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Article on Online Advertising and Privacy in the May issue of Communications of the ACM
The May 2011 issue of Communications of the ACM has a Viewpoint article entitled, "Economic and Business Dimensions: Online Advertising, Behavioral Targeting, and Privacy", written by Avi Goldfarb (U Toronto) and Catherine Tucker (MIT).
Also in this issue is an article by Tim Wu (CIS/SLS must have heard it last week) on "Law and Technology: Bell labs and Centralized Innovation."
Codex Resident Fellowship
Codex announced they are accepting applications for a Resident Fellowship for the 2011-2012 academic year.
Deadline is May 27, 2011. More details about the fellowship are below.
Codex – The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics is accepting applications for a Resident Fellowship for the 2011-12 academic year.
Hearsay Culture shows 136 and 137 -- Prof. David Post and Kevin Poulsen -- posted
At long last (end of semester craziness, primarily, caused the delay), I am pleased to post two new shows!
Andrew McLaughlin to Join Stanford Law School's Center for Internet & Society
Andrew McLaughlin, until recently the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, is joining the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society as a non-residential fellow.
CIS Fair Use Legal Experts Answer Fair Use Questions About YouTube
On April 21, 2011, YouTube invited the public to ask our CIS Fair Use experts questions regarding fair use.
Anthony Falzone, Executive Director of the Fair Use Project, and Julie Ahrens, Associate Director of the Fair Use Project, answer a selection of questions in this YouTube video.
Made in India @ New York Indian Film Festival - May 6
Made in India, a film in the Fair Use Project's Documentary Film Program, will be screened on Friday May 6 at the Tribeca Theater in New York. Book your tickets through the New York Indian Film Festival.
The Promise of Privacy Controls
Privacy settings and other technological controls used to protect privacy have been justifiably criticized a bit lately. Danielle Citron recently blogged at Concurring Opinions about an important new study conducted by Columbia’s Michelle Madejski, Maritza Johnson and Steve Bellovin that found that Facebook’s default privacy settings fail to capture real-world expectations. The United Kingdom Government has recently indicated that browser settings alone cannot be used by Web users to give consent to being tracked online under a new EU law. The Government's rationale for this decision was that these browser settings were not flexible enough to reflect a user's true privacy preferences. The general consensus seems to be that most privacy settings simply aren't that good at protecting the actual information we consider private in a given context. I think some skepticism regarding privacy controls is warranted, particularly in light of the current technology. However, I'd like to show some support for privacy controls, or, rather, the promise of privacy controls. My hope is that that courts and lawmakers do not completely sour on recognizing privacy controls as a legitimate way to protect an Internet user's privacy.
Nevada Bill Would Pave The Road To Autonomous Cars
Is it lawful for a car to drive itself? In the absence of any law to the contrary, it should well be. A new bill is working its way through the Nevada state legislature that would remove any doubt in that state. A.B. 511 directs the Nevada Department of Transportation to authorize autonomous vehicle testing in certain geographic areas of Nevada. Should vehicles meet Nevada DOT standards, they would be permitted to "operate on a highway."
The bill defines not only autonomous vehicle, but artificial intelligence as well. AI is "the use of computers and related equipment to enable a machine to duplicate or mimic the behavior of human beings." An autonomous vehicle uses "artificial intelligence, sensors, and [GPS] coordinates to drive itself."
To be clear: autonomous vehicles are not yet the law of the land in Nevada. This bill must pass through two committees and receive a hearing before it can be voted on and become law. Some preliminary thoughts on the bill in its present form follow.
5/9: CIS Speaker Series: Tim Wu discusses his new book THE MASTER SWITCH
End: May 9, 2011 2:00pm
Location
Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate and author of The Master Switch. He is a professor at Columbia Law School, the chairman of media reform organization Free Press, and is working for the FTC as a senior advisor. Wu was recognized in 2006 as one of 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in 2007 Wu was listed as one of Harvard's 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine.
Tim Wu's best known work is the development of Net Neutrality theory, but he has also written about copyright, international trade, and the study of law-breaking. He previously worked for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry in Silicon Valley, and was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University (B.Sc.), and Harvard Law School.
Wu has written for the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Forbes, Slate magazine, and others. He can sometimes be found at Waterfront Bicycles, and he once worked at Hoo's Dumplings.
Please RSVP here for this free event.
Tim Wu presents his widely acclaimed new book THE MASTER SWITCH: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.
In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.
As Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century—radio, telephone, television, and film—was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood . . . NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide . . . And foremost, Theodore Vail, founder of the Bell System, the greatest information empire of all time, and a capitalist whose faith in Soviet-style central planning set the course of every information industry thereafter.
Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire—a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike—Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today’s great information powers: Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T. A battle royal looms for the Internet’s future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out.
"A Masterpiece" - Lawrence Lessig
"A ripping yarn" - The Atlantic
Lunch will be served.
4/25: Copyright, Remix and the Art of Collaborative Media: A conversation with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Falzone
End: April 25, 2011 2:00pm
Location
Updated April 27, 2011
Check out photos from the Joseph Gordon-Levitt talk.
hitRECORD.org is a project Joseph Gordon-Levitt started almost five years ago. They have evolved into a professional open production company that creates and develops art and media collaboratively. Rather than just exhibiting and admiring each other's work as isolated individuals, they invite users to gather and collectively work on projects together.
Spotlight on CIS
CIS Faculty Director Barbara van Schewick's book now available from MIT Press!
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Our Work
Spotlight on Fellows
"Do Not Track" Explained
Junior Affiliate Scholar Arvind Narayanan and Student Fellow Jonathan Mayer have a proposal to help solve the problem of online behavioral targeting. From Arvind's blog: Do Not Track "is a way to move past the arms race between tracking technologies and defense mechanisms, focusing on the actions of the trackers rather than their tools. A variety of consumer groups and civil liberties organizations have expressed support for Do Not Track; Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the Federal Trade Comission has also indicated that DNT is on the agency’s radar."
Cyberlaw Clinic
Cyberlaw Clinic archive.