark Binmore
* Star Wars Kid
* ReputationDefender
** Maybe this is not a problem of Wikipedia, this is a problem in the internet generally

=== Getting Educational Institutions to Explicitly Participate ===

* Partnership Program w/ Schools-Teachers?
*:Need to identify what benefits, if any, would accrue to teachers, students, or Wikipedia by such a partnership.
*:: zing! [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?]
::: [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings#Comments Just be sure to read all the comments, too].
::: From the standpoint of the purpose identified in the Cummings blogicle, I question whether teaching students how to succeed in Wikipedia's dysfunctional rhetorical environment, or learning Wikipedia's preferred style of authorship, which is difficult to distinguish from organized, sanctioned plagiarism, is of any benefit to students or to teachers. Wikipedia also has a tendency to be resistant to such efforts; I recall several instances of students having been assigned to edit Wikipedia and subsequently being blocked on the grounds that their assignment created a "conflict of interest" (a term of art within Wikipedia's idiosyncratic jargon which means something other than what an ordinary person would think it means). [[User:Kelly Martin|Kelly Martin]] 17:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
*:: so "Partnership" was thrown around incredibly loosely
* Getting students to flag hotspots (see flagging proposal)
* Getting students to learn about how projects like Wikipedia work
*: A proper study of how Wikipedia works, and more importantly how Wikipedia fails, could possibly be of interest for students in social psychology, abnormal psychology, political science, marketing, and other related fields. Marketing people, especially, should be very interested in learning how to exploit Wikipedia more effectively. [[User:Kelly Martin|Kelly Martin]] 17:53, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
** Clarifying how '''not''' to use Wikipedia
** Addressing institutions' views on sources, primary and secondary
** Addressing Wikipedian's concerns on newbies
**: A recent attempt at a quality control study (the "NEWT project") on the treatment of editors perceived to be newbies by managers of Wikipedia's speedy deletion process was met with strong disapproval by the community. Wikipedia's community actively resists efforts, either internal or external, to examine its internal processes and behaviors, except when the purpose is clearly structured from the beginning to be adulatory.
* Keeping in mind all of this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_and_universities_project Wikipedia school and university projects]

==Resources==

* [http://akahele.org/ Akahele]

* [http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/ Augmented Social Cognition Blog]

* The Wikipedia Review : [http://wikipediareview.com/ Forum], [http://wikipediareview.com/blog/ Op-Ed Blog]

* [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=25352 Wikipedia Timeline]
* [http://mywikibiz.com/Wikipedia_scandals Wikipedia Scandals]
* [http://mywikibiz.com/Wikipedia_Vandalism Wikipedia Vandalism]

==References==
<references/>

UbiComp

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

= What is Ubiquitous Human Computing? =

Professor Zittrain provides an excellent overview of the emerging field of "Ubiquitous Human Computing" in a recent [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/ssrn-id1140445-pdf paper]. For the purposes of this course, focus on the paper's discussion of "fungible networked brainpower" as exemplified by Amazon Mechanical Turk, LiveOps and InnoCentive. Alternatively, these core ideas are expressed in video form [http://bigthink.com/jonathanzittrain/the-long-and-silent-subway-ride-of-the-future here].

= The Current Services =

== Amazon Mechanical Turk ==

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) [http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome product] is the simplest ubiquitous human computing model currently available. It provides a marketplace for "Human Intelligence Tasks" (HITs), which are typically large collections of simple and repetitive tasks that nonetheless require a human mind to complete. The HITs are necessarily limited in scope because their maximum price is $10.

== LiveOps ==

LiveOps's [http://www.liveops.com marketplace] is a step up from AMT because it carefully selects those that can perform tasks. Out of 3500 candidates to become a LiveOps worker each week, LiveOps only selects 50-75 after a test and an interview.

Patrick McKenna, founder of LiveOps but no longer with the company, has outlined what he believes draws each party to LiveOps. Workers desire (1) access to work, (2) control over their own work schedules, and (3) independance. McKenna believes that the most important factor to workers in their schedule flexibility. Also very important to the worker is the lack of setup and takedown time - there is no LiveOps equivalent to the unpaid commute to and from work. There is also no LiveOps equivalent to the real-world workplace expenses of gas, work clothes and workplace eating. McKenna believes that the average LiveOps worker make $9 an hour, but that this amount is equivalent to earning $16/hour in a job involving the aforementioned expenses.

McKenna believes that work providers are drawn to LiveOps primarily because of its flexibility and capacity to maximize productivity from their workers. Work providers are also able to avoid costs associated with the real-world workplace - office space, setup and takedown time, etc. - LiveOps employers only pay for work when it is actually being done. The flexibility offered by LiveOps allows for work providers to quickly vary the size of their workforce - they do not need to keep a "reserve" of employees that are paid with no work to do in order to handle spikes in workforce needs.

== InnoCentive ==

InnoCentive's [http://www.innocentive.com/ marketplace] is again a step up from LiveOps in terms of complexity of its tasks and skills needed to complete them. InnoCentive's asks its workers to solve minor scientific problems posed by its work suppliers. InnoCentive offers its workers large awards, including awards of $1,000,000 for some solutions. InnoCentive refers to its work providers and workers as "seekers" and "solvers", respectively.

= The Difficult Issues =

== Present Day Doctrinal Problem Areas ==

*American Business Law Journal: The Information Revolution and its Impact on the Employment Relationship: An Analysis of the Cyberspace Workplace
**This is a fantastic survey paper on the many issues raised with employment law in combination with cyber-workers.
**This article seems to assume that cyberworkers will still be working in the United States, but this seems like an unrealistic assumption
**Written in 2003, around the time LiveOps launched (2000)
**Citation: 40 AMBLJ 301
**Section II of this article examines how working over the internet blurs/challenges current law about the employee/contractor distinction.
***"Under the right-of-control test, an employee is not an independent contractor if the employer has the ability to control the time, method, and manner of employment"
**Section IV of this article examines how cyber-working affects non-compete agreements and copyright considerations (such as works-for-hire)
***"The Internet exacerbates this tension by raising previously unheard of issues in drafting and enforcing non-compete agreements."
***Work-for-hire: How does UbiComp affect the work-for-hire test established by Creative Non-Violence v. Reid? ( 490 U.S. 730 (1989) )
**Section V - Employment Regulation
***A: The Burlington/Faragher sexual harassment standard is not clear when applied to cyber-workers
****"The Ninth Circuit held that remoteness will not dilute an employee's obligation to report sexual harassment."
***C: Family Medical Leave Act - depends on employee/independent contractor distinction
***D: Workers Compensation
***E: Fair Labor Standards Act
***F: The National Labor Relations Act
***G: The Occupational Safety & Health Act
**Conclusions
***For employee/contractor distinction, "courts must use the existing and long-standing right-of-control test, but apply it with sensitivity to the unique characteristics of Internet-enabled workplaces."
***As courts evolve toward the Zippo sliding scale, they must set some standard of how much contact remote employment creates between the employee's forum state and the employer.
***Agencies need to adopt specific regulation to deal with cyberworkers
***"When regulatory guidance is insufficient, the legislature must act"
****Congress must clarify how unions can organize and communicate in cyberspace in order to protect labor and management rights.

*Case study: Amazon's Mechanical Turk may violate employment/tax laws because the employee-employer relationship is between the requester and the worker [http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-amazon-mechanical-turk-black-market.html]

== Potential Difficult Problems in the Future ==

* What if UbiComp is used for political lobbying?
** In general, any mass movement could be created using UbiComp
* Could employees "outsource" their own work using UbiComp? [http://webchicanery.com/2009/06/20/4-minute-work-week/]

UbiCompBrief

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Ubiquitous Human Computing

2024-08-14T19:59:04Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

= What is Ubiquitous Human Computing? =

Professor Zittrain provides an excellent overview of the emerging field of "Ubiquitous Human Computing" in a recent [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/ssrn-id1140445-pdf paper]. For the purposes of this course, focus on the paper's discussion of "fungible networked brainpower" as exemplified by Amazon Mechanical Turk, LiveOps and InnoCentive. Alternatively, these core ideas are expressed in video form [http://bigthink.com/jonathanzittrain/the-long-and-silent-subway-ride-of-the-future here].

= The Current Services =

== Amazon Mechanical Turk ==

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) [http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome product] is the simplest ubiquitous human computing model currently available. It provides a marketplace for "Human Intelligence Tasks" (HITs), which are typically large collections of simple and repetitive tasks that nonetheless require a human mind to complete. The HITs are necessarily limited in scope because their maximum price is $10.

== LiveOps ==

LiveOps's [http://www.liveops.com marketplace] is a step up from AMT because it carefully selects those that can perform tasks. Out of 3500 candidates to become a LiveOps worker each week, LiveOps only selects 50-75 after a test and an interview.

Patrick McKenna, founder of LiveOps but no longer with the company, has outlined what he believes draws each party to LiveOps. Workers desire (1) access to work, (2) control over their own work schedules, and (3) independence. McKenna believes that the most important factor to workers in their schedule flexibility. Also very important to the worker is the lack of setup and takedown time - there is no LiveOps equivalent to the unpaid commute to and from work. There is also no LiveOps equivalent to the real-world workplace expenses of gas, work clothes and workplace eating. McKenna believes that the average LiveOps worker make $9 an hour, but that this amount is equivalent to earning $16/hour in a job involving the aforementioned expenses.

McKenna believes that work providers are drawn to LiveOps primarily because of its flexibility and capacity to maximize productivity from their workers. Work providers are also able to avoid costs associated with the real-world workplace - office space, setup and takedown time, etc. - LiveOps employers only pay for work when it is actually being done. The flexibility offered by LiveOps allows for work providers to quickly vary the size of their workforce - they do not need to keep a "reserve" of employees that are paid with no work to do in order to handle spikes in workforce needs.

== InnoCentive ==

InnoCentive's [http://www.innocentive.com/ marketplace] is again a step up from LiveOps in terms of complexity of its tasks and skills needed to complete them. InnoCentive's asks its workers to solve minor scientific problems posed by its work suppliers. InnoCentive offers its workers large awards, including awards of $1,000,000 for some solutions. InnoCentive refers to its work providers and workers as "seekers" and "solvers", respectively.

== CrowdFlower ==

[http://crowdflower.com/ CrowdFlower]

= The Difficult Issues =

== Present Day Doctrinal Problem Areas ==

*American Business Law Journal: The Information Revolution and its Impact on the Employment Relationship: An Analysis of the Cyberspace Workplace
**This is a fantastic survey paper on the many issues raised with employment law in combination with cyber-workers.
**This article seems to assume that cyberworkers will still be working in the United States, but this seems like an unrealistic assumption
**Written in 2003, around the time LiveOps launched (2000)
**Citation: 40 AMBLJ 301
**Section II of this article examines how working over the internet blurs/challenges current law about the employee/contractor distinction.
***"Under the right-of-control test, an employee is not an independent contractor if the employer has the ability to control the time, method, and manner of employment"
**Section IV of this article examines how cyber-working affects non-compete agreements and copyright considerations (such as works-for-hire)
***"The Internet exacerbates this tension by raising previously unheard of issues in drafting and enforcing non-compete agreements."
***Work-for-hire: How does UbiComp affect the work-for-hire test established by Creative Non-Violence v. Reid? ( 490 U.S. 730 (1989) )
**Section V - Employment Regulation
***A: The Burlington/Faragher sexual harassment standard is not clear when applied to cyber-workers
****"The Ninth Circuit held that remoteness will not dilute an employee's obligation to report sexual harassment."
***C: Family Medical Leave Act - depends on employee/independent contractor distinction
***D: Workers Compensation
***E: Fair Labor Standards Act
***F: The National Labor Relations Act
***G: The Occupational Safety & Health Act
**Conclusions
***For employee/contractor distinction, "courts must use the existing and long-standing right-of-control test, but apply it with sensitivity to the unique characteristics of Internet-enabled workplaces."
***As courts evolve toward the Zippo sliding scale, they must set some standard of how much contact remote employment creates between the employee's forum state and the employer.
***Agencies need to adopt specific regulation to deal with cyberworkers
***"When regulatory guidance is insufficient, the legislature must act"
****Congress must clarify how unions can organize and communicate in cyberspace in order to protect labor and management rights.

*Case study: Amazon's Mechanical Turk may violate employment/tax laws because the employee-employer relationship is between the requester and the worker [http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-amazon-mechanical-turk-black-market.html]

== Potential Difficult Problems in the Future ==

* What if UbiComp is used for political lobbying?
** In general, any mass movement could be created using UbiComp
* Could employees "outsource" their own work using UbiComp? [http://webchicanery.com/2009/06/20/4-minute-work-week/]
** How can child labor be prevented?

Student Responsibilities

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

'''THESE ASSIGNMENTS HAVE NOT YET BEEN FINALIZED'''

''Pre-Course Responsibilities'':

#Complete one of the following tasks and write a post on the course wiki about your experiences [ [[Experiences in Crowd Sourcing]] ]
##Apply to be a LiveOps representative
##Interact with Twitterhawk or another commercial Twitter application
##Use Mechanical Turk (complete or post a HIT)
##Address / propose possible ideas for the [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/Challenges/Privacy_Icons Drumbeat Privacy Project]
##Participate within an online community or service that touches on one of the cross-cutting themes of the course (due process on the internet, privacy/anonymity, mass collaboration, and motivating good & bad actors). It should be one you havenât tried before. (e.g. Couchsurfing)
##'''Due by January 3rd'''
#Read Professor Zittrain's book [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It]
##Be prepared to be called upon in the first class to discuss the topics and ideas in the book
##'''Due by January 4th'''

''Course Responsibilities'':

#Attend all course meetings: be prepared and participate
#After the first introductory session on January 4nd, email the course admin (cyberlaw_winter10_admin@eon.law.harvard.edu) and rank the four main difficult problems in order of preference
##You will be assigned to a group of 5 based on your topic preference
##'''Due 4pm Wednesday, January 6'''
#Contribute to the course wiki on a regular basis
##Contributions may be adding information or readings, or posting questions
##Students should register a user name, should email the user name to the course admin, and then should be sure to log in before contributing
##Contributions count for course credit
#For each day of the first week, contribute to the predictions page on what issues you think the next day's speakers will raise
#Each student should â'''sign up'''â for a week 2 class (by posting username on wiki under that subject)
##Students should post a hypothesis on the or wiki with their prediction of what the speakersâ biggest problems will be
###Predictions '''due before class'''
##After class, students should compare their predictions to the actual problems posed by speakers and react to the problems raised.
###Comments '''due before the next class meeting'''

''(Optional) Field Trips & Panels'':
Field Trips will be arranged on week days to relevant locations (such as Facebook, eBay, and the Museum of Computer History). Students are encouraged to attend and to discuss their experiences/thoughts on the course wiki. Class time will also be reserved the next day to discuss field trips.

''Group Responsibilities'':

#Groups will be assigned based on topic preferences (see above)
#Groups should prepare for 15 minutes of âquestion timeâ during Week 2, during which students can seek advice & input on their proposed solutions from the class and any other brain trust members who are present that day.
#Groups should contribute to and edit the background wiki pages on their topic to be used as a resource by future classes
#Presentations: groups will give a 30 minute presentation in Week 3 on their difficult issue and proposed solution. Students will be able to receive feedback from speakers present.
##Groups should also post a detailed summary of their presentation on the wiki
##This does not have to be very long, but should provide a write up of the proposed solution that can be available for critique and comment by other classmates and participants.
#Final Project:
##The final project is '''due midnight (PST) January 31st'''
##The format of the final project is open-ended with creativity encouraged. The goal is to contribute substantively to the difficult problem being addressed by your group. This could be a written âbriefing paperâ, a Wikipedia strategic proposal, a website designed to solve a problem, or any other appropriate format.

Terms of Service Brainstorming

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

== Way to get the icon to scale quickly:==

To overcome initial inertia on this project, crowd source it in the beginning. Have users visiting each site read one or more relevant parts of the privacy policy and rank it on a scale from 1-10, then use that data to feed the icon that Mozilla displays. Over time, the businesses themselves will want to rank their own policies. Mozilla can then begin to shift the balance of the rating from the crowdsourced data to business self-reporting until it becomes the standard.

==For More Information:==

Have each icon for a category of privacy information (data saving, monetization, customizability, etc) link to that particular paragraph of the actual text so if a user is interested in a particular part of the policy, clicking on that link will take you to the actual text of the relevant part of the policy.

==For more accurate information==
Have users create their own settings for which privacy issues are most important to them. That way Mozilla can create or collect many different icons for various aspects of privacy policies, but only show the most relevant 4-5.

==Suggest Better Sites==
For sites with bad privacy rating in important categories or in areas that users are particularly interested in, clicking on the icon could suggest similar websites with better privacy policies.
: for instance, a site with better customizability of privacy policies.

------
= Friendly ToS=
This is a the current draft of the Friendly ToS, a collaboration between [[User:Dharmishta|Dharmishta]] 04:26, 13 January 2010 (UTC) Bill Bushey, Parker Phinney, Erhardt Graeff, Frank Tobia, Seth Woodworth and Tim Hwang. We've just been drafting this stuff in our free time, and would love to have anyone from this class (or anyone else who has found themselves to this wiki page) on our mailing list where we discuss this stuff! Feel free to edit it here.

FriendlyToS Version 0.01

Service providers have not lived up to their responsibility to their users. In the current paradigm of ToS and Privacy Policies, the user is disempowered and vulnerable to a loss of privacy. Users should be empowered with the ownership of and knowledge about their own data on these services.

The prevalence of online services makes the Terms of Service an increasingly important force in defining the terms of the webâs cultural and community ecosystem. However, to date, the larger web community concerned about freedom online has not yet coalesced a consensus around how best to structure the Terms of Service in the same way that it has done in the world of copyright or patenting. We the undersigned seek to fill that gap -- proposing an overarching set of standards that will protect liberties and promote the responsible stewardship of online spaces.

In the past, communities have generated solutions for dealing with the legalities of the relationship between a service and an individual. The GNU Public License revolutionized the world of software by providing a unified standard of freedom to access, change, and redistribute code. Similarly, Creative Commons provided creators the freedom to choose how to license their content. We advocate for a similar approach that will remake the expectations and responsibilities surrounding the user-service relationship.

Recognizing the long history of discussion surrounding the concept of âfreedomâ in the digital space, we adopt the term âfriendlyâ to describe these declarations. This term embraces the desire not only to secure freedom as the physical infrastructure of the internet shifts in the coming decade, but also to enshrine the terms of fair dealing in that space as well.

A Terms of Service, End User License Agreement, Privacy Policy and all documents tied to the user-service relationship are consistent with the values of the FriendlyToS if they comply with the following requirements. We also specify the details of a FreeToS, which leverage the terms of the FriendlyToS to construct an online space that is more affirmatively free in its use of data:

==LEGAL As to the legal form of a FriendlyToS, we declare the following:==

*Human Readable: FriendlyToS advocates the creation of human-readable licenses, which allow the user to quickly identify the relevant terms of notification, use of data, and data ownership.

*Standardization in Code and Text: In an effort to aid this process, FriendlyToS advocates the creation of a standardized way of representing these legal structures in code and text, which will bolster the development of applications which support users in understanding the terms of their digital environment.

==RIGHTS A FriendlyToS respects the following rights in order to be consistent with the protection of freedom:==

*Notification: The ability to change the terms of an agreement without the knowledge of the user is a violation of trust in online spaces. We declare that a FriendlyToS is one in which the service provider give adequate advance notification to users of changes to their legal relationship and provides an archived history of past versions.

*Transparency of Data Distribution and Storage: Service providers must provide clear information about which third-parties receive data, what data is stored, and how long that data is stored for. Any data that enters the hands of third parties should be made clear by the service at the outset and made easily viewable by the users at any time.

*Data Ownership: Similarly, a FriendlyToS views vagueness on the ownership of content produced or uploaded to an online space as an affront to fair dealing. The relationship between provider and user and the ownership of data should be made clear at the outset and made easily viewable by users at any time.

*Neutrality: These requirements are explicitly neutral as to the terms of ownership, the transfer of data to third parties, the types of data being stored, and how long the data is stored, so long as there exists complete transparency about these practices.

*Accessibility: A FriendlyToS provides users with the right to see what personal data is being collected and held by the provider at any time. This information should be clear, concise, and colloquial.

==FreeToS We believe that a FriendlyToS also lays the groundwork for an online space to be fundamentally more free in important ways. The FreeToS is an extension of these beliefs, and functions in addition to the regular FriendlyToS. The terms of this space would include:==

*Data Portability: The inability to easily exit a service generates conflict of interest and an inherently flawed power imbalance between user and provider. The FriendlyToS believes that healthy relationships are possible only by ensuring that users are given the right to port a copy of their data locally, at any time.

*Interoperability: The right to portability is useless if the issue of formatting is not addressed. A non-interoperable set of data is no better than a non-portable set of data, and as such a Friendly ToS advocates in favor of ensuring that users can port data in open and interoperable formats.

*Write Access: A FreeToS provides a formal process by which users have the right to request that a service completely delete information that belongs or is associated with them. It also allows a user to modify data about that user held by the service.

MassCollaboration

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===Issue Definition===

The development of and increasingly pervasive access to the internet has permitted mass collaboration on a scale not previously possible. Projects such as Wikipedia, Couchsurfing, Mechanical Turk, MySpace, Facebook, all rely on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_collaboration mass collaboration] and are therefore frequently called Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs). The success or failure of such COIN projects depends to great extent on the number of participants. As a result, project coordinators face massive challenges motivating good participants and preventing bad actors (see the cross-cutting theme on motivation).

On a more basic level, COINs are based on a shared premise that mass collaboration results in improved products: the more people involved the better quality the product. Is this a valid premise? Do we believe that using mass collaboration is as good or better than using experts? What knowledge / benefits do we lose by shifting towards mass collaboration? What do we gain?

As a review of [http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/ Andrew Keen]'s book ''The Cult of the Amateur'' states:
<blockquote>Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 â distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing â ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen points out in his provocative new book, âThe Cult of the Amateur,â Web 2.0 has a dark side as well.<ref>Michiko Kakutani, Books of the Times: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/books/29book.html "The Cult of the Amateur"], New York Times, June 29, 2007.</ref></blockquote>

At its most basic level, this theme questions whether we really believe that groups perform better than individuals, whether a group of average individuals is as good or better than an expert.

===Mob Mentality===

Opponents of mass collaboration compare such projects to "[http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-mob-mentality.htm mob mentality]" -- a term used to refer to unique behavioral characteristics which emerge when people are in large groups -- or herd mind, or group think. Andrew Keen states dramatically that mass collaboration is nothing more than "ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.â<ref>Id.</ref>

Social psychologists have traditionally described mob mentality in terms of its negative attributes, noting the potential for peer pressure and group-think, for stifling creativity, lowering exceptional performers, and division into us v. them approaches to information.

===Sharing Knowledge===

Many developers, educators, and economists argue that mass collaboration is the wave of the future: that it is more efficient, achieves better results, and is more cost-effective than the use of experts. Is this true?

While acknowledging the potential for negative outcomes (peer pressure, group-think and suppression of minority views), some researchers propose that technological solutions can overcome these challenges: e.g. have participants rank the novelty of postings in order to increase the salience of minority views.<ref>Gerry Stahl, "[http://ijcscl.org/_preprints/volume3_issue2/stahl_3_2.pdf The Strength of the Lone Wolf]," 3 International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 1-5 (2008).</ref>

Other researchers are even more optimistic, suggesting that the unique characteristics of COINs make these COINs un-susceptible to the mob mentality weaknesses. As a result, COINs have all the positive outcomes with none of the negative, giving COINs a competitive advantage<ref> Gloor, Peter A, Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage Through Collaborative Innovation Networks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).</ref> and presenting the best (or only) mechanism for addressing major global problems such as sustainability.<ref>Archer, Fei, & Petzel, [http://www.samhÃ¤llsplanering.se/fou/cuppsats.nsf/all/78d3802c456fd1d9c12575dd00472ba4/$file/NetworkedCollaborationFinal%20FINAL.pdf Collaboration for Sustainability in a Networked World], Thesis, Blekinge Institute of Technology (2009).</ref>

In this optimistic camp, Tapscott and Williams argue in their book ''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration is Changing Everything'' that mass collaboration is the future of business and a (nearly) pre-requisite for economic success in the internet age.<ref>Tapscott & Williams, [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DVomiOeBg_YC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=mass+collaboration&ots=45nHzVQdr9&sig=Lz-jNmCVXITWbShGvFqFPFwGooM#v=onepage&q=&f=false ''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration is Changing Everything''] (2008).</ref>

===Logistical Challenges===

Mass collaboration on the internet presents even more challenges than traditional "mob mentality" simply from the logistics of having a dispersed group of collaborators. Catherine Cramton identifies major challenges facing dispersed collaboration projects:
*Failure to communicate and retain contextual information
*Unevenly distributed information
*Difficulty communicating the salience of information
*Differences in speed of access to information
*Difficulty interpreting the meaning of silence<ref>Catherine Durnell Cramton, "[http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/3086013?&Search=yes&term=Quality&term=Collaboration&term=Research&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DCollaboration%2Band%2Bthe%2BQuality%2Bof%2BResearch%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26wc%3Don&item=5&ttl=49407&returnArticleService=showArticle The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration]," 12 Organization Science 346-371(May-June 2001), [Available on JSTOR if link not work].</ref>

How can these problems be addressed on the internet? Cramton notes that dispersed groups, on the basis of physical distance, often break down into "us v. them" mentality - does anonymity address or exacerbate this issue?

===Related Questions===

====Popular v. Right====

Is our information base shifting away from what is correct and towards what is popular? For example, Google has become a popular starting-point for information, but Google lists results in order based not on what is most correct but rather on what is most popular. How does this affect our knowledge base? How do we define "correct" - does it mean widely accepted, proven through scientific inquiry (in which case, Creationists would question what "proven" means) or something else? If "widely accepted", who votes? Only the expert community? Or anyone?

Consider technological solutions that are devloping, like [http://disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu/ DisputeFinder] that can identify debated issues and present an alternative point of view, so the reader is at least informed on the controversy.

====Raising the Average - Bringing Down the Top?====

Evidence on whether collaboration actually improves performance is mixed, and appears to depend not only on the nature of the work but also on the identity of the participants and size of the group. One major question to consider, though, is whether we are achieving new heights or just raising the average.

Robert Miller conducted a social psychology study on students in his course writing collaborative papers (note: there are significant structure biases inherent in this study) and concluded that on average the collaborative papers were better.<ref>Richard S. Miller, "[http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol1/miller.pdf Collaborative Writing in Social Psychology: An Experiment], 1 Writing Across the Curriculum 95-103 (1989).</ref> However, Miller noted himself that he could not determine whether the papers were better because the best student in each group did the majority of the work (and therefore lower grades from the worse students were eliminated) or whether the groups really generated absolutely better quality work.

Does group work achieve new heights (better than the best person in the group could achieve) or does it simply eliminate the worst work? Miller's students reported that they felt the group work stimulated creativity and therefore led to better products.<ref>Id.</ref> However, a study on collaboration and the quality of scientific research found that groups were less likely to produce bad papers, but were not any more likely to produce good papers.<ref>Stanley Presser, "[http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/284727?seq=2&Search=yes&term=Quality&term=presser&term=Collaboration&term=Research&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3DCollaboration%2Band%2Bthe%2BQuality%2Bof%2BResearch%26f0%3Dti%26c0%3DAND%26q1%3Dpresser%26f1%3Dau%26c1%3DAND%26q2%3D%26f2%3Dall%26c2%3DAND%26q3%3D%26f3%3Dall%26wc%3Don%26Search%3DSearch%26sd%3D%26ed%3D%26la%3D%26jo%3D&item=1&ttl=1&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=doAdvancedResultsFromArticle Collaboration and the Quality of Research]," 10 Social Studies of Science 95-101 (Feb 1980).</ref> This study suggests that collaboration eliminates the worst mistakes but that it does not improve content beyond what an individual could do.

====Size & Make-up of the Group====

As noted above, the size and make-up of the group make a difference in the quality of collaboration. How do these questions come into play when we are dealing with mass collaboration (thousands and thousands of contributors) who are often anonymous so the group make-up isn't even known? At what group size do the complications and problems with collaboration outweigh the benefits?

One social psychology experiment determined that there are benefits to collaborative work, but they failed to show benefits for all-female groups.<ref>Nancy Vanderhey Samah & Richard De Lisi, "[http://www.jstor.org/pss/20152646 Peer Collaboration on a Nonverbal Reasoning Task by Urban, Minority Students]," 69 Journal of Experimental Education 5-21 (2000).</ref> It is not clear, however, whether this depends on the nature of the project worked on (e.g. does this still apply for female collaborations on female-dominated issues?). Also, mass collaboration often assumes that it will be mixed gender, because it is so large, but Wikipedia, for example, is estimated 80-90% male. How does this bias affect the quality and nature of the collaboration?

=====References=====
<references/>

PrivacyAnonymity

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On the internet, it can be tempting to view yourself as an anonymous browser, but increasingly the public is becoming aware of just how untrue that is. A study by the [http://epic.org/reports/surfer-beware.html Electronic Privacy Information Center] surveyed the 100 most frequently visited sites on the internet; of those 100 none met the basic privacy standards established by EPIC and only 17 had any privacy terms at all. In a medium with so little protection and so much information available, [http://nymag.com/news/features/27341/ children] are particularly vulnerable.

Consider whether consumers on the internet truly make informed decisions regarding their privacy. The Terms of Use of Facebook for example - have you ever really read them all the way through? What about Harvard Law School's privacy terms for our email or administrative boards? Does the average user read and understand those terms? Some technological projects like the [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/Challenges/Privacy_Icons Drumbeat Privacy Icons] project are working on new ways to inform users about the privacy regulations of the sites they visit. (Drumbeat is looking for proposals on how to develop a system of "privacy icons" that could easily label websites according to the degree of privacy retained by the user.) And there are also technological businesses and solutions such as [http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=reputationdefender&aq=0&aqi=g1g-s4g1g-s1&oq=reputationd&fp=a50ffc77dda4c0bc ReputationDefender], but are these enough to address the issue?

Unlike snail mail, your email can be readily surveilled by government officials without a warrant because courts have held that there is no expectation of privacy on the internet.

Is this true?

Privacy and Anonymity on the Internet

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Motivating Good

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Two challenges relating to motivation face those who organize online collaborations: how to motivate good actors to contribute and how to motive bad actors to either conform to regulations or to cease from participating.

'''Motivating Good Actors'''
The success of online collaborative efforts such as Wikipedia and Couchsurfing (among many others) depends entirely on the participation of massive numbers of users. What motivates individuals to participate? To not just use such services but to actively contribute to their upkeep? And how can developers change the structure of their efforts to best motivate greater numbers of users?

'''Motivating Bad Actors'''
The fact that online collaborative efforts are open and available to massive numbers of users and participants also means that they are susceptible to mis-use by bad actors. Bad actors may act maliciously (e.g. editing Wikipedia to include false information) or simply out of ignorance. How can such actors be motivated to conform? Alternatively, how can such actors be eliminated or dissuaded from acting at all?

GNI

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= Background on the Global Network Initiative =

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) was formally launched in December 2008. The GNI is a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI) designed to address issues of privacy and freedom of expression on the internet, and more broadly in "information and communications technologies." The constituent stakeholder groups are companies (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo so far), academics (including the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School), socially-responsible investors and human rights groups (including the EFF). Although initial membership features many prominent players in the field, not all of them signed on without concern about GNI's future. For example, in its [http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/gni/signon_letter.txt signon letter], the EFF expressed concern about serious omissions from the GNI's founding documents.

The GNI's framework is laid out in its three founding documents: (1) The Core Principles, (2) The Implementation Guidelines, and (3) The Governance, Accountability and Learning Framework. The GNI's objectives are to have information & communication (ICT) companies enroll in the initiative by paying dues and then upholding the GNI's principles according to its implementation guidelines.

According to Caroline Nolan, who played a key role in the development of the GNI, it takes its inspiration from other MSIs and corporate codes of conduct, including the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Principles Sullivan principles]. Current participants have also been engaged with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Voluntary Principles. The GNI has attempted to learn lessons from those initiatives, in particular lessons that could improve the GNI's accountability and reporting framework.

One of the GNI's main challenges is identifying the circumstances under which participating companies should stand up to government demands that infringe on their users' freedom of expression and privacy. It is also very challenging for companies to operate with typically very broad government regulations that affect freedom of expression and privacy. Another serious problem is identifying violations of the GNI's principles when the principles are themselves very broad. Caroline gave an example of child labor violations, which are comparatively easier to identify.

Colin Maclay of the Berkman Center provides an excellent introduction to the GNI and the context surrounding its development in a [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/maclay-access-controlled-pdf chapter] from his book, "Access Controlled".

== The Core Principles ==

The GNI is primarily designed to protect Freedom of Expression and Privacy on the internet. According to the GNI, these principles are derived from standard international doctrines including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The posture of the principles is for the participating companies to uphold international standards of freedom of expression and privacy in the face of pressure from local laws in the jurisdictions in which they operate.

The [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/principles/index.php principles] attempt to take into account the realities of business by requiring that "company Board, senior officers and others responsible for key decisions that impact freedom of expression and privacy" are fully briefed on the principles and that companies take responsibilities for their own actions and for those of their partners and supply chain on a "best effort" basis.

== The Implementation Guidelines ==

This [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/implementationguidelines/index.php document] is designed to give companies that enroll in the GNI a framework for ensuring that their obligation to uphold the GNI's principles that they agreed to uphold is met to a standard that is acceptable to the GNI.

== The Governance Framework ==

This [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/governanceframework/index.php framework] describes the structure of the GNI, including its timeline for growth.

= Legislative Alternatives to the GNI =

As Maclay explained in his "Access Controlled" chapter, Yahoo's provision of information leading to the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao was a driving example of the need for stronger protection of human rights by ICT companies. Congressman Lantos's [http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/lantos110607.htm admonishment] of Yahoo provides an example of Congressional disapproval of Yahoo's disregard of human rights principles, and in part explains the motivation for the introduction of legislation to address the problem. At this time, Yahoo was asked to endorse the Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA).

GOFA is an attempt to foster the same ideals espoused by the GNI, but through regulation rather than multi-stakeholder collaboration. Nolan cited concern that given the complexities of the regulatory environment, GOFA, would be unable to cope with the dynamic nature of the ICT sector or address and anticipate the complex global problems involving online filtering, censorship and surveillance practices. John Palfrey, also of the Berkman Center, agreed in his Congressional [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/2008/05/20/testimony-on-internet-filtering-and-surveillance/ testimony] that the GOFA is too "blunt" to properly address the issues. The Center for Democracy & Technology, while agreeing with the goals of the GOFA, has [http://www.cdt.org/international/censorship/20080505gofa.pdf published] disagreement with some of its implementation.

John Ruggie, a political scientist formerly associated with the UN, provides an excellent [http://www.reports-and-materials.org/Ruggie-report-7-Apr-2008.pdf analysis] of the way that government and corporate responsibilities to protect human rights overlap and are related. While his paper is not specifically on the topic of the GNI or the GOFA, it provides excellent context for how legislation and initiatives like the GNI can be structured.

Is legislation a feasible alternative to the GNI, or can it be used to supplement and foster initiatives like the GNI?

= The Difficult Issues =

== Growing GNI ==

Currently, GNI has three participating, dues-paying member companies: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. All of these companies were founded in the United States and have headquarters in the United States. All of these companies offer similar internet services and serve similar customer needs. The GNI will be unable to have a lasting role in improving freedom of expression and privacy in "information and communications technologies" or live up to its "Global" title unless it can expand its membership geographically and service-wise.

One issue facing the GNI's future growth is that the people developing the GNI worked together for years. These people persevered throughout a difficult process, and were able to reach compromise because they were on the verge of achieving their goal of starting the GNI. Newcomers will not have been through this process, but will need to feel equally important. How can the trust built between the initial stakeholders scale to newcomers?

Another issue is that no telecommunications companies are enrolled in the GNI, although several participated in the development of the GNI and dropped out before it launched. Nolan cited concerns about the structure of the GNI, budget and the potentially onerous accountability process as possible reasons why these telecommunications companies failed to join the GNI upon launch.

Senators Durbin and Coburn sent a [http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=316922 letter] to 26 software companies urging them to sign up for the GNI. In this letter, the senators imply that the GNI will not be able to advance human rights unless more companies enroll. Nolan believes that the GNI can only truly affect governments in a positive manner if its membership increases. The Senators reference the recent use of the internet by Iranian protesters as an example of the expressive power of the internet.

What can incentivise companies to join the GNI or similar initiatives and uphold its principles?

== Metrics/Accountability ==

How can the impact of the GNI be measured? It is easy to make a checklist to ensure that companies are meeting the explicit requirements of GNI membership. However, the introduction of external auditors to ensure more substantive compliance is presently a hugely contentious issue. The GNI's governance framework requires that, by 2012, external auditors play a role in evaluating compliance with the GNI's principles. Human rights group form one of the GNI's four constituent groups, and need to feel like they have an actual sense of what companies are doing. Nolan emphasizes that this process must not be a "gotcha" process, but rather a process that is informed by evolution and learning.

The new governance charter has sparked a huge debate about reporting, auditing, who picks the auditors, who pays for the auditors and how much power they should have.

How should this accountability framework function? How can input on the users of participating companies' users be measured?

== Institutional Issues ==

Members of GNI's board are drawn from each of the GNI's four constituencies. In the most current revised governance charter, the board is to be composed of eight representatives from participating companies, four representatives from participating NGOs, two representatives from participating investor organizations, two representatives from participating academic organizations and an independent chair. At least one member from each constituency must be present to reach a quorum.

The charter also mandates that no more than one representative from a single company, NGO, investor or academic institution be on the board at any one time. Additionally, for issues requiring a "supermajority" of the board, 50% of each constituency group's board members must approve. "Supermajority" issues include altering or creating exceptions to the GNI's core documents, determining the compliance of a GNI participant or selecting an executive director.

Are the weightings given to each constituency group appropriate?

In the same charter, board member terms are to be two years in length and renewable for one term only. An exception to this rule is that founding company members shall serve three terms of two years.

What are the optimal board term limits?

== Complaint Mechanism ==

How can a system be designed under which individuals whose human rights are being infringed can report these violations? This system would need to be enormously scalable, accessible, usable and be able to determine the validity of complaints. The accessibility of this system will be especially crucial countries where internet access may be limited, because those will be the most likely countries from which complaints will arrive.

Nolan believes that a good input/complaint process must be a core feature of GNI for its own good governance. How can this system be developed?

== Human Rights Impact Assessment Tool ==

The GNI is attempting to develop a human rights impact assessment tool for use by members and others. This tool would help companies evaluate potential impact of human rights when they are deciding to enter a new market. This tool would be used to inform business decisions by helping to assess risks and opportunities. This tool would be a way to leverage the pool of experts that are associated with the GNI.

One difficult issue is the group of users that the GNI would make the tool available to. Would it be released to members only to incentivize membership? Or would this tool be available to any company will to make use of it with the goal of generally fostering human rights advancements?

How should this tool function?

Course Schedule

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The class will average 10 hours per week. These hours need to be scheduled around the availability of the speakers and the also the other classes of the SLS students.

Cybersecurity

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''For the cybersecurity student group's discussions from the Cyberlaw: Difficult Problems Class, see [[Cybersecurity Brainstorming]]''
== SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM ==

According to the U.S. federal government, threats to cyberspace pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges of the 21st Century.<ref name=DNIAnnual">[http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20090310_testimony.pdf]Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, ''Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Services Committee, Statement for the Record,'' March 10, 2009, at 39.</ref> An increasing number of state and non-state actors are now capable of targeting U.S. citizens, financial institutions, critical infrastructure, and government organizations. The Commission on Cybersecurity, established to advice President Obama in his new administration, stated the challenge: "America's failure to protect cyberspace is one of the most urgent security problems facing the new administration."<ref name=CSIS">[http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/081208_securingcyberspace_44.pdf]CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity, ''Security Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency,'' Dec. 2008.</ref> In fact, the intelligence community assessment is that already a number of nations have the capability to conduct crippling attacks against the U.S.<ref name=DNIAnnual">[http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20090310_testimony.pdf]Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, ''Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Services Committee, Statement for the Record,'' March 10, 2009, at 39.</ref>

One reason cybersecurity poses such a security threat is that the term 'cybersecurity' applies to almost everything. The White House Cyberspace Policy Review that analyzes the current cybersecurity threat defines the term broadly:

<blockquote>Cybersecurity policy as used in this document includes strategy, policy, and standards regarding the security of and operations in cyberspace, and encompasses the full range of threat reduction, vulnerability reduction, deterrence, international engagement, incident response, resiliency, and recovery policies and activities, including computer network operations, information assurance, law enforcement, diplomacy, military, and intelligence missions as they relate to the security and stability of the global information and communications infrastructure. The scope does not include other information and communications policy unrelated to national security or securing the infrastructure.<ref name="WhiteHouseReview">[http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf] White House Cyberspace Policy Review, p2 (March, 2009).</ref></blockquote>

Summarizing, the Policy Review notes that âCyberspace touches practically everything and everyone.â<ref name="WhiteHouseReview" /> Given this definition, it is no wonder that cybersecurity is perceived as an almost insurmountable problem. In order to begin approaching solutions, therefore, we will first begin by breaking down our understanding of what cybersecurity means.

For pictures of the whiteboards from Professors Goldsmith and Zittran's conversation can be found [[here.]]

== ASSESSING VULNERABILITY ==

The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet internet] is a large-scale decentralized network of generative computers. (For an introduction to how the internet works, read the first two pages of [http://www.informs-sim.org/wsc04papers/038.pdf ''BGP Attack''].) This network is vulnerable to attack at several different key points, each with a different result and security concern. The taxonomy below breaks down the security issues according to what part of the network is under attack. Real life examples of attacks are then provided to illustrate the danger of attacks, and the application of this knowledge to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare cyberwarfare] is then considered.

If you need background on how the internet works and is related, watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN95GE4mOIw JZ's background video about internet and law].

In order to help us understand cybersecurity, we can break down our analysis of vulnerable points in cyberspace by separating out the point of attack.

===I. Vulnerability in the Network Itself===

This vulnerability considers attacks upon the network itself. A clever hacker could shut down the internet itself in an extreme case, or more conservatively can re-route the internet to prevent users from getting where they need to go.

The internet is a large-scale decentralized network. A packet sent from one computer to another may cross multiple networking administrative domains (called Autonomous Systems [AS]). Internet routing includes two different systems: an intra-domain routing system and an inter-domain routing system. AS routes traffic within its infrastructure any way it likes, but all of the AS's coordinate inter-domain routing by running a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol Border Gateway Protocol] (BGP) on routers that connect the AS's. The BGP computes routes between every AS and every IP address.<ref name=BGP Background">[http://www.informs-sim.org/wsc04papers/038.pdf]J. Kim et al., A BGP Attack Against Traffic Engineering, PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2004 WINTER SIMULATION CONFERENCE 318 (2004).</ref> As a basic matter: When you type a domain like "news.com" into your Web browser, it uses the Domain Name System to cough up a numeric Internet address, e.g. 216.239.113.101. That IP address is handed to your router, which uses a table of addresses to figure out the next hop toward the news.com server.

Kim Davies, ICANN's manager of route zone services, says ICANN isn't able to revoke the AS number of a misbehaving network provider. "It's best to think of them as similar to post codes or ZIP codes," Davies said. "We maintain a registry of them to ensure that they aren't conflicting." If the address information provided by AS is reliable, all is well. But if an AS makes a false broadcast, because of a configuration mistake or for malicious reasons, all hell can break loose.

To attack the network itself, however, it is then possible to cause a disconnect in the BGP-AS connection. The best example of an attack on internet as a network is such a BGP attack: this kind of attack gained publicity through the recent incident in which Pakistan accidentally took down YouTube. See this [http://www.ripe.net/news/study-youtube-hijacking.html case study on Pakistan & Youtube] and this [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/08/revealed-the-in/ comment on the threat of BGP hijacking] for more details. These kinds of attacks aren't new or unique: a network provider in Turkey once [http://www.renesys.com/blog/2005/12/internetwide_nearcatastrophela.shtml pretended to be the whole internet].

The main solution that has been suggested is for network providers to be automatically notified when the virtual location of an Internet address changes, which is what some researchers have suggested in the form of a "hijack alert system."<ref>[http://iar.cs.unm.edu/]IAR</ref><ref>[http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/originChange.pdf], Alert System Proposal</ref> Another is to treat broadcasts with changes of addresses as suspicious for 24 hours and then accept them as normal. Simple filtering of broadcasts may not always work because some networks provide connectivity to customers with thousands of different routes.<ref>Declan McCullagh, âHow Pakistan Knocked YouTube Offline (and how to make sure it never happens again),â CNET NEWS BLOG, Feb. 25, 2008, http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9878655-7.html.</ref>

Arguably the most extensive countermeasure would be a technology like Secure BGP,<ref>[http://www.ir.bbn.com/sbgp/]Secure BGP</ref> which uses encryption to verify which network providers own Internet addresses and are authorized to broadcast changes. But Secure BGP has been around in one form or another form since 1998, and is still not a widely-used standard, mostly because it adds complexity and routers that understand will add additional cost.

===II. Vulnerability in the Network Endpoints===

The internet as a network joins together numerous end point computers. These endpoints are all vulnerable targets in and of themselves, though the nature of the end point changes some of the ramifications of its attack.

====A. SCADA Systems====

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA SCADA] systems (SCADA stands for supervisory control and data acquisition) are computer systems that oversee industrial computer systems. Generally the term is used to refer to governmental systems such as the computer systems that regulate dams, traffic lights, and other components of civilian infrastructure. One of the most public issues has been concern that a hacker could shut down public power grids or that terrorists could utilize the SCADA systems to destroy infrastructure. See this recommendation [http://www.oe.netl.doe.gov/docs/prepare/21stepsbooklet.pdf "21 Steps to Improve SCADA security"] for how to address these threats. See a report on a [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123914805204099085.html SCADA hijack into the US electricity grid (2009)] or this report on [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/108735/Utility_hack_led_to_security_overhaul Australian sewage and water system hack] for examples of the type of vulnerabilities we face. Also consider more extreme examples: could a hacker access a [http://tech.commongate.com/post/Hacker_Hits_Nuclear_Plant nuclear power plant]?

====B. Servers====

Rather than targeting individual computers, attackers can target servers and providers. Once a server is infected, it propagates the infection and compromises other internal computers and sensitive servers incorrectly thought to be protected from unauthorized access by external entities. This infection can also result in servers being shut down by regulators in order to prevent the spread of infection, thereby effectively stopping business at that site. This can have significant implications depending on the nature of the site.

There appear to be two main avenues for exploiting and compromising web servers: brute force password guessing attacks and web application attacks. Microsoft SQL, FTP, and SSH servers are popular targets for password guessing attacks because of the access that is gained if a valid username/password pair is identified. SQL Injection, Cross-site Scripting and PHP File Include attacks continue to be the three most popular techniques used for compromising web sites. Automated tools, designed to target custom web application vulnerabilities, make it easy to discover and infect several thousand web sites. See this evaluation of the [http://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/ Top Cyber-Security Risks].

====C. Personal Computers====

The term personal computers is meant broadly to apply to individual computers rather than larger servers or systems. However, the use of these computers - whether for government application, industrial business, or private personal use - has a significant impact on the nature of the security concern. One of the vulnerabilities that all types of personal computers share, however, is that all the computers are [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/generative generative], having the power to create. This very generativity adds to the potential vulnerability of the computers.

In his book, [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/archives/11 The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It (Chapter 3)] on generativity and cybersecurity, Zittrain describes the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm Morris Worm Attack] - the first virus attack (1988) and how the changing nature of the internet made that attack possible:

<blockquote>[T]he Morris worm really was not perceived as a network problem, thanks to the intentional conceptual separation of network and endpoint. The Morris worm used the network to spread but did not attack it beyond slowing it down as the worm multiplied and continued to transmit itself. The wormâs targets were the networkâs endpoints: the computers attached to it. The modularity that inspired the Internetâs design meant that computer programming enthusiasts could write software for computers without having to know anything about the network that would carry the resulting data, while network geeks could devise new protocols with a willful ignorance of what programs would run on the devices hooked up to it, and what data would result from them. Such ignorance may have led those overseeing network protocols and operation unduly to believe that the worm was not something they could have prevented, since it was not thought to be within their design responsibility.
...

Even without...flaws, the machines were intentionally designed to be operated at a distance, and to receive and run software sent from a distance. They were powered on and attached to the network continuously, even when not in active use by their owners. Moreover, many administrators of these machines were lazy about installing available fixes to known software vulnerabilities, and often utterly predictable in choosing passwords to protect entry to their computer accounts. Since the endpoint computers infected by the worm were run and managed by disparate groups who answered to no single authority for their use, there was no way to secure them all against attack.</blockquote>

The computers could not be secured because each computer could incorporate the code, use it and further distribute it.

<blockquote>Whether through a sneaky vector like the one Morris used, or through the front door, when a trusting user elects to install something that looks interesting without fully understanding it, opportunities for accidents and mischief abound. A hobbyist computer that crashes might be a curiosity, but when a home or office PC with yearsâ worth of vital correspondence and papers is compromised, it can be a crisis. And when thousands or millions of individual, business, research, and government computers are subject to attack, we may find ourselves faced with a fundamentally new and harrowing scenario. As the unsustainable nature of the current state of affairs becomes more apparent, we are left with a dilemma that cannot be ignored. How do we preserve the extraordinary benefits of generativity, while addressing the growing vulnerabilities that are innate to it?</blockquote>

More discussion on generativity and security can be found in the following references.<ref>[http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrain.php]Jonathan Zittrain, Protecting the Internet Without Wrecking It, Boston Review (2008).</ref><ref>[http://www.ericjohnolson.com/blog/2007/08/31/saving-the-web-should-we-sacrifice-generativity-for-safety-and-security/]Eric Olson, Saving the Web: Should we sacrifice generativity for security?, Olson's Observations.</ref><ref>[http://www.temple.edu/lawschool/dpost/Zittrain.pdf]David Post, The Theory of Generativity (response/evaluation of Zittrain's ideas).</ref><ref>[http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/2008/04/generativity_emergent_cha.html]Adam, Generativity, Emergent Chaos and Adam Thierer.</ref>

=====1. Government Computers=====

In this year alone, we've seen data about the presidential chopper appear on [http://www.switched.com/2009/03/09/iranian-computer-found-to-have-info-on-presidential-chopper/ Iranian laptops], warnings about [http://www.switched.com/2009/03/23/hackers-could-cause-blackouts-on-smart-grid/ hackers causing blackouts], an [http://www.switched.com/2009/02/11/faa-systems-hacked-employee-information-released/ intrusion into the FAA], and a wholesale hijacking of the [http://www.switched.com/2009/02/01/federal-job-applicant-database-hacked/ federal government's job listing] site. All this while the Pentagon has spent over [http://www.switched.com/2009/04/09/pentagon-spends-100m-in-6-months-on-cyber-attacks/ $100 million] to protect against such attacks, which are only [http://www.switched.com/2009/02/21/attacks-on-federal-computers-increase-by-40/ expected to increase].

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/09/the-analyzer-su/ Ehud Tenenbaum] ("The Analyzer") is one of the most famous hackers to break into government computers. He was only 19 when he was arrested in one of the first high-profile hacking cases. Even though his attacks were considered "unsophisticated" at the time (exploiting a known vulnerability in the Solaris operating system), he still managed to breach systems belonging to the Department of Defense, Air FOrce and Navy, NASA, and MIT.

Earlier this year, hackers broke into the Pentagon's $300 billion [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html Joint Strike Fighter project] -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever. This has raised significant military concerns: a Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made "steady progress" in developing online-airfare techniques. China hopes its computer skills can help it compensate for an underdeveloped military, the report said. China [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5193207/China-denies-claims-it-hacked-into-Pentagon-computers.html denies] that it was responsible for the hack.

=====2. Industrial Computers=====

Depending on the industry that is hacked, computer vulnerabilities in industry can mean loss of revenue, distribution of valuable (and potentially dangerous) technological information -- even biological or chemical weapon information or nuclear technology. Tenenbaum recently made a re-appearance as a hacker and is being held responsible for taking more than [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/the-analyzer-ha/ $10 Million from U.S. Banks]. In 2003, 39% of [http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,2136212,00.htm global banks had been hacked] at least once. And attacks against industries and financial institutions are [http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/data-security/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=0I0CGCB0CXWVNQE1GHPCKHWATMY32JVN?articleID=201806928&_requestid=474611 increasing]: in 2007 alone attacks rose 81%. As more of our banking transactions take place online, hacking becomes even more valuable as a business.

=====3. Private Individual Computers=====

===Application in Cyberwarfare===

For general background information on cyberwarfare, browse [http://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/cyberwarfare.html the Washington resource] page (includes definitions, strategies and news articles on point). For an example of cyberwarfare in action, read [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10 Palestinian Cyberwar] by Allen and Demchack: it provides a good explanation of exactly how such a war is conducted.

== NEXT STEPS ==

Earlier this year, the White House released a [http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf Cyberspace Policy Review] that recognizes the far-reaching impact of cybersecurity and the currently vulnerable position of the United States. The Near-Term and Mid-Term action plans from that report are reproduced below.

The most-discussed / most publicized step towards improving cybersecurity is to [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32290186/ns/politics-white_house/ name a Cyber Czar]. Since Obama initially announced this intention in May, 2009, however, the position has continued to go unfilled. Some politicians support this move (see [http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/10/30/Web-Lieberman-Cybersecurity-Legislation.aspx Lieberman], but other experts are critical of this position - considering either unnecessary or actually counterproductive (see [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/08/white-house-cyber-czar-resigns-good-riddance/ Tanji] and [http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/11/02/Web-Collins-cybersecurity-coordinator-opposition.aspx Collins]).

Legislation on a variety of fronts is also being considered, though not everyone is sure what (if anything) the new legislation would add.<ref>[http://www.fcw.com/Articles/2009/05/04/news-congress-cybersecurity.aspx]Ben Bain, Lawmakers Attack Cybersecurity on Multiple Fronts, Federal Computer Week, May 1, 2009.</ref>

[[Image:Near_Term_Action_Plan.PNG|White House Cyber Security Review Near Term Action Plan]]

[[Image:Mid-Term_Action_Plan.PNG|White House Cyber Security Review Mid-Term Action Plan]]
<ref>[http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf White House Cyberspace Policy Review], p37-38 (March, 2009).</ref>

==REFERENCES==
<references/>

DueProcess

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= Issue Definition =

Users store valuable content online using services such as GMail and Facebook. What happens if the provider of this service decides to ban or restrict access to "your" content or account? Is there an appeals process of any notion of due process whatsoever?

Related: Is a website a place of "public accomodation" under the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disability Act?

== Gmail ==

From GMail's [http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en Terms of Service]

4.3 As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Googleâs sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform Google when you stop using the Services.

4.4 You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account.

...

8.1 You understand that all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of, the Services are the sole responsibility of the person from which such content originated. All such information is referred to below as the âContentâ.

...

8.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service...

== Facebook ==

Facebook does not seem to have a formal appeals process for banned accounts [http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/03/facebook_banish.html]

Global Network Initiative

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

= Background on the Global Network Initiative =

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) was formally launched in December 2008. The GNI is a multi-stakeholder initiative designed to address issues of privacy and freedom of expression on the internet, and more broadly in "information and communications technologies." The constituent stakeholder groups are companies (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo so far), academics (including the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School), socially-responsible investors and human rights groups (including the EFF). Although initial membership features many prominent players in the field, not all of them signed on without concern about GNI's future. For example, in its [http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/gni/signon_letter.txt signon letter], the EFF expressed concern about serious omissions from the GNI's founding documents.

The GNI's framework is laid out in its three founding documents: (1) The Core Principles, (2) The Implementation Guidelines, and (3) The Governance, Accountability and Learning Framework. The GNI's objectives are to have information & communication (ICT) companies enroll in the initiative by paying dues and then upholding the GNI's principles according to its implementation guidelines.

According to Caroline Nolan, who played a key role in the development of the GNI, it takes its inspiration from other MSIs and corporate codes of conduct, including the Sullivan principles. Current participants have also been engaged with the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Voluntary Principles. The GNI has attempted to learn lessons from those initiatives, in particular lessons that could improve the GNI's accountability and reporting framework.

One of the GNI's main challenges is identifying the circumstances under which participating companies should stand up to government demands that infringe on their users' freedom of expression and privacy. It is also very challenging for companies to operate with typically very broad government regulations that affect freedom of expression and privacy. Another serious problem is identifying violations of the GNI's principles be identified when those principles are also very broad. Caroline gave an example of child labor violations, which are comparatively easier to identify.

Colin Maclay of the Berkman Center provides an excellent introduction to the GNI and the context surrounding its development in a [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/maclay-access-controlled-pdf chapter] from his book, "Access Controlled".

== The Core Principles ==

The GNI is primarily designed to protect Freedom of Expression and Privacy on the internet. According to the GNI, these principles are derived from standard international doctrines including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The posture of the principles is for the participating companies to uphold international standards of freedom of expression and privacy in the face of pressure from local laws in the jurisdictions in which they operate.

The [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/principles/index.php principles] attempt to take into account the realities of business by requiring that "company Board, senior officers and others responsible for key decisions that impact freedom of expression and privacy" are fully briefed on the principles and that companies take responsibilities for their own actions and for those of their partners and supply chain on a "best effort" basis.

== The Implementation Guidelines ==

This [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/implementationguidelines/index.php document] is designed to give companies that enroll in the GNI a framework for ensuring that their obligation to uphold the GNI's principles that they agreed to uphold is met to a standard that is acceptable to the GNI.

== The Governance Framework ==

This [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/governanceframework/index.php framework] describes the structure of the GNI, including its timeline for growth.

= Legislative Alternatives to the GNI =

As Maclay explained in his "Access Controlled" chapter, Yahoo's provision of information leading to the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao was a driving example of the need for stronger protection of human rights by ICT companies. Congressman Lantos's [http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/lantos110607.htm admonishment] of Yahoo provides an example of Congressional disapproval of Yahoo's disregard of human rights principles, and in part explains the motivation for the introduction of legislation to address the problem. At this time, Yahoo was asked to endorse the Global Online Freedom Act ([http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.4780: GOFA]).

GOFA is an attempt to foster the same ideals espoused by the GNI, but through regulation rather than multi-stakeholder collaboration. Nolan cited concern that given the complexities of the regulatory environment, GOFA, would be unable to cope with the dynamic nature of the ICT sector or address and anticipate the complex global problems involving online filtering, censorship and surveillance practices. John Palfrey, also of the Berkman Center, agreed in his Congressional [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey/2008/05/20/testimony-on-internet-filtering-and-surveillance/ testimony] that the GOFA is too "blunt" to properly address the issues. The Center for Democracy & Technology, while agreeing with the goals of the GOFA, has [http://www.cdt.org/international/censorship/20080505gofa.pdf published] disagreement with some of its implementation.

John Ruggie, a political scientist formerly associated with the UN, provides an excellent [http://www.reports-and-materials.org/Ruggie-report-7-Apr-2008.pdf analysis] of the way that government and corporate responsibilities to protect human rights overlap and are related. While his paper is not specifically on the topic of the GNI or the GOFA, it provides excellent context for how legislation and initiatives like the GNI can be structured.

Is legislation a feasible alternative to the GNI, or can it be used to supplement and foster initiatives like the GNI?

= The Difficult Issues =

== Growing GNI ==

Currently, GNI has three participating, due-paying member companies: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. All of these companies were founded in the United States and have headquarters in the United States. All of these companies offer similar internet services and serve similar customer needs. The GNI will be unable to have a lasting role in improving freedom of expression and privacy in "information and communications technologies" or live up to its "Global" title unless it can expand its membership geographically and service-wise.

One issue facing the GNI's future growth is that the people developing the GNI worked together for years. These people persevered throughout a difficult process, and were able to reach compromise because they were on the verge of achieving their goal of starting the GNI. Newcomers will not have been through this process, but will need to feel equally important. How can the trust built between the initial stakeholders scale to newcomers?

Another issue is that no telecommunications companies are enrolled in the GNI, although several participated in the development of the GNI and dropped out before it launched. Nolan cited concerns about the structure of the GNI, budget and the potentially onerous accountability process as possible reasons why these telecommunications companies failed to join the GNI upon launch.

Senators Durbin and Coburn sent a [http://durbin.senate.gov/showRelease.cfm?releaseId=316922 letter] to 26 software companies urging them to sign up for the GNI. In this letter, the senators imply that the GNI will not be able to advance human rights unless more companies enroll. Nolan believes that the GNI can only truly affect governments in a positive manner if its membership increases. The Senators reference the recent use of the internet by Iranian protesters as an example of the expressive power of the internet.

What can incentivise companies to join the GNI or similar initiatives and uphold its principles?

== Metrics/Accountability ==

How can the impact of the GNI be measured? It is easy to make a checklist to ensure that companies are meeting the explicit requirements of GI membership. However, the introduction of external auditors to ensure more substantive compliance is present is a hugely contentious issue. The GNI's governance framework requires that, by 2012, external auditors play a role in evaluating compliance with the GNI's principles. Human rights group form one of the GNI's four constituent groups, and need to feel like they have an actual sense of what companies are doing. Nolan emphasizes that this process must not be a "gotcha" process, but rather a process that is informed by evolution and learning.

The new governance charter has sparked a huge debate about reporting, auditing, who picks the auditors, who pays for the auditors and how much power they should have.

How should this accountability framework function? How can input on the users of participating companies' users be measured?

== Institutional Issues ==

Members of GNI's board are drawn from each of the GNI's four constituencies. In the most current revised governance charter, the board is to be composed of eight representatives from participating companies, four representatives from participating NGOs, two representatives from participating investor organizations, two representatives from participating academic organizations and an independent chair. At least one member from each constituency must be present to reach a quorum.

The charter also mandates that no more than one representative from a single company, NGO, investor or academic institution be on the board at any one time. Additionally, for issues requiring a "supermajority" of the board, 50% of each constituency group's board members must approve. "Supermajority" issues include altering or creating exceptions to the GNI's core documents, determining the compliance of a GNI participant or selecting an executive director.

Are the weightings given to each constituency group appropriate?

In the same charter, board member terms are to be two years in length and renewable for one term only. An exception to this rule is that founding company members shall serve three terms of two years.

What are the optimal board term limits?

== Complaint Mechanism ==

How can a system be designed under which individuals whose human rights are being infringed can report these violations? This system would need to be enormously scalable, accessible, usable and be able to determine the validity of complaints. The accessibility of this system will be especially crucial countries where internet access may be limited, because those will be the most likely countries from which complaints will arrive.

Nolan believes that a good input/complaint process must be a core feature of GNI for its own good governance. How can this system be developed?

== Human Rights Impact Assessment Tool ==

The GNI is attempting to develop a human rights impact assessment tool for use by members and others. This tool would help companies evaluate potential impact of human rights when they are deciding to enter a new market. This tool would be used to inform business decisions by helping to assess risks and opportunities. This tool would be a way to leverage the pool of experts that are associated with the GNI.

One difficult issue is the group of users that the GNI would make the tool available to. Would it be released to members only to incentivize membership? Or would this tool be available to any company will to make use of it with the goal of generally fostering human rights advancements?

How should this tool function?

Future of Wikipedia

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

==Birth and Growth of Wikipedia==

Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.<ref name="History of Wikipedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia],History of Wikipedia.</ref> It represented a new development in the collaborative, web-based creation of bodies of knowledge. Initially it was a complement to the expert-written encyclopedia project âNupedia,â<ref name="Nupedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia], Wikipedia Entry on Nupedia.</ref> in order to provide an additional source of articles. Wikipedia soon outpaced Nupedia and grew to be arguably the most successful example of collaborative content creation. Today Wikipedia boasts that it contains several million articles and pages in hundreds of languages worldwide contributed by millions of users.

Wikipedia is arguably the most successful online collaboration but it is not the first. One early predecessor was Interpedia, initiated in 1993,<ref name="Interpedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpedia], Wikipedia Entry on Interpedia</ref> although the project never fully left the planning stages.<ref name="Joseph Reagle Article on Interpedia & Wikipedia Background">[http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html#heading5], Joseph Reagle Article on Interpedia & Wikipedia Background.</ref> Free Software Foundationâs Richard Stallman described the need for a free universal encyclopedia in 1999, although the Free Software Foundation didnât launch its GNUPedia to compete with Nupedia until January 17, 2001, two days after the start of Wikipedia.<ref name="The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource">[http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html],The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource.</ref> And Wikipedia itself grew out of Nupedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia. On January 10, 2001, Wales and Sanger created the first Nupedia wiki, but reputedly Nupediaâs expert volunteers did not want to participate, so Wikipedia was established as a separate site.<ref name="History of Wikipedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia], History of Wikipedia.</ref> Wikipediaâs vision: ''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Thatâs our commitment.''<ref name="Wikimedia Foundation">[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home], Wikimedia Foundation</ref>

===Growth of Wikipedia===

The growth of Wikipedia depended on the contribution of numerous lay users, a departure from the Nupedia tradition of using expert contributors. Nupedia was founded upon the use of highly qualified expert contributors and a multi-step peer review process, but despite its interested editors, the process was slow, and only 12 articles were written in the first year.<ref name="Early History of Nupedia">[http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/18/164213&tid=95&tid=149&tid=9], The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir - Part I" and "Part II", Slashdot, April 2005.</ref> Wikipedia, in contrast, generated over 1,000 articles in its first month of operation and over 20,000 articles in its first yearâa rate of 1,500 articles per month.<ref name="History of Wikipedia">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia], History of Wikipedia.</ref> In March, 2001, Wikipedia expanded into multilingual sites, beginning the development of Wikipedias for all major languages.<ref>http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/000049.html</ref>

===Wikimedia===

Initially, Wikipedia was managed by Bomis, a commercial web portal headed by Jimmy Wales. In March 2002, during the dot-com bust, Bomis withdrew funding for Wikipedia.<ref name="Schiff, Stacy">[http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact].(July 31, 2006). Schiff, Stacy. "Know It All". The New Yorker.</ref> At that time, Larry Sanger left both Nupedia and Wikipedia. He returned briefly to academia, then joined the Digital Universe Foundation and founded Citizendium, an alternative open encyclopedia that uses real names for contributors to discourage vandalism and expert guidance to ensure accuracy of information.<ref name="Anderson, Nate">[http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/citizendium.ars], Anderson, Nate (February 25, 2007). "Citizendium: building a better Wikipedia". Ars Technica.</ref>

Meanwhile, after substantial consultation with Alex Roshuk, Jimmy Wales created the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in St. Petersburg, FL, later moved to San Francisco, CA.<ref name="Wikimedia Foundation">[http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home], Wikimedia Foundation.</ref> Announced on June 20, 2003, the WMF serves as an umbrella body that includes several other types of wiki collaborative information sharing sites:

* Wikipedia
* [http://www.wiktionary.org/ Wiktionary]
* [http://www.wikiquote.org/ Wikiquote]
* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikibooks] (including [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior Wikijunior])
* [http://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikisource]
* [http://commons.wikimedia.org/ Wikimedia Commons]
* [http://species.wikimedia.org/ Wikispecies]
* [http://en.wikinews.org/ Wikinews]
* [http://en.wikiversity.org/ Wikiversity]
* [http://incubator.wikimedia.org/ Wikimedia Incubator]
* [http://meta.wikimedia.org/ Meta-Wiki]

The foundation's by-laws declare a statement of purpose of collecting and developing educational content and to disseminate it effectively and globally.<ref name="Wikimedia Foundation bylaws">[http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws&oldid=20641#ARTICLE_II_-_STATEMENT_OF_PURPOSE], Wikimedia Foundation bylaws. Archived from the original on 2007-04-20.</ref> Wikimedia is managed by a Board of Trustees. The Foundation and a team of local volunteers also organize [http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal Wikimania] every year, a conference for users of the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

==Academic Studies of Wikipedia==

Academic studies of Wikipedia have mainly used Wikipedia as a tool to analyze other phenomena. The users on Wikipedia provide a large database of subjects which the researchers use to test their hypotheses or as a social network which can be manipulated and observed. The majority of studies focus on either semantic relatedness<ref>M Strube et al,[http://www.aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2006/AAAI06-223.pdf WikiRelate!], Computer Semantic Relatedness Using Wikipedia, Proceedings of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2006)</ref><ref>E Gabrilovich et al, [http://www.aaai.org/Papers/IJCAI/2007/IJCAI07-259.pdf Computing Semantic Relatedness Using Wikipedia-Based Explicit Semantic Analysis](2007)</ref><ref>Zesch et al, Analyzing and Accessing WIkipedia as a Lexical Semantic Resource, Data Structures for Linguistic Resources (2007).</ref> or online coordination and conflict resolution techniques.<ref name="Coordination">Viegas et al, [[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.84.6907&rep=rep1&type=pdf Talk Before You Type: Coordination in Wikipedia], Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2007)</ref><ref name ="Kittur">Kittur et al, [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1240624.1240698 He Says, She Says; Conflict and Coordination in Wikipedia], Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Computing (2007)</ref><ref name="Wilkonson">D Wilkonson & B Huberman, [http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0702140 Assessing the Value of Cooperation in Wikipedia, Computers and Society], arXiv:cs/0702140v1 [cs.DL] (2007).</ref>

There is a persistent and widespread failure of academic studies to address the realities of Wikipedia, as opposed to the wishful pipe-dreams of armchair speculators and the uncritical recycling of Wikipedian promotional claims. There is a pressing need for the application of disciplined field study methods and qualitative research based on systematic participant observation.

==Academic Reflections on Wikipedia==

* Cummings, Robert E. (12 Mar 2009), "Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?", ''Inside Higher Ed''. [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings Online].

* Jaschik, Scott (26 Jan 2007), "A Stand Against Wikipedia", ''Inside Higher Ed''. [http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki Online].

* Lih, Andrew (16 Dec 2009), "Ron Livingston, Growth, and Wikipedia". [http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2009/12/16/ron-livingston-growth-and-wikipedia/ Online].

* Matetsky, Ira (May 2009), "Thoughts on Wikipedia", ''The Volokh Conspiracy''. [http://volokh.com/posts/chain_1242098183.shtml Online].

* Schumacher, Mary Louise (30 Apr 2009), "Deconstructing Wikipedia", ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel''. [http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/44035017.html Online].

* Wilson, Mark A. (01 Apr 2008), "Professors Should Embrace Wikipedia", ''Inside Higher Ed''. [http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/01/wilson Online].

==Difficult Problems : Three Big Questions==

This section addresses the following questions:

# What is the mission of the Wikipedia project?
# What are the methods of the Wikipedia project?
# Are the methods adequate to the mission?

===What is the Mission?===

====Education====

=====Aspects of Education=====

* Education in Citizenship

* Education in Scholarship

=====Issues in Education=====

What are the effects of the Wikipedia environment on the critical thinking, information literacy, and research skills of its participants?

'''Critical Reflective Thinking'''

'''Balancing Content and Process'''

Too much commentary on what students learn from Wikipedia stops with the content of articles and fails to examine what students learn from participating in the culture of Wikipedia. Educators know that education is as much about process as it is about product. They understand that students âlearn by doingâ, by taking part in communities of practice. What do students learn by playing the Wikipedia online game?

====Information====

* The role of an informed citizenry in democratic societies

====Socialization====

* The preservation and transmission of culture

===What are the Methods?===

===Are the Methods Adequate to the Mission?===

==Difficult Problems : Effects of Wikipedia Subculture on the External Society==

What are the effects of the Wikipedia environment on the critical thinking, information literacy, and research skills of its participants?

Too much commentary on what students learn from Wikipedia stops with the content of articles and fails to examine what students learn from participating in the culture of Wikipedia.

Educators know that education is as much about process as it is about product. They understand that students âlearn by doingâ, by taking part in communities of practice. What do students learn by playing the Wikipedia online game?

The effects of using Wikipedia as a source of information is a research question.

The effects of participating more broadly in Wikipedian activities, from the editing game to the policy-making game, is another research question.

Even a bad source of information and a bad guide to the norms of research methodology can serve the ends of critical thinking and information literacy — '''''if''''' the user is afforded the opportunity to reflect on its deficiencies.

Whether Wikipedia helps or hinders the user in gaining that capacity is yet another research question.

Educators are aware that learners have many different paths to knowledge. Among the most obvious are these:

# Learning by being told.
# Learning by doing things for oneself.
# Learning by watching what others do.

What do people learn from participating in the full range of activities provided by the Wikipedia website, considered with regard to each of these modes?

Some of the questions that educational researchers would naturally think to ask about the Wikipedia experience are these:

# What do people learn about the ethical norms of journalism, research, and scholarship?
# What do people learn about the intellectual norms of journalism, research, and scholarship?

For example, questions that one might ask under the indicated headings are these:

# What do people learn about the relative values of primary and secondary sources from reading the relevant policy pages in Wikipedia?
# What do people learn about plagiarism from watching what others do in Wikipedia?

==Difficult Problems : The Bridgespan Strategy==

Following Wikimania 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation (in cooperation with The Bridgespan Group) created a [http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page strategy wiki] that identifies major concerns for the future of the WMF and its projects, and this wiki permits users to contribute and comment on proposed solutions, so long as the contributions meet with approval. A number of contributors have been blocked.<ref>[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&limit=100&type=block&user=Philippe&month=&year= Block log] of coordinator Philippe Beaudette</ref> The problems presented below have been highlighted as the most significant and challenging problems facing the WMF and its projects.

===Identity and Growth of the Contributing Community===

There are three main concerns relating to the contributing community that sustains Wikipedia:

# Size of the contributing community — is it sustainable and is it sufficient?
# Identity of the contributing community — does population bias create content bias?
# Inequality within contributing community — does Wikipedia really represent contributions of the many, or is it moving towards an elite system?

It needs to be appreciated that no statement about the demographics of Wikipedia editors is verifiable according to the usual standards of statistical research. The relationship between real people and editor accounts is known to be many-to-many, but the extent of its deviation from a one-to-one correspondence is simply not assessable on the grounds rules of the site.

====Size====

Several studies and articles have suggested that Wikipedia's contributing community has slowed growth, stopped growing, or is even declining (see [http://prawo.uni.wroc.pl/~kwasnicki/EkonLit6/WikipediaSoul.pdf Battle for Wikipedia's Soul]"; "[http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-1-slowing-growth-of-wikipedia-some.html Slowing Growth of Wikipedia]"; or "[http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/23/wsj-volunteers-log-off-as-wikipedia-ages/ Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages]" for a sample). Others, such as Oded Nov, have looked at [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10 "What Motivates Wikipedians"] and concluded that the majority are motivated by fun. But is Wikipedia "fun" enough to maintain its contributing community? A [http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2009/07/part-1-slowing-growth-of-wikipedia-some.html study] by the Palo Alto Research Centre found that the number of new articles added per month flatlined at 60,000 in 2006 and has since declined by a third. Wikimedia Australia's Vice-President, Liam Wyatt explains this: "Because the project is much more filled out and more complete, it's increasingly harder for new users to be able to add something without some level of expertise."

====Identity and Bias====

Studies on Wikipedia's contributing population determine that the majority are white males (Oded Nov says 92.7% male, another [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/31/only-13-of-wikipedia-contributors-are-women-study-says/ 87%]). If this is the case, does Wikipedia truly represent an unbiased cross-section of global (or even American) knowledge? How does the identity of the contributing community bias Wikipedia regarding politics? Consider claims that Wikipedia needs to be further censored or is being [http://state-ethics.blogspot.com/2009/07/censoring-wikipedia-2.html manipulated by Nazis] seeking to control the flow of information in Germany, or that its editors are [http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:How_Conservapedia_Differs_from_Wikipedia far more liberal than the American public].

====Inequality====

Within the Wikipedia contributing community, there has been a rapid divide between "contributors" and "editors", with editors determining much of the style, tone and occasionally content of articles. One study found that âelite usersâ were pushing out new contributors, with 25% of occasional wiki editorsâ changes being erased or reverted by established editors. This was up from 10% in 2003.<ref>[http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/HICSS.2008.333 Editors as Elite Users]</ref>.

Once again, Wikipedia has editor accounts only. It is possible to predicate properties of editor accounts based on their contribution histories, but it is not possible to extrapolate those predicates to real persons with any degree of verifiability. The accountability of the distinction claimed above is thoroughly undermined by the fact the same person may be editing under many accounts and many persons may be editing under the same account.

===Quality Control : Perceived and Actual===

It is important to distinguish between concerns about the actual quality of Wikipedia articles and concerns about the perceived quality of the articles. The one should be approached as a contributor and technical problem, and the other should be addressed as a publicity problem. Also, the concept of quality is intentionally broad and includes everything from accuracy of information, to degree of citation provided, to the quality of images and prose.

====Actual Quality of Wikipedia====

On October 24, 2005, ''The Guardian'' published an article entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" where a panel of experts were asked to critically review seven entries related to their fields.<ref name="Guardian">[http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,16541,1599325,00.html], Can you trust Wikipedia?, ''The Guardian'', 2008.</ref> One article was deemed to have made "every value judgement … wrong", the others receiving marks from 5 to 8 out of a notional ten. Of the other six articles reviewed and critiqued, the most common criticisms were:

# Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)
# Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key omissions in some articles (3 mentions)
# Poor balance, with less important areas being given more attention and vice versa (1 mention)
The most common praises were:
# Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4 mentions)
# Much useful information, including well-selected links, making it possible to "access much information quickly" (3 mentions)

''Nature'' reported in 2005 that science articles in Wikipedia were comparable in accuracy to those on ''Encyclopedia Britannica'''s web site. Out of 42 articles, only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', although more than a hundred lesser errors and omissions were found in each and Wikipedia's articles were often "poorly structured."<ref>P.D. Magnus, [http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/36449903/On-Trusting-WIKIPEDIA On Trusting Wikipedia], Britannica.</ref>

On March 24, 2006, ''Britannica'' provided a rebuttal of this article, labeling it "fatally flawed",<ref name="Nature Flawed BE">[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Journal_Nature_study_%27fatally_flawed%27%2C_says_Britannica], Journal Nature study "fatally flawed" says Britannica, March 24, 2006, Wikinews. </ref> to which ''Nature'' responded.<ref name="Nature Responds">[http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf], Encyclopedia Britannica and Nature: A Response, March 23, 2006.</ref>

Among Britannica's criticisms were that excerpts rather than the full texts of some of their articles were used, that Nature composited parts of different Britannica texts to make a text for review in one case, that Nature did not check the factual assertions of its reviewers, and that many points which the reviewers labeled as errors were differences of editorial opinion. Nature responded that any errors on the part of its reviewers were not biased in favor of either encyclopedia, that in some cases it used excerpts of articles from both encyclopedias, and that Britannica did not share particular concerns with Nature before publishing its "open letter" rebuttal.

Three subsequent studies -- a 2006 web-based survey,<ref>[http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/wikieval], Larry Press, Survey of Wikipedia accuracy and completeness, Professor of Computer Information Systems, California State University (2006)</ref> a 2004 comparison of ''Brockhaus Multimedial'', ''Microsoft Encarta'', and the German Wikipedia, <ref>Michael Kurzidim: Wissenswettstreit. Die kostenlose Wikipedia tritt gegen die MarktfÃ¼hrer Encarta und Brockhaus an, in: ''c't'' 21/2004, October 4, 2004, S. 132-139.</ref> (repeated in 2007 <ref>Dorothee Wiegand: "Entdeckungsreise. Digitale EnzyklopÃ¤dien erklÃ¤ren die Welt." c't 6/2007, March 5, 2007, p. 136-145.</ref>), and a 2007 review by Australian magazine ''PC Authority''<ref>[http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/93908,wikipedia-uncovered.aspx/1], PC Authority:'Wikipedia Uncovered'.</ref> -- concluded that Wikipedia was generally as reliable as other traditional encyclopedias.

However, Wikipedia may not be as reliable in technical or specialized fields. A peer-reviewed 2008 study<ref>[http://www.theannals.com/cgi/reprint/aph.1L474v1.pdf] KA Clauson et al., Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug Iinformation in Wikipedia, 42 Annals Pharmacotheraphy 1814 (2008).</ref>examined 80 Wikipedia drug entries. The research team found few factual errors but determined that these articles were often missing important information, like contraindications and drug interactions. One of the researchers noted that "If people went and used this as a sole or authoritative source without contacting a health professional...those are the types of negative impacts that can occur." The researchers also compared Wikipedia to Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), by looking for answers to 80 different questions covering eight categories of drug information, including adverse drug events, dosages, and mechanism of action. They have determined that MDR provided answers to 82.5 percent of the questions, while Wikipedia could only answer 40 percent, and that answers were less likely to be complete for Wikipedia as well. None of the answers from Wikipedia were determined factually inaccurate, while they found four inaccurate answers in MDR. But the researchers found 48 errors of omission in the Wikipedia entries, compared to 14 for MDR. The study noted that Wikipedia articles improved significantly over time. The lead investigator concluded: "I think that these errors of omission can be just as dangerous [as inaccuracies]", and he pointed out that drug company representatives have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe.

Another informal but systematic study of one calendar quarter's worth of edits to Wikipedia's one hundred articles about the 100 senators of the United States determined that these articles were interspersed with incorrect information or defamation about 6.8% of the time.<ref>[http://www.mywikiâbiz.com/Wikipedia_Vandalism_Study Vandalism study of U.S. senators], analyzing data from 4th Quarter, 2007.</ref>

In addition to these potential omissions (or purposeful deletions), the structure of Wikipedia lends itself to several [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#cite_note-50 potential vulnerabilities]:

#Information citation loops
#Vandalism
#Anonymity of authors lending to false information (see e.g. the [http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1062 Essjay controversy])

In 2007, XKCD created a humorous [http://xkcd.org/285/ comic] illustrating a feature (references and citations) designed to ensure greater accuracy in articles.

====Perceived Quality of Wikipedia====

Whether or not Wikipedia actually is accurate, its reception as a trusted source has been plagued by doubts regarding the trustworthiness of its content as the product of mass collaboration by anonymous authors.

Years ago, the perception of Wikipedia in the average population was relatively high. In a web-based survey conducted in spring 2006, fifty participants rated Wikipedia articles: 76% agreed that the article was accurate, and 46% agreed it was complete. The same survey compared Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica: of 18 responses, 6 favored Britannica, 7 favored Wikipedia, and 11 found Wikipedia more complete.<ref>Larry Press, "[http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/wikieval/ Survey of Wikipedia accuracy and completeness]," Professor of Computer Information Systems, California State University (2006).</ref>

However, Wikipedia's '''reception by academia''' has been less than stellar, and current popular perception of the compendium is on the decline. (Note the January 10 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Rollercoaster_%28The_Cleveland_Show%29 episode] of ''The Cleveland Show'', where Cleveland Brown, Jr. asks his sister (disguised as "Tyra Obama") if it's true "you guys can clap your breasts together like a seal", and when she says "No", he deadpans to the camera, "Thanks a lot, Wikipedia".)

Even if Wikipedia itself doesnât intend to be used as a course for academic works, it is often used by students and researchers as a starting point. However, the open-source collaborative and anonymous efforts that produce Wikipedia have led to wide-spread skepticism of its accuracy. Most of the angry responses targeted at Wikipedia have been aimed at its claim to be an encyclopedia. Such claims are thought to establish greater expectations of accuracy than are or possibly can be achieved by non-expert collaboration. Academics have also criticized Wikipedia for its perceived failure as a reliable source, and because Wikipedia editors may not have degrees or other credentials generally recognized in academia.

Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief for the Encyclopedia Britannica, describes Wikipedia as the âFaith-Based Encyclopedia.â He describes the âcrucial and entirely faith-based stepâ in the Wikipedia process: âSome unspecified quasi-Darwinian process will assure that those writings and editings by contributors of greatest expertise will survive; articles will eventually reach a steady state that corresponds to the highest degree of accuracy.â This step, he argues, is a completely unwarranted leap of faith. Rather, âContrary to the faith, the article has, in fact, been edited into mediocrity.â<ref name=McHenry>[http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=111504A], Robert McHenry, The Faith-Based Encyclopedia Blinks, Dec 14, 2005 (2008).</ref>

Andrew Orlowski accuses Wikipedia of being a âvanity exerciseâ for calling itself an encyclopedia, and writes that the use of the term "encyclopedia" to describe Wikipedia may lead users into believing it is more reliable than it may be. He points out (describing a libel case against Wikipedia) that âIf what we today know as "Wikipedia" had started life as something called, let's say - "Jimbo's Big Bag O'Trivia" - we doubt if it would be the problem it has become.â The public begins to expect trustworthy information from Wikipedia and instead gets a âking-sized cocktailâ of bureaucracy and âspontaneous graffiti.â <ref>[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/12/wikipedia_no_responsibility/page2.html], Andrew Orlowski, "Who's responsible for Wikipedia?" The Register, Dec 12, 2005.</ref>

Middlebury College went so far as to [http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.1/rosenzweig.html?pr=jah931 ban the citation of Wikipedia] in papers in its history department. On this note, however, consider the fact that Wikipedia itself states in its guidelines that Wikipedia is not suitable for academic citation because Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is a tertiary source. The use of Wikipedia is not accepted in many schools and universities in writing a formal paper, and some educational institutions have banned it as a primary source while others have limited its use to only a pointer to external sources.<ref name=Duke>[http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/03/28/News/Several.Colleges.Push.To.Ban.Wikipedia.As.Resource-2809247.shtml], Lysa Chen, "Several colleges push to ban Wikipedia as resource," Duke Chronicle, March 28, 2007</ref><ref>"[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki A Stand Against Wikipedia]", ''Inside Higher Ed'' (January 26, 2007). Retrieved on January 27, 2007.</ref><ref name=McHenry>

Some academic journals do refer to Wikipedia articles, but do not elevate it to the same level as traditional references. For instance, Wikipedia articles have been referenced as "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in the journal Science. The publisher of Science states that these enhanced perspectives "include hypernotes - which link directly to websites of other relevant information available online - beyond the standard bibliographic references."<ref>[http://www.aaas.org/publications/books_reports/CCLI/PDFs/01_D_Perspectives.pdf], Yolanda S. George & Shirley S.Malcolm, "Perspectives from AAAS|publisher=American Association for the Advancement of Science."</ref>

====Improving Wikipedia's Perceived Accuracy====
One study presented at the 2008 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Work explored whether a visualizations system could improve readersâ perceptions of trustworthiness in a wiki by exposing hidden article information.<ref>
Kittur, Suh & Chi, Can You Ever Trust a Wiki?: Impacting Perceived Trustworthiness in Wikipedia, in PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACM 2008 CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK (2008) 477-480. [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1460639&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=56978117&CFTOKEN=87505552Abstract].</ref> The results suggest that surfacing information that is relevant to the stability of the article and patterns of editor behavior can have a significant impact on usersâ trust. This should be considered in conjunction for proposals on color-coding articles by age, editing contribution etc that are being considered to improve article accuracy.

Other suggestions include:

*Reputation-based text coloring. Each article could display a button labeled "check text reputation": upon clicking the button, a user would be led to a copy of the page, where the text background color reflects the reputation of the author of each portion of text, as well as the reputation of authors who vetted the text, editing the page while leaving the text in place. The appeal of this method is that reputation is displayed in an anonymous way, associated to the article text. This avoids placing blame or praise directly on the authors: the impersonal character of this feedback could be well-suited to a collaborative forum such as the Wikipedia.<ref>T. Cross. Puppy smoothies: Improving the reliability of open, collaborative wikis. First Monday, 11(9), September 2006.</ref>
*Restricting edits. Highly controversial articles could be protected, so that only authors with sufficiently high reputation are able to edit them. This is currently employed by Wikipedia as part of its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_policy Protection Policy] but it could be expanded.
*Reputation-based alert system. Wikipedia Editors keep a watchful eye on most controversial articles, and in fact, on a large portion of the Wikipedia, improving content and undoing poor-quality revisions. A reputation system could be used to alert them whenever a crucial or controversial article is modified by a low-reputation author. A reputation system provides an incentive for high-quality contributions. A reputation system could provide an additional incentive for authors to provide high quality contributions to the Wikipedia.<ref>P. Resnick, R. Zeckhauser, E. Friedman, and K. Kiwabara. Reputation systems. Comm. ACM, 43(12):45{48, 2000. C. Dellarocas. The digitization of word-ofmouth: Promises and challenges of online reputation systems. Management Science, October 2003.</ref>
*Content-Driven Reputation system. Study by Adler & de Alfaro proposes a content-driven reputation system for Wikipedia to allow readers to determine reliability of an article based on the reputation of the contributors and editors. The reputation of authors would be based on how their contribution to Wikipedia fares: the longer an article or edit remains un-edited or un-altered, the better the authorâs reputation. This can be, however, much less accurate than a user-driven reputation system. Author contributions can be deleted for a variety of reasons, including reorganizations and thorough rewrites of the articles. Alder & Alfaro address these issues in that the reputation of authors whose edits are reverted to the original text suffers; reputation of authors whose edits are further refined later on do not suffer.<ref>B. Thomas Adler & Luca de Alfaro, [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=luca_de_alfaro A Content-Driven Reputation System for the Wikipedia].</ref>
*Zeng et al. also propose a mechanism wherein the revision history of the Wikipedia article is used to compute a trust value for the article.<ref>H. Zeng, M.A. Alhoussaini, L. Ding, R. Fikes, and D.L. McGuinness. Computing trust from revision history. In Intl. Conf. on Privacy, Security and Trust, 2006.</ref>

* It could also prove interesting to explore combinations of user and content reputation devices.

===Sustainability of the Wikimedia Model===

The strategy discussions at Wikimania 2009 raised the question of whether Wikimedia, as it stands today, is sustainable: both from a technological and organizational standpoint.

* Is a platform that both supports numerous users and serves less tech savvy contributors possible?

* How can Wikimedia ensure its financial stability?

* How can Wikimedia re-structure its institutional organization to allow oversight without creating too many levels of hierarchy such that the bureaucracy becomes ungainly?

====Emerging Strategic Priorities====

* Optimize Wikimediaâs operations

* Identify roles volunteers are best suited to perform and what are the most effective uses of paid staff

* Create alliances and partnerships with other institutions and organizations to advance the mission: also, what are the necessary preconditions to such alliances? How support similar projects?

====Obstacles to Sustainability====

* Persistent lack of accountability

* Inability to respond to widespread critical feedback

===Expansion and Questions of Scope===

Since the founding of Wikipedia in 2001, there has been substantial growth in user-generated online content.<ref>Geist, M. Mapping the digital future. OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 254 (2006), 36â37.</ref><ref>Dunn, J., Byrd, D., Notess, M., Riley, J., and Scherle, R. Variations2: Retrieving and using music in an academic setting. Commun. ACM 49, 8 (Aug. 2006) 53â58.</ref> According to one Nielsen rating, user-generated content drives 50% of the top fastest growing internet brands.<ref>Nielsen NetRating. [www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/PR_060810.PDF User-generated content drives half of U.S. top 10 fastest growing Web brands], (Aug. 10, 2006).</ref> Consider just the popularity of collaborative site such as YouTube, Flickr, or Slashdot.org. Traditional media outlets such as BBC News.com have also added areas for collaboration.<ref>Eltringham, M. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4900000/newsid_4900400/4900444.stm Citizen journalists challenge BBC], BBC NewsWatch (2006).</ref> User-generated content appears to be the way forward â but is Wikipedia a good model upon which to base that progress? Can the system used for Wikipedia be applied in other scenarios?

==Lay Questions for Scholars Concerned with the Role of Law in Society==

The Law of any given Land is frequently out of sync — now leading, now lagging — the collective common sense of what it takes to constitute a just society. With that in mind, let us address the questions of justification:

# What is and what should be the obligations of interactive media site owners and interactive media site participants toward their fellow citizens, toward the larger communities of inquiry from which they derive their justification, and toward the world at large?
# It is possible to debate the current dictates of the Law at great length — this has already been done at great length and will no doubt continue to be done at even greater length. But the ordinary citizen in danger of becoming roadkill on the Internet Autobahn will be concerned with the broader horizon, longer haul issues of where the Law is bound to go if it is designed to achieve and maintain a just society.

===Freedom of Speech, False Witness, Truth in Advertising===

===Legal and Social Justification for Tax Incentives===

==Resources==

* [http://akahele.org/ Akahele]

* [http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/ Augmented Social Cognition Blog]

* The Wikipedia Review : [http://wikipediareview.com/ Forum], [http://wikipediareview.com/blog/ Op-Ed Blog]

==References==
<references/>

==Presentation==
([[Presentation |In class Presentation - January 21]])

Due Process on the Internet

2024-08-14T19:57:24Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Collaborating and Relying on Masses

2024-08-14T19:57:23Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

===Issue Definition===

The development of and increasingly pervasive access to the internet has permitted mass collaboration on a scale not previously possible. Projects such as Wikipedia, Couchsurfing, Mechanical Turk, MySpace, Facebook, all rely on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_collaboration mass collaboration] and are therefore frequently called Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs). The success or failure of such COIN projects depends to great extent on the number of participants. As a result, project coordinators face massive challenges motivating good participants and preventing bad actors (see the cross-cutting theme on motivation).

On a more basic level, COINs are based on a shared premise that mass collaboration results in improved products: the more people involved the better quality the product. Is this a valid premise? Do we believe that using mass collaboration is as good or better than using experts? What knowledge / benefits do we lose by shifting towards mass collaboration? What do we gain?

As a review of [http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/ Andrew Keen]'s book ''The Cult of the Amateur'' states:
<blockquote>Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 â distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing â ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen points out in his provocative new book, âThe Cult of the Amateur,â Web 2.0 has a dark side as well.<ref>Michiko Kakutani, Books of the Times: [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/books/29book.html "The Cult of the Amateur"], New York Times, June 29, 2007.</ref></blockquote>

At its most basic level, this theme questions whether we really believe that groups perform better than individuals, whether a group of average individuals is as good or better than an expert.

===Mob Mentality===

Opponents of mass collaboration compare such projects to "[http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-mob-mentality.htm mob mentality]" -- a term used to refer to unique behavioral characteristics which emerge when people are in large groups -- or herd mind, or group think. Andrew Keen states dramatically that mass collaboration is nothing more than "ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.â<ref>Id.</ref>

Social psychologists have traditionally described mob mentality in terms of its negative attributes, noting the potential for peer pressure and group-think, for stifling creativity, lowering exceptional performers, and division into us v. them approaches to information.

===Sharing Knowledge===

Many developers, educators, and economists argue that mass collaboration is the wave of the future: that it is more efficient, achieves better results, and is more cost-effective than the use of experts. Is this true?

While acknowledging the potential for negative outcomes (peer pressure, group-think and suppression of minority views), some researchers propose that technological solutions can overcome these challenges: e.g. have participants rank the novelty of postings in order to increase the salience of minority views.<ref>Gerry Stahl, "[http://ijcscl.org/_preprints/volume3_issue2/stahl_3_2.pdf The Strength of the Lone Wolf]," 3 International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 1-5 (2008).</ref>

Other researchers are even more optimistic, suggesting that the unique characteristics of COINs make these COINs un-susceptible to the mob mentality weaknesses. As a result, COINs have all the positive outcomes with none of the negative, giving COINs a competitive advantage<ref> Gloor, Peter A, Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage Through Collaborative Innovation Networks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).</ref> and presenting the best (or only) mechanism for addressing major global problems such as sustainability.<ref>Archer, Fei, & Petzel, [http://www.samhÃ¤llsplanering.se/fou/cuppsats.nsf/all/78d3802c456fd1d9c12575dd00472ba4/$file/NetworkedCollaborationFinal%20FINAL.pdf Collaboration for Sustainability in a Networked World], Thesis, Blekinge Institute of Technology (2009).</ref>

In this optimistic camp, Tapscott and Williams argue in their book ''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration is Changing Everything'' that mass collaboration is the future of business and a (nearly) pre-requisite for economic success in the internet age.<ref>Tapscott & Williams, [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DVomiOeBg_YC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=mass+collaboration&ots=45nHzVQdr9&sig=Lz-jNmCVXITWbShGvFqFPFwGooM#v=onepage&q=&f=false ''Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration is Changing Everything''] (2008).</ref> Former Wired editor Kevin Kelly credits the rise of a 'digital socialism' to internet-based mass collaboration. <ref>Kevin Kelly, [http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_newsocialism?currentPage=1 ''The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online''] (2009) - "Of course, there's nothing particularly socialistic about collaboration per se. But the tools of online collaboration support a communal style of production that shuns capitalistic investors and keeps ownership in the hands of the workers, and to some extent those of the consuming masses."</ref>

===Logistical Challenges===

Mass collaboration on the internet presents even more challenges than traditional "mob mentality" simply from the logistics of having a dispersed group of collaborators. Catherine Cramton identifies major challenges facing dispersed collaboration projects:
*Failure to communicate and retain contextual information
*Unevenly distributed information
*Difficulty communicating the salience of information
*Differences in speed of access to information
*Difficulty interpreting the meaning of silence<ref>Catherine Durnell Cramton, "[http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/3086013?&Search=yes&term=Quality&term=Collaboration&term=Research&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DCollaboration%2Band%2Bthe%2BQuality%2Bof%2BResearch%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26wc%3Don&item=5&ttl=49407&returnArticleService=showArticle The Mutual Knowledge Problem and Its Consequences for Dispersed Collaboration]," 12 Organization Science 346-371(May-June 2001), [Available on JSTOR if link not work].</ref>

How can these problems be addressed on the internet? Cramton notes that dispersed groups, on the basis of physical distance, often break down into "us v. them" mentality - does anonymity address or exacerbate this issue?

===Related Questions===

====Popular v. Right====

Is our information base shifting away from what is correct and towards what is popular? For example, Google has become a popular starting-point for information, but Google lists results in order based not on what is most correct but rather on what is most popular. How does this affect our knowledge base? How do we define "correct" - does it mean widely accepted, proven through scientific inquiry (in which case, Creationists would question what "proven" means) or something else? If "widely accepted", who votes? Only the expert community? Or anyone?

Consider technological solutions that are devloping, like [http://disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu/ DisputeFinder] that can identify debated issues and present an alternative point of view, so the reader is at least informed on the controversy.

====Raising the Average - Bringing Down the Top?====

Evidence on whether collaboration actually improves performance is mixed, and appears to depend not only on the nature of the work but also on the identity of the participants and size of the group. One major question to consider, though, is whether we are achieving new heights or just raising the average.

Robert Miller conducted a social psychology study on students in his course writing collaborative papers (note: there are significant structure biases inherent in this study) and concluded that on average the collaborative papers were better.<ref>Richard S. Miller, "[http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol1/miller.pdf Collaborative Writing in Social Psychology: An Experiment], 1 Writing Across the Curriculum 95-103 (1989).</ref> However, Miller noted himself that he could not determine whether the papers were better because the best student in each group did the majority of the work (and therefore lower grades from the worse students were eliminated) or whether the groups really generated absolutely better quality work.

Does group work achieve new heights (better than the best person in the group could achieve) or does it simply eliminate the worst work? Miller's students reported that they felt the group work stimulated creativity and therefore led to better products.<ref>Id.</ref> However, a study on collaboration and the quality of scientific research found that groups were less likely to produce bad papers, but were not any more likely to produce good papers.<ref>Stanley Presser, "[http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/284727?seq=2&Search=yes&term=Quality&term=presser&term=Collaboration&term=Research&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoAdvancedSearch%3Fq0%3DCollaboration%2Band%2Bthe%2BQuality%2Bof%2BResearch%26f0%3Dti%26c0%3DAND%26q1%3Dpresser%26f1%3Dau%26c1%3DAND%26q2%3D%26f2%3Dall%26c2%3DAND%26q3%3D%26f3%3Dall%26wc%3Don%26Search%3DSearch%26sd%3D%26ed%3D%26la%3D%26jo%3D&item=1&ttl=1&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=doAdvancedResultsFromArticle Collaboration and the Quality of Research]," 10 Social Studies of Science 95-101 (Feb 1980).</ref> This study suggests that collaboration eliminates the worst mistakes but that it does not improve content beyond what an individual could do.

====Size & Make-up of the Group====

As noted above, the size and make-up of the group make a difference in the quality of collaboration. How do these questions come into play when we are dealing with mass collaboration (thousands and thousands of contributors) who are often anonymous so the group make-up isn't even known? At what group size do the complications and problems with collaboration outweigh the benefits?

One social psychology experiment determined that there are benefits to collaborative work, but they failed to show benefits for all-female groups.<ref>Nancy Vanderhey Samah & Richard De Lisi, "[http://www.jstor.org/pss/20152646 Peer Collaboration on a Nonverbal Reasoning Task by Urban, Minority Students]," 69 Journal of Experimental Education 5-21 (2000).</ref> It is not clear, however, whether this depends on the nature of the project worked on (e.g. does this still apply for female collaborations on female-dominated issues?). Also, mass collaboration often assumes that it will be mixed gender, because it is so large, but Wikipedia, for example, is estimated 80-90% male. How does this bias affect the quality and nature of the collaboration?

=====References=====
<references/>

Day 2 Predictions

2024-08-14T19:57:21Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

= Mark =

Sheel: Cisco, with its involvement in China's Golden Shield Project and $16 Billion investment (http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2825.html), doesn't want to have to deal with issues of human rights that might diminish ROI. Notable quote from article and 2008 testimony: Chandler said, "Cisco does not customize, or develop specialized or unique filtering capabilities, in order to enable different regimes to block access to information." My guess: Mark Chandler will affirm this statement tomorrow, but the real reason is that following the GNI principles would be a poor business decision and CISCO isn't willing to make any sacrifice.
: Elisabeth: we might push back on the idea that this would be a poor business decision, and solicit Cosson and Hope's opinions. Yahoo and Google have faced real backlash for their actions, and GNI serves as something of a safety net against that backlash. We could also ask Chandler if he can imagine how GNI could be structured such that it would be worthwhile for Cisco to join--it would be interesting to see if what he says matches up with what Cosson says GNI needs to do to recruit new members.
:: Andrew: I doubt Chandler would be cynical (frank?) enough to respond this way, but Cisco may be shielded from the kind of "PR risks" that Yahoo/Google/Microsoft face, since their products and services reside below the content layer and are less intuitively understandable to the general public. Along these lines, I hope to hear some discussion about the sources of contention between stakeholders at different architectural layers. How do differences in the type of actions governments request from these companies translate to materially different policy preferences, given the extreme broadness of the principles at issue?
:: Hector: I agree with Andrew and wonder whether Cisco will go to lengths to emphasize the hardware-side of its products/services. This may be a more palatable version of JZ's "gun's don't kill people" framing: "Look, we provide hardware and the software interfaces that are infinitely customizable." Such an argument works only to the extent that the products/services are general-use (generative?) and the extent that CISCO is '''truly''' removed from any immoral end-use.
:: Michael: I think Mark will lean on the fact that Cisco provides hardware. The current constituents of GNI (Micosoft, Google, and Yahoo) exclusively provide services and software which only have a limited range of customizable options. Cisco's products, on the other hand, can be customized for myriad purposes. Unlike the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" fallacy, Cisco's hardware products have a wide variety of applications and are designed specifically and primarily for a number of innocuous purposes and can only be transformed into destructive tools with significant input by the consumer/user. So then Cisco probably has a specific problem with the final bullet point under "Responsible Company Decision Making" of the [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/cms/uploads/1/GNI_-_Principles_1_.pdf GNI Guiding Principles] which requires that companies use their best efforts to force clients or customers to conform to these rules. It could be a seriously onerous burden on hardware providers to say that they must force customers in other countries to abide by American/European concepts of ethical uses of that equipment, and even more onerous to consider punishing Cisco when its products are used in violation of such standards.
: Jason: I doubt that he will emphasize ROI and the need to make money to a group like ours - or, at least he won't explicitly mention his company's desire to make billions of dollars. Instead, I suspect that Mark will emphasize the need for more Internet infrastructure in developing countries, and the uncertain effect of the GNI in terms of continuing to do business everywhere. He would be right about that need - see, for instance, the Internet density map [http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/worlddotblack.jpg here]. So he can ask us rhetorically, "What is Cisco supposed to do? Don't you cyberlaw students want people in China and Southeast Asia and the Middle East and Africa to get online, too? If so, those countries need our hardware - and we can't choose who runs their governments!" And you know what? If he says this, he will have a very, very good point.

Daniel: I believe Chandler will provide his professional - and hopefully personal - account on the role CISCO plays in [facilitating / enabling / providing neutral tools] to allow for "different regimes" to control their nationals' internet experience. Cosson and Hope will probably dedicate more time to in depth discussion of two issues: involvement of industry actors other than the GNI founding members and the types of incentives that are needed for that, including legal alternatives and public exposure of "do some evil" firms. Also, given that we will not have representatives from Google and Yahoo, these companies are likely to figure prominently in the examples of events, actions and concessions to be avoided.

Sanford Lewis: I predict that Mr. Chandler will not discuss in very much depth the extent to which external stakeholder and stockholder pressure has shaped company policy, unless he is prompted by student questions to discuss this.

Lien: The GNI principles are so general and an "implementation / repetition" of international standards. If a certain company (for whatever reason) does not want to join the GNI, this company still has to comply with these standards. To play the devil's advocate, does joining the GNI change anything in reality or is it just a good thing to join because of the company's image and reputation? Furthermore, the concept of the GNI (sort of self- regulation) is a very American concept. European companies are not very familiar with this kind of approach. The GNI might be a good starting point for a company to obey to certain principles. However, the privacy principles are so broadly written that, if a company would follow these principles, it would still not comply with European Privacy legislation. Why would an European company then join the initiative and do all the effort (e.g. audit, ...), knowing that it would still not comply with European legislation?

:Elisabeth: I also wonder how true it is that these are "international" standards, rather than American or American/European standards.

Michael: I expect Mark will point out that GNI's primary focus seems to be providing guidelines for instances in which a government or other entity makes direct requests of a company for information (ID of a dissident) or to take certain action (block certain functions of software), but that these values are inapplicable to much of what Cisco does. Cisco is likely less concerned with such direct inquiries and more concerned with customers altering its devices to accomplish bad objectives. The kinds of hardline, direct guidelines that GNI will likely promulgate to address issues that would apply to governments' direct inquiries to Microsoft, Google and Yahoo would be very difficult to apply to companies like Cisco who provide heavily customizable software. In fact, any steps Cisco might take to prevent consumers from using its products to violate GNI rules would, itself, violate the rule encouraging freedom of expression by the consumer of such products. (of course the easy response to this might be that all of these are, a fortiori (had to throw some legal speak in here somewhere), reasons that companies like Cisco should be a part of the conversation to create rules that will be more generally applicable.

Ramesh: I wonder if Mark will agree with the distinction I tried to draw below between removing content that's objectionable to governments and providing private information to those governments to find dissidents. It seems like Cisco's technologies could be used for either; does Mark think both are acceptable forms of behavior?

Bruno: I guess the easiest way for him to dodge the question of why Cisco did not join GNI is the âwe have to abide by local legislationâ excuse, and that's most probably what he will do. Unless GNI can come up with stronger incentives for companies to join the initiative â stronger meaning better economic incentives â, companies like Cisco will always be able to come up with that excuse with a straight face and do not feel compelled to do any extra effort to improve it's business practices concerning freedom of expression privacy issues.

= Dunstan =
Tyler: I believe Dunstan will try and draw a distinction between situations involving two types of countries. The first type is countries with laws in accordance with GNI principles but that are not enforced or poorly enforced. The second type is countries with laws that on their face are violative of GNI principles. I hope Dunstan will discuss strategies that corporations should use for situations that arise involving both types of countries and the different approaches that GNI stakeholders can collectively take to preemptively forestall problems in each of the two types of countries.
: Daniel: It would be great if we further explored the (blurring) division between these two country-types. Was Google's first move in the negotiation with Turkey - accepting to block videos insulting AtatÃ¼rk, but only within the country's limits - OK under the GNI principles? How much can a country legitimately curb freedom of speech, according to the GNI framework? IMO, its diplomatic language allows for an "American" interpretation, but also for an "European" one and perhaps others even more restrictive.
Reuben: I'd be interested in hearing how BSR's involvement with the GNI was different than corporate social responsibility projects in other economic sectors and how that speaks to the uniqueness of ICT and these issues.
: Ramesh: I'd like to hear Dunstan draw distinctions between two types of conduct that often seem to be conflated in this area -- removing content at the best of governments (Google.cn) vs. providing private information to governments that can lead to the arrest and prosecution of dissidents (Shi Tao). The first seems like a necessary step to take for companies to conduct business in countries with different laws, while the second seems to raise much more serious ethical issues, as the company is actively helping repressive governments search out and persecute dissidents. I suspect that Dunstan may draw this distinction, as perhaps companies, both inside and outside the GNI, think there are serious differences between the two types of conduct.

= Chuck =

Tyler: I expect Chuck to express frustration that more corporations have not signed up for GNI and identify some specific reasons why he thinks GNI has so far been unable to recruit any additional corporations from the initial roster of three (Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft). I also hope that Chuck discusses what preparations Microsoft has made to allow GNI auditors access the sensitive Microsoft information.

::Michael: I expect that Chuck will express some level of understanding that many companies are still reticent to join GNI in its infancy before there are any real tangible benefits (especially for smaller companies). But I also expect that he will express some optimism that more companies and organizations will begin to join as GNI matures and proves itself.
::I would like to hear how Chuck thinks abiding by GNI guidelines might affect smaller companies. If such companies refuse to give foreign governments the information they request, could a boycott of services by that country's government have have a disastrous effect on a smaller companies bottom line?

Sharona: Along these lines, I would be interested to hear how he thinks he could make newer, especially significantly smaller, companies joining GNI feel a part of the team. As the wiki primer points out, the people at Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have worked together for years to create the foundation of GNI, and it will be hard for additional members to feel they can make a contribution without feeling like second class citizens. Even though Chuck will likely say this can be overcome by a feeling of inclusiveness and democratic collaboration, I would push back to see how willing they would be to re-imagine some of the core tenants of GNI in order to fit the needs of other types of companies.

Juan: As a stakeholders unite, GNI is supposed to have more flexibility and accommodation than its legislative alternatives, such as GOFA. With this flexibility, how will it attract new members in China, such as Baidu (www.baidu.com, the market leader of search services), Kaixin network (www.kaixin001.com, the most popular social network website in China, which is a knockoff of facebook), Tudou (www.tudou.com, the biggest video site mainly serving local videos) and etc. Facing with a very powerful government, I doubt they will have an incentive to join the GNI.
Another question is what is the role of GNI? If company challenges the government request, government would not buy it, what actions would company be supposed to take? Will GNI interface with government? By challenging the government request, the company may be punished by government, either directly or indirectly. Is there any benefit for the company to take the risk?
Will GNI work for China? Can it enlighten Chinese government to change its position on human rights and free expression?
Should GNI have multiple standards on human rights protection in different countries, since different countries have different views on human rights.
: Lien: Good point. I believe we should indeed ask the question to all speakers whether the GNI is not a typical American way of approaching issues, that might not work that easily in other continents.

Reuben: With regards to the relationship between Chuck and Mark, I think that while Chuck will make statements supporting the GNI, he is unlikely to challenge Mark or CISCO to join. I'd also expect Chuck to express some reticence in allowing auditors too much freedom to access sensitive information.

Amanda: I think Chuck will be supportive of GNI's attempts to create an independent entity to deal with privacy issues and hope that he will make a compelling case for how the organization will be able to both grow and scale and include new members while not diluting the message.

Victoria: I suspect that Chuck will applaud the movement already made by GNI and that it creates a safe space for companies like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft since they come to some form of a consensus it gives them a feeling that they have reached a Best Practices Guide - that has been steered by enough people that it is ethically correct. However, I'd like to know more about whether these companies have stepped into an inappropriate role by creating GNI. In essence, these companies are acting as law makers - and yet they have not been elected. . . by the US let alone the international community. Should there be more checks on GNI? Should their be conversations with elected representatives from countries? Do they ever feel nervous about their place in this rule-making position?

Franny: As applicable to both Chuck and Dunstan, I think there might be some discussion as to how including non-governmental/non-private sector organizations such as EFF adds legitimacy to GNI's purpose and goals. I have to wonder to what extent these organizations also serve safety watchdogs roles within GNI, where clashes between public and private perspectives arise (even if they're supposed to be on the same team).

Due process on the Internet among private sheriffs

2024-08-14T19:57:20Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

==Issue Definition==

Users store valuable content online using services such as GMail and Facebook. What happens if the providers of these services decide to ban or restrict access to "your" content or account? Is there an appeals process? Is there any notion of due process whatsoever?

;Question
: The term ''due process'' implies an analogy to legal proceedings that may or may not be apt for all interactive media sites.
: Are there more fitting terms of contractual or ethical obligation, explicit or implied promise, truth in advertising, or just plain good faith that might apply to the particular case?

;Related
: Is a website a place of "public accomodation" under the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act?

;Also
: What rights do users have, or reasonably believe they have, with respect to the content they store, distribute, or publish via services like Gmail or Facebook?

===Gmail===

The main concern for users who are banned from Gmail would seem to be recovering the content stored in their account. Google does not appear to guarantee that they will allow a banned user to recover their content; at the same time, they could do so, apparently at their sole discretion. Are there any accounts of Google banning Gmail users, and if there are, what has been Google's disposition of the contents of their mailboxes?

From GMail's [http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en Terms of Service]

4.3 As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Googleâs sole discretion, without prior notice to you. You may stop using the Services at any time. You do not need to specifically inform Google when you stop using the Services.

4.4 You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account.
...

8.1 You understand that all information (such as data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images) which you may have access to as part of, or through your use of, the Services are the sole responsibility of the person from which such content originated. All such information is referred to below as the âContentâ.
...

8.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service...

===Facebook===

Facebook does not seem to have a formal appeals process for banned accounts. [http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/03/facebook_banish.html] In the site's [http://www.facebook.com/help/#/help/?faq=15875 help center], an e-mail address and some simple instructions (for what to include in the e-mail) are provided, but no other details are provided regarding the remedial procedures followed by Facebook (if any) once the appeal e-mail is sent.

A user banned from Facebook likely faces three concerns. The first is control over the continued publication of their material after the account has been banned, which depends on whether or not Facebook continues to publish content created from banned accounts. The second is access to private or semiprivate information either stored in the banned user's account itself, or in other Facebook accounts to which that user had access by virtue of Facebook's social-network-based security. The third is ongoing access to Facebook's social networking features.

Facebook does not seem to discuss, with anyone, not even the banned user, the reason for any bans it imposes, so the risk of being defamed by Facebook by virtue of having been banned by them seems minimal.

===Wikipedia===

;Questions
: Are Encyclopedias like Butter or Orange Juice? That is, does the use of the term "encyclopedia", in conjunction with valorized terms like "knowledge" and "policy", constitute a claim of "suitability for a particular purpose", all fine-print disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding?
: Are users of Wikipedia solely responsible for their expectations that Wikipedia Management will maintain "knowledge" and operate according to their advertised "policies"?
: Or does the Wikimedia Foundation incur a legal obligation to conduct its operations in specific ways by dint of its advertising, fund-raising, and promotional activities, all of which it does under a tax-advantaged status?

Wikipedia allows most users to edit their own User_talk pages after being blocked or banned, so that they can use this page to post appeals. Exceptions are made for banned users who use their talk pages "abusively". Given the fact that almost anything can and will be described as "abuse", this is a distinction without a difference. The practical effect is to quell criticism and quash anything that might be considered a right of reply.

Until recently, a Wikipedia "block log" was practically impossible to expunge, and Wikipedia user pages containing templates stating "this user has been banned" were indexable by search engines. In most cases, these pages and logs still remain in existence indefinitely, and arguably can act as a form of public shaming that is not always warranted or justifiable. In recent months, however, the site's administrators have shown a greater willingness to "courtesy-blank" such material (including public discussions leading up to bans), mostly for users whose Wikipedia identities can be linked to their real identities. Given that the so-called "courtesy" is typically extended arbitrarily, without consultation, and even against the request of the user in question, it may be seen as a measure to protect the actions of Wikipedia management from open scrutiny. This appears to be due to a variety of factors, including recent negative media coverage, an influx of more rational administrators (many of whom are quite young), and an effort to reduce ongoing offsite attacks by banned users by eliminating as many sources of friction as possible. The concept that such acts of "public shaming" might be either unethical or illegal does not seem to occur to most Wikipedians; when such statements are removed the removals are generally predicated on practical, rather than ethical or legal, grounds.

Wikipedia's "Arbitrators" have been quite consistent over the years in insisting that Wikipedia's dispute resolution process does not guarantee "due process", and have consistently said that attempting to do so would hinder, rather than assist, their function. However, recently Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia Foundation's General Counsel, took the Arbitration Committee, in its entirety, to task for making and publishing a decision (to remove certain privileges from a user) that "not been made in any way that meets what I as a lawyer would characterize as due-process and evidentiary standards" [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/02/the_end_of_the_wikipedia_good_old_boys_club/], suggesting that at least Mr. Godwin believes that Wikipedia should offer some semblance of due process within its community governance scheme. However, there is, as of yet, no indication that Wikipedia's community desires for its dispute resolution process to ensure due process to disputants. At least one external commentator[http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=27610&view=findpost&p=207760] mentioned the remote possibility of someone bringing legal action against Wikipedia via a mechanism similar to a New York Article 78 proceeding.

Wikipedia is unlike Facebook or Gmail in the sense that there is essentially no way to store content on Wikipedia in a nonprivate way, most content stored on Wikipedia can be edited by anyone whosoever (much of it even without having an account), and in any case, accounts are extremely easy to obtain. Therefore, the loss of one's account does not significantly impair one's ability to access, alter, or remove any content one may have chosen to store there, and the damage caused by the loss of one's account rights are mostly reputational in nature and depend almost entirely on how readily one's account can be tied to one's identity, which at Wikipedia is entirely optional. This is entirely unlike Gmail, in which a user might have gigabytes of personal, nonreproduceable correspondence stored in the account, or Facebook, which strongly encourages people to provide sufficient information so as to personally identify themselves.

;Comment 1
: Re: "the loss of one's account does not significantly impair one's ability to access, alter, or remove any content one may have chosen to store there"
: This statement is not only false but exhibits a lack of familiarity with the realities of Wikipedian activities. [[User:Jon Awbrey|Jon Awbrey]] 22:06, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

==Moot Court==

As a lay observer of these discussions who found himself forced — beginning willy but mostly nilly some five years ago — to take an interest in the realities of Wikipedia politics and subculture, I find that most of the assertions that remote observers make about Wikipedia are pure and simple wishful thinking, dreamily detached from the concrete realities of what actually goes on there.

The most typical excuse for "Due Process" that we find in Wikipedia is not conducted in the powdered wiggery of the Arbitration Committee, the kangaroo court of last resort, but commonly ends with the defendant hanging from one of the lower rungs of the dispute resolution ladder, often in effigy, though the results of the lynching are hardly improved by the presence of the celebrant.

For instance, if you'll forgive me for citing a case that I have the most intimate acquaintance with:

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive134&oldid=78423288#User:Jon_Awbrey_project_spam The Case of the Exploratory Spiel-Lurker]

Signed, [[User:Jon Awbrey|Jon Awbrey]] 04:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Day 3 Predictions

2024-08-14T19:57:19Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Daniel: My guess is that three issues will be focused:

1- ''labor rights'' â workers in UHC are not attached to a safe work environment, do not receive any fringe benefits, health care, etc., and as of yet there are no unions for Turks and the like. It is quite easy to see homeworkers as nonworkers, and to build [http://www.missconceptions.net/downloads/mturk-pca09-web.pdf digital sweatshops].

2- workersâ new ''expectation of complete anonymity'', that go way beyond privacy demands in regular work environments. Hopefully ethical issues concerning this faceless workforce will be discussed, as well as its potential identity and community feelings (taking into account that, unlike bearers of [http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_releases/press_release_archive/press_release/pr-061009-value formal jobs], UHC workers have shifting numbers, not social security ones). Still on this topic, I expect debates about people willing to perform otherwise shameful tasks, and about the opportunities for children, sick or unfit workers in general to work / be worked.

3- the ''use of UHC for complex, creative tasks'', analyzed in conjunction with a look at the economics of commoditized labor pools. Resulting discussions could examine quality control and its costs, and [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1357054.1357127 proper design], necessary to unleash [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ3Q6Y6Ylqo creativity] and demand more than repetitive, boring tasks from fellow anonymous humans. On that note, it is nice to see that, as scientific experiments with Mechanical Turks [http://experimentalturk.wordpress.com/ become more popular], academic attention is drawn towards the problematic incentives in the platformâs most common setting (low payment + repetitive tasks), which encourages Turks to finish HITs as fast as they can, [http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/2010/01/looking-for-subjects-amazons-mechanical-turk.html at the expense of proper comprehension of the tasks].
: Andrew: Since at least some of our guests tonight are "creatives", I hope to hear some discussion about the relationship between full-time freelancers and websites that crowdsource complex, creative tasks (e.g. Worth1000, [http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php iStockPhoto]). At a Berkman lunch last spring, [http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/ Jeff Howe] cited a [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1122462 study] that showed only 4% of iStockPhoto sellers derived their primary income from the site. As the site and its peers begin to dominate the market for stock photography, what happens to the livelihoods of those who depended on stock photography for a living? Protectionist worries like this parallel those about outsourcing more generally and are vulnerable to the same counters about progress and efficient markets; I hope some of those arguments play out tonight.

My wish list for the session: discussions of solutions / tools such as [http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/ Turkopticon], a Firefox application designed to identify and expose âshady employersâ.

Michael: Since two of our guests have used UHC for artistic projects, I expect one or both of them will respond to some [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cult_of_the_Amateur/ Cult of the Amateur]-style criticisms. I am especially interested to hear whether our speakers think UHC improves the quality of creative/design work that can be accomplished or aggregated from UHC or whether it represents a possible step backward from looking to established professionals for this kind of work. Based on the backgrounds of the speakers, I would imagine Bjoern Hartman and Aaron Koblin will argue that UHC presents the possibility for improvement over the previous paradigm of established professionals. I imagine one or more of the speakers may believe that UHC doesn't really represent a change in quality of such higher level work, but just a difference in kind.

I don't know if any of our guests plan on discussing this topic, but I would be especially interested to hear their perspectives on UHC's effect on the morality of work done. Anonymity on the internet can sometimes remove users' filters of social convention and politeness. So UHC might make it easier for users of Mechanical Turk or CrowdFlower to do work (either voluntarily or unknowingly) that would be morally dubious. There also seems to be a lot of noise in the Mechanical Turk system especially -- a lot of scams rather than true HIT tasks. A possible solution would be to use the existing Mechanical Turk or CrowdFlower functionality for users to rank the morality of the various tasks and provide marginally greater pay or benefits for tasks with higher moral/utility rankings. But I would be interested to hear to what extent our guests think this is a problem.

Ramesh: I predict that the founders of human computing websites will be more focused on the technology and potential of the websites and may have a blind spot for the legal issues that may be raised by UHC (applicability of minimum wage and other laws) while as law students, we may naturally focus on the legal issues implicated.

: Tyler: I agree that Lukas is obviously very excited about the technology and the potential of his website and similar websites. However, I believe that the "blind spot" that Ramesh predicts will be more of a "worrisome spot". I think Lukas will be extremely worried about the legal implications concerning products in his space. I think a lot of this worry is justified since it is likely unsettled or unclear law that even an experienced employment lawyer could only guess about, and it I think Lukas may be kept up at night by the potential for new or clarified law to derail his project. I suspect that Lukas will have attempted a risk analysis of his business plan with respect to legal risks, but have had great difficulty because of the challenges associated with assigning probabilities and magnitudes to the risks that he faces.

Alternatively, perhaps the founders of UHC websites will see them simply as a continuation of current trends, especially the increasing numbers of contractors in the labor force of large companies and governments and the outsourcing of call-center (and increasingly higher-skilled) jobs overseas. Does UHC present any problems that are different from the current trends? What role can employment and labor law play in a world where increasing numbers of workers are "independent contractors" or even Mechanical Turks? Will technology re-enact Lochner?

Franny:
Given the guest list, I diplomatically disagree with Daniel (and agree with Ramesh) and would expect these guests to address the positive potential and advantages of human computing applications into business, arts and culture, as well as the benefits available through this new type of labour force with built-in autonomy. As libertarian as I may be in my views, I agree with Daniel that there is a real possibility that UHC can develop into a last resort for unskilled workers to earn income in order to survive. I just don't think that the negative aspects will be the focus of today's session.

I would also be interested to hear our guests' thoughts on whether UHC can be applied to tasks in which sensitive information is involved, and if so, how could private content be protected?

:Jason: Totally agree with Franny here. I was at first somewhat surprised that in the talk that Lukas gave at TechCruch 50 there was zero discussion of any of the legal aspects of this (no one asked, "Um, do you have to withhold taxes from the workers?" or "What if it turned out that someone was a child?" or "Won't your business model be ruined if it turns out you have to pay taxes for not providing health insurance to these people?" or anything along those lines) - but, of course, I forgot that I'm a law student and that's not the lens through which they are viewing this technology. Faced with a room of (mostly) lawyers, these questions will obviously come more the fore than they were there, but I suspect that the considerable advantages and potential of this type of work will dominate the discussion.

:Reuben: I wonder how feasible it is to actually make any real money as a mechanical turk. All of the tasks I tried took me at least a few minutes to read the instructions and then a little bit of time to actually perform the task. I suppose if someone did the same repetitive task over and over it would cut down on the amount of downtime and you could more quickly make some money, but at $.02 a task (which seems to be a going rate), even if you spent as little as 30 seconds on each HIT, it works out to $2.40 an hour. You need to pay about $.07 a task to add to the basic minimum wage. I see how the employers/taskmasters benefit, but aside from the novelty, I don't see any real benefit for the turkers. I'd love to hear from Lukas what the average worker makes doing CrowdFlower tasks.
::Hector: Yes I'm also very interested in seeing some numbers. Do they have any system for flagging usage? First, setting aside fair wage issues, does anyone do this for 40 hrs a week? If so, then many of our worries can be concretely identified and addressed. Check out this article showing relative sweatshop rates in different countries: [http://www.independent.org/publications/working_papers/article.asp?id=1369 Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards]
::Elisabeth: This isn't scientific, but here's a [http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/07/05/can-you-actually-earn-reasonable-money-from-mechanical-turk/ personal finance blogger] on making minimum wage on AMT. He thinks it's possible if you take qualification tests and can write quickly. In my limited experience, I tend to agree that it's possible (and recall that commuting/wardrobe/etc expenses are nonexistent).

:Amanda: I think the incentive structure around these sites (non-monetary incentives) is really interesting because I still don't know where to draw the line between UGC and HITs - for example, when I post a review on Yelp, I don't own it and they are making money off of what I post (indirectly), and yet they don't pay me and I don't expect to be paid. I saw the Crowdflower presentation live this year and the response I think they'll have to the minimum wage question is that this work is all on-demand, you can do the work whenever you want to - that opt-in element makes it somewhat different than a traditional employer-employee relationship.

:: Elisabeth: A related question is whether the popularity of paid-crowd sourced material will drive out unpaid work like Yelp. I don't think Yelp could be replaced by a series of HITs (what entity would pay for it?), but if people can immediately monetize their time, they may be less willing to do free tasks.

Juan:

By doing quality control and tracking the quality history of workers, Crowdflower moves one step closer to a real employer. How will it and other human computing websites deal with labor law issues, such as employment relationship, jurisdiction conflict, non-compete agreement, anti-discrimination, disability, leave time, wage and hour requirements, and etc. Also, building up workers' career path, balancing between monitoring and privacy intrusion, disclosing information for workers to evaluate the moral value and giving them the opportunity to opt out, shall be new problems in the cyberspace. Besides, this paid work on-line may have an impact on those contributions without payments. How will we address this issue to make sure people will have incentives to embark on free works.

Another thing I want to hear is whether UHC will develop verticals like the traditional industries. How will it develop those verticals not suitable for on-line outsourcing per its nature?

Sheel: The 'quality history of workers' that Juan alluded to is particularly interesting to me. Crowdflower seems to integrate the 'reputation' of workers in ways that Mechanical Turk doesn't do for its HITs. I'd like to hear Lukas's thoughts on this mechanism---how easy is it for users who have a low reputation to just start all over, taking the good (long history with website) away from the bad (similar to the online reputation possibilities that JZ mentioned in his book)? Does CrowdFlower only track user names in this manner? Also, would Crowdflower ever consider having tasks cost a higher amount for the vendor with the stipulation that only those with a certain reputation will be able to perform them?

My prediction is that the reputation system will be naturally brought about in conversation when Lukas is describing his company as his 'competitive advantage'. He will probably say that there isn't a need to have tasks cost a higher amount for the services of those with a good reputation (if the question is posed) because the service is inherently reliable as it can recognize spammers from truly competent workers.

Sharona: I agree with Franny and Ramesh - I think the speakers will generally focus more on the positive contributions these types of sites can offer - the innovation from crowd sourcing, the efficiency, the specialization - and less concern over the legal issues. One thing I would like to hear is whether they think these tasks will continue to be performed by US residents, or how quickly they will also be outsourced to English speaking (or non-English speaking) people across the world looking for menial labor especially. Another thing to consider is how or if people could actually make a career out of doing tasks online, or whether it is just something to supplement another job. How will things like health benefits or insurance policies come into play for these kinds of workers?

Yosuke:
I agree with the majority opinion, I think guests will not really focus on negative aspects of ubiquitous human computing, such as potential problems of child labors in developing countries, as JZ stated in [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/archives/21#41 this paragraph in his book]. While I guess they will address some amazingly positive aspects of UHC.

Vickie: My guess here is that the "creative types" as Andrew called them are going to be psyched about the creative potential of mechanical turk but less satisfied by the "mundane tasks" that are fueled through the programs (as stated by Aaron Koblin in this video http://vimeo.com/3199933). I believe Koblin and Hartmann are not going to be happy to hear as much about CrowdFlower. Koblin, specifically said in his presentation in this video that he limited the amount of times his contributors could use HITs for his art projects. Unlike CrowdFlower Koblin isn't looking to use Turkers as steadfast blinded workers. He seems very conscious of all the Marxist qualms with the program.
:Hector: From my layman's perspective, Marxist qualms can often be settled by magical economic arguments, but you're right about certain moral problems stemming from the mundane nature (if you begin talking about the dignity of labor as a human experience). On a less lofty note, I wonder if these fellows will present (explicitly or between the lines) a picture of what they imagine the average turker to be. Is it a net-savvy hipster from Portland who likes to submit cat stories? A stay at home mom? A child in a third world internet cafe? Ruben's note above raises some concerns, I'll talk more up there.

Lien: I also agree that the speakers will try to keep it positive. I'm however interested to hear whether these "human computing companies" ran into law suits already because of legal issues, both in the EU and other continents. Further, did they already got (negative?) reactions from governments, human rights organisations, labor organisations, unions, etc. . Also, if a human computing company would be sued by a turk, does it involve the "requester" (as the "employer"?) in the lawsuit? Speaking to my colleagues in Europe, none of them had really heard of this mechanical turk fenomenon. However, I'm sure that taking into account our very strict labor law that highly advantages employees, and strong influence of labor unions, labor regulations will become a huge issue.

Emily: I hope all of our guests address issues of transparency. Why didnât I know about mechanical turking until I was required to read about it for this class? Thereâs information about the program on Amazonâs website, but how would anyone know to look for it? We can hold journalists responsible (and hopefully, we won't need Jacob Riis again) for this stuff, but apart from existing laws, how much can (or should) companies be doing to bring these relatively new labor practices out in the open?

Bruno: I would like to hear Lukas' opinion about the possibility of CrowdFlower's workers having the same labor rights that traditional workers in the industry have. Would this mean the end of such service - both b/c of the potential excessive bureaucracy that could be required and an eventual increase in the service's cost? My guess is that probably not, b/c the system seems to present advantages even with such regulation - such as easy scalability and increased flexibility of working hours for instance.

Elisabeth: CrowdFlower collects huge amounts of data on its users. I'd be interested to know whether the users can take that data with them if they decide to work on say, Odesk (a higher-end UHC service). In other words, to what extent can workers build a CV and advertise the quality of their work? One of the things that struck me about Amazon Mechanical Turk is that they give the workers almost no access to their own data. I'd also be curious more generally to know how much contact Lukas has with CrowdFlower workers--are they individual relationships, or anonymous statistics? And what are their demographics (for instance, this strikes me as a potentially hugely popular among stay-at-home-moms), what do they like about the service, and what are their main complaints?

I'd like to hear everyone's opinion on whether companies ("requestors" or whatever else they're called) should be able to remain anonymous. This seems to me to allow a lot of shady practices, but it might be key for, say, InnoCentive's scientific questions. It's a concern on the "creative" front, too. As I understand it, the sheep project didn't disclose the purpose in the initial requests, and some Turkers were startled and/or upset to find their sheep being turned into someone else's art project. So I'm more interested in disclosure than whether AMT is a "good" way to produce art--I just see it as part of a busy ecosystem, and it's not like it's driving out professional artists (although istockphoto may be).

One thing I notice on this page and our mailing list is that we're lumping a huge variety of sites under the UHC label. It would be valuable for the class, or maybe just the UHC group, to develop more of a taxonomy.

Day 2 Thoughts

2024-08-14T19:57:18Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

== Cybersecurity ==

Daniel: the idea of a "digital driver's license" has been around for [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E some time now]. Effective and simple [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature digital signature] schemes, outside corporate or governmental control, sound much more promising to me.

Jason: This was a great discussion. To borrow a taxonomy from the [http://consc.net/papers/facing.html philosophy of mind], I particularly liked that we were trying to identify the "hard" problems and the "easy" problems of cybersecurity - even if we didn't always agree about what they are. In theory, though, we might identify a class of easy problems because they seem to have incremental solutions. If your drone transmissions are getting intercepted, use encryption! If you're worried about data loss, generate lots of backups to the cloud or to a mesh network! If you're worried about your credit card being stolen when you buy on Amazon, how about a government-generated user ID system? Or (somewhat more controversially), if your Air Traffic Control system is vulnerable, spend some money and update it - maybe making it more appliancized, maybe adding more points of human control.

But that still leaves the hard problems that seem to need quantum solutions. How can we solve the attribution problem when the global network was fundamentally designed to be pretty anonymous? How do we rectify the fact that the Internet carries both regular civilian communications and government transmissions? And how can we guarantee that hardware is secure when the only way to verify that it was built to spec is to take it apart? I'm looking forward to talking more about both kinds of problems, and both kinds of solutions.

: Tyler: While I agree that it is a serious problem when we can't trust our hardware, I thought it was also a good point brought up in class that there is no reason why we should trust the software that runs on top of the hardware either. Is it possible to write software that we can trust even if we know or assume that it is running on malicious hardware? Are there any out of the box techniques that would allow us to use untrusted software running on untrusted hardware but still have some degree of security?

: Sheel: Professor Goldsmith's comment showed that this is a problem that may have to be solved before law can even come into play: law depends on attribution that Jason mentioned - finding the bad actor. What are we supposed to do if we are only 20% sure an attack came from China?

Sheel: First time that our military/government has critical information (not withstanding the unencrypted info that the government was sending overseas!) being sent over public networks. Am curious to discuss either a) better methods of encrypting information over public networks or b) better ways to build private, government-only networks. Also, the SCADA comment made by Ivan about the problem not being authentication, but old networks/platforms that have an extremely difficult time being changed, show this will require a LOT of incentives for people to be able to make the switch to more powerful networks---if that even is the answer.

Finally, w/ regards to Prof. Zittrain's first 'out of the box' solution on ad hoc mesh networking - I'm having trouble understanding incentives for the guy with the internet on the outskirts of hurricane in the Katrina example to let others access his/her connection. Wouldn't being 'kind' then require a troublesome amount of security and encryption on behalf of the original users part?

Chuck: First of all, my thanks to Prof. Zittrain and to all of you for allowing me to participate (including on your wiki). I hope what I offered was helpful and perhaps even thought-provoking. Second, here are some of the links I mentioned for more on the identity/security issues: http://www.microsoft.com/endtoendtrust and in particular the white paper under the "vision" link. For those inclined for a geekier dive, there is Kim Cameron's excellent blog at http://www.identityblog.com/. Finally, I'd also note our blog post on one of our big projects, the US-China Internet Industry Forum and Craig Mundie's remarks in particular, which touched on these cybersecurity issues in that context. http://bit.ly/8BpJfe

== GNI ==

Reuben: I think we should all congratulate ourselves on our prognostication skills. A lot of our predictions were right on the money. After reviewing my notes, I came away with a few main points. It seems the GNI has had two main benefits for those involved. First, it has helped companies establish processes for how they will handle sticky situations that arise in fields of free expression and privacy where previously those concerns went unrepresented or were dealt with an ad hoc scramble. Secondly, GNI has facilitated relationships between companies and human rights organizations that allow the two sides to work together collaboratively to map out strategies and get more effective results.

While the panelists recognized the effectiveness of the GNI in at least certain situations, I was a bit surprised by the degree to which at least some participants seemed to welcome government involvement in order to force more attention on the activities of smaller companies who don't stand out the same way a Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, or CISCO might.

Jason: I think that the discussion took a bit of steam out of the "Difficult" part of the "Difficult Problems" equation - at least with regard to why Cisco is not participating in GNI and how they make decisions that implicate human rights issues. Mark's explanation of Cisco's position was exceedingly compelling: to my mind, he left little doubt that they really do have a different sort of impact on human rights than companies higher up in the stack; that they face a vastly different competitive landscape and client base than other ICT companies; and that they have well-developed standards and principles going forward. From where I sit, they would be completely crazy to join the GNI - it'd be all potential downside with no upside that I can tell, for either the company or for human rights. (Sadly, Cisco did not pay me to say all that, even if I just completely toed the company line.)

: Elisabeth: I generally agree, but I wonder why Cisco doesn't take the lead in starting a GNI-like group (or a subgroup of GNI itself) to deal with hardware issues. That is, GNI could be seen as a standards body for companies in all different parts of the ICT space that want to expand operations abroad.

Elisabeth: after the session, two still-difficult problems jumped out at me. First, how can GNI get smaller companies on board? In the US, I can imagine consumer and government pressure playing a role, but that will only work if the burdens aren't onerous. Second, although Mark did talk about the long-term benefit to Cisco of getting more people online, I was struck by the fact that companies are asked to join GNI partly (mostly?) out of altruism. The discussion about externalities left me wondering if there's a way to ground GNI in economics rather than goodwill. As I understand externalities, they're costs or benefits that aren't internalized. If human rights violations created a cost that appeared in a company's bottom line, presumably there would be more effort to avoid them. In the US, I think consumer outrage after gross human rights violations helps internalize their cost, but I wonder if more of a business case can be made for GNI membership or GNI-like principles.

Chuck: I am also impressed (but not surprised) by your prognostication skills. I'd only add that, in addition to the two points Reuben notes above, GNI has generated a systematic way for companies to make publically credible the steps they take. This, I think, is where companies not in GNI are missing out. When there are these cases (as Mark noted) of public condemnation of companies - which can at times generate more heat than light - it is very helpful to be able to point to the process that GNI creates and demonstrate that your company not only has standards and principles but that these are being followed in practice. I also think GNI is very aware that different business sectors have different needs. Microsoft, like Cisco, sells products and services to governments (servers are in a somewhat similar position to routers as part of network infrastructure) and we stand to benefit from guidance in those areas. Related to that, and on the point about government involvement, I'd also note that the GNI principles are applicable across a company's operations, including in the US, and in that respect it's important that governments address their own practices as well as look for constructive steps to help advance user trust in other markets. I hope that came across in the class, but if not I wanted to note it here too. Thanks again.

Day 3 Thoughts

2024-08-14T19:57:17Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Tyler: I am wondering if the terms in AMT's conditions of use that works prepared by turkers are to be considered works for hire would be considered valid. My initial instinct is that it would not necessarily be so.

: To paraphrase, the Copyright Act defines a work for hire as (17 U.S.C. 101):

* 1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment
** The factors to make determination were listed in the CCNV v Reid case (790 U.S. 730, 1989)
*** The two most important factors are provision of employee benefits and tax treatment (from Aymes v. Bonelli, 980 F.2d 857, 1992)
* OR 2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work if:
** 1. category: is one of:
*** part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work
*** a translation
*** a supplementary work â adjunct to a work made by another author
*** a compilation
*** an instructional text â systematic instructional activities
*** a test
*** answer material for a test
*** an atlas
** 2. intent: if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire
must fit into one of the 8 categories to be a contracted work made for hire (p132)
Most work produced for HITs would not seem to fall into either of these categories.

::Michael: I think many works produced through HITs are going to be considered compilations or collective works. Certainly David's Sheep or 100 Dollar Bill are compilations so long as they are taken as a whole. Even in any attempt to monetize the individual elements, the Turk Participation Agreement states that any works which cannot be considered works for hire are assigned to the requester. (full text copied below)

::Section 3(a): "As a Provider, the Requester for whom you provide Services is your client, and as such, you agree that the work product of any Services you perform is deemed a "work made for hire" for the benefit of the Requester, and all ownership rights, including worldwide intellectual property rights, will vest with the Requester immediately upon your performance of the Service. To the extent any such rights do not vest in Requester under applicable law, you hereby assign or exclusively grant (without the right to any compensation) all right, title and interest, including all intellectual property rights, to such work product to Requester." [https://www.mturk.com/mturk/conditionsofuse The full policy can be found here.]

::Jason: Michael just sort of stole my mojo - I was about to say a similar thing - but Tyler, I guess I too don't see why you think HITs are not works-for-hire under test 2. Take the book about cats: it seems to me that Bjoern specifically ordered those stories for his compilation, which would fall under the rule. I guess there could be a problem of asymmetry if both parties need to know that they work is being commissioned, since in many cases only the commissioner might know what it's being used for. But given the Mechanical Turk terms of service that Michael reproduces above - which probably constitutes a "written instrument" - I think the Turker would be hard-pressed to argue that he had zero notice, even if he didn't know specifically what his work would be used for.

:::Andrew: I think there's certainly enough wiggle room in the words "specially ordered or commissioned" to support a claim that the AMT contract does not effect WMFH status, at least in some cases. Take the cats book: When it was ordered, Bjorn himself didn't know what he was going to do with the cats when he got them. How could he argue that he had "specially ordered or commissioned" them for that compilation at the time of the contract? More generally, I think the 'meeting of the minds' aspect is more important than Jason suggests, given that it's the basis of so much doctrine in contract interpretation. That is, I think it's an open question whether a task which the performer does not know to have a certain purpose can be said to be "specially ordered or commissioned" for that purpose with regard to the written instrument.

::Sharona: While I agree with Jason and Michael that this is probably a work made for hire, do you think this may run into contracts of adhesion problems? Or, do you think if the average turker was aware of what his "original" (after all, to be copyrightable, it must be original) work would be used for, he would have agreed to the Participation Agreement? Does it matter?

::Tyler: To follow up on my original thought, I agree that an argument could be made for HITs to be WMFH, but I see big problems with the "specially ordered or commissioned" language as Andrew mentioned. Also, I'm not sure mention in the terms of service would qualify as a written instrument signed by both parties.

:::Jason: Hmmm, that's interesting. After doing a bit more reading, I agree that the WMFH requirements are a bit stricter than I thought they were, so I do see your point, even though I stand by the view that the cat book contributions likely qualify as works made for hire. Maybe we need to find a HIT that becomes a creative work and then sue the compiler for copyright violation to find out? Sure, it'd be an ironic copyright suit coming from this group, but we can work around that.

Victoria: I think what bothers me most about Ub. Hum. Comp. through tools like Mechanical Turk and re-Captcha is the lack of transparency. I think a lot of the fear about these programs - that lead to the Iranian hypo stem from a lack of transparency. The task master is not required to say what the micro task is for. However, what I found to be a fascinating comment last night in response to this came from Bjoern. After publishing the cat book he said he asked a test group if it was OK to publish the book without asking first. Bjoern reported that the Turkers seemed to be OK with it. I wonder if it is just the non-Turkers (like myself) that have a problem with the lack of transparency and dream up these dystopic problems.

Secondly in addition to transparency I have a problem with the micro-tasking. Although Aaron's artwork is completely beautiful - Crowdflower kind of makes me feel uneasy at times - especially when thinking that it could eventually be tapped into on an IPhone app during a person's idle time and that a security guard is doing it while he is supposed to be engaged in surveillance. By making the tasks so short and small Turk infuses money-making into every aspect of life. It makes everything a cost-benefit analysis. Should I go to the beach and read a Magazine or make money. Should I stand in line and think about what I have to cook later or make money? Should I spend time with my family or make money?

Juan: I'm thinking the "addiction" problem Zittrain mentioned. From the requesters' perspective, they want to come up with some interesting idea to attract people to work on it. The more attractive the idea, the more time people might be willing to contribute. Like the ESP game, some people spend more than 20 hours a week on it, almost "work" as a full time employee. The downside is "addiction". However, the good thing is people contribute while they are playing. To put it another way, human computing collects human intelligence which would have been wasted on meaningless on-line surfing. Especially for those countries with a large population like China, human computing can make use of a large amount of human resources.

Another interesting thing is the responsibility of Ubicomp sites. Lukas said they will not accept works to spam other one's website. How about political abuse? Transparency may be one solution, because users would be given the opportunity to judge the social value and choose to walk away. Should there be some code of conduct governing the activities of Ubicomp sites? How can we make sure Ubicomp sites will follow the code of conduct?

Sheel: To be honest, I was surprised that Lukas cared about monitoring the customers (i.e. those requesting services to be performed) at all. Sure, there are plenty of ethical issues as mentioned above and as talked about, but doesn't it make sense from a business perspective to not spent capital on monitoring something for which there is no legal reason to monitor? I feel like the more he claims to say that he is monitoring, the more the public may demand and expect monitoring. It makes more sense to me for Crowdflower to be like YouTube or eBay; in other words, if content is so obviously illegal (like child porn videos on YouTube or selling presidential inauguration tickets on eBay) then it should be taken down upon notice, but otherwise it should be left up and not monitored.

Elisabeth: A lot of our concerns are quite paternalistic, and it's hard to imagine what appropriate legal solutions would be. I don't know much about labor law in this country, but I think we mostly try to regulate minimum wage and truly hazardous working conditions. Regulation of addiction issues or mind-factory issues would really be a brave new world. I left class more interested in providing market solutions for workers who like microwork, but want away around some of the downsides -- for instance, a Crowdflower-like service that filtered tasks for workers, giving them access to better tasks and allows them to carry their reputations with them.

:Reuben: I was intrigued by the ways Turkers have already united to protect themselves to an extent. Between the Turker Nation message board and the Turkopticon Firefox extension, dedicated Turkers have already found ways to warn the Turker community about bad job providers and inform each other about what HITs are easy and what pay well. I can't remember who it was, but I believe someone was concerned that he who controls Turkopticon would be in a powerful position to influence what tasks are performed on Mechanical Turk, but I don't think an open source system that depends on community reviews really has that kind of vulnerability. Combined with other forums, like Turker Nation, I think the community could play a strong role in weeding out the bad and directing people to the good parts of Mechanical Turk and human computing.

Day 4 Predictions

2024-08-14T19:57:17Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Amanda: I am very interested to hear Chuck's take on the relationship between the government, large corporations like Microsoft, and the defcon-attending hacker community (like the L0pht group mentioned in the Wired article). Is the government receptive to both groups? I imagine the relationship specifically between the hacker community and the government can become tense because the interests of both groups is not exactly aligned and is sometimes conflicting. Have they been able to successfully work together around a common threat like cybersecurity? While I imagine the government often tries to recruit from the hacker community, and I'm interested to hear where they draw the lines legally as far as subversive behavior within the hacker community (ie do they bend the rules for the sake of potential advances in cybersecurity?).
:Of course there are great advances yet to be made in the relationship between white-hat hackers and corporations like Microsoft. Skepticism abounds from both sides for obvious reasons, as well as entrenched interests and preconceptions based on past interactions ("Hackers are simply criminals", or on the other side "Microsoft is The Man").

:Tyler: To follow up on the above predictions, I am interested in hearing Chuck describe what he feels is the proper balance between government and private corporations dealing with cybersecurity. This may be an actual allocation of roles, or more of a question about how much of private industry's culture of innovation and rapid change can be transplanted into the government. Professor Goldsmith painted a picture where the government is not, and is unable to, secure the cyber-interests of the United States so when we hear that 90% of US military traffic runs through private networks, are we shocked that this number is so high or that it is not closer to 100%?

:Elisabeth: I'm also interested in exploring this idea of transplanting "the private industry's culture of innovation and rapid change" into government. When I read government documents, I'm struck by how little they actually say--there's a lot of forming a vision to have a strategic plan to nurture partnerships that draw on core competencies. On the other hand, I was impressed by the number of actual ideas that David Clark and the participants in the Centra Technology Cyber Compendium proposed. How can the government provide the resources and permission for private companies (or actors?) to start actually trying out these ideas, instead of having everything devolve into meetings about process? (see the Cyber compendium doc, starting on page 87, for some more musings on these questions.)

Vickie: I'm going to dovetail from Amanda's comment and say that I think Chuck is going to speak more specifically about the ID program he was talking about the other day as a possible solution to cybersecurity. Just as in the Wired article - identification solves a large percent of the problem, mostly through accountability. However, this seems too Orwellian for my blood. Unlike a passport that is shown in person - a computer ID is never going to be checked person to person. The computer will always be the intermediary. Moreover, this type of program may deter people from doing things on the Internet that they normally would do - if it wasn't anonymous. Visit certain political sites, fetish sites etc. etc. At what point is our fear balanced by our need for an Internet that is not being surveyed.

Sheel: I'm interested in hearing about the BGP/Secure BGP with ASes vulnerability mentioned in the Wired article. This is something that Microsoft should have, and probably does have, on their radar; after all, what would happen if a bunch of Hotmail customers had their private emails routed to other ISPs, or delivered to the correct ISPs after making stops at non-secure locations. My guess is that Chuck recognizes the problem and that Microsoft is taking action, but doesn't know what exactly is being done/could be done technically using Microsoft's clout.

:Ramesh: I wonder what Chuck would say are the benefits to anonymity on the internet, and whether they are outweighed by the security risks. It seems like there could be a creditable argument saying just that. Also, I wonder about problems in scaling up ID programs -- one would assume that many countries would not participate, but if desirable content could only be accessed by an ID, perhaps consumers would then demand their nations also issue internet IDs.

:Elisabeth: easier IDing creates problems specifically in repressive political regimes, and would make GNI's work more difficult.

Hector: Some of Chuck's points from his remarks on Tuesday that stuck with me most were the strengthening of internet identification and alternative networks that use something else than TCP. I hope that he elaborates on the possible applications of the latter.

Lien: I'm very interested to hear (i) what Chuck thinks the biggest cybersecurity risk is that Microsoft and other simular major private companies face and (ii) how the company is prepared for attack on its system and will react on it. I however predict he's not gonna answer that question...

Reuben: On Tuesday we spent a great deal of time on the attribution problem of cybersecurity which is related to deterrence and retaliation. I'd like to hear more about that, but I'd also like to hear about how we shore up our own defenses and incentivize security. I'll be interested to hear who Chuck thinks should be responsible for security. There is a dilemma for a company like Microsoft that may not want to have the burden of cybersecurity thrust upon them, but may also resist government mandates and control. I think Chuck will probably recognize that both public and private sector have a role to play, but he will emphasize the need for government to provide more leadership in the area.
: Daniel: If Chuck details public and private strategies, I expect him to talk much more about what Microsoft has proposed to other industry players than about governmental talks. My guess is that he will also reiterate a preference for diplomatic cooperation between firms, stressing the limitations of naming and shaming (as with GNI, when nobody discussed the tainted past of the companies that were not present on Tuesday). Finally, I would bet a lesser amount on his discussing long-term solutions for users to be more aware of security risks and more reactive to perceived security flaws / reports that do not harm primarily that specific user.

Jason: Especially since we have already had some discussion on the security issue, I think the class will be able to offer some interesting solutions for problems that exist pretty high-up in the stack, like user behavior, software, ID schemes, and other things that happen at the end node. But I predict that we'll be somewhat flummoxed about what's going on and what to do about the fundamental nature of the network, like the implications of the stuff that Clark was talking about in [http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/sl20090304 his talk] that we listened to. I certainly am - though hopefully we'll make a bit of headway in class.

Michael: Though not quite a prediction, I would like to hear Chuck's thoughts on whether cybersecurity issues can be solved incrementally or whether there needs to be a comprehensive scheme to take care of many problems at once. We touched on this question on during the second class, but it never really got answered. My guess is that Chuck will say comprehensive change is impractical and the internet will have to continue to rely on the procrastination principle.

Andrew: Another leftover question from Tuesday is JZ's Wikipedia-esque solution at the logical layer--implementation of bottom-up stuff like ad hoc mesh networking rather than top-down "perimeter defense", and the transformation of the security problem into a question of numbers (do the people who are passionate about the network succeeding outnumber those who are passionate about its failure). (Hopefully I didn't botch the paraphrase). Neither Jack nor Chuck responded directly to these ideas; perhaps Chuck will today.

Juan: I would like to hear what are the roles of different parties to address the problem? How can the parties work collaboratively to approach this problem? How can the hacker resources be used efficiently to solve this problem? e.g. use white-hat hackers to hunt down black-hat hackers.
What incentives can be given to ISPs and vulnerable site owners to create secured internet and secured websites?
: Daniel: How much should government / companies provide incentives to individuals joining the fight? What happens in the aftermath of white-hat / black hat hacker wars? Is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fifItoMPTw defection] to the bright side more likely to happen than defection of now-trained hackers to cybercrime?

Franny: Following Hector's train of thought, I think Chuck will expand on how addressing the attribution problem with "Internet drivers licences" will help ameliorate (if not resolve) many cybersecurity problems. Of particular interest, I hope Chuck will discuss implementation strategy - would it be possible to achieve this goal through economic pressure, or is internationally harmonized government involvement necessary?

Bruno: I would be interested to know whether Chuck would consider changes in the end-to-end architecture at order to insert security in the center of the network at the cost of generativity.

File:Photo(3).jpg

2024-08-14T19:57:15Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

[[Image:Photo(3).jpg|thumb|120px|alt=Example alt text|Example caption]]

Day 6 Predictions

2024-08-14T19:57:13Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Daniel: Our guests will probably discuss at length the challenges that Dispute Finder and most web-based cooperative tools bump into while attempting to harness input from virtual crowds. I guess they will talk about Dispute Finderâs design difficulties, such as costs and trade-offs (between precision and recall, between user-friendliness and number / quality of features, etc). Theyâll most likely also summon stories from the interviews discussed in the document we received, perhaps to illustrate content-layer problems with measurement of "information sources reliability"; usersâ misunderstandings / trouble with logic operations; and group biases.
I would love to hear their views on the [http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i256/f09/lectures/RobEnnalsGuestLecture.ppt proposed use of Turks] to improve the database of disputed claims and arguments, as well as on the current biases of the disputed facts / arguments presently listed by the software.

:Jason: I predict that there will be a good deal of discussion of what Daniel calls the "user-friendliness" aspect of these tools - and I hope there is, because it's critical. Specifically, what is the necessary ratio between DisputeFinder or Herdict "passive users" and "active reporters" to make a project successful? I say this because both Herdict and DisputeFinder look somewhat sparsely-populated for them to be maximally-useful right now. For example, Herdict is [http://www.herdict.org/web/explore/country/CN;jsessionid=4A2D95D3EB7A8F96B073DE77D3654D53 reporting] that 2 Chinese users have reported YouTube as inaccessible. How do I interpret that? What percent of people who might know about and like Herdict in China are reporting back to Herdict? We know that Wikipedia is successful in spite of the fact that only a very small portion of readers become really regular editors - but Wikipedia is also one of the most visited sites in the world. I hope we discuss what strategies these organizations are employing to build participation for these more niche offerings. [[User:Jharrow|Jharrow]] 18:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

:Reuben: When Daniel talks about the challenges of web-based cooperative tools, my first thought is about the challenge of a achieving a critical mass. I poked around with Dispute Finder for just over an hour this morning and during the entirety of my browsing the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Slate I only came across one disputed claim. No offense to America's news media, but my guess is that what I read is more disputed than that, but that there just aren't enough people trolling the news sites and adding claims to the dispute finder database for the service to actually be that helpful yet. Jason's point about passive users versus active reporters is important. I too would like to hear about how to reach a critical mass and how many active users are needed in order to have a useful service. I'd also like to hear about the potential for users to participate in a more passive manner - notwithstanding the privacy issues, if Herdict could just monitor my browsing and automatically send a report whenever I come across an inaccessible website, something akin to a Last.fm for my click stream, the data would seem to be much more complete than simply recording whatever I choose to report. Never underestimate the laziness of the average person. My prediction is that our guests acknowledge the shortcomings in their current offerings while remaining optimistic about the possibilities of community based technology. [[User:ReubRodriguez|ReubRodriguez]] 18:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

:Amanda:Totally agree with Jason and Reuben here on hoping to hear Daniel's definition of what it means to have "critical mass." This is a huge challenge in much of the UGC world - how many people you need to really establish credibility, and at what point you start to become relevant. Attracting users is probably the largest hurdle I can think of for any site that relies on user content - so how they do it and what strategies have worked would be very helpful.

::Ramesh: I agree with Reuben on the usefulness of Dispute Finder and Herdict. While Wikipedia (and Yelp, and a few other sites) show that sometimes, you can get useful content for free, that's not always the case. DisputeFinder didn't find many disputes when I did my regular scan of news websites, even when reading articles on topics like medical marijuana and same-sex marriage. It seems like applications like DisputeFinder and Herdict would be better if they were more automated -- if DisputeFinder automatically attached itself to controversial terms, and especially, as Reuben suggested, if Herdict was not based on self-reporting.

:: Franny: I agree that a threshold level of dedicated trusted users (see Vicki's comments below) resolves many problems. I hope our guests will discuss the strategies used by DisputeFinder, or any other website initiatives dependent on a large and broad variety of user input: (1) to attract that user base; and (2) to cope during the interim period while they continue to try to attract that user base. For example, I wonder to what extent DisputeFinder has considered building in redundancy as a means of increasing the accuracy of its results (to borrow a strategy from CrowdFlower), or perhaps some combination of automation and redundancy.

::Andrew: I hope the discussion of how to achieve critical mass focuses as much on instilling/spreading an ethos as it does on ways to automate the DF system. Tools don't work without the accompanying human motivation: the wiki architecture is awesome, but (see our Predictions pages) they don't necessitate anything about a page's structure, and that's where the Wikipedian ethos steps in. No matter how passive DF/Herdict eventually allow their users to be, those users will (probably) still have to take the first step of registering, installing the plug-in etc. To do that, they have to be persuaded of the importance of the problem the tools are meant to address. Until the supposed echo chamber, "daily me" effect of Internet discourse becomes a mainstream concern, DF will not be a mainstream tool.

::Sheel: I agree that critical mass is a huge issue, but I think validity is more of an issue; Reuben's description of his searches on the NY Times infer that many statements that most of us would claim to be disputed are simply not being caught by the program. I think DisputeFinder, while trying to make its technology stronger, should focus on instituting some sort of citations for all the information it crawls. In other words, whether the statement is 'disputed' or not, the plugin should (perhaps in the form of clickable footnotes), find citations for them; these can be links to 'valid' websites, scientific papers, press releases, etc. I'd be interested in asking whether DisputeFinder thinks it could move into the citation space and expand its scope. [[User:Style|Style]] 02:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

:Tyler: I completely agree with above thoughts about Herdict and DisputeFinder needing to collect a critical mass of users before becoming useful. This seems to echo the idea that wikipedia was not useful for its first several years because it did not possess a critical mass of articles. However, I think there are some differences because individual pieces of wikipedia could become useful before wikipedia as a whole in that individual articles could become independantly useful before wikipedia became as comprehensive as it is today. I don't see that Herdict or DisputeFinder have the same capability to be useful while scaling because they require users to explicitly decide to install plugins and begin using their services before any benefit can be gained by that user. Wikipedia was able to gradually grow in prominence as users occasionally found information on wikipedia that they wanted through web searches. I am wondering if Herdict or DisputeFinder can take advantage of automated solutions to increase their seemingly as-yet sparsely populated databases? For example, could web crawling robots be used to identify at least some inaccesible sites with the expectation that this list could then be pruned by users rather than expecting it to materialize entirely by user submissions? Could DisputeFinder use a web crawling robot, in conjunction with sophisticated text parsers to begin identifying at least some topics that clearly involve dispute? I expect and hope that the guests will discuss some strategies for increasing the datasets of their projects to the point that they can obtain their critical mass of users and data more quickly. [[User:TylerLacey|TylerLacey]] 19:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

::Michael: In terms of achieving critical mass for utility, herdict seems to have an additional challenge to wikipedia and DisputeFinder. When users make contributions to wikipedia or DisputeFinder, the information they provide remains useful indefinitely (for the most part). Herdict, on the other hand requires constant updating. This is entirely possible (as twitter and facebook demonstrate), but it reflects an additional challenge. I would be curious to hear if there is any data to determine what the different requirements of such different sites would be. [[User:Mfeld|Mfeld]] 23:19, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
:: I'm also wandering whether DisputeFinder might face the same problem as Wikipedia as the the composition of the DisputeFinder community (if there is one?). Do the guests have only clue on who the people are that are flagging certain statements? Do these people reflect the different composition of society?

:: Daniel: Tyler has a great point here, so maybe we should ask if the Dispute Finder team has thought of an interesting dispute to explore well enough in terms of paraphrases / arguments, so that users could experience the full potential of the software and then be lured into becoming frequent contributors. [[User:Darbix|darbix]] 01:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

: Yosuke:One of the biggest problems in the internet is the trustworthiness of the articles. DisputeFinder is attacking this problem directly, so I'm very excited to hear what is going on there. As you pointed out here, there are few users and it is hard to say it's really useful right now, but I guess the critical mass is coming around the corner. For example, social bookmark webservice users (like diggers) could begin using DisputeFinder, because they like to comment on the issue in the meta-pages. Personally, when Japanese version of the DisupteFinder has launched, I'd love to install it. [[User:Yosuke|Yosuke]] 03:16, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Emily:
Dispute Finder bears an inherent flaw: individuals, not algorithms, decide whom and what to trust for information. Consider the watch on your wrist. If your watch starts to get the time wrong, you might try to fix the watch. You hope and pray your watch starts giving you accurate, dependable information because you like your watch. You might even love your watch. But, if it continues to betray your trust, and the people in your trusted circle insist your watch is wrong, you give up. You decide to trust a new watch, but your new watch will probably be reminiscent of your old watch with respect to personal taste, experience, and preferences. Most people are intuitive enough (though they donât necessarily convert insights into complex conclusions about source x versus source y) to know that 120 seconds of live, relatively unedited sound on Fox News Live or MSNBC Dayside is less likely to contain factually accurate information â even if relatively unimportant, like the location of a fire, or the total number of casualties in a mass shootingâ than a compulsively edited, fact-checked tome in the Sunday NY Times magazine, the Economist, or the New Yorker.

Article 3.5 of the Dispute Finder document, âDetermining Trustworthy Sources,â seems a bit absurd. It actually acknowledges the marketability challenges of its own software: âUnfortunatelyâ¦the sites people actually trust are often those that share the personâs own point of view.â So, again, what is this software and what, really, is the point? Segway into âCross-cutting themes.â Save the world. How? Is Dispute Finder intended to help people sue other people for libel? Richard Jewel (now deceased) had a reasonably compelling case. Thatâs probably why he successfully sued (for libel) every organization, from CNN, to NBC, to the NY Post. All settled. He collected from each of them. But Richard Jewel didnât need help from Dispute Finder. Richard Jewel had a case.

Cross-cutting themes: âChange the technology, save the world.â Okay, why not? Isnât there something else smart people at Intel and UC Berkeley could be doing to make the world better? Last November, the New York Times produced an alarming story [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html] about the food stamp program in America(ânow expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day.â) Also no shortage of children in custody. Last December, the New York Times obtained â and reported on [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/nyregion/14juvenile.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=new%20york%20family%20court%20juvenile%20department%20of%20justice%20youth&st=cse]â a âconfidential draft reportâ prepared by a task force appointed by NY gov David Paterson: âNew York Stateâs current approach fails the young people who are drawn into the system, the public whose safety it is intended to protect, and the principles of good governance that demand effective use of scarce state resources.â Story also says the situation was so bad that the DOJ, at one point, was threatening to âtake over.â

So, if Intel is interested in contributing, how about addressing real problemsâhelping real peopleâ that could affect real, collective societal change and improvement? Children and education seem like obvious places to start. Basics like hardware and mentors could go a long way. Children in poverty struggle with range of issues, including asthma, low self-esteem, obesity, and depression. Consider children in places like the South Bronx (Jonathan Kozolâs children [http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Grace-Children-Conscience-Nation/dp/0060976977]): allocation of resources in places like this (and/or lower-middle class communities), especially from companies like Intel, could change lives; give voices to people from whom we do not often hear.

Interested to hear thoughts on Internet privacy, though I'm not sure adults have an expectation of privacy anywhere [http://gawker.com/5444885/facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-on-your-erased-privacy-these-are-the-social-norms-now] on the Internet. If you want privacy, don't put yourself on the Internet. Finally, on the subject of online harassment, if we accept that the Internet is a public place, to what extent is it acceptable to regulate online communication, including but not limited to comments deemed 'offensive' on blogs?

: Lien: Although this is not the subject of today, I do believe we can still exceptations about privacy on the net. It is not because this is a difficult issue and the level of privacy goes down as more and more people also post personal information about others on the net, that we cannot have expectations anymore. The same is true for the regulation of online communication, it is not because the Internet is a public space, that even public speech cannot be regulated in one way or another.

Predictions. Guests will be nice. Class will be nice. Hope to hear more about Dispute Finder's business model.

Tyler: I would like an explanation for why the contributor of a disputed claim on DisputeFinder needs to provide a link to an article that illustrates the opposing point of view. If there are no article, isn't it still valuable to identify a claim as disputed, especially since this could break DisputeFinder's dataset building-process into two parts? I could enter a disputed claim without a link to another source and then another user, once alerted to the potential dispute could track down and enter the article. I see the argument that an issue is not actually in dispute if there is no contradictory reports of it, but I wonder if an entry into DisputeFinder should be enough to create a "dispute", rather than requiring a link. I agree that even a blog post outlining the opposing point of view would be more helpful than a "dispute" without any link, but I'm not sure that it should be a requirement. Today I entered a disputed claim as "Works prepared by amazon mechanical turkers are considered works for hire under the United States Copyright Act" to see if DisputeFinder would highlight portions of our wiki (which does not currently have any disputed claims, according to DisputeFinder) but I was stalled when it asked for a link to a web location outlining this dispute. Should I have entered the page on this wiki where we discuss the issue? I hope that the guests discuss this aspect of the DisputeFinder process. [[Special:Contributions/68.65.169.179|68.65.169.179]] 20:11, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

:Tyler: Another question that came up during my lunchtime discussion of DisputeFinder with some of our classmates: is there a practical way that DisputeFinder could leverage the existing collection of topics that wikipedia has flagged as a "point of view" or "non-neutral" to boost DisputeFinder's database of disputes?

: Elisabeth: Actually, I tend to think the need to cite an article is a useful safeguard. It mirrors Wikipedia's rule that contributors can't do original research, and I think it exists for the same reason: to keep spammer-activists from simply flinging their views into these trusted systems. It's just to easy to go around labeling hundreds of things as disputed. Now, you could just go write a wiki on Amazon Mechanical Turk and then cite to it on dispute finder, much as anyone can publish an article on SSRN and then write a Wikipedia page, but it does provide some measure of protection (it stopped Tyler). One alternative solution is for DisputeFinder to flag in a lighter color, or a different color, claims that are marked disputed but have no article support.

Victoria: I completely agree with the former point that DisputeFinder's success is dependent on gaining a critical mass of end users. In addition to the need for more users, I think the platform is very trusting of the end users themselves. DisputeFinder allows for a lot of users to subjectively claim anything is disputed even when it begins to reach the absurd. EscapistMagazine.com posted in June 2009, "the 2009 Iran Presidential election was rigged," "Global warming does not exist" and "Recycling is good for the environment" were disputed. Although theoretically the idea of a marketplace of ideas works - without the appropriate robust marketplace DisputeFinder becomes a caricature of the truth-seeking function of free speech.

:Michael: I am interested to hear the speakers from DisputeFinder describe why they believe the simple knowledge of a dispute is socially valuable. The extent to which a statement is disputed seems like it would be more valuable. I'd be interested to hear if our speakers expect to include a scale of dispute to their software, such as that used in Herdict (the different colored sheep).
:I predict that DisputeFinder will view one of its most difficult challenges to be determining the trustworthiness of sources. Unlike CrowdFlower, DisputeFinder may not be able to simply use agreement as an accurate rubric for which user-supplied links are trustworthy and which are spam. Since the nature of the site is to highlight disagreement, it doesn't seem possible to use user agreement as the benchmark of useful data for their service. I would be interested to hear what DisputeFinder uses as its criteria for determining which data is reliable (meaning non-spam). [[User:Mfeld|Mfeld]] 23:39, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
:: Elisabeth: I'm not sure why a crowd-voting system isn't appropriate--after all, people on both sides of a given debate can vote up sources they consider most trustworthy--but I'd be interested to hear how our speakers think it has worked.

Juan: I'm interested in hearing their thoughts on the collection of disputed claims. As the material mentioned, most people who were interviewed are interested in applying Dispute Finder to particular areas that affect them. Thus, how will they collect data for areas not that popular or useful to most people, especially there are no other incentives to encourage claim creation. I guess building up community as wikipedia or herdict did might be one solution. The question is how this community can be built up. Also, I kind of feel Dispute Finder overlaps with the search services provided by Google and other search engines. If people are interested in one topic, they can always use Google or other search services to find the corroborations or objections on it. By determining trustworthy resources, can I say Dispute Finder sort of limited the available resources to people? To me, "trustworthy resources" is more like a subjective concept, everyone can has his/her own trustworthy resources. Is there a need to have a website telling us which resource is trustworthy, especially the site itself said it is a difficult tradeoff to determine the trustworthy resources.

Sharona: I totally agree with everyone's comments about the lack of a critical mass, and I would be curious to hear how they think they could theoretically gain one. Would people actually be drawn to this the way they are to edit wikipedia pages? Is it simply a matter of a marketing strategy? Another question I had while reading the website and the other document was regarding the phrase "trusted source." Who defines that? The users? What if people start claiming that what DisputeFinder may deem "unreliable" is a trusted source in their view? Who will stop them, and will that be antithetical to DisputeFinder's ethos?
: Hector: Indeed, I'd be interested to see the demographics of DF's users (considering a perception of skeptical/activist internet users based out of Berkeley)

Emily: Sharona, not sure anyone needs to "stop them." Even a cursory search for articles on the Internet citing "Dispute Finder" suggests this thing hasn't picked up much steam: 0 results in google news; 1 at NYT.com (but the story was produced out of the recently launched Bay Area blog!). Curious to hear if others, including guests, have responses to your "marketing strategy" question.

Elisabeth: looking at all of our readings together--on Dispute Finder, new.net, and Herdict--makes me think about how we're creating an increasingly atomized web, where users have remarkably different experiences in the Internet space. It's not just that people are accessing different content. Some people are passively consuming stories from CNN, others are carefully sculpting an information diet from RSS feeders and DisputeFinder trusted sources, and still others are contributing to all different kinds of tasks, from tracking filtering around the world to working on SETI. Even "contribution" work can be active or passively happening in the background (Wikipedia is active; SETI is background, and DisputeFinder and Herdict are active now but could be passive if some of the tech suggestions above are implemented). Extensions like Readability and the popularity of mobile phone browsers make the web look totally different for different users, and if new.net takes off, it won't even be interoperable between ISPs! The question of "how we interact with the internet" thus will become even more complex as the user experience splinters even further. And so (dragging this mediation back to class), I would like to hear how Herdict and DisputeFinder see their audiences. Is the vision global acceptance? Or is it a critical mass large enough to get the job done--to identify most blocked sites and most disputes claims--and specialized use only by those who are particularly interested in the topic?

: Elisabeth: and one theme that connects all of these services is the need for active users. How do we foster a culture in which people think they have a responsibility to contribute to the web (beyond even contributing pure content), instead of just using it?

Lien: Although there aren't any guests of HerdictWeb, I think it would be interested to see on the website as to why a certain site is blocked. Sometimes, there might be legitimate reasons of a government to blog a certain site. In Belgium, e.g., a site that indicated what the exact address is of people convicted for paedophilia, was blocked by the government for privacy reasons.

: Bruno: actually there is [http://www.herdict.org/web/about someone from Herdict], although he is not exactly a guest ;)

Bruno: Achieving a critical mass of users is really essential for such kind of projects. In order to scale up participation a project manager should be concerned about what are the motivations for users to participate and focus the initial marketing strategies on certain groups to which the project can be more appealing. Just like the experience of our wiki has shown, as well as Wikipedia's experience also seems to corroborate, initial participation tends to become an example for future participation. In this sense, I would be curious to learn whether the analysis of users participation to this moment would reveal the existence of an identifiable group(s) to which outreach efforts should be focused and whether there has been an activity directed at community building.

Day 5 Thoughts

2024-08-14T19:57:13Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

I am very interested to hear anyone's thoughts after the visit with Wikimedia Foundation representatives. -- [[User:Thekohser|Thekohser]] 08:17, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

:Since no one else seems to have any thoughts to share on the subject, I guess I might as well post a link to the [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28144 discussion of this course] on ''The Wikipedia Review''. [[User:Jon Awbrey|Jon Awbrey]] 17:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

::Yep, because everyone really, really wants to hear pretentious, psychotic trolling about how Wikipedia is EVIL INCARNATE. Thanks, but no thanks. -- (''unsigned blurb'', from [[Special:Contributions/8.24.3.117|8.24.3.117]] IP address)

Day 7 Predictions

2024-08-14T19:57:12Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

In the spirit of today's issues, our collective "anonymous" predictions are set out below:

== Reputation Defender ==

First of all, congratulations to Reputation Defender for [http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/reputationdefender-kleiner-bessemer-8-65-million/ raising $8.65 million last year] (announced today, January 12, 2010).

Mr. Fertik will probably try to persuade us that Reputation Defender offers great advantages to improve our reputation (even promoted by Dr. Phil?!), and the service obviously has a lot of merit--assuming you have the ability to pay for it. It gives people a great way to remove defamatory, or potentially defamatory, content in a way where it harms nobody and helps those who it should. However, we hope that the students and guests will discuss the problems raised by this kind of business:
:â¢ Is Reputation Defender a tool to defend or artificially improve one's reputation? (And does it matter?)
:â¢ Does Reputation Defender's incentive to ''hide'' the methods they use to get content removed (sometimes as simple as a DMCA takedown) actually ''slow'' the evolution of civility on the Net?
:â¢ If Reputation Defender does intend to expand onto Facebook, as suggested in the article linked to above, would that be a privacy violation? Aren't individuals entitled to talk about each other in a social networking setting?

:We'd also like to hear about the tactics Reputation Defender uses to increase Google page ranks (MyEdge) in a way that makes sure it doesn't get the Google Death Penalty, as well as what technological or legal tools Reputation Defender would add if it could (perhaps, specifically, how it would interact with Facebook).

Another apparent weakness of ReputationDefender is that while they are one company with a limited amount of employed people working for them, they might have to fight against a legion of anonymous people - which sometimes amounts to over 9,000 participants - that can be easily mobilized in certain image boards and forums. It would be also interesting to know how they would deal with this.

Reputation Defender will probably also emphasize how its product is "family-friendly" -- its website must have more mentions of protecting your family and children than the all of the other websites we've looked at in the class, combined. Is Reputation Defender profiting from a generational gap with regard to privacy? Parents may be horrified by what their children post online, and assume it will doom their career prospects, but by the time the children are adults, it may be normal to have that information freely available.

Additionally, we would be very interested to hear anecdotes from our guests about the most compelling use cases for ReputationDefender - where does the majority of their business come from? What are some surprising use cases they have seen with the product? How do they plan to expand with this new infusion of cash?

== Anonymity ==

We hope our guests will not be too narrowly focused on the need to ensure accountability through identification and attribution. The democratic benefits of leaving an option open for anonymous contribution is important also, to help encourage frank speech and content. (As Dispute Finder discussed yesterday - their emphasis is not to resolve an issue in dispute, but to highlight for the public that there is a conflict, which cannot exist without vocalization of many different points of view, no matter how unpopular.) This made lead naturally into a discussion of how to work with governments who are much less protective of freedom of expression than the US government is, given strong First Amendment values here. In light of the well-publicized events surrounding Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning, Ebele may express Yahoo's recent concerns with anonymity and its sometimes drastic importance outside the U.S. Continuing on the international theme, we would be interested to hear our guests' opinion about Google's dramatic announcement today about China, and wonder if it will have any effect on Mozilla.

In terms of anonymity on the Internet in the user's control, we think services such as Tor do quite a good job. We may also discuss whether it would be good or bad to allow less skilled Internet users to get access to these tools, and, if it would be a good thing, how these technologies could be built-in to the browser or bundled with the OS. There still are weaknesses associated with the exit nodes of Tor allowing hackers to access user names and passwords due to the lack of encryption technologies available. Our guests may also speak to what drawbacks are associated with anonymizing services like Tor or [http://www.domainsbyproxy.com/ DomainsbyProxy] which simultaneously maintain privacy for certain users, but are specifically designed to thwart disclosure requirements where they still exist.

== Mozilla and Privacy ==

We expect Ryan and the people of Mozilla will show the great advantages of understandable privacy policies in the form of icons. This might encourage people to actually check whether a website upholds certain privacy standards. Even more importantly, it would allow users, in an easy way, to realize the diverse range of privacy policies (and the amount of information released to third parties) that various add-ons have (the Location Aware feature of Firefox version 3.5, for example, can tap into a wide range of information). The advantages of easy-to-understand privacy icons are straightforward, although we might wonder whether users will have a collective voice strong enough to cause change, or whether users will really stop visiting nytimes.com if it has certain unpleasant policies. The people from Mozilla will probably express the difficulty in creating icons that are simple enough to be understood at a glance and useable by a wide range of users when there is such wide variety in privacy policies. On the other hand, some core questions - such as if the information is "shared with a 3rd Party?"; "anonymized before being stored or used?"; "personally identifiable?"; "stored for more than x time?"; "monetized in any way?" - [http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/making-privacy-policies-not-suck/ might be answered by relatively few icons].

As we discussed yesterday, the people at the Mozilla foundation can take any idea to improve the internet from a fanciful theory to a concrete reality very quickly. It seems likely, then, that they are deluged with causes to adopt and browser functionality to build in. It would be interesting to hear how they decided what to focus on, and why privacy rose to the top of the list. Mozilla has, in effect, the ability to bundle any plug-in that it desires with Firefox by making it core browser functionality. The guests are likely to justify why modifications to the browsers that we use are a necessary or desired way to implement them, and we should also address whether there is a happy medium between bundling functionality with Firefox and relying entirely on users tracking down and installing plug-ins (like DisputeFinder requires). Is there a possibility of a central plug-in repository that can allow useful plug-ins to take off more easily? Can the decision of which plug-ins/concepts could be "promoted" to core browser functionality be crowdsourced somehow?

Day 6 Thoughts

2024-08-14T19:57:11Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

Quickie thought: how effective can Firefox plugins really be for many projects - especially those that require a large non-geek percentage? And what if IE were to allow easy compatibility with plugins? Consider the following back of the envelope calculations:

-25% of Internet users use Firefox. [http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/05/05/how-many-firefox-users-are-there-mozilla-estimates-270-million/ Estimates] are that this is about 270 million users.

-The latest [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/statistics statistics] from Mozilla show that there are about 200 million add-ons in use total. But that's clearly not evenly distributed. I can't find the number, so let's wildly ballpark it and say that the average add-on user is using four add-ons (the Stanford computer in Room 280B is clearly using way more...), which means there are 50 million people that really use add-ons.

That means that if we take the roughly billion people who are estimated to be on the Net (based on the marketshare above of Firefox), about 5% even have the capacity to change their user experience with a Firefox extension.

I don't know what the implications of this are - anyone else have a deep thought? - but I think it's worth remembering that those who desire to change their Internet experiences this way are a small minority of users. If IE decided to open up to extensions, though - and if there was some way to translate existing Firefox extensions over to that platform - we might have a whole new ballgame... [[User:Jharrow|Jharrow]] 23:28, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

:Reuben: While we certainly demonstrated the utility of crowdsourcing and plug-ins in our discussion, Jason is correct in reminding us that we shouldn't lose the forest for the trees. Both crowdsourcing and plug-ins have their weaknesses, either the need for a critical mass of participation, the need for high quality participation (the kind that can't be bought from Mechanical Turk), or simple browser compatability. Without some larger education campaign or publicity, it's hard to imagine these plug-ins making significant impacts on many users. The majority will likely stick to plain vanilla internet and the cybersecurity problem, ubicomp problems, etc. will all still be out there for them. [[User:ReubRodriguez|ReubRodriguez]] 00:54, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

::Yeah, this is clearly an issue with all emerging internet technologies. 2/3s of people still use IE today. But it seems like innovation has been driven by the small group of elite users throughout the history of the internet (that's probably the case for other technologies). The cycle of plug-in to inclusion in Firefox to inclusion in IE probably could happen in a year or two, if the plug-in was really great. [[User:Rnagarajan|Rnagarajan]] 23:01, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

::: The move from early adopters using it as a plug-in to heavy discussion by elite users in prolific environment such as Mozillaâs [https://wiki.mozilla.org/drumbeat Drumbeat Project] or [http://slashdot.org/ Slashdot] to the tool becoming a âbuilt-inâ in Firefox could be pretty fast. And if the functionality indeed solves a real problem, it would be weird if IE, Chrome, Opera etc. would not adopt it ASAP (in whatever form that assimilation happens).[[User:Darbix|darbix]] 01:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Cybersecurity Brainstorming

2024-08-14T19:57:09Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

This page reflects the brainstorming and discussion of the cybersecurity group in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Zittrain Jonathan Zittrain]'s Cyberlaw: Difficult Problems Class.

'''Note: This page was just a scratch-pad for our ideas. Our final project is [[Cybersecurity Project|here]].'''

''For the Mozilla-icon-privacy project see: [[Terms of Service Brainstorming]].''

=Problems to Tackle=

Misaligned incentives have prevented industry, users, and government from solving many of the problems of cybersecurity. We're proposing three projects that will allow (power) users to increase the security of their data, as well as improve security for other people, and maybe even for the network as a whole. We may also be interested in working on the [[Terms of Service Brainstorming | Mozilla Privacy issue]].

=="Safeword"==
*''All functionality should be inserted into the browser to appear as part of the various websites.''
(1) Shows security level of user-selected password as it's typed in (for registration)
(2) If user chooses weak password, auto-fill will be turned off. User must manually type in all weak passwords
:Safeword will look for keystrokes and won't send the password to the website if it doesn't sense the appropriate keystrokes
(3) Refuse password if it's been used before (for a major/important/security-sensitive site)
:for security reasons, Safeword would only save the first 4 characters of each password (not the whole thing)
(4) Periodically prompt user to change password
:this would be a suggestion, not a requirement and users could set how often it should prompt

Other Ideas:
*encrypted password storage within browser
*using recaptcha or pictures (esp game), etc as dual key for all passwords
*perhaps regulation requiring financial institutions to only accept strong or dual-key passwords

NYT article on bad password security: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/technology/21password.html?hp

==Mesh Network Vaccination==
Firefox plug-in used by the 5% of power users that can help patch the problems created by the larger base of security-ignorant or security-apathetic users. I made the analogy to tower defense at some point.

''For your edification, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense Tower Defense].'' ''[[User:Mfeld|Mfeld]] 05:18, 13 January 2010 (UTC)''

==Stop Badware==
We propose a Firefox plug-in that would incorporate an improved Stop Badware database and automatically warn users when they attempt to access websites that are suspected of including malware or have been known to do so recently. We also propose this is included in search engines. While Firefox 3 and Google have recently implemented similar ideas, we would like to display more granular data (i.e., 99% of visitors to this site report no problems, 90% of visitors to that site), with better timing information, and automatically build in reporting of malware to the database.

StopBadware goes independent: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10440210-245.html

==Distress Password==
Have 2 passwords --
:(1) secure password -- shows all emails, all data
:(2) distress password -- shows limited data (like limited profile), only showing safe data

==Password Picture==
Have a dual key mode of authentication for various web services: one would be the typical password, and the second would be a series of pictures. For example, when creating an account on a website for the first time, you would choose a password and choose keywords for pictures, like "animal" or "tree". Logging in would require you to enter a password as well as, from a series of pictures, choose your 1, 2, or 3 pictures that show your keyword. This would prevent robots from being able to try and guess your password, and would also prevent keystroke detectors from being fully functional.

=Presentational ideas=
*"This is your internet, this is your internet on botnet"
*Ham Sandwich metaphor acted out in reality
*Voiceover puppets a la JZ's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NggzBHSXdCo video explanation of Herdict]
*PSA Announcement featuring Internationally Recognized Magician Michael Feldman
*Lessig-style keynote presentation (as part)

Spot 1: Ham Sandwich (Live).

Magic Michael is happily doing a magic trick. Suddenly, he makes a ham sandwich appear out of nowhere. He asks an audience member, "And now, who would like to eat this ham sandwich?" People in the audience (kids?) react angrily. One says, "But, where did that ham sandwich come from?"

CUT TO Magic Michael, now sitting on a stool, talking to the camera: Everyone knows not to eat a mysterious ham sandwich that I make appear out of nowhere. But why do some people install software when they don't know where it came from? Hi, I'm internationally-recognized magician Michael Feldman, and I'm here to remind you how important it is to keep your computer safe. When in doubt about whether or not you should download and install a piece of software, just follow the ham sandwich rule; if it came from a stranger and you're not sure when or where it was made, don't install it - or eat it!

(looks great -- I just want some more magic puns, like "if it were a rabbit sandwich, maybe that's ok" or "installing random programs isn't magic. it's stupid.")

End with "The More You Know" music and logo? (like at the end of this stupid clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eazYHO3Hsg&feature=related).

Spot 2:
Magic Michael is seated, looking directly at the camera. "Hi, i'm internationally-recognized (and renowned) magician Michael Feldman. I can make many things disappear (hand gesture, and poorly patched together video making something disappear). But there's one thing that even I can't make disappear: the cybersecurity problem. (Michael attempts to make something symbolizing cybersecurity disappears, but fails). Remember, kids, installing random programs isn't magic. It's stupid."

[[Image:CyberSec1.jpg|thumb|120px|alt=Whiteboard Notes Part 1|Mesh Network Vaccination / Password Protection Ideas]]
[[Image:CyberSec2.jpg|thumb|120px|alt=Whiteboard Notes Part 2|Ideas for Incentivizing]]
[[Image:CyberSec3.jpg|thumb|120px|alt=Whiteboard Notes Part 3|Stop Badware Ideas]]
[[Image:Problems Solved.jpg|thumb|120px|alt=Whiteboard Notes Part 4|Problems Solved by "Safeword"]]
[[Image:Safeword Functionality.jpg|thumb|120px|alt=Whiteboard Notes Part 4|Functionality for "Safeword"]]

Day 8 Predictions

2024-08-14T19:57:08Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

For those who aren't familiar, here are [http://creativecommons.org/dmca/ Creative Commons'] and [http://www.google.com/dmca.html Google's] explanations of DMCA Notice and Takedown Procedures, one example of Due Process online

==Should there be Due Process Online==
It seems like there should be, though we can't predict where the folks from Google believe it should come from. On the one hand, you might think that Google is "just" a company, and their due process obligations are not greater than those of any other private entity who effects your life: i.e. send a letter to the complaint department and pray. At the entire other end of the spectrum, you might think that Google is such a critical point-of-control online that the government should have no problem regulating them in areas from copyright to even their handling of search results and their imposition of the death penalty. My guess is that Google believes itself to be in the former, "leave-us-alone" pile.

One thought is that due process is important in the legal system because nobody has a choice about whether they are subjected to its processes. However, the market may incentivize a proper balance of due process from online service providers. For example, if the Google death penalty becomes so pervasive that the search results are no longer relevant enough for users, or if unfairness generates enough badwill that users will switch to a different search engine, Google may be incentivized to offer different processes. In reality, Google's status as an incumbent would make these factors unlikely to affect Google's decision making but it is possible that they could have effect in less mature fields with more competitors.

It's great how the website with the article on the Google death penalty was filled with mostly internal links, which seems to be intended to raise its Google rank.

As it is, Google and other service providers like facebook are a black box. In the Death Penalty article it seemed that a site could be given the death penalty without even knowing it had done something wrong; theoretically a company could set up spam that attempts to increase the page rank of a competitor with the intention it gets the Google Death Penalty. Moreover, some non-malicious actors whose sites are infected with malware can be dramatically hurt by the Google StopBadware partnership; they might claim they've been punished without Due Process, but Google's courterargument that they're helping to increase web safety is compelling. In light of the complexity of the issues and the spectrum of people whose lives and businesses Google can affect, clearer guidelines are needed and more open and transparent procedures for resolving cases.
:Our guest, however, might point out that spammers are infinitely creative, and trying to set up rules in advance to deal with every possible situation is just inviting people of ill-will to take advantage of Google. Thus, it might be argued that the company should have every right to optimize its product for the vast majority of non-malicious users around the word. For those reasons, along with the additional burdens that would place on Google, our guest is unlikely to be receptive to imposing additional procedure and transparency, but maybe an appeal to the "Don't be evil" side of the company would help?

What about companies that aren't as obviously influential as Google (but hope to be). It seems a lot of us might be offended because of something akin to the "essential service" that Google has--so we become rightfully critical of how they punish/banish users. But how might other companies know when they cross the threshold from bullied to bully?

==Due Process Defaults==

There are at least two default possibilities for due process of takedowns on the internet: (1) Due process afforded before takedown (default on), and (2) take down immediately upon request and afford due process to restore the content (default off). Google will probably take the stance that (2), default off, is a more appropriate standard for internet due process. Since internet content can do a great deal of harm in a very short period of time, it makes sense to take it down immediately (after someone has complained that it might be harmful information) and create a process by which the uploaded can ask that it be restored. That way the damage of offensive content is mitigated, but could not be unilaterally censored. (also, this process probably does the best job of limiting the liability of companies like Google, YouTube, etc). I think one of the biggest problem companies such as Google face is however that after summary proceedings, which in Europe can take more than 3 months after the lawsuit was filed, the procedure on the merits can take years and years (up to 6 or even more years), so it takes too much time until the case comes to an end (unless parties are willing to settle). Another problem are the huge damages (imposed on a daily basis in case of non-compliance) that are imposed very easily and run up very quickly. I would like to hear the thoughts of the guests on this.

:The counter argument to the above is that this cripples the generatively of the internet. If anyone can request that content be taken down which web companies must comply with, it would be possible for anyone to (at least temporarily) gag the production of new content. A better compromise might be to require that the requester make some showing of who they are and how they will be harmed (at something resembling a probable cause standard) before web companies must comply with such a complaint.
:Due process is needed for the protection of the party against which actions to be taken, and in the interest of public notice. According to Facebook terms of service, an account will be disabled if it is found to repeatedly infringe other people's intellectual property rights. Here a due process is needed to disable an account on Facebook. How many times does "repeatedly" refer to? Who have the final say on this "infringement" of other people's intellectual property rights? Hope to hear more from our guest on their practice to deal with this, and how they balance between the alleged owner of the right and the one against whom the action to be taken.

It would also be interesting to hear how different companies have complained and whether any of them have slayed the Giant - known as Google. Have any ever threatened back or been able to have some worthy leverage against Google?

==Google and China==
Although today's class isn't about this topic, it's hard to believe it won't come up. It will be interesting to hear whether the Google guest will have a response to Jason's concern that Google disengaging with China will allow unscrupulous actors to dominate the world's biggest internet market, and that Google, even if it had to make compromises, could do more good than evil by working inside China.
:Yes, The voice of "Google in China" not "Google China" is around for a while. It will be interesting to hear how Google will do business in China if it finally decided to pull out. This will have a huge impact on not only the internet users in China, but also the resellers and strategic partners of Google China.

:I think there is some connection between the Google-China news and today's topic. From a macro perspective, what kind of due process should be given to Google (or any other type of Internet service provider) before the decision is made to force them to withdraw? Today's speaker should have some good insights into Google's experiences with Turkey to might help us understand what the coming fight with China may look like. Another thing to consider with regard to today's topic is whether there should be (if any) due process afforded to China itself - by releasing the publicity statement, Google is essentially making wide allegations against (presumably) the Chinese Government - does this raise due process concerns? Was this the best or only way to handle it? It certainly got the world's attention, and I do find it doubtful that China would have responded in any other way.

:: I absolutely agree that Google-China has the flavor of a due process question--although we should keep in mind the different types of "rights" in play (perhaps there's a fundamental human right not to be turned over to hostile authorities, and a consumer right to retain control over one's data, but is there really a right to be listed in a search engine? or to have access to such a search engine at all?). Just as what we call "rights" may be flexible, "due process" could be flexible too--for instance, does a GNI decision count as due process, even if it's only an association of private parties? For some additional context on these issues, check out this [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/magazine/30google-t.html excellent article] on Google, Turkey, Thailand, and free-speech concerns, which seems to indicate Google is much more interested in establishing a process than some of our classmates above predicted.

: Another concern: will there be due process for those individual's whose email accounts were breached? Will they be informed, and what, if anything, would they be entitled to?

Cybersecurity Project

2024-08-14T19:57:03Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1267401600

''Topic Owners: Mike, Jason, Ramesh, and Sheel''

Saying that cybersecurity is a "difficult problem" is like saying that reversing global warming is a difficult problem: it's true, but it doesn't quite capture how devilishly complicated and multifaceted the problem really is. There's no single reason why creating a more secure global network is so difficult; it in part has to do with the radically-distributed architecture of the Net, in part with some deep flaws computer software for both consumers and businesses, and in part from the network's sheer size and importance to our daily lives. (For more on this, see the nice [[Cybersecurity]] backgrounder.)

Our group approached the problem not with the goal of inventing a panacea that would make all credit card transactions magically secure and make it impossible for hackers to [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html compromise Gmail's security]. Instead, we wanted to offer suggestions with minimal implementation headaches and maximal benefit to users, from novices to experts.

The final "product" of our month-long thinking on this issue begins with a reasonably short video overview of our ideas [http://www.vimeo.com/9036735 here,] (or see below), explains some of the details of our proposal, and also has an alpha-release Firefox plugin that you can download and try out (thanks to [http://www.elance.com/ Elance] for making the plugin possible, by the way).

=Overview=

We discussed this topic at length in an in-class presentation on January 19. [http://www.vimeo.com/9036735 This] 9-minute video summarizes and extends the presentation we gave that day. The details on this page elaborate on the proposals mentioned in the video.

=Guiding Principles=

Before turning to the specific proposals we've made to improve cybersecurity, it's helpful to discuss some of the guiding principles that have informed our work. We applaud the [http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf government's] attempts to improve cybersecurity, but don't believe that a top-down, regulatory or legislative solution is a panacea.

===Empowering Users===
Cybersecurity is a huge, complicated problem, conceivably including everything from keeping the electrical grid from going down to garden-variety phishing spam. We consciously left the [http://www.sandia.gov/scada/history.htm SCADA] problem to those in government and industry, and focused on problems that face ordinary users.

We suggest tools that rely both on the power users who have contributed much to the internet's development as well as the ordinary users who are the overwhelming share of people online today. Bottom-up solutions seem improbable when they begin; Wikipedia and Firefox, to take just two examples, were thought to face extremely long odds. We believe that giving users the tools they need to take control of their own security can improve users' experiences on the net, as well as convincing major market players to adopt similar solutions that will help everyone, including those users who haven't taken affirmative steps to protect their security.

===Nudging Users===
The mind sciences and behavioral economics have demonstrated the tinkering with default settings and gently [http://www.nudges.org/ nudging] people in a direction can cause dramatic changes in behavior. We apply that insight to cybersecurity. If it's a little harder to reuse or create weak passwords, or a little easier to find out what malware has infected your computer, security may greatly improve.

===Code is Law===
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig Lawrence Lessig's] 1999 insight that [http://www.code-is-law.org/ code is law] is still crucial to understand cybersecurity more than ten years later. Most fundamentally, the major browsers and websites can improve (or worsen) security for users, perhaps much more than the government can. Key browsers and websites, by coding our proposals or other security fixes, can make a major impact on security.

===No big thing, many little things===
Finally, we consider ourselves [http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/rt/HF.pdf foxes, rather than hedgehogs,] and believe that there's no one big thing, or top-down solution, by the government or the private sector, that could solve the cybersecurity problem overnight. Cybersecurity has so many dimensions that it must be improved on all levels, by the government, by industry, by non-profits, and by users. Even if the net suddenly became more secure, in a few months or years new vulnerabilities would be exposed and take the place of the old. As long as the Net remains open, cybersecurity will be a never-ending arms race, and we believe that empowering users, nudging them to better security practices, and remembering that code can be law can give the good guys the upper hand.

=Specific Proposals=

==Public Service Announcement==

We created a Public Service Announcement for generating public awareness for the cybersecurity problem, and showed it in class on January 19. It's online [http://vimeo.com/8937782 here] but is password-protected. Please email us if you were in the class and would like the password.

The upshot of the video is that we don't think a direct public awareness campaign will be very effective. We believe it would be more productive to nudge users and change their behavior by altering the way browsers and websites work, not by scolding people in 30-second TV ads.

==SafeWord==

===What is SafeWord?===

SafeWord is a real, working FireFox plugin designed to nudge users into keeping safer and more unique passwords, though it's too unstable and unrefined to be considered anything but alpha software at this point. It's available for download [http://www.jasonharrow.com/safeword-1.0.0-fx.xpi here]. To install, save that file to your disk, select File --> Open in Firefox 3.5 or above, and install it. You will need to restart Firefox before it takes effect. Thanks to Elance for helping with the coding on very short notice.

We have created a video demonstration of one of the key features of SafeWord [http://vimeo.com/9031865 here].

===What Are The Goals of SafeWord?===

SafeWord begins with a simple proposition: online passwords should be both strong and also different across different sites, and your browser should help you achieve that goal. Studies continue to show that most people use very simple passwords; see, for instance, [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/technology/21password.html this] ''New York Times'' article that gets right to the point. "If your password is 123456," reads the headline, "just make it HackMe." Moreover, most users also fall into the "dirty habit" of using the same password across multiple online accounts, which can lead to a disaster if only one of the accounts is able to be compromised. An extremely detailed analysis of a 2009 attack that used this principle to compromise many online accounts of Twitter employee is [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/19/the-anatomy-of-the-twitter-attack/ here].

===More on The Unique Password Feature===

====A Scary Story, and A Word About Annoyance====

Even readers who are all for stronger password security in general may nonetheless be skeptical of what can happen to "regular people" who can't be bothered to remember so many passwords. But here's a very scary story - which is taken directly from the [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/19/the-anatomy-of-the-twitter-attack/ Twitter attack analysis] cited above - of what can happen if users employ the same password at multiple important sites:

# HC [the hacker's alias] accessed Gmail for a Twitter employee by using the password recovery feature that sends a reset link to a secondary email. In this case the secondary email was an expired Hotmail account, he simply registered it, clicked the link and reset the password, giving him control of the Gmail account.
# HC then read emails to guess what the original Gmail password was successfully and reset the password so the Twitter employee would not notice the account had changed.
# HC then used the same password to access the employeeâs Twitter email on Google Apps, getting access to a gold mine of sensitive company information from emails and, particularly, email attachments.
# HC then used this information along with additional password guesses and resets to take control of other Twitter employees' personal and work emails.
# HC then used the same username/password combinations and password reset features to access AT&T, MobileMe, Amazon and iTunes, among other services. A security hole in iTunes gave HC access to full credit card information in clear text. HC now also had control of Twitterâs domain names at GoDaddy.
# Even at this point, Twitter had absolutely no idea they had been compromised.

That's the danger, and it ain't pretty.

On the other hand, as SafeWord users, we admit that the aspect of the program that requires you to use a different password for each new login is, well, pretty damn annoying. Complying with its demands to keep generating unique passwords might even require some old-fashioned tricks, like the creation of a heuristic for generating memorable but unique passwords or keeping a card in your wallet to keep track of your various logins (and maybe even separating out parts of ''that'' list or keeping it encoded somehow). Still, we think that the cost/benefit analysis weighs in favor of life being just a little more annoying in this area, because as our scary story illustrates, there are '''lots''' of points-of-entry to our various accounts, and '''lots''' of random people out there who would love to hack those accounts for financial gain or to get their kicks.

====Why Do It This Way?====

There are other solutions out there that automatically generate secure, unique passwords for each site you visit; [https://lastpass.com/features_free.php LastPass] is a particularly nifty one. But they all share several key points of failure: they rely on a master password, and they store your passwords in the cloud. Relying on a master password is particularly problematic, because a compromise of that password can lead to the same disastrous chain of events that we are trying to prevent. The only way to truly reduce the risk of this type of threat is to decentralize everything. And if that takes encouraging people to work a little harder, we at least want to make people aware that this just might be worth the hassle. Similarly, there are problems with storing passwords in the cloud, including intruder problems and problems if the company goes out of business or the cloud becomes inaccessible.

====Extension v. Built-in Feature====

Initially, we hoped to build this extension to make a pitch to Mozilla that they should think about building this kind of functionality into the browser. But as we have used a now-working copy of SafeWord in our browsers - admittedly, it's an alpha copy that's not even close to ready for prime-time - at least two of us (i.e. jharrow and rnagarajan) see that it's just too intrusive for mainstream users. If the average, busy user gets a pop-up every time he comes across a new website and tries to use an old password, he will get angry at the browser. If this happens a few times, he will probably switch from Firefox to another browser. So right now, the idea works best as an extension for people who really believe in password security and want a little nudge when they are thinking of giving in to the instinct to just use the password they used last time. But if SafeWord could work only with websites that store important personal information -- email providers, financial institutions, retailers with your credit card information -- and ignore the local newspaper's website, perhaps the balance between security and frustration would be a little closer to the former.

===More on the Stronger Password Feature===

On the other hand, the idea of adding a feature that helps users create more secure passwords - even if they are reused across multiple accounts - is a simple fix that should enhance the browsing experience for most users.

Increasingly, many websites are giving users some guidelines on password security. For instance, Yahoo!'s sign-up page looks like this:

[[Image:Yahoo.png]]

We think that's great. But not all sites have that feature. For instance, you get no visual feedback if you sign-up for an Amazon account with a weak password:

[[Image:Amazon1.png]]

Your browser can change this state-of-affairs easily. Here's the new view, with a SafeWord bar underneath the password field reminding you that your password is weak:

[[Image:Amazon2.png]]

SafeWord even lets you customize the password strength options:

[[Image:Amazon3.png]]

We think something like this really could be built into the browser, and would both add to the user experience and increase security.

==Tower Defense==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense Tower Defense] is a metaphor for a particular strategy of addressing cybersecurity threats.<ref> Tower Defense is a genre of computer game in which the player places 'towers' alongside a path that goes across the screen. Enemies cross the screen along the path and the towers shoot at the enemies, hopefully eliminating them before they reach the other side of the screen. The Player does not have control over the towers' operation, only their placement. Similarly, Tower Defense as a cybersecurity strategy would hopefully place concerned users strategically throughout IP addresses on the internet such that they could passively identify and correct viruses and botnets passing through nearby computers.</ref> Certain threats, like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_denial_of_service#Distributed_attack Distributed Denial-of-Service] attacks or malware like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware#Infectious_malware:_viruses_and_worms viruses and worms] take advantage of the free rider problems associated with security on the internet -- ignoring secure computers and instead leveraging the still significant number of insecure computers to wreak havoc online. No matter how much understanding a public awareness campaign might generate, some percentage of users will remain unaware and their computers will remain susceptible to botnets and malware. Companies such as eBay, Amazon, and Google, which might be in a position to alert users when their computers are infected, don't want to alert their users for fear of driving away business. Tower Defense is a strategy to address this issue by empowering educated users to help out their less computer-savvy friends and neighbors with computer security problems just...because.

Since the initial conception of this idea, there have been some promising signs that [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/facebook-joins-with-mcafee-to-clean-up-malware-on-site/ organizations] are starting to take steps in [http://stopbadware.org/home/pr_01252010 this] direction.

===How Tower Defense Works===
[[Image:Tower Defense Diagram.png]]

Tower Defense can be conceived in three ways: (1) as an "Amber Alert" for internet threats, (2) as a kind of invasive surgical procedure to remove malware, or (3) as an independent community of 'Good Cyber Samaritans.'

Each of of these different conceptions would have largely the same structure, shown in the diagram above: An infected computer signs in to a website such as Facebook or eBay. At this point, both the website and the ISP can tell that the computer may be infected.<ref> ISPs and websites can tell when a computer has a port open, waiting for commands that is not related to where the user is browsing</ref> Rather than inform the user directly and risk alienating his/her business, the ISP or website informs the Tower Defense program that it is connected to an infected computer. The Tower Defense program can then either (1) inform the user that his/her computer may be infected, (2) connect to the infected computer through the website or ISP to quarantine or cure the infected computer ''with'' the users knowledge and permission, or (3) connect to the infected computer through the website or ISP to quarantine or cure the infected computer ''without'' the users knowledge and permission.

Hopefully, the Tower Defense program can act as a kind of Mutual Aid Treaty for the Internet, allowing websites and ISPs to (perhaps anonymously) combine their information about possible online threats so that all can be safer (This, however, may create free rider problems of its own).

==="Amber Alert" For The Internet===

What if a coalition of leading Internet sites were willing to share certain information about security threats with a third party organization (like [http://stopbadware.org/home/index StopBadware]), and the third-party would vet the information and then issue certain "Amber Alerts" that all the sites would be willing to publicize in some way? When there's a particularly egregious security hole in an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6 old browser], for instance, if all the leading websites actively encouraged its users to patch it, that has the potential to do a lot of good. Google has just recently begun to do this by [http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-browsers-for-modern-applications.html phasing out support] for older browsers with security issues.

If such actions and recommendations are filtered through a reliable third-party, perhaps the companies who are reluctant to contribute their information won't be threatened by the embarrassment of having an "Amber Alert" put out, and perhaps actions like the ones Google has begun to take can become more effective. Sure, there would be negative consequences for a company, just as a company who undertakes a product recall generates bad publicity. But ultimate the hope is that companies will realize the net positive value of this transaction, and that consumers will look kindly on companies promoting a new level of honesty and transparency.

===Cyber Surgery===

Just as it is impossible to eliminate all security threats by informing internet users of security problems in the abstract, it may also be impossible to eliminate these threats by simply alerting users that their computer may be infected. Since these users apathy or unwillingness to take steps towards security are the original source of the problem, an "Amber Alert" system may be insufficient to substantially eliminating the problem.

Under a Cyber Surgery model, a website or ISP could inform the Tower Defense program running passively on an educated users computer that an infected computer is logged into the site/ISP. The Tower Defense program could then connect to the infected users computer via Mesh Networking through the ISP or website and quarantine or remove the malware on the infected computer. Because this model is designed to overcome user inertia or apathy, this quarantining or removal of malware would have to occur without the infected computer's user's knowledge or consent.

There are a number of new dangers to this approach. First, hackers may try to subvert this software to quarantine or delete good files on other computers rather than malware and viruses. Hopefully a Tower Defense program would preclude this possibility by running passively on a users computer and would not present any opportunity for the user to interact with or control the program. Next, running software or altering the state of another computer without permission may not be ethical or legal. The legal ramifications could be removed through legislation if Congress or the relevant governing body could be convinced that this is a good use of the technology. The ethical dilemma is trickier. Finally, creating a centralized list of infected computers could be very dangerous if hackers were to get ahold of it. This may be mitigated by not maintaining a centralized list, but instead only having the websites or ISPs inform individual Tower Defense programs running on individual computers when a virus or piece of malware is nearby, thus diluting and dispersing the risk. Still, even on a single computer, the few pieces of information about infected computers nearby could cause a problem in the hands of hackers.

===Good Cyber-Samaritans===

Finally, if legal or technological barriers preclude the creation of a Tower Defense program operating as an Amber Alert or Cyber Surgeon, perhaps there could be a network of young people who think security is important and who don't mind hanging around their local library for a few hours helping people update software and patching security holes. Companies and ISPs could upload possible security issues to a Stop Badware-like website where educated and interested users could go, and propose solutions which the companies could then implement. Essentially, this is crowdsourcing cybersecurity patches. This solution becomes ever-more feasible as a greater proportion of users switches to laptop computers and as projects showing that people are willing to assist strangers for the sheer fun and satisfaction of the experience - from building an [http://www.wikipedia.org encyclopedia] to giving them a [http://www.couchsurfing.org couch to crash on] for free - flourish. Relying on people's good natures could be a new way to make progress on this problem.

This proposal has its own challenges. Many companies still believe in security through obscurity and might not be inclined to share their security breaches with a publicly accessible website. Also, there would have to be a process for vetting the security fixes to make sure that they both work and don't include new trojans. Also, this kind of higher-level skilled work is not as readily appropriate to crowdsourcing as things like the tasks commonly associated with Mechanical Turk.

==Distress Password==

This was an idea originally discussed at the Liberation Technologies Seminar in the Fall of 2009 and was expanded upon by the team. Imagine you have confidential information in your email (as most of us do) and you are captured by a hostile terrorist organization. They demand your Facebook and Gmail passwords. As of now, we only have one password: the real one. But, what if we had a distress password that, if entered could:

# delete the account, or say it was 'temporarily suspended';
# show the email account, but only emails that you had marked as safe (or, in other words, only those which you hadn't filtered as 'private'); and/or
# require to you call customer service due to 'unauthorized activity'

This seems like it could be implemented fairly easily by any email service provider.

==Password Picture==

The purpose of the password picture idea is to prevent against keystroke detectors on public computers gaining access to passwords. Keystroke loggers have the ability to detect, generally in a covert manner without the user knowing, all the actions that the user is performing with his or her keyboard. Also, bots that troll cyberspace and attempt to guess passwords using various permutations and combination are incapable of seeing pictures and interpreting them (hence the CAPTCHA and RECAPTCHA systems). This dual authentication system would require the typical typed-in password, as well as the user to select, from a series of pictures, the picture or pictures that match the category given at the time of signup (perhaps updated every 3 months). Keystroke loggers wouldn't be able to see the clicks that are occurring by the mouse on the pictures, and bots wouldn't be able to successfully enter a secured area solely through guessing. It would work like this:

Say, when creating an account on Gmail, Gmail gave me the category 'tree' and 'car'. Here is what would happen when I went to log in:

# I'd have to type my password
# Then, from a series of 20 pictures, I would have to pick the one that is a tree. (A step that only a human can perform)
# Then, from a series of 20 pictures, I would have to pick the one that is a car. (A step that only a human can perform)

At the end of the day, through two different modes of password authentication, security increases in a relatively painless way.

=Footnotes=
<references />

Main Page

2022-06-23T19:12:08Z

BerkmanSysop: orig

Welcome to Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw, a January course taught by Professor Jonathan Zittrain and Elizabeth Stark, co-hosted by Stanford Law School and Harvard Law SchooI.

In addition to this wiki, this class maintains a [http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/difficultprobs/ blog] and [http://twitter.com/DifficultProbs twitter feed]. Check them out!

If you are a student, please see the [[Student Responsibilities]] section and [[Course Logistics]]. For admins looking for details on field trips, please visit [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/difficultproblems/Main_Page#Field_Trip_Logistic here]. All regular class meetings will be at '''Stanford Law School Classroom 280B'''.

This [http://www.law.stanford.edu/contact/#maps map site] has a map of the [http://www.aaccessmaps.com/show/map/us/ca/bayarea Bay Area], [http://ucomm.stanford.edu/map/ Stanford campus], and [http://transportation.stanford.edu/images/visitor-bus.pdf visitor parking] at Stanford.

The four main difficult problems to be addressed are:
*[[Global Network Initiative]] ([[GNI Brainstorming |Group Page]])
*[[Ubiquitous Human Computing]] ([[Ubicomp Brainstorming |Group Page]])
*[[Future of Wikipedia]]
*[[Cybersecurity]] ([[Cybersecurity Project|Final Project]]) ([[Cybersecurity Brainstorming |Brainstorming Page]])

Cross-cutting themes include:
*[[Due process on the Internet among private sheriffs]]
*[[The role of intermediaries]]
*[[Motivating good and bad actors]]
*[[Collaborating and relying on masses]]
*[[Privacy and Anonymity on the Internet]]

Group presentation schedule:
*Friday, Jan. 15th: Ubiquitous Human Computing
*Tuesday, Jan. 19th: Cybersecurity
*Wednesday, Jan. 20th: Global Network Initiative
*Thursday, Jan. 21st: Future of Wikipedia

==WEEK ONE: DEFINING THE PROBLEMS==

<center> '''Monday, January 4th''' </center>

'''LUNCH''': 12-2pm SLS, Room 280B
:Student introductions

'''CLASS''': 7:20-9:20pm SLS Room 280B
:A brief overview of the course, its goals and expectations, including an introduction to the difficult problems and the cross-cutting themes.
:A quiz on Zittrain's book, [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It] will be given.
:Brief introduction to the Global Network Initiative

''Readings For Class'':
*Read [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It]
*Explore the [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/ Global Network Initiative] website
*Read the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/GNI GNI Wiki Primer]

''Assignments'': Before next class, post [[Day 2 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 1 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Tuesday, January 5th''' </center>

'''CYBERSECURITY BACKGROUND: ''BONUS''''': 2-4pm SLS Room 280B
: Professor Zittrain will interview Professor [http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=559 Jack Goldsmith] as an overview of cybersecurity as it has evolved and as it can potentially be addressed.

*''Bonus Writing Opportunity'': produce a summary of the cybersecurity event, to be used as background reading for Thursday

'''CLASS''': 5:15-7:15pm SLS Room 280B
:Identify the first-order problems regarding corporate responsibility and free expression on the internet. Examine how GNI attempts to address these problems and then evaluate whether GNI is a success and whether better approaches could be taken.
:Introduction to ubiquitous human computing.

''Guests:''
*Mark Chandler, CISCO
*Chuck Cosson, Microsoft
*Dunstan Hope, BSR

''Readings:''
*Read Rhys Blakely, ''[http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article728898.ece Yahoo in second Chinese blog Row],'' TimesOnline, Feb. 9, 2006.
*Read Colin Maclay, "[http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/maclay-access-controlled-pdf Protecting Privacy and Expression Online]," ''in'' Access Controlled (Ronald Diebert et al., eds., MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2010).
*Read GNI [http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/cms/uploads/1/GNI_-_Principles_1_.pdf Guiding Principles]
*Read the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/Ubiquitous_Human_Computing UbiComp Wiki Primer]

''Assignments'': Before next class, post [[Day 3 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 2 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Wednesday, January 6th''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 6:30-8:30pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 7:00pm
:Examine the nature of ubiquitous human computing and potential future applications of human computing and the dangers.
:Introduction to cybersecurity.

''Guests'':
*Lukas Biewald, [http://crowdflower.com/ CrowdFlower]
*Bjoern Hartman, see his [http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/ Mechanical Turk Cats Book]
*Aaron Koblin, see his [http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work.html Ten Thousand Cents and Sheep Market projects]

''Readings'':
*Visit [http://www.mturk.com/ Mechanical Turk], [http://www.liveops.com/ LiveOps], [http://www.crowdflower.com CrowdFlower] or other human computing site
**Watch the [http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2167086 12-minute video] of Lukas' CrowdFlower presentation at TechCrunch
*Skim Nancy R. Mansfield, ''[http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/internet-technology/618188-1.html The information revolution and its impact on the employment relationship: an analysis of the cyberspace workplace]'', American Business Law Journal (2003).
*Kate Thomas, ''[http://www.seiu.org/2009/12/insurers-hire-mafia-to-spam-congress.php Insurers Hire Mafia to Spam Congress]'', SEIU.org Blog, Dec. 10, 2009.
*Read Jonathan Zittrain, ''[http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/ssrn-id1140445-pdf Ubiquitous Human Computing]'', SSRN Paper No 32/2008 (July 2008).
*Read the [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Wiki Primer]

'''ASSIGNMENT: Due -- Email Admin with Problem Topic Choice'''

''Assignment'': Before next class, post [[Day 4 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 3 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Thursday, January 7th''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 11:10am-1:10pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 11:40am
:Cybersecurity has been identified as one of the greatest threats facing the United States today, but it is ill-defined and almost impossible to address. How can we frame this problem to better inspire solutions? How should government, military, businesses, and internet/tech approach the problem from different angles and do these different approaches work together?
:Introduction to Future of Wikipedia

''Guests'':
*Chuck Cosson, Microsoft

''Readings'':
*Listen to David Clark, [http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/events/sl20090304 The Internets We Did Not Build].
*Col. Allen & Lt. Col Demchak, ''[http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10 The Palestinian-Israeli Cyberwar]'', Military Review (2003).
*Kim Zetter, ''[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/08/revealed-the-in/ Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security Hole]'', Wired (2008).
*Review Zittrain, [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It]; Chapter 3
*Skim CENTRA Technology, [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10 Cyber Compendium] Workshop, Nov. 2009.
*Skim the White House [http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Cyberspace_Policy_Review_final.pdf Cyberspace Policy Review] (2009); focus on the introduction/overview and the Near & Mid-Term Action Plans.
*Read [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/Future_of_Wikipedia Future of Wikipedia] wiki background paper

''Assignment'': Before next class, post [[Day 5 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 4 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Friday, January 8th''' </center>

'''FIELD TRIP: ''BONUS''''': 10:30 am eBay office visit (shuttle from SLS), including JZ talk and meeting with eBay lawyers and security experts
*If you're unable to attend, you might want to watch JZ's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw3h-rae3uo Minds for Sale talk].

'''CLASS''': 3:00-5:00pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 3:30pm
:Wikipedia has grown quickly and rapidly to become one of if not the largest online content-generating collaboration. Following the 2009 Wikimania, Wikimedia has undertaken a self-review, looking at strategies for the future of Wikipedia. Is it a sustainable model? and if so, to what other fields is it applicable? How can its reception in academia be improved? and what are its applications for education?
:Brief introduction of next week's cross-cutting themes

''Guests'':
*Stu West, [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees#Stu_West Wikimedia Foundation Board Member]
*Mike Godwin, Wikimedia General Counsel
*Phoebe Ayers, Wikimedia volunteer

''Readings'':
*Review Zittrain, [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It]; Chapter 6
*Peruse Wikipedia's [http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Strategy Page]
*Strona, ''[http://prawo.uni.wroc.pl/~kwasnicki/EkonLit6/WikipediaSoul.pdf The Battle for Wikipedia's Soul]'', The Economist, March 6, 2008.
*''[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/01/26/wiki A Stand Against Wikipedia?]'', Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 26, 2007.
*Browse [http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/ Wikipedia Watch] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia Criticism of Wikipedia]
*''[http://www.resourceshelf.com/2009/11/23/wsj-volunteers-log-off-as-wikipedia-ages/ Wikipedia Volunteers Log Off as Wikipedia Ages]'', Wall Street Journal.
*''[http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/12/new-editors-are-joining-english-wikipedia-in-droves/ New editors are joining English Wikipedia in droves?]'', Infodisiac, Dec. 6, 2009.

''Assignment'': Before next class, post [[Day 6 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 5 Thoughts]]

'''EVENING EVENT: ''BONUS''''': Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres at David Hornik's office in Palo Alto after class.

----

<center> '''Saturday, January 9th''' </center>

Tour of San Francisco (Optional); details TBD. To give input and suggestions, visit [[Tour Ideas]].

==WEEK TWO: CROSS-CUTTING THEMES==

<center> '''Monday, January 11th''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 7:20-9:20pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 7:50pm
:One potential way to address some of the problems addressed in this course is through innovations and technological solutions. Several solutions have changed the way our browsers work and thereby changed the way we interact with the internet, making life better. In what other areas could a similar approach be applied? Change the technology, save the world.
:Introduction to cross-cutting theme of privacy, anonymity and liability on the internet

''Guests'':
*John M. Agosta, [http://disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu/ DisputeFinder]
*Tye Rattenbury, DisputeFinder
*Rob Ennals, DisputeFinder
*Tad Hersch, DisputeFinder

''Readings'':
*Visit [http://www.herdict.org/web/ HerdictWeb]
*Watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NggzBHSXdCo Video explanation of Herdict] (student suggested)
*Zittrain's [http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/02/10/berkman-jz-on-herdict/ Comments on Herdict] at a Berkman Center Lunch
*Visit [http://disputefinder.cs.berkeley.edu/ DisputeFinder] (Test it out!)
*Visit [https://www.new.net/ New.net]
**How can .church domain names exist when it does not exist? Look at the new.net domain decoder
**Compare with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains List of Internet Domains]
*Read Introduction to Ann Bartow, ''[http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlg/vol322/383-430.pdf Internet Defamation As Profit Center: The Monetization of Online Harrassment]'', 32 Harvard Journal of Law & Gender 383 (2009).

''Assignment'': Before next class, post [[Day 7 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 6 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Tuesday, January 12th''' </center>

'''WORKSHOP: ''BONUS''''': 1-2pm Faculty Lounge, Stanford [http://public.resource.org/law.gov/ law.gov workshop]
Hosted by Carl Malamud
:Some students attend the entire workshop, 10am-3pm

'''CLASS''': 5:15-7:15pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 5:45pm
:Privacy and anonymity can raise significant issues for accountability for online actions. Users often believe they are more anonymous than they truly are online - how can we better educate the public about the reality of privacy online? Consider the Drumbeat privacy project and creative commons issues.
:Introduction to the cross-cutting theme of due process and dispute resolution on the internet.

''Guests'':
*Ryan Calo, SLS Fellow
*Ebele Okobi-Harris, Yahoo! Director of Business and Human Rights
*Mark Surman, Mozilla
*Michael Fertik, Reputation Defender
*Carl Malamud
*Julie Martin, Mozilla
*Aza Raskin, Mozilla

''Readings'':
*Browse [http://creativecommons.org/ Creative Commons] for discussion
*Review Zittrain, [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It]; Chapter 9 on Data Genealogy
*Odia Kagan, ''[http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?s=latestnews&id=1915 Fighting Anonymous Defamation],'' Int'l Business Law Services, November 26, 2007.
*Consider commercial applications; visit [http://www.reputationdefender.com/ ReputationDefender]
*[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/Challenges/Privacy_Icons Drumbeat privacy icon challenge] backgrounder

''Additional Materials'' (suggested by student):
*Watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCbKv9yiLiQ Message from Anonymous to the Church of Scientology];
*Skim [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29 Wikipedia's article about Anonymous Group];
*Read about (and use!) [http://www.torproject.org/ Tor]

''Assignment'': Before next class, post [[Day 8 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 7 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Wednesday, January 13th''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 6:30-8:30pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 7:00pm
:How do our due process concerns translate to the internet and online communities? Should due process exist on the internet? Is the internet public or private space and under what terms do we have the privilege or right to access?
:Consider, for example, how much due process should be required to remove an account from Facebook, Google or Twitter. How much due process is necessary for a take-down on YouTube and what right of appeal do you have in any of these circumstances?
:Introduction to online collaboration and group motivation strategies

''Guests'':

* Kim Scott, Google

''Readings'':

* Skim Elizabeth Thornburg, ''[http://faculty.smu.edu/ethornbu/Thornburg%20Macro.doc Going Private: Technology, Due Process, and Internet Dispute Resolution]'', 34 Univ. Cal. Davis 151 (2000).
* Read through the Facebook or Google terms of service (see the primer above)
* Recall Zittrain, Chapter 7, on [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/archives/18#48 Private Sheriffs]
* Terri Wells, ''[http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Beware-the-Google-Death-Penalty/ Beware the Google 'Death Penalty']'',Search Engine News (2006).

''Assignment'': Before next class, post [[Day 9 Predictions]].

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 8 Thoughts]]

----

<center> '''Thursday, January 14th''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 11:10am-1:10pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 11:40am
:Online collaboration projects require internet organizations to motivate and coordinate large groups of people. This requires both motivating good actors to participate and motivating bad actors either to not participate or to conform to the rules/standards of the site. How can website hosts face these challenges? How involved should the users of cooperatively developed sites be in their governments?

''Guests'':
*Daniel Hoffer, [http://www.couchsurfing.org/ Couchsurfing]
*Micah Schaffer
*Dan Scholnick, [http://www.trinityventures.com/venture-capital-team/bio.php?first-name=Dan&last-name=Scholnick Trinity Ventures]
*Ben Rigby, [http://beextra.org The Extraordinaries]
*Stu West, [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees#Stu_West Wikimedia Foundation Board Member]

''Readings'':
*F. Gino, Jun Gu, & Chen-Bo Zhong, ''[http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10 Contagion or Restitution? When bad apples can motivate ethical behavior]'', 45 J. Experimental Social Psychology 1299-1302 (2009).
*Browse [http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/ OpenCouchSurfing.org] posts and complaints
*Review readings from Friday, January 8th on Wikipedia and motivation of contributors

''Thoughts after class'': [[Day 9 Thoughts]]

'''CLASS SOCIAL''': Bonus, evening, details TBD

----

<center> '''Friday, January 15th''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 1:00-3:00pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 1:30pm
:Ubiquitous Human Computing presentation (60 min)
:Discussion of solution's strengths and weaknesses and other approaches to consider

''Guests'':
*Fabio Rosati, Elance

''Group Documents'':
*[http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVl_o5lQOXEqZGMzejN4OG5fMjEzZnFyeG54ZG4&hl=en Best practices ]
*[http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AVl_o5lQOXEqZGMzejN4OG5fMjE2Z3pjNWR2ZGM&hl=en Technological solutions ]

''Thoughts about the discussed solutions'': [[UHC Solutions]]

==WEEK THREE: SOLUTIONS==

<center> '''Monday, January 18th''' </center>

'''NO CLASS''': [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._Day Martin Luther King, Jr. Day]

----

<center> '''Tuesday, January 19th''' </center>

'''FIELD TRIP: ''BONUS''''': Google, 3:30pm

'''CLASS''': Held at Google during visit
:Cybersecurity presentation (60 min)
:Discussion of solution's strengths and weaknesses and other approaches to consider

''Guests'':
*Mitchell Baker

----

<center> '''Wednesday, January 20th''' </center>

'''FIELD TRIP: ''BONUS'':''' Facebook, 12:30-2pm (TBC)

'''CLASS''': 6:30-8:30pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 7:00pm
:Global Network Initiative presentation (60 min)
:Discussion of solution's strengths and weaknesses and other approaches to consider

''Guests'':
*Esther Wojcicki

----

<center> '''Thursday, January 21st''' </center>

'''CLASS''': 11:10am-1:10pm SLS Room 280B, guests to begin arriving at 11:40am
:Future of Wikipedia presentation (60 min)
:Discussion of solution's strengths and weaknesses and other approaches to consider

''Guests'':
*Craig Newmark, [http://www.craigslist.org/about/craig_newmark Craigslist founder] and [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board#Craig_Newmark Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board member]
*Edward Wes
*Jack Herrick, founder of [http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page WikiHow]
*Stu West, [http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees#Stu_West Wikimedia Foundation Board Member]

'''WRAP-UP DINNER''': 7:20-9:20pm SLS Student Lounge

<center> '''Friday, January 22nd''' </center>

'''ReputationDefender visit''': 2:30pm
----

<center> '''January 31st''' </center>

'''FINAL PROJECTS DUE'''

Talk:Global Network Initiative

2013-11-12T20:51:01Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

From Claire O'Callaghan, SLS 2010 - Google's official blogpost today indicates a change in Google policy concerning its China operations due to security/free speech concerns - see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

Talk:Future of Wikipedia

2013-11-12T20:50:57Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Ubiquitous Human Computing

2013-11-12T20:48:51Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

= What is Ubiquitous Human Computing? =

Professor Zittrain provides an excellent overview of the emerging field of "Ubiquitous Human Computing" in a recent [http://drop.io/cyberlaw_winter10/asset/ssrn-id1140445-pdf paper]. For the purposes of this course, focus on the paper's discussion of "fungible networked brainpower" as exemplified by Amazon Mechanical Turk, LiveOps and InnoCentive. Alternatively, these core ideas are expressed in video form [http://bigthink.com/jonathanzittrain/the-long-and-silent-subway-ride-of-the-future here].

= The Current Services =

== Amazon Mechanical Turk ==

Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) [http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome product] is the simplest ubiquitous human computing model currently available. It provides a marketplace for "Human Intelligence Tasks" (HITs), which are typically large collections of simple and repetitive tasks that nonetheless require a human mind to complete. The HITs are necessarily limited in scope because their maximum price is $10.

== LiveOps ==

LiveOps's [http://www.liveops.com marketplace] is a step up from AMT because it carefully selects those that can perform tasks. Out of 3500 candidates to become a LiveOps worker each week, LiveOps only selects 50-75 after a test and an interview.

Patrick McKenna, founder of LiveOps but no longer with the company, has outlined what he believes draws each party to LiveOps. Workers desire (1) access to work, (2) control over their own work schedules, and (3) independence. McKenna believes that the most important factor to workers in their schedule flexibility. Also very important to the worker is the lack of setup and takedown time - there is no LiveOps equivalent to the unpaid commute to and from work. There is also no LiveOps equivalent to the real-world workplace expenses of gas, work clothes and workplace eating. McKenna believes that the average LiveOps worker make $9 an hour, but that this amount is equivalent to earning $16/hour in a job involving the aforementioned expenses.

McKenna believes that work providers are drawn to LiveOps primarily because of its flexibility and capacity to maximize productivity from their workers. Work providers are also able to avoid costs associated with the real-world workplace - office space, setup and takedown time, etc. - LiveOps employers only pay for work when it is actually being done. The flexibility offered by LiveOps allows for work providers to quickly vary the size of their workforce - they do not need to keep a "reserve" of employees that are paid with no work to do in order to handle spikes in workforce needs.

== InnoCentive ==

InnoCentive's [http://www.innocentive.com/ marketplace] is again a step up from LiveOps in terms of complexity of its tasks and skills needed to complete them. InnoCentive's asks its workers to solve minor scientific problems posed by its work suppliers. InnoCentive offers its workers large awards, including awards of $1,000,000 for some solutions. InnoCentive refers to its work providers and workers as "seekers" and "solvers", respectively.

== CrowdFlower ==

[http://crowdflower.com/ CrowdFlower]

= The Difficult Issues =

== Present Day Doctrinal Problem Areas ==

*American Business Law Journal: The Information Revolution and its Impact on the Employment Relationship: An Analysis of the Cyberspace Workplace
**This is a fantastic survey paper on the many issues raised with employment law in combination with cyber-workers.
**This article seems to assume that cyberworkers will still be working in the United States, but this seems like an unrealistic assumption
**Written in 2003, around the time LiveOps launched (2000)
**Citation: 40 AMBLJ 301
**Section II of this article examines how working over the internet blurs/challenges current law about the employee/contractor distinction.
***"Under the right-of-control test, an employee is not an independent contractor if the employer has the ability to control the time, method, and manner of employment"
**Section IV of this article examines how cyber-working affects non-compete agreements and copyright considerations (such as works-for-hire)
***"The Internet exacerbates this tension by raising previously unheard of issues in drafting and enforcing non-compete agreements."
***Work-for-hire: How does UbiComp affect the work-for-hire test established by Creative Non-Violence v. Reid? ( 490 U.S. 730 (1989) )
**Section V - Employment Regulation
***A: The Burlington/Faragher sexual harassment standard is not clear when applied to cyber-workers
****"The Ninth Circuit held that remoteness will not dilute an employee's obligation to report sexual harassment."
***C: Family Medical Leave Act - depends on employee/independent contractor distinction
***D: Workers Compensation
***E: Fair Labor Standards Act
***F: The National Labor Relations Act
***G: The Occupational Safety & Health Act
**Conclusions
***For employee/contractor distinction, "courts must use the existing and long-standing right-of-control test, but apply it with sensitivity to the unique characteristics of Internet-enabled workplaces."
***As courts evolve toward the Zippo sliding scale, they must set some standard of how much contact remote employment creates between the employee's forum state and the employer.
***Agencies need to adopt specific regulation to deal with cyberworkers
***"When regulatory guidance is insufficient, the legislature must act"
****Congress must clarify how unions can organize and communicate in cyberspace in order to protect labor and management rights.

*Case study: Amazon's Mechanical Turk may violate employment/tax laws because the employee-employer relationship is between the requester and the worker [http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-amazon-mechanical-turk-black-market.html]

== Potential Difficult Problems in the Future ==

* What if UbiComp is used for political lobbying?
** In general, any mass movement could be created using UbiComp
* Could employees "outsource" their own work using UbiComp? [http://webchicanery.com/2009/06/20/4-minute-work-week/]
** How can child labor be prevented?

UbiCompBrief

2013-11-12T20:48:49Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

UbiComp

2013-11-12T20:48:49Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Terms of Service Brainstorming

2013-11-12T20:46:48Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Privacy and Anonymity on the Internet

2013-11-12T20:43:52Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Presentation

2013-11-12T20:43:45Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Hello — we are Amanda, Bruno, Franny, Hector and Yosuke of the Cyberlaw: Difficult Problems course. Feedback from people who use and are familiar with Wikipedia/Wikimedia is an extremely important part of formulating our proposed solution, and we thank you for your interest and contributions. We only ask that you direct your comments and input to the other [[Future of Wikipedia]] pages, and allow us to use this Presentation page to create our final class presentation. We look forward to hearing from you!

= [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaADQTeZRCY Professor Wikipedia says …] =
[[Image:Professor.jpg|100px]] [Warning: contains mild profanity.]

= General public view of Wikipedia's biggest problem [Yosuke] =
* we were trying to reach a segment primarily outside of Wikipedia editor community
* common themes in the responses we received
* majority of responses indicated content issues were the biggest problem

[[Image:Mturk01.jpg]]
[[Image:Mturk02.jpg]]
[[Image:Mturk03.jpg]]

[[Image:Mturkpie01.jpg]] [[Image:Mturkpie02.jpg]]

:'''CONTENT:'''
::''1. Too many people are writing/editing the same article.
::''2. Limit the number of people who can work on one article at any given time, and lock down good articles that shouldn't be changed, or only give access to writers/editors that are trusted.

::''1. Some of the information presented is false.
::''2. A suggestion is to make the material go through a process where it is checked by individuals before it is posted.

::''1. A lot of the information is false or inaccurate.
::''2. Have editors that check information before it is published.

::''1. it is not considered a reliable source by educators
::''2. prove that the information is reliable so students will be able to use it for academic reasons

::''1. The biggest problem with Wikipedia is that not all of the information is legitimate. Wikipedia is not a good source for papers and some of the information is false. Anyone can post information there.
::''2. You can solve the problem by having a team collaborate on user's information before it is posted.

::''1. The biggest problem is its trustworthyness. I'm never sure that I can trust the information on wikipeida.
::''2. This can be fixed by being more careful about putting in citations.

::''1. I think Wikipedia's lack of total credibility is its biggest problem. Many entries lack citations verifying the accuracy.
::''2. I think the problem can be solved by finding editors to check the accuracy of the entries made by people.

::''1. I think too many big information on a given topic. Information that is unnecessary for a common man.
::''2. Wikipedia can be made short perhaps a link for "advanced reading" given seperately and only the basic information in the main page.

::''1. The grammar and sentence structure is often wrong or confusing.
::''2. Use grammar check and make people edit the texts.

::''1. The biggest problem is some of it is more opinion than fact.
::''2. A way to solve this is just to have the writer mention facts, and not on opinion or speculation.

::''1: The biggest problem is that most of the articles lack references and professionalism.
::''2: One solution is not to allow just any user to edit or create an article with providing good and "quality" references first, and then having a professional to look over the article and make sure it meets high quality standards before being published.

::''1. I think the biggest problem with the current Wikipedia is that quite a few things, such as medical terms or conditions, are either not even listed or only have a very, very basic explanation.
::''2. I think you can solve those problems by working on collecting & posting more detailed information about topics you only have a brief description of or that there is currently no information about on the site.

::''1. non expert opinion of explanation about subjects which looks like an expert explanation.
::''2. just do a simple test before letting people to post articals

::''1. I believe there is some inconsistency in the correct knowledge about topics.
::''2. This could be changed by having more experts on topics reviewing the information before it is posted.

::''1. I think the biggest problem is that anybody can submit information, and there is no real way to verify if the information is even correct or not.
::''2. Wikipedia needs to start really investigating who is submitting information and makes sure that correct information isn't tampered with.

::''1. In many articles recent updations are not clear in wiki.Sometimes wrong informations are given or outdated informations.
::''2. Make a team for checking the article ,they can create updations if needed.

::''1. Not peer reviewed.
::''2. Have professionals review articles before posted.

::''1. Extreme left wing bias, as well as failure to monitor those who have extreme bias. The Climategate scientist who edited hundreds of articles in Wikipedia and wiped out all mention of the Medieval Warm Period and anything that included discussion of other causes of global warming (such as solar activity or continuation of human deforestation as agriculture advanced) were removed.
::''2. Allow those who report slander and abuse to have the editor's changes removed. Allow those who have credentials in their field to have a higher value in their edits than general off the street users.

::''1. People write things that aren't correct or accurate on Wikipedia.
::''2. To solve the problem, Wikipedia can hire professionals to verify all information posted on Wikipedia.

::''1. Unverified informatioin.
::''2. Require the production of the reference to support the information's accuracy.

::''1. There is no standard level education or research ability to those who edit it.
::''2. Allow only those who can provide necessary abilities and pass tests and reviews by wikipedia standards.

::''1: GIVING THE UNWANTED MORE INFORMATION TRY TO REDUCE THE INFORMATION
::''2: SHORT THE STORIES INTO THE IMPORTANT LINES ONLY WHICH CAN HELPS US TO SEE THE MAIN POINTS

::''1. The biggest problem with Wikipedia is also its greatest strength - its inclusivity in that anyone can amend add information. A lot of people think that, therefore, the information on the site may not necessarily be accurate, and may even be deliberately misleading. For example : dates of death given for people who are still alive.
::''2. All information should be centrally vetted for accurate content. This should be highly publicized.

::''1. The length of the content, the huge history sections and irrelevant information.
::''2. Cut back on the history and the unneeded text sections, paraphrase.

::''1. Wikipedia describes every concept in a detailed manner; sometimes it is so deep that is confusing to layman.
::''2. This problem could be solved by adding pictorial representation of the data and also by using simple words and sentences.

::''1. Not articles on every person subject
::''2. Not everyone will write articles. Let people suggest articles that should be added, then hire people to write articles on the suggested subjects.

::''1. Anyone can edit the information so the content is unreliable.
::''2. Have a screening procedure by which people have to sign up, state credentials and a method of verifying them and be given a password in order to change or add information.

::''1. Wikipedia lacks in depth articles. Only the basics are available in many cases.
::''2. Could you link it with Google search's database somehow to get the specific result ?

::''1. Incorrect information
::''2. Restrict editing to qualified professionals in that field

::''1. The biggest problem of current Wikipedia is the absence of the staff. There are no persons from Wikipedia that have to verify authenticity of articles and correct misspellings. Wikipedia is a community-based website and that is not great.
::''2. You can solve the problem by hiring a couple of persons that can verify and correct the articles before they are stated on Wikipedia.

::''1. The biggest problem is that you can't confirm the information on there is true.
::''2. Things need to get approved and there needs to be constraints as to who can post

::''1. Whichever page you open , you have and "edit this page" and then "save this edited page" . If required anyone can edit it which can be used for actual editing the contents or otherwise prank.
::''2. I would want "edit this page" and contents to be saved in the page be given to a proper Moderator who can change the details in Wikipedia rather than allowing one and all without any proper control.

::''1. False information here and there.
::''2. Not much else you can do than increase moderation.

::''1. The fact that one still can never be completely sure if the information is correct or unbiased.
::''2. Hire historians, unbiased group to proof everything

::''1. Wikipedia has user edited information, which can sometimes lead to false information in an article. Wiki does check people's work but it may take some time before false information is removed.
::''2. To solve this problem, Wiki should have users go through a screening process before being allowed to add/edit an article.

::''1. Too little information is the problem
::''2. Provide more information on certain topics that have little information will make a huge difference

::''1. I THINK THAT WHEN IAM SEARCHING SOMETHING WIKIPEDIA DO NOT GIVES THE ORIGINAL DATA RELATING TO TOPIC
::''2. U CAN SOLV T THROUGH A BRIEF SURVEY AND STUDY ABT THE PROBLEM

::''1. Some articles seem biased
::''2. More oversight before changes are added/submitted

::''1. I think that it is extremely important to solve the problem of accuracy within the articles. This leads to Wikipedia not being a permissible source for any academic purposes.
::''2. There should be a kind of IQ test before editing is allowed. In fact, limiting editing to registered users only would be a huge step in the right direction! Good luck!

::''1. N/A
::''2. need to edit people postings information whether its is 100% real or not.

::''1. Infromation is too accurate. Sometimes only opinion of the writer is represneted. Some dates, facts may be fake.
::''2. Represent neuteral opinion. Correspond regrading dates/facts to paperback encyclopedias, they are more accurate.

::''1. the information shown in wikipedia for some particular data may not be true.that is there are false information.
::''2. it can be solved by studying more about those and putting the right information

::''1. I think the biggest problem with Wikipedia is a lot of people don't trust the validity of the answers found there.
::''2. In order to solve this problem you need to have accredited sources that provide the answers to the questions asked on the site.

::''1. The content was not updated.
::''2. Please review at least 1 month.

::''1. The biggest problem is accuracy of articles. Who knows what is fact and what is opinion.
::''2. Solving the problem can be partially done by stating Wikipedia does not guaranty the accuracy of an article.

::''1. The realiability of the information is still not where it needs to be. I have found that the information that can be found in Wikipedia is usually fairly reliable, however the website does have a reputation for having things that are not entirely true or correct.
::''2. I feel this can be solved is there are more articles on Wikipedia that are certified by professionals in the area or subject and that can vouch for the truthfulness of the information provided.

::''1. I think the biggest problem with Wikipedia is the fact that they don't have a link available on major sites such as google or yahoo.com. Therefore, making people are less likely to use it.
::''2. We can solve that problem by providing a link to Wikipedia on sites such as yahoo, google, msn, and maybe even on facebook. The website of Wikipedia itself is excellent and very useful to everyday life. They should just make it easier to access it.

::''1. Readability.
::''2. Hire people like me to implement ABC's, accuracy, brevity and clarity!

::''1. The information given isn't always accurate. I am a college student and as a rule we are banned from using Wikipedia as a source for our papers.
::''2. The problem can be solved by ensuring that the information is correct.

::''1. Sometimes the stubs have no information
::''2. request that the stubs actually have at least a link to a site or something

:'''VANDALISM AND ATTRIBUTION:'''
::''1. The biggest problem is people can use anonymity to vandalize Wikipedia in both blatant and sneaky ways.
::''2. The best way to solve the problem is to ban anonymous edits and require a verified email address. This preserves the fundamental principle of allowing anyone to edit because anyone can get a free yahoo or hotmail account and use it to register. But it will deter a lot of the vandalism because signing up for a free email account and then registering a Wiki account is more trouble than it's worth if your intent is to vandalize (and get banned quickly). But if you want to make legitimate contributions, going through the process one time is only a minor inconvenience.

::''1. People vandalising pages or putting unsourced information.
::''2. Only allowing trusted members to add content or edit information on wikipedia's pages

::''1. The ability for someone on a local computer to mess around and change words on the site.
::''2. Make the user register to post comments instead of just letting them post it. As for as myself concerned Wikipedia is on the right path and if somebody feels any hardship it will gradually be eliminated.

::''1. Sometimes you cannot trust the person who gives the information it provides.
::''2. The solution here is to have a background of the person who gave the information in Wikipedia.

::''1. People putting in information that is not correct, when they know it's not correct, but because they think it's funny/amusing.
::''2. Require information be checked by a second person before it's put into an article.

::''1. The biggest problem with Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it.
::''2. I think that those who edit the information on the site should have some sort of qualification and it should be subject to review before being displayed.

::''1. Wikipedia is open to have their definitions being changed and there have been charges that some of the definitions have been hacked and manipulated by people that want to have their version of an event validated on Wikipedia.
::''2. The solution might be to have a review panel to look over disputed items or complaints to see if the definition is valid.

::''1. Too much vandalism and unreliability of information.
::''2. Allow only registered members to edit/create pages. Make sure those registered members are confirmed through CAPTCHA, email, etc. And have more experienced moderators assigned to different categories to check page edits.

::''1. The biggest problem is that anyone can post whatever they want to the pages.
::''2. Have some way to fact-check the information before it is posted to the pages would solve the problem.

::''1. We are never sure the information are accurate.
::''2. Let members of Wikipedia Vote for article's accuracy and display on site the result out 100% (with number of votes).

::''1. There is no real control of who or what is posted.
::''2. There needs to be a "review" standard before items are published. I love to use wilipedia.

::''1. Malicious editing / reversions.
::''2. Require approval for edits e.g. at least 3 people should agree.

::''1. People can input incorrect information.
::''2. Have a review process before info is accepted

::''1. The major points of criticism of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, are the claims that the principle of being open for editing by everyone makes Wikipedia unauthoritative and unreliable (see Reliability of Wikipedia), that it exhibits systemic bias, and that its group dynamics hinder its goals.
::''2. There are quires, reams, bales of controversy over what constitutes notability in Wikipedia. somebody will sort it out.

::''1. The biggest problem is that any one can post information on a a subject that's not totally accurate or totally false information.
::''2. Needs a authenticate the information that was put on Wikipedia. Example a professional or some one that can do this.

::''1. There's no way to guarantee if the information is correct.
::''2. Have more reliable sources.

::''1. Quality control. While some entries are great, quality varies widely. Some articles are written by experts in the area, and while this is great, they're understood only by other experts. Then there are the articles that get vandalized constantly.
::''2. Assign admins specifically to different topics. This also means that they can concentrate on one area that they enjoy instead of worrying about the whole wiki.

::''1. The fact that information can be edited to easily.
::''2. Tighter security restrictions on who can edit/add what

::''1. There is too much information of questionable veracity.
::''2. Check the credentials of people posting/editing articles.

::''1. People vandalizing the articles, i.e chancing numbers presented in statistics and facts on various pages
::''2. Each revision should be voted on and checked by others before being shown to the public

::''1. That any one can change anything.
::''2. Have a stricter set of guidelines on who can edit what.

::''1. The biggest issue with Wikipedia is that anyone can edit the information.
::''2. I believe you could allow only people that work for the company or professors from colleges with proof of their work to be able to edit the pages. That way people wont go on and change things just to be funny.

:'''SEARCH AND TECHNICAL INFRASTRUCTURE:'''
::''1. The biggest problem with Wikipedia is not being able to find the meanings to an given subject.
::''2. The solution is to make details more simpler for others to understand so that it will be easier for users to find the answers that they are seeking.

::''1. The main problem is answers are scattered.
::''2. By ordering it we can solve it.

::''1. Using javascript (extensions/UsabilityInitiative/*) causes certain browsers (Mozilla 1.7) to crash.
::''2. Re-write scripts so that they work.

::''1. in my point of view all the answers given by the Wikipedia is perfect. but the arrangement of all answers is not attractive.
::''2. for avoid this problem please make some attraction back round and tabulation usage also must. thank you.

::''1. if we try to search anything in wikipedia means its taking much longer time to load the page than othersites.
::''2. you can increase the bandwidth of the site,thus making it a fast one

::''1. The problem is we need seperate search Engine for all fields.
::''2. plz create an search Engine about all the fields.

::''1: In terms of search pages, if doesn`t find any match it is not even bringing any related topics to its users.
::''2: In cases of not finding any match for search result, it can atleast mention linked search result thru someother search websites.

::''1. PAGE LOADING TAKING LOT OF TIME IN WIKIPEDIA when compared to Google.
::''2. Please make the site in such a way that page loads quickly

::''1. The loading time are too long in some busy time such as 7-10 PM
::''2. I am not sure is the problem appear due to the network company or the Wikipedia. if the problem due to the Wikipedia's system, i think it should improve that problem to build a new system which have better quality system.

::''1. It loads slow. Wherever I have been around the world wikipedia always shows up near the top in search results but I avoid it because it's slow.
::''2. Use all that money that was recently collected and buy more capacity for the site.

::''1. There are too many results, and some of them are not matched with the actual search results. for eg -- zuerich = zurich.
::''2. A proper keywords search should be used, that matches word to word.

:'''GOVERNANCE:'''
::''1. Wikilawyering is the most frustrating part of working on Wikipedia. A casual user like me is easily intimated when more experienced members invoke seemingly obscure Wikipedia policies.
::''2. Simplify and reduce the number of Wikipedia policy pages.

:'''USER INTERFACE / WEBDESIGN:'''
::''1. Color of the website is boring.
::''2. changing the layout is the only solution

::''1. It needs more color.
::''2. Having a new logo might help this problem.

:'''MISCELLANEOUS:'''
::''1. Funding
::''2. Offer a premium upgrade with fuller content, additional resources (eb.com, hoovers.com, amazon.com, bankrate.com, *.edu, *.gov, *.org), integrated video with real-time RSS and twitter feeds. Set the price at something low to entice those who want the upgrade as easy as saying "yes". I recommend no more than $1.99/month * 1,000,000 users the first month = $1,990,000. This would alleviate Jimmy from having to beg 3 times a year for help and would immensely improve the quality of the information. mechturk@ymail.com

::''1. I feel there is no problem in the current wikipedia. Everything is fine and we get solution for everything for everything from Wiki.
::''2. Its better give a link on everypage of wiki for a feedback, that makes to improve the wiki better.

::''1. the big problem about wikipedia is that there is no mailing and chat options with the people who have submitted notes. we people sometimes have problem with notes, so we want to solve our problem. the second problem of wikipedia is that the grammar and words are not simple so only US and UK people can easily understand because its their own language. but its somewhat hard for other language people to understand it.
::''2. so make grammar and words simple for people to understand.

:'''OUTTAKES:''' [[Image:clapperboard.jpg]]
::''1. There aren't pictures of enough marvel comics characters.
::''2. Put more pictures up.

::''1. Global warming is the biggest problem of current Wikipedia.
::''2. It can be solve by growing more trees

::''1. I could not find any problem on Wikipedia. Many times, i am read Wikipedia frequently.
::''2. N/A

::''1. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Wikipedia! Please donot try to "fix" something that is not broken!!!
::''2. N/A

::''1. The current Wikipedia has nothing wrong with it. Wikipedia doesn't have problems to solve.
::''2. N/A

::''1. I think there is no problem in the current Wikipedia. It is a very good source of information.
::''2. N/A

::''1. I think Wikipedia is perfect.
::''2. N/A

= Analysis of other problems considered [Hector] =

== Introduction ==
It might border on banality for us to repeat many of the important criticisms of Wikipedia (and indeed some of the less important criticisms). Nevertheless, we here try to sketch out areas of concern, and in some parts, our rationale for not so pursuing. Several sources provided us with different categories and examples of Wikipedia's criticisms: JZ's book, Wikimedia's [http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Usability Initiative], Wikipedia's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump Village Pump], the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines Policies and guidelines] (which implicitly draw attention to the small and large frictions that can develop within the community), and the enthusiastic critique from commentary such as the [http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=28144 Wikipedia Review].

== Picking Our Battles ==
=== On God-Kings and Governance ===
Problems along this vein include:
*The odd status and power of [http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2008/03/jimbobling.jpg Jimbo Wales], a "God-king who may or may not be able to act unilaterally" (JZ 141)
*The reliance on consensus, not on democracy
*The curious nature of a ''highly'' developed collaborative project, which has very wonderfully developed a governance structure and a form of constitutionalism. The level of development, however, can be a hindrance to reform, given the Wikipedians' strong devotion to the project and once more the need for consensus.
For purposes of the project, our group decided that we weren't about to kick out Jimmy, and the Wikipedians themselves as well as other media do a decent job at pointing out his previous [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_wales#Controversy controversies]. Furthermore, the open and consensus-based nature of the Wikipedia project has resulted in very strong and thoughtful (though at times idiosyncratic) arrangements such as the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars Five Pillars] that guide the activity of the encyclopedia.
How can we ride on the strengths of such internal machinery while injecting new sources of strength? We believe that the strength, vibrancy, and growth of the Wikipedia community could bring new avenues of improvement.

=== Contradictory Missions? ===
This broad, rather generative project was kick-started with an outrageous idea and clever, new (for 2001) web-publishing software. Other than a few key initial nudges (as well as the code behind the structure), the community was left to fill in the gaps on its own. Some of the resulting kinks include:
*The Inclusionism vs. Deletionism debate
*An interpretation of the banner project as an attempt to compile An Online Encyclopedia or The Sum of All Human Knowledge
*The stark differences in the vision and execution in the different language Wikipedias. (Compare the English and German sites)
Much has been written regarding the inclusionism/deletionism debate, from the popular media to the depths of obscure Wikipedia discussion pages. As strongly as some of us (Hector) may feel one way or the other (why exclude valuable information about minor Star Wars characters?!) about the matter, adding another voice to the shouting match would probably not settle most of the disagreements.

=== Quality===
Our visiting friends from the Wikipedia Review were quite keen to correctly point out the differences between '''perceived''' and '''actual''' accuracy within Wikipedia. And indeed, different challenges are at hand in allaying the different concerns of different readers, who might be using Wikipedia to
*study for a med school exam,
*learn more about their Senator,
*write a 6th grade history paper, or
*write an Associated Press fluff piece about quality concerns in Wikipedia.
Currently, the most powerful tool in Wikipedia's arsenal against vandalism and inaccuracy is its editing base and the large number of eyeballs the community provides. Once again, the health and growth of the Wikipedia community are vital factors, as are the current policies regarding sources, references, and neutrality. We think that good solutions can tap into the project's very strengths here.

=== Issues in Education ===
When schools and colleges express concern over their students using or possibly misusing Wikipedia in their academic work, Wikipedia's own response has generally taken the mildly surprising form of acknowledging its limitations and underlining its proper use as a tertiary source. Even so, this tertiary source is one that dominates many a student's initial research paths and quite often ends up being the only source consulted. [http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf_Project See Bookshelf Project]

Another manner of addressing this problem can be to engage the students to collaborate with the Wikipedia project themselves. In doing so, they might learn more about an assigned topic (given the increasingly stringent requirements of relevance and citation within Wikipedia), learn more about collaborative projects more generally (with the rules, benefits, and pratfalls of such a subculture), all the while helping with Wikipedia's overall aims of further compiling human knowledge.

Various articles and even Wikipedia pages document how others have scratched at this possibility. While our own group's proposal is not directly about classroom participation in the Wikipedia community, we think that our concerns with streamlining certain forms of community participation could easily be ported towards more specific pedagogical implementations.

=== Identity and Growth of the Contributing Community ===
*Wikipedia could be considered both an encyclopedia and a movement
*Some have brought attention to rates of editorship
*Wikimedia wrestles with the question of membership in the Community
*What distinguishes a user from being a reader, casual editor, or experienced editor?
==== Barriers to Entry====
*What are some of the (many) reasons that a new user can be discouraged from editing?
*Note the Wikipedia Community's own [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NEWBIES concerns], comprehensively addressing ways to make the newbies feel more welcome.
==== Financial Sustainability====
*We are punting this to Bridgespan

== Honing In ==
=== Interaction with the Community-Centric Nature of Wikipedia ===
* As it stands, Wikipedia does have a constitution, albeit a bit more like England's constitution
* What improvements could be consistent with Wikipedia's strengths, while providing forward-thinking alternatives?
* A choice to work within the hilarious environment that is a consensus-driven open collaboration
=== Regarding Deliverability ===
* Considering the reams of electronic text that have been written on the topic, we decided that a simple, ''actually'' implementable solution might fare better
* Wikipedia is quite open and quite dynamic. But one does get a sense that the experienced editors rule, with added clout stemming from knowing the levers and style of the community.
* Can we suggest a perspective or solution that can dovetail with the aims of the present ''and future'' Wikipedia community?

= Wikimedia and Bridgespan's initiatives [Franny] =
== ''Wikimedia Usability Initiative'' - the studies ==
[[image:Usability.jpeg|150px]]
:[http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience_Study Usability and Experience Study]
:[http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability,_Experience,_and_Progress_Study Progress Study]

== Overview of Bridgespan involvement with Wikipedia ==
[[image:Bridgespan.jpeg|300px]]

- [[Image:Wikistrategy.jpg|200px]] initiative
- approaches and perspective on wikipedia and its problems
:- think of Wikipedia as a movement in addition to a non-profit organization under the direction of a board
:- [http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Emerging_strategic_priorities emerging strategic priorities]
- grassroots efforts and duplicative smaller initiatives are helpful; efficiency is not main concern

== Our preliminary analysis ==
:Key problems:
::1. Quality and reliability of content (e.g. factual errors on Wikipedia lowers the reliability and credibility of its content)
::2. Wikipedia's editor base is decreasing (existing editors are losing interest and it is difficult to recruit new editors)
:::* Deals with issues of:
::::- community
::::- motivations
::::- outreach and public relations
:* Must reach out to user base outside of Wikipedia's community; How does that user base perceive Wikipedia and its problems?
:* What demographic are we reaching out to? how will we reach that demographic?
:* Utilizing crowdsourcing techniques to highlight factual inaccuracies? How can we harness [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/Talk:Future_of_Wikipedia voluntary contributory energies]?
:* Organization and filtering techniques will make it easier to match factual inaccuracies with editors (new or existing) willing and able to make corrections

= Proposed Solutions =
== FireFox browser extension [Amanda] ==

'''PRODUCT SPEC:'''

Wikipedia Educational Browser Extension
[http://www.slideshare.net/amandapey/wikipedia-group Browser Spec Images]

'''WRITTEN DESCRIPTION:'''

This browser extension serves many purposes: first, it is meant to facilitate the identification of factual errors within Wikipedia by creating a user-friendly way to catalog the errors using Wikipedia's taxonomy - which you can find under the open task bar in this link <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_portal>, second, it provides an inroad for new potential editors to interact with the site through micro-contributions and build familiarity with Wikipedia process, third it teaches users to do not completely rely on the text he/she is reading and to point him/her to which areas need contribution [?], fourth, it would also work as a way to bring the discussion page to the surface, teaching them to "discuss before editing".

What to Build (Description) â please forgive the non-technical nature of this spec. We are happy to provide additional information including more views if needed.

After the user installs the plugin, there should be a logo in the bottom right corner of the browser and an entry added to the âtoolsâ bar of the browser.

We imagine the interaction as follows:

When the user spots an error, he or she can click on our logo in the corner of the browser or click the entry in the Tools menu and a small window will pop up from the bottom of the browser (see below image for basic window design). Then, he or she would highlight the text that contains what the users suspects to be an error. The text would be auto-pasted into the text box. Then the user can add commentary and additional references. After the user adds commentary on the error and clicks submit the two text fields will be sent to two places â our database and a landing page where the accuracy flags will be delivered in real-time.

Moreover, the script would allow the user to see, if he/she desires which areas of the text are highly controversial and had many people commenting on them. This would be made by attributing hotter colors to more disputed/commented paragraphs and lighter colors to the others. This functionality is inspired by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stet_%28software%29 this tool] developed for the purpose of revising the GPL licenses.

The text should disappear from the two boxes and instead be replaced by a popup dialog box that says âthank you for your contribution.â

== Implementation - First steps ==
:1. Name application
:2. Reach out to Mozilla community to build proposed FireFox application extension.
:3. Work with Wikimedia/Bridgespan to incorporate landing page and application with Wikipedia.

== Suggestions from Mozilla community [Bruno] ==

*Use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stet_%28software%29 Stet] to highlight controverted parts of the text
**[http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gplv3-draft-4.html#gpl3.verbatimcopying.0.0 Example of this tool]
*Advantages:
**raise awareness of controversies in each article;
**bring the discussion page to the surface making the user more acquainted with the idea of reading that information critically
*Problems:
**How to integrate past discussions in the software database?
**How to get people to use the tool?

= Other solutions we considered [Bruno] =
==Beta Versions==
Inspired by the open source community production system of decentralized production and semi-centralized control over the final product, we came up with the idea of bringing the concept of "beta versions" to the Wikipedia production model. Accordingly, the same way that a software needs to be stable enough and free from bugs before being released to the public, each article would be subject to a process of review and comments before going live. Top editors would have a partial final word over each of the final versions of a page and would decide when the page would be sufficiently stable to go live. This process does not need to be implemented all over Wikipedia, but at least on more controversial articles. This change would allow Wikipedia to substantially reduce vandalism and to improve accuracy of its articles. Moreover, it would allow to better educate newbies about the practice of discussing a change, before making the edit in the article.

The disadvantages of such system would be to create a bottleneck in the production system that could make the website less dynamic and responsive to new events. This could be compensated by increasing the number of the top editors responsible for the review process. One could raise the concern of whether this would only create

Wikipedia has been discussing this idea in the context of biographies of living persons and there's much controversy whether such approach would be the best one. We believe that it is possible to find the right balance in the spectrum of control and anarchy that would allow for a more efficient and reliable production system.

==Campaign to encourage users to "donate" edits==
===Objectives===
*Convert users into editors
*Focus on underdeveloped articles that could be identified with the tool described above
*Introduce newbies to Wikipedia's writing style and rules

In order to address the problem of how to motivate new editors to participate in Wikipedia, we came up with the idea of creating an annual editing campaign. The inspiration for this idea was the recent successful fundraising campaign promoted by Wikipedia. We believe that by concentrating efforts on a limited period of time on getting people to do their first edits we can turn them into more frequent editors. The fundraising campaign has shown that users not only have a desire to support Wikipedia, but also that when a goal and a time frame is established people seem to feel more compelled to help achieve it.

Goals can be established according to specific needs of the encyclopedia during each year and various metrics can be adopted to assess them. In addition to this, it would be helpful to suggest specific tasks for newcomers. This would make it possible to direct efforts towards weak areas of Wikipedia instead of having new editors wasting time on well developed articles.

==Strengthening relationship and partnering with secondary school systems (Franny)==
*Plugging in landing page to school system
*Lesson plan

= Discussion Questions =
1) How do we keep this tool from being an invitation to massively and scrupulously edit only topics like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_swift Taylor Swift] article?

2) What should we name our application?
:* Wiki Peer Review
:* WikiNation; WikiWorld
:* Our Wikipedia
:* Wikipedia For Life (W4L)
:* Wikipedia Wizard

3) Compare the average discussion happening in a Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Taylor_Swift talk page] and one happening on a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb-K2tXWK4w Youtube video]. Which one is better?

4) Might it be worthwhile to be able to click on a piece of a wikipedia page and find out who added/edited it? (Craig also suggested that a reputation system might be worthwhile)
: for example, [http://wikitrust.collaborativetrust.com/screenshots screenshots from WikiTrust]
: for an example of a "reputation of edit" issue on Wikipedia, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzoli's mzoli] (a page added by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales Jimbo Wales])

5) What about a pop-up, after someone has been for a while in Wikipedia, asking for help? A sufficiently user-friendly mechanism could nudge the user into disclosing her/his areas of expertise, and then show stub pages or redlinks accordingly.

6) Journalism Schools are going through a major transformation as their profession is currently being brought into question itself. For example, Columbia School of Journalism recently invested in the Tow Center to focus on Digital Journalism. [http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/cs/ContentServer/jrn/1165270052298/JRN_News_C/1212612063557/JRNNewsDetail.htm See Tow Center]. That stated, in addition to Frannie's point about incorporating your platform into a school requirement - I wonder what about approaching Journalism schools. This really would be a great way to get free labor from the professionals that share almost all of Wikipedia's most fundamental goals - especially its 4 pillars.

Main Page

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Global Network Initiative

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GNI

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Future of Wikipedia

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Experiences in Crowd Sourcing

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== Mechanical Turk ==

=== Daniel Arbix ===

I have signed up to Mechanical Turk as a Brazilian citizen (not all HIT opportunities were available, then). I have tried to explore different tasks to check the diversity the platform offers for workers. There are some amusing tasks to be performed, but most â against the websiteâs Participation Terms â, are boring schemes to distort internet advertisement payments or to gather active e-mails (for spam or worse, I presume). There are also numerous HITs which demand fake reviews of products and websites, or which require âturksâ to show support to social-networking profiles or events, and even to write posts in blogs making compliments to the blog ownerâs clever analyses. In the end of the day, it took me four hours to work on eight HITs and make $5.50. A short summary of my experiences follows.

''1st try'': bad page design, no $
I saw a task as available, was able to follow the instructions and actually perform it on a third party website, but then I realized that the event that would trigger a confirmation number required for my payment had already expired, so of course no payment was made to my account. This was the first contact I had with HITs designed to redirect traffic to earn advertisement revenues (it was described as âa test for page load time, very easy, for USD 2.00â).

''2nd try'': the second HIT I tried had the following misleading instructions:
* "This HIT is an easy to complete 'sign up' assignment. It shouldn't take you longer than 2 minutes to complete. Many thanks for your time! Simply go to: http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=633&id=93282 Sign up. Then send a print screen of your confirmation email to: mark.studentearnings@gmail.com and write your username and approximate time of sign up in the box below"
The site redirected me to http://www.offersclick.co.uk/offers/SiteRender.aspx?SiteID=501&ThemeID=21&q14259=AFW&q26274=93282 Again, it seems like arbitrage of internet advertisement revenuesâ¦
It was impossible to complete the task within the assigned time â the form-filling advertisements website took too much to load â, so I returned the HIT (and received no $, in spite of losing a lot of time)

''3rd try'': the HIT had the following description:
* "Complete free online quote form. MUST BE 18 OR OLDER AND LIVE IN USA TO COMPLETE THIS HIT Visit Site - Enter Name and Email - Takes less than a minute. IMPORTANT: Eligible only to those who have not yet signed up to this offer. Please don't use disposable e-mails as well. Let's keep this site honest. INSTRUCTION: 1) To get started, visit this website: http://www.aislezone.com/mturk-offer02.php 2) Select make, model and enter zip code. Click "get quotes" 3) Complete the form and click on "get free dealer quotes" REQUIRED PROOF: On activation confirmation copy/paste or type full text to the box below starting with : "Sent!..." "
The time-description was fair, and I received payment after two days. I also (stupidly) provided my real Stanford e-mail, with the result of getting my mailbox now filled by car dealers messages. Again, the HIT seems like arbitrage of internet advertisement revenues.

''4th try'': the HIT had the following description:
* "Data Collection-Google Results Reward: $1.25 per HIT Insert address, perform google searches and indicate first result"
This HIT was an honest one, requiring a verification of search results (Google), all related to the same company. Time description was fair, and my $ arrived a day later.

''5th try'': the HIT had the following description:
* "Rate faces of candidates running for office. Usually takes less than 5 minutes. You can find the survey here: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/207922/faces3 At the end of the survey, you'll find a code. To get paid, please enter the code below:"
This was a fun, quick HIT. It had a fair time description, and payment was received after a day. I was, however, a terrible subject for the MIT social psychology survey, since most pictures to be rated are of Brazilian politiciansâ¦

=== Jason Harrow ===

It all started out so promisingly. Before I even started, I was excited because "Mechanical Turk" is such a great name. What did it mean? What was mechanical about it? And who or what is the âTurkâ in the transaction? Then, in the back of my mind: isnât that somehow vaguely racist?

Wikipedia would know what a Mechanical Turk is, of course. So I searched for it, and I immediately found my answer. The Mechanical Turk was a chess playing âmachineâ that, âfrom 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 . . . was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was explained in the early 1820s as an elaborate hoax.â Something thought to be a form of artificial intelligence later explained to be just a smart guy in a box? How cool is that? Could there be a more perfect name for this service? I made a mental note that if I am ever in the position to pick a name for an Internet company or service, I will find out who chose "Mechanical Turk" and consult him or her. I couldnât have been more excited to get started.

I logged in with my Amazon ID and created my Amazon payment account. Unlike Daniel (above), I am a US citizen; also unlike Daniel, I chose to go first for a little assignment that paid $.02 per HIT. My task was to go to the website of a given educational institution, type in when the spring semester 2010 started, and give the URL of the Academic Calendar page confirming this. I did one successfully and submitted it. It took about 90 seconds. Easiest job of my life. Bring on a few more.

The next one took longer and bore no fruit, though: the little Midwestern barbershop college that was assigned to me didnât display when their spring semester started (side thought: do barbershop colleges even have spring semesters?). That was frustrating; all that effort, and no shiny pennies at the end of the rainbow. And why in the world does this guy â Aaron Smyth, whoever that is â even want to include barbershop colleges in his survey? What could he possibly be doing with that data? I pressed on and did a few more start dates before trying to find something else. It got boring pretty quickly, and I realized that 2 cents wasnât really worth it beyond the initial thrill of it all.

Like Daniel, I then encountered what later became obvious as a scam: someone who said theyâd pay me money for signing up, but the time given was too fast and there was no way to actually verify that I completed the task in the way they said I needed to. This made me angry. How in the world does Amazon â one of my favorite companies on the planet, by the way â let them get away with this? I reported the bastards, but I donât know what happened to that complaint. A few days later, Mechanical Turk still seems littered with these scams. Thatâs disappointing.

I turned to a final HIT, what seemed like just an individual who wanted me to go to his website and post any kind of comment, just for the sake of getting more hits. Seemed a little shady, but I gave it a try and duly posted a comment. Days later, I got the bad news: rejected! I wouldnât be getting the shiny nickel I was promised. Hey Amazon: how is that allowed?

I was once so excited by the great name and the prospect of making easy money, but I'm now deeply disappointed with both the requesters and with Amazon. Why did all the posters seem so scammy? Why aren't there any tasks that seem interesting and worthwhile? And how does Amazon let the requesters get away with this? I felt somehow betrayed by an Internet company that I feel oddly loyal to; it was as if HBO launched a new channel that turned out to be entirely infomercials. Get your act together, Mr. Bezos!

I logged into my account a few days later. The final tally was 8 HITs accepted; 4 submitted; 1 returned; 3 abandoned; 3 approved; 1 rejected; and, in the end, 6 measly American cents earned. I wish that the original chess-playing Mechanical Turk hadnât been destroyed in 1854. That Mechanical Turk might have been a sight to see. This one isnât.

=== Lien Ceulemans ===

After all the Christmas presents I had to buy for my family, I thought that a good way to earn some money (while doing my homework) was to volunteer as a mechanical turk.
A Google search brought me to the Amazon mechanical turk website (https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome).

Before starting, I first had to create a payment account and accept the 6 pages long âAmazon Mechanical Turk Participation Agreementâ, thereby exclusively granting my intellectual property rights to the âRequesterâ. Furthermore, this agreement informed me that, as a mechanical turk, I would perform a âwork for hireâ âand would ânot be entitled [â¦] to any vacation pay, sick leave, insurance programs, including group health insurance or retirement benefits; or [â¦] worker's compensation benefits in the event of injury.â

Amazon describes its platform as âa marketplace for work that requires human intelligenceâ There is indeed no sign of a worldwide crisis, as 306,354 âHuman Intelligence Tasksâ or âHITâsâ were available.

I started with an easy, quite boring assignment that would pay me 0.05 dollar for each correct hit: âFind the Website Address for a Restaurant and its Menuâ. Since at that time, my âvalueâ was still rated at 100, I met the qualification requirement. While the website of âMerlo La Trattoriaâ in Chicago is quite easy to find, I ran into difficulties after a few hits. The address of the âBrazil steakâ house was only indicated in Chinese characters in the assignment, so I got completely lost at Google. It was time for another challengeâ¦

For my next HIT, I had to âwrite a short answer about carsâ of 50 to 60 words. Since I do not know anything about cars, this seemed the perfect HIT to test the reliability of the mechanical turk platform. To my best knowledge, I answered the question âHow do I clean a mass air flow sensor on my Mercury?â as follows: âThis is very easy to clean. You just take some water and soap that smells delicious and pour the water into the mass air flow sensor. If it is still not clean enough, repeat this process for a couple of times. You will see that your mass air flow sensor will look brand new again.â Although the HIT explanation mentioned that no qualification was required, after performing the hit, my answer was âsubmitted to conjecture corporation and [would] be approved or rejected shortly.â A few hours later, I received a âQualification Request Rejection Notificationâ email âfor Amazon Mechanical Turk. Despite I failed the test question, I did receive the 0.03 dollar reward for participating in this HIT.

After this, I decided to find a HIT which was more related to my field of knowledge. For different law schools, I needed to find the final fall application deadline for 2010 and the URL of website where I found the information. There were still 53 HITS available with a reward of 0.05 dollar each. Although the HIT information indicated that each HIT would take me around 10 minutes, I managed to complete a single HIT in about 4 minutes. This would thus result in an hourly wage of 0.75 dollar. Taking into account both the operating costs (e.g. electricity, internet, etc.) and the opportunity costs involved, I wonder who - besides âDifficult Problems in Cyberlawâ students - is willing to be a mechanical turk.

Although I got very bored, I tried to perform another HIT that required me to find the date, parties and subject of so-called âtop secret letters of the US war departmentâ. While this sounds as a very exciting and interesting assignment, in reality, trying to analyze unreadable pdfâs was not that fun. I decided to give it a last try, but had a hard time to find any attractive assignment. In the end, I participated in a research of the UNC Charlotte Human Computer Interaction Lab that does research in policy making decisions for social applications. After giving my âInformed Consent for Social Application Decision Makingâ, I had to indicate whether (i) I would or would not accept a certain Facebook application and (ii) share information of my Facebook friends with this application. Although this was not really interesting, this HIT gave me at least a good feeling as I contributed to university research. This was perfect to end my life as a mechanical turk.

Today (i.e. 5 days after submitted more than 20 hits), my Amazon Payment Account indicates that the approval of my submitted HITâs is still pending. This means that so far, I only earned 0.03 dollars for 2 hours of labor.

=== Juan Cheng ===

I signed up to Mechanical Turk to complete a HIT. Before I decided which one to work on, I browsed the available HITs to see what kind of jobs are offered there. Because I wanted to know what is the difference between the HITs and the tasks in physical work environment. I found most of the HITs are trivial, boring and kind of meaningless. One of the HITs even highlighted that âthis job is only for [a person's name]. Anyone else will be rejectedâ. This is so weird. Why the requester just ask the person he designate to finish the job offline?

I finally decided to work on a HIT which asked the worker to find the official website address for a restaurant and its menu. The requester provided the full name, address and telephone number of the restaurant to help target the object. It's pretty easy. I just surfed on Google and found the website address in 2 minutes. As requested, I attached the URL of the website address and that of the menu and submitted the HITs on December 28, 2009. Then I returned to my account to see the status. It showed that the HIT I submitted was pending for approval/rejection by the requester. Up to now, I have not been approved or rejected yet. I've sent a email to the requester to check. Will follow up.

One thing to note is before I selected the HIT above, I accepted several other HITs to try to work on them. I then returned them because they were very boring and time consuming. I supposed Mechanical Turk would not made a record for this. However, they actually did and even recorded the submitted, returned and abandoned rates based on the total HITs I accepted. It makes me feel like I'm an employee of Mechanical Turk and they will probably evaluate my performance based on these rates and other data, e.g. the feedback from the requester.

I guess the requester offered this HIT for at least two purposes. One is to get more people know the restaurant. Actually I really like the style of the website and I would try this restaurant if I happen to be around. The other might be to get more people search it on Google. If there are plenty of search on this term, the name of the restaurant appears as a google suggest.

=== Victoria Baranetsky ===

So fascinating. I âplayedâ on Mechanical Turk for several days doing a variety of hits. I had never participated on Mechanical Turk before but soon became a junkie. Spending an embarrassing amount of time on it. Some tasks kept me entertained longer then others. The ones I like I would repeat over and over. And when I got bored with one I moved onto the next. Here is a short list of a few of the HITs that I participated in.

The first was a psychological study, I assume. The task was to rate the attractiveness of people in 30 photos from 1 (least attractive to 10 (most attractive).

The second was called âBasketball Tracking.â As footage of a basketball game played I was assigned to move a box over the image of the player. (A somewhat simpler version of Duck Hunt).

The third was named âTag Fashion Magazine Covers.â As you clicked through different covers of beauty magazines the task was to categorize the predominant color on the cover (e.g. blue, green or red), the âlookâ (e.g. sexy, glamorous, or charming) and the brand of magazine (e.g. Vogue, Cosmo or Hustler).

The fourth was a photo identifier of cars. A car listing including the model and year was provided and the HIT required that the Turker find a matching photo for that specific car.

After I did these HITs I wanted to do something a little more thought provoking so I took three qualifying exams that were simple multiple choice questions including my place of birth, age and degree of education.

In total there are several things that struck me while âplayingâ with mechanical Turk.

First, the diversity of HITs was fascinating. The HITS were all over the board â going to show the incredible ability for Turk to be a great tool for a plethora of organizations.

However, although the diversity was phenomenal I was a bit hesitant with every HIT because I didnât know the purpose or reason for what I was doing. For example, the psychological study that asked me to rate the beauty of the persons in the photographs was bizarre in asking me for a waiver. The waiver explained that I was not allowed to bring suit for my work in this study and that I had no monetary rights.

Not only was the purpose concealed but the member asking for the HIT is not revealed. Although there is a name for example âPaul Goldsteinâ is listed as the requester â further information is not available. I think this lack of transparency is troublesome. Anonymity certainly promotes more use of Mechanical Turk but it seems when some tasks could perhaps have malicious purposes, transparency would be good. In addition, transparency of the Turkers also would make their work more veritable.

Lastly, the final thing that troubled me on Mechanical Turk was the addictive quality of the tasks. By placing money into the equation one feels that playing, categorizing and writing reviews - in essence what is wasting time is perhaps a valuable to spend time. The games become frighteningly more appealing and what begins as a 45-minute endeavor turns into several hours of clicking, tagging and reading. I felt like a better at Atlantic City â pulling the proverbial lever at the slot machine over and over again.

=== Andrew Jacobs ===
I also experimented with Amazonâs Mechanical Turk.

My first HIT was to transcribe a 30 second audio clip. From the perspective of a new mturk worker, I was entirely satisfied with the experience. I could preview the audio clip before accepting the HIT, so as not to commit myself to garbled mumbling and subsequently damage my reputation by abandoning the task. The content turned out to be a snippet of Biblical interpretation. I accepted, did my best (bracketing a few words I wasnât sure of, including âMillenialistsâ), and a few days later received two cents in my payments account for approximately three minutes of work.

From a slightly more critical perspective, this HIT got me thinking about economic and noneconomic incentives. As an unpaid intern for a literary magazine a few years ago, I transcribed a two-hour roundtable discussion among five barely distinguishable voices, recorded on a cheap, analog tape recorder. Though the task was awful, I worked on it diligently, mostly because I liked the editors and believed in their cause. If that alleged âMillenialistâ word had popped up, I certainly would have gone to greater lengths to verify it than I did here, even though I risked two whole cents in this case. What if, then, there were a volunteer crowdsourcing tool for this requesterâs particular brand of Christianity? Or, more plausibly, a general volunteer crowdsourcing website that grouped unpaid tasks by the causes that their completion furthered? The results might well be of higher quality than mturkâs, and I imagine those volunteer sites would avoid some thorny labor issues that Amazon faces.

My second HIT, which a few others have mentioned, was easy: I was to find the URLs for the main website and the menu of a given restaurant, at five cents a pop. (If either of these websites proved nonexistent, there was space to say so, and I still got my nickel.) Though it took a couple more days than the first HIT, I was eventually paid $.15 for my three finds.

The mindless, but not grating, simplicity of this HIT made me think a bit about how mturkâs economic incentives may be better utilized without increasing their value. In order to shift my earning to an Amazon Gift Certificate, for example, I have to follow a handful of steps and type in exactly how much I want to transfer. Why canât I have my account be directly and continuously tied to a Gift Certificate? And why not have a âHIT itâ button along with âBuyâ in Amazonâs retail stores? If there wasnât enough money in my Payments account, the button would take me to my mturk account so I could earn some more. One of the most valuable things I can get for less than a dollar, in my mind, is an Amazon MP3. If Iâm working for tiny sums anyway, I might be more motivated if my tiny carrot were a more direct embodiment of value.

Now that I have a Mechanical Turk account, will I use it again? Maybe. Like Victoria, I had some fun completing the âTag Fashion Coversâ HITs (though at first the âsubmitâ button in their dialog box was malfunctioning). Perhaps even as much fun as, say, those last twenty minutes of bopping around on the Internet before bed. I smell a New Yearâs resolution. . .

=== Elisabeth Oppenheimer ===

I too spent some time on Mechanical Turk. I'd used it a few times before, which was enough to teach me to stay far away from $.02 tasks. They're boring, they often just don't work, and they pay $.02. But I actually enjoy some of the higher-paid tasks, especially writing articles. So I sorted the available HITs by wage and started with the one that paid the most, $4.17/hour. That seemed like an unbelievably high wage, particularly since it only asked me to look at a website and review it. After I'd glanced at the website, though, I realized that it was impossible to submit the HIT. Clever spam: the highest-priced task gets lots of viewers, who click through to the ad-loaded website, whose operators are presumably paid per view (or just hope some Turkers will click through). The operators didnât any up paying for any HITs, so voilaâfree traffic.

Moderately disgruntled, I found a $1.70 HIT to write a 300 word piece about green weddings. It took maybe 5 minutes to complete, and I had fun--law students don't get to do much free writing, and since my friends are getting married in droves, I have a lot of thoughts about weddings. The payment came through the next day. I also wrote an article about how to make airline travel quicker and easier ($1.00, 300 words), also quickly paid. Then I started on a HIT that asked me to write a 500 word article including the words "sheer bodystocking." I wrote the HIT about something completely unrelated to lingerie (I wrote about sledding in my hometown), added the words "sheer bodystocking" in the middle of a sentence, and submitted. I wish I could say this had been a conscious quality-control experiment, but I just wasnât paying much attention when I started writing. My article been pending several days, and Iâm eager to see whether I get my $1.00.

Like most of you, I assume that these articles are not in fact serving those who want to know how to plan a green wedding or facilitate air travel, but are ending up as word salad on spammy webpages. (Despite that knowledge, I find myself surprisingly invested in writing good and useful articles â irrational?) So I saved my text and did a Google search for it a few days later, and got nothing; Iâll repeat it in a few weeks. As much as I find AMT tasks strangely soothing, like many of you, I don't think they always make the internet a better place.

I also paid a brief visit to the Turker forums, where there's a discussion going on about the perceived increase in spammy HITs, whether reporting does any good, whether companies will find out who reported them and reject that person's HITs, whether Amazon should preemptively screen HITs, and whether class-action lawsuits might do any good. Interestingly, a few requestors were participating in the discussion too, and one experienced Turker appeared to be in conversations with Amazon's management.

Finally (as discussed a little more below), I set up a TwitHawk alert for people tweeting about Amazon Mechanical Turk. I havenât gotten any Turkers yet, but I did get requestors advertising HITs and a couple of articles about the service. One article made a good point--Amazon has long relied on customer rankings and data to create a huge part of the service's value (imagine how lame Amazon would be if only staff could do reviews!), so it was natural they would think to expand into the crowdsourcing space.

== LiveOps ==

=== Sheel Tyle ===

I am in the process of signing up as an inexperienced bilingual (Spanish & English - I'm conversational, not fluent, in Spanish, but let's see how much I'm tested on it) LiveOps call center agent. There are videos on the website from independent agents, testimonials on the sidebar ($15-22/hour), and press releases from various periodicals that try and convince.

There are five steps that I must follow in order to be 'submitted for review':

Validate your email address

Verify your understanding of the general requirements

Provide basic information on your background

Assess your comprehension and computer skill

Audition your voice

Under ''''basic information'''', here are some of the questions:

Have you ever contracted your business with LiveOps in the past?, Do you have prior call center experience?, Are you currently licensed to sell both health and life insurance products?, Are you currently licensed to sell both property and casualty insurance products?, Do you have prior experience in sales?, Do you have prior experience taking calls from Radio offers?, Do you have any experience in outbound telemarketing?, Do You Speak, Read and Write Spanish - FLUENTLY?, Do You Speak, Read and Write French - FLUENTLY?

I said "No" to every one except "Yes" to speaking Spanish.

Then, under ''''comprehension and computer skill'''', I had to answer questions like:

''
Please read this script:"We dont want you to miss out on this great offer, so what I can do for you today is offer you 1 HotBrush for 3 easy payments of $29.99 plus $14.75 to cover processing or you can take advantage of our special offer, the SpeedyHeat model for only $6.67 additional per payment. The SpeedyHeat Model contains a computer chip which lets your HotBrush heat up faster and hold a more even temperature just like the most expensive professional quality hot tools. So, would you like to order the HotBrush or the SpeedyHeat Model?"

In this script, is the customer choosing between two different products or are they deciding whether to add a product (for two products total)?
Deciding whether to add a product
Choosing between two different products''

'' What is the keyboard shortcut to move between windows you already have open on your computer?
Hold down the "Alt" button and press the "Tab" button
Drag the window offscreen
Click the appropriate button in the task bar
Close the program you are currently working in, and open a new one
Minimize the window you are currently working in ''

Finally, the voice test. LiveOps asked me to call in to a 1-800 number and, when prompted, read two passages: one in English and one in Spanish.

Submitted. Once I hear back, I'll update whether I was accepted =)

=== Ramesh Nagarajan ===

I've completed the agent qualification process to become a LiveOps representative. Sheel did a good job of explaining the basics of the qualification process, so I'll share two observations I had about the process.

First, there's a fair amount of legal language LiveOps uses, with the intention of disclaiming any liability or even the existence of much of a relationship between it and its contractors. One must agree to the following: "I understand that LiveOps will investigate all of my information provided during the Agent Qualification process, and that Certification of my home business to contract with LiveOps will be contingent upon successful completion of a criminal and credit background check." They aren't currently accepting Massachusetts residents as LiveOps contractors -- perhaps Massachusetts's laws are too worker-friendly -- so I hope that means I get to avoid the "criminal and credit background check." Also, I didn't have to provide a Social Security Number, which makes me wonder if there is a real background check. Going back to the phrase I agreed to, I found it interesting that LiveOps representatives are setting up "home business[es] to contract" with LiveOps. There seem to be at least two advantages that LiveOps has over traditional telemarketing and call center companies -- first, it could save money on infrastructure by having employees work out of their own homes and use their own computers and phones, and second, it could save money by not having actual employees. I wonder which is more important, and if the second is a necessary part of the company's business strategy.

On a lighter note, the questions for "comprehension and computer skill" were quite entertaining. I was asked if booting a computer meant to turn on the sound, throw it out, turn it on, or add extra drives, and I had to decipher the meaning of a call script. I think there's a good chance I got one of the questions wrong. It asked what a customer paid today for a product that had "an upfront trial payment" of $15, three monthly payments of $40, and a shipping and handling charge of $10. I answered $15, but when I think about it, maybe it should be $25.

== Online mass collaboration project ==

=== Franny Lee ===

While waiting for my little sister to finish teaching her last Grade 9 class of 2009, I fell into conversation at an Ottawa (Canada) Starbucks with Russell Maier, a professional collaborative multi-media artist and a fellow fan of peppermint mochas. Russell is currently cycling around the world to help promote and orchestrate a âplanetary collaborative mosaicâ art/photo project, based upon the ancient cultural concept of a âmandalaâ. The first grand â1Mandalaâ is slated to be unveiled in front of the NYC UN Headquarters in May 2010.

The projectâs theme - global peace and togetherness: âAs a celebration of our Oneness we are building a collaborative planetary mandala. Our mosaic 1Mandala is being built out of pictures of people of all places and cultures smiling peace to the world. These "peace portraits" are being arranged into a Mandala-- an ancient circular and geometric art-form long-used by the world's spiritual traditions for healing, unity and raising consciousnessâ¦ It will be a powerful symbol of humanity united in the intention of peace to each other and the planet. â¨â¨We invite you to share your peace and your portrait with the world.â

Photo contributions are accepted through the project's website at http://www.1mandala.org. From my conversation with Russell, I get the sense that artistic vision currently dominates the project. Issues of communicating his project to a global audience are forefront (in addition to the website, Russellâs blog of his travels http://missive452.blogspot.com/ and the âdaily e-blastsâ with the âpeace portrait of the dayâ, this project participates in Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon), while intellectual property or privacy concerns have not been addressed other than with a simple website privacy policy and release (see 2-paragraph âPrivacy and Releaseâ at http://www.1mandala.org/en/uploader). Photos are (or will be) screened by a member of his team at some point before the final UN premiere, however, Russell prefers not to interfere with individual contributions unless the photo is deemed absolutely inappropriate. His logistical vision is to ultimately develop a fully automated online photo contribution process. There have been very few (I believe less than 5) instances where a photo has been refused - if I recall correctly, one may have involved something about a turkey.

After creating my peace picture, I began the online contribution process and was required to register my email address, first name, city and country. After completing registration, I received an email with instructions for my photo contribution, which included general tips for âpeace portraitsâ and a hyperlink to the contribution uploader webpage. From there, I completed the web-fillable form by uploading my peace portrait, advising of my city and country, and was given the option of adding a photo caption and including a story about my photo. A box for the privacy policy and release and a box to confirm that this is an âintentional peace portraitâ must be checked off to proceed to the next steps, which are to crop the photo to the project size as per the instructions provided, and finally, to submit the photo. I kept experiencing âInternal Server Errorâ messages while trying to submit my peace portrait, and finally contributed through the alternate method of emailing a copy to peace@1mandala.org.

=== Amanda Peyton ===

Nov. 4, 2008 is a day that brought both metaphorical and tangible change to the White House. For many Americans, the day holds special, "memorable" significance.

A young filmmaker at IFC named Jeff Deutchman decided that the day would be worth capturing (regardless of the outcome of the election) in many different cities, so he enlisted a few friends to film highlights from Election Day that he then spent a few months editing into a proper documentary.

But then he realized that by only using the footage from his friends, he was ignoring what was surely massive amounts of footage and still photos from those outside of his personal circle. He started a website, [[www.11-4-08.com]], where people can browse, upload and edit footage from November 4th into their own "documentaries". The participatory site will launch in conjunction with the film's screening at a prestigious film festival in March.

The website accomplishes several objectives, and touches upon a few themes of mass collaboration:

1. If people watch the documentary and enjoy it, they can continue to interact with the film through the website

2. It allows history to become personal - while there were certain events on Nov. 4 that everyone in the country shared, this website - like many popular tools on the web, allows the user to personalize their experience.

3. It connects people who previously would have had no interaction by letting them access, watch and edit each other's footage

My involvement with this project has been to brainstorm how to structure the crowdsourced part to ensure ease of use and maximum participation. When putting together a site where the first objective is to prompt some sort of participation from the user (as opposed to straight consumption) there are several elements that I believe are critical:

- Clear objective of what you want from the user. For this project it's clear - to contribute still photos and footage from Nov. 4, 2008. I believe that this request is focused enough that the user will not be overwhelmed. If you make your requests too broad often times the user will get overwhelmed.

- Recognition. A large motivator for those who participate in crowdsourced projects is the incentive structure. How will the participants be recognized? (This could be a separate essay in itself - Amazon, Yelp, Reddit, Stack Overflow and Hacker News all boast their own incentive structures to encourage participation).

- Speed and Tech - the back-end technology needs to be seamless. For this project, the challenge has been to identify an in-browser simple video editor that will allow people to take existing footage and edit it into their own mini-documentaries. Currently, video editing software is large and bulky, but there are a few companies that are building simple browser-based video editing tools. Also, as Google has taught us, the site needs to be fast. The fastest way to scare away users is to have a slow site (just ask Friendster).

When the film is shown in March and the project launches, I am very curious to see how people will use the site and how participation will materialize.

=== Sharona Hakimi ===

A November New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/technology/internet/17maps.html?_r=1&nl=technology&emc=techupdateema1 about a wikipedia-style mass collaborative mapping effort sparked my interest in various grassroots and industry induced efforts to find the best and most helpful way to "map"the world around us. We all use google maps, and with the satellite images and street-view capabilities, google maps has helped define the way I travel now, especially as they become readily available on our cellphones. However, as the article discusses, mapmaking is largely political, and left solely to google experts to decide what to map, how quickly, and from which views, we are leaving it to strangers with a vested interest. Hence, organizations like OpenStreetMap and wikimapia have come about in an effort to democratize mapmaking, leaving it in the hands of reliable locals to show just where the nearest coffee shop or library is.

I played around with three different mapmaking websites (one of which is sponsored by google, and another which partners with it to lay your data on top of google maps).

The first website I tried is OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org/) which is a non profit aimed at making free maps that can be reused by anyone. According to NYTimes, it has some 180,000 contributors who have mapped many countries in varying levels of detail, and it even has its own twitter account. Although I love the idea behind the website, I think the layout is actually really confusing, and the search is terrible. It's set up as a wiki, allowing contributors to edit and discuss various changes. It was a bit of a hassle to sign up for an account, and any contributions have to be authorized, so I have yet to see if my additions to my neighborhood in Toronto (a pharmacy, a synagogue, etc), were added.

The next website I tried is wikimapia (http://wikimapia.org), which partners with google maps, allowing users to create specialized maps on top of google. I spent some time trying to label buildings at Harvard Law school, but when I actually tried confirming the changes it said it was already labeled (though it didn't seem to be). Overall I found this website a lot easier to use and I like the layout more, although the search function is also not very good.

The last one I used was Google Map Maker (http://www.google.com/mapmaker), which immediately opens a very user friendly help box explaining the user's role ("Your work as a citizen cartographer will appear on Google Maps and serve the needs of local users, schools, city planners, tourists, and more."). Although I hate to say it, since this "democratization" of mapping is initiated by a for-profit industry member, this website is by far the most advanced and user friendly, and I found it really fun.

Overall I'm a really big fan of the democratization of mapmaking, and I think it fits with the general concept to have various websites that function in different ways to do the same thing. As the technology becomes more advanced, I think all three websites will get even better. I definitely believe that mass collaboration is extremely important and even necessary in making making maps in the 21st century.

== TwitHawk ==

=== Elisabeth Oppenheimer ===

(Formerly TwitterHawk, but Twitter made them change the name.)

The TwitHawk space looked forlorn, so I took a quick look at it. It's pretty clever. You set up a search -- say, people tweeting about Amazon Mechanical Turk within 25 miles of Palo Alto -- and the app updates you when someone tweets on that topic. You also set up some prepared responses ("Iâm studying Amazon Mechanical Turk for a class, how has your experience with it been?") which are automatically sent to anyone who matches your search. You can also change the settings such that you need to confirm before sending your message, or so that you automatically follow anyone you message. It's basically a marketing tool: in the example they give, a coffee shop searches for local people tweeting about a desire for coffee, and then sends them the address of the shop.

The concern in the press coverage is that this will massively spam Twitter users, but the owners have taken some useful steps to prevent this--you have to pay 5 cents per message, you can only send one message to a given user, and you can only send one message every two hours.

I'm impressed with the service, although Iâm still fundamentally stunned that Twitter and Twitter apps have morphed so quickly from a "huh? why would you want to do that?" phenomenon to a "cornerstone of all cool marketing campaigns" phenomenon.

=== Reuben Rodriguez ===

First things first. As mentioned above, Twitterhawk is dead. Long live Twithawk! I think Elisabeth did a pretty good job of describing what Twithawk does so I'll keep my description to the bare minimum: Twithawk is basically a tool that sends preset replies to other Twitter users whose tweets match whatever search results you have set up. Twithawk gives new registrants 10 free auto-replies, so I set up a new Twitter account and gave it a spin.

I decided I would be tweeting as HarryDoyle97 and accordingly constructed a search for any mention of the word "Indians" within 25 miles of the Cleveland area. I created three pre-set responses and set up the search to run once every two hours. Within 10 minutes, Twithawk had sent out my first auto-response (JUST a bit outside) to Indians on Fan Feedr in Cleveland, Ohio. It was all very easy.

Elisabeth discusses the critics' main concern about how Twithawk could be used for mass Twitter spam and she mentions the steps Twithawk has implemented to try and combat this possibility - the five cent per reply cost and the limited frequency with which a response can be sent. There is also subtle encouragement to use the Twitter feed as more than just a robot automatically replying to search results. Each "campaign" that you set up has a meter on your dashboard labeled "TwitterHawk Noise Ratio" with an arrow pointing from green to red. It then rates the ratio between Twithawk responses on your feed vs. "natural" (read: by an actual human being) responses and encourages the user to keep the ration below 25% (1 Twithawk response for every 4 real ones). While this may not deter those with the real intent to spam, at the least it serves as a helpful reminder to the well-meaning, but inattentive marketer to keep their feeds from being mere spam. Finally, the FAQs asks those who feel that Twithawk is being used for spam to report the spammers and notes that Twitter is active in punishing spammers. If Twithawk remains vigilant, the product definitely has potential.

=== Tyler Lacey ===

I used TwitHark too. My goal was to find people complaining or wondering about on the status of the (often late) Boston subway and bus system called "The T" and run by the MBTA. So my search was simple: I merely searched for terms such as "MBTA", "T", "late", "delayed", etc. that posted within 5 miles of Boston. My response was to tell people about the official MBTA twitter feed (MBTANow) that already supplies people with very up to date information. I set TwitHawk to send this response automatically.

I suspect that my response will annoy more people (at most 10 really, since I am only using my ten free responses) than it helps for two reasons. The first is that "within 5 miles of Boston" is too coarse of a search area. It will likely define lots of people that do not or can not use the T and exclude many people that do use the T. This difficulty is a symptom of the my second, more general, complaint with TwitHawk's search mechanism: it is too simplistic. For something as delicate as searching the millions of twitter posts and responsing in a useful manner, I think I need more than the simple list of terms that are presumably searched for in an "or" fashion, narrowed by a single location. I would prefer something more akin to regular expressions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression) that would let me specify precisely the strings that I am searching for, as well as a more precise manner of specifying locations (so I could use something like "within 1 mile [Town]" for every town near Boston that the T serves). This way I would be able to target posts that are more likely complaning or inquiring about the status of the T and search within an area that more closely resembles the T network rather than a circle extending out from the center of Boston. I believe that this advanced search capacity should be built into TwitHawk using a more sophisticated search builder interface. This would allow users not familiar with the complexities of regular expressions to make use of their flexibility. However, an API or program that sat on top of TwitHawk could achieve a similar result by flattening a regular expression into many simpler searches and automatically entering those searches in TwitHawk. However, for complicated regular expression searches this would create an unmanageable number of simpler searches for TwitHawk to store.

I also noticed that a captcha is the only thing that seemed to be standing between me and multiplying my ten free opportunities to spam into millions of free spam messages by automatically creating TwitHawk accounts and setting them to the same searches. Without knowing the internals of TwitHawk I can't be sure what defenses exist to prevent this.

== Drumbeat Privacy Project ==

===Michael Feldman===

Ok. So I was intimidated by some of the other possible projects such as Twithawk and Mechanical Turk. Signing up for things and following directions? Ew. So, the clear solution was to try and tackle the creative problem proposed by Drumbeat to simplify various internet companies' privacy policies, a la Creative Commons. The idea is to create a simple structure of icons, images and phrases to more effectively communicate a companies privacy policy without requiring the user to sift through a ton of dense legalese.

In creative commons, each icon which stands for a particular set of rights the author wishes to protect. But this won't work for privacy policies because the policies are different for each company. They don't merely invoke a set of already-delineated rights. One organization called Privacy Choice has already tried to create icons to simplify the process of learning about companies privacy policies, (see http://www.privacychoice.org/whos_watching). But this website is not completely effective since it requires the user to "mouse over" various categories of privacy policies, only to encounter much more "mumbo jumbo."

It seemed to me that the primary design problem was that there are multiple levels of information: specific data within specific provisions within general categories. So I tried to create an idea for a basic system which used the Privacy Choice Categories (plus a few others I thought would be relevant), color coded them so that a user could tell which categories might require greater attention, and then placed the provisions on a rather vague scale. While not as specific as an ultimate solution might want to be, this at least gives a user site-specific information that will be useful before delving into the actual text. From here, the next step would be to create a stock of short phrases which could appear when the user mouses over the icons which would give more detailed information without resorting to large blocks of text.

All in all, the challenge is very interesting and definitely something I would be happy to continue to work on over the next few weeks. The specific challenge of conveying all information in a given privacy policy in simpler symbols is one which will likely require involvement of the actual companies to conform their policies to set rubrics (or at least stock modular blocks of text), but short of that, it might be possible to create a more intuitive set of symbols that could be more generally applicable to all policies. But then there would still be the problem of aggregation of information since people would have to go through each policy to decode it and re-encode it into the new system.

You can find the actual suggestions I posted to drumbeat here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Talk:Drumbeat/Challenges/Privacy_Icons.

===Bruno Magrani===

If Firefox is about making the web better through software, drumbeat intends to be the twin brother that focus on connecting project ideas and people together to promote a better web. In a way, one can think about it as an incubator for projects to improve people's experience on the web.

Because the project seemed quite exciting to me I took the liberty to exchange some emails with the people involved to get a sense of how I could be of most help to the project and decided to collaborate coming up with other examples of people who are contributing to improve the web. This first initial experience â being able to chose how to best participate in the project â denoted one of the wonders of online peer production: the advantage over traditional industrial information production systems in terms of information gains regarding how to connect a person's interest with a specific task.

If one important component of the project involves coming up with ideas for projects an equally important component involves getting real life examples of who is doing what to improve the web. It works both as way to recognize the efforts of these people, but also to stimulate other people to do the same and start their own initiatives. In a sense this is intended to send a message saying: everyone can and should contribute to make a better web.

One of the things that I notice while reading the projects and people being featured was that they were too much focused on experiences happening in the United States and some in Europe, so I decided to come up with examples of what both common and notorious people were doing in a developing country such as Brazil. My contribution can be found [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/yearone/peoplebrainstorm here] and I'm definitely going to keep contributing to the project.

Day 7 Thoughts

2013-11-12T20:33:16Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

==ReputationDefender==
While I think some of the things ReputationDefender has done are admirable, I was troubled by the disclosure that the company has signed revenue-share agreements with information aggregators. These companies are often quite controversial (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelius for example). It seems like these revenue share deals could potentially set up the wrong incentives (even if signed with the best intentions), where ReputationDefender's profits are now aligned with profits of information aggregators. I could envision a future where everyone needs to pay "protection money" to companies like Intelius (or intermediaries, like ReputationDefender) in order to preserve their privacy, and that seems like the wrong state to be in. I can't help but wonder whether the solution here is more stringent regulation of information aggregators (mainly just requiring free and easy one-stop opt-out). Consumers don't need to pay to sign up for the national do not call registry, and one could imagine a similar opt-out process for information aggregators. It seems kind of perverse if people feel compelled to *pay* to opt out of things that they did not sign up for to begin with.
:I also wonder how sustainable this is as a business model. Reputation Defender can aggregate money from its clients and share that revenue with information aggregators, but wouldn't insurance companies be able to out spend them? It seems as if the primary purchasers of such information aggregation may be in better financial positions than any aggregator of individual concern about such things. Is it possible that ReputationDefender's market will one day compete with insurance companies and the like for annual revenue? Or, what if a big player like Google (or a Google spin off) decides to enter this space and crush ReputationDefender before it even gets off the runway?

:I agree with the distaste with having to pay protection money, but it seems better to have the option than not to. Regulation would be ideal, but would likely run up against powerful commercial interests. See the power of the insurance industry in the health care debate. Add advertisers and you're looking for trouble.

:I wonder if there are legal issues (antitrust?) with the protection money payments.

==Lifelock==

LifeLock is another consumer "reputation protection" company (more focused on identity fraud) with a pretty interesting business/marketing model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeLock
: However LifeLock has had many many problems, discussed in this article from [http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/securitymatters_0612 Wired Magazine] including one of the [http://phoenix.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2007/06/11/daily15.html co-founders] having been an identity thief himself, the CEO's identity has been stolen successfully a [http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=lifelock+suit number of times], and there is currently a [http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/21/experian-lifelock-update-markets-equity-cx_md_0221-markets32.html pending suit] against the company claiming its business model isn't legal.

: Yeah, LifeLock is definitely controversial. Didn't mean to imply that it was "good", just "interesting" :)

==Opt-Out Programs==

Incidentally I believe that CAN-SPAM requires that opt-out has to be free to the user. CAN-SPAM failed for a lot of reasons, whereas the do-not-call registry has comparatively succeeded--would be interesting to discuss why.

==Transfer of Ownership==

What happens when formerly trustworthy companies get sold? Should the data submitted by users be transferred? This is a very real threat--Friendster and Spock were recently acquired (the latter by Intelius--see http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/29/spock-and-intelius-uh-oh/). Mint.com was also acquired by Intuit, but imagine if they had been acquired by a telemarketing firmâ¦

==Mozilla Privacy Icons==

''We have created an internal page on this wiki for [[Terms of Service Brainstorming|Brainstorming Ideas]] for this project''

I'm still not convinced that there is an actual problem here to solve (or rather, whether the problem is so severe as to require the hammer of a browser icon convention). In some ways I feel like people have already voted with their widespread usage of sites like MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, and Google despite the lack of a privacy icon.

It is worth noting that the icon-in-the-browser-to-signal-privacy already exists in one form today--the "lock" you see when performing credit card transactions over SSL. It'd be interesting to examine the origin of this convention. I'd argue that in this case there *was* an actual problem to solve (and that users probably would not submit credit card information without the lock, so that users and businesses had a strong incentive to come up with a convention--adding the lock increases conversion rates).

Cybersecurity Project

2013-11-12T20:33:10Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Cybersecurity

2013-11-12T20:33:03Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1265097600

Ubiquitous Human Computing

2013-11-12T19:45:33Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1380614400

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= The Difficult Issues =

== Present Day Doctrinal Problem Areas ==

*American Business Law Journal: The Information Revolution and its Impact on the Employment Relationship: An Analysis of the Cyberspace Workplace
**This is a fantastic survey paper [http://www.terpopuler.net/kata-mutiara-lucu-terbaru Kata Mutiara Lucu] on the many issues raised with employment law in combination with cyber-workers.
**This article seems to assume that cyberworkers will still be working in the United States, but this seems like an unrealistic assumption
**Written in 2003, around the time LiveOps launched (2000)
**Citation: 40 AMBLJ 301
**Section II of this article examines how working over the internet blurs/challenges current law about the employee/contractor distinction.
***"Under the right-of- [http://www.terpopuler.net/download-update-avira-terbaru Update Avira] control test, an employee is not an independent contractor if the employer has the ability to control the time, method, and manner of employment"
**Section IV of this article [http://playbox.me/free-slots free slots] examines how cyber-working affects non-compete agreements and copyright considerations (such as works-for-hire)
***"The Internet exacerbates this tension by raising previously unheard of issues in drafting and enforcing non-compete agreements."
***Work-for-hire: How does UbiComp affect the work-for-hire test established by Creative Non-Violence v. Reid? ( 490 U.S. 730 (1989) )
**Section V - Employment Regulation [http://diangan.blogspot.com/2012/06/daftar-gemscool.html Cara Daftar Gemscool]
***A: The Burlington/Faragher sexual [http://www.terpopuler.net/biodata-dan-foto-derby-romero Biodata Derby Romero] harassment standard is not clear when applied to cyber-workers
****"The Ninth Circuit held that remoteness will not dilute an employee's obligation to report sexual harassment."
***C: Family Medical Leave Act - depends on employee/independent contractor distinction
***D: Workers Compensation
***E: Fair Labor Standards Act
***F: The National Labor Relations Act '''[http://diangan.blogspot.com/2012/06/rcti-tv-streaming-online-mivo.html RCTI TV Streaming Online]'''
***G: The Occupational Safety & Health Act
**Conclusions
***For employee/contractor [http://www.terpopuler.net/foto-non-dhera-indonesia-idol-2012 Dhera Idol] distinction, "courts must use the existing and long-standing right-of-control test, but apply it with sensitivity to the unique characteristics of Internet-enabled workplaces."
***As courts evolve toward the Zippo sliding scale, they must set some standard of how much contact remote employment creates between the employee's forum state and the employer.
***Agencies need to adopt specific regulation to deal with cyberworkers
***"When regulatory guidance is insufficient, the legislature must act"
****Congress must clarify how unions can organize and communicate in cyberspace in order to protect labor and management rights.

*Case study: Amazon's Mechanical Turk may violate employment/tax laws because the employee-employer relationship is between the requester and the worker [http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2009/07/is-amazon-mechanical-turk-black-market.html]

== Potential Difficult Problems in the Future ==

* ''[http://diangan.blogspot.com/2012/06/spesifikasi-dan-harga-samsung-galaxy-y.html Kumpulan Cara Mengatasi Hanya Di Cara-Mengatasi.Com]''
* ''[http://goo.gl/83FG0 Kumpulan Cara Mengatasi Hanya Di Cara-Mengatasi.Com]''
* What if UbiComp is used for political lobbying?
** In general, any mass movement could be created using UbiComp
* Could employees "outsource" their own work using UbiComp? [http://webchicanery.com/2009/06/20/4-minute-work-week/]
** How can child labor be prevented?

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