Amazon's
ironic decision to delete Kindle users' copies of 1984 shows the old
rules about copyright, ownership and privacy don't apply to today's
technology
A little over a year ago, in one of the most
important privacy cases ever heard by the Supreme Court of Canada,
Justice Ian Binnie sought to allay concerns that we are sleepwalking
into a surveillance society with the following remark: "On these
occasions, critics usually refer to 'Orwellian dimensions' and 1984,
but the fact is that 1984 came and went without George Orwell's fears
being entirely realized, although he saw earlier than most the
direction in which things might be heading."
Like most judicial
pronouncements with staying power, I still haven't quite figured out
what he meant by this. Was the judge simply saying that the worries
expressed by privacy advocates are sometimes overblown? Or was his
clever, lawyerly use of the word "entirely" a tongue-in-cheek
expression of genuine concern?
Either way, Justice Binnie's
remark has caused me to wonder what it would take to say that Orwell's
fears are "entirely realized."
I am guessing the threshold must be rather high.
After
all, Orwell conjectured about a world that even David Lynch would agree
is wild-at-heart-and-weird-on-top. It wasn't just about big brother,
doublethink or the telescreen. There was also that crazy stuff about
The Ministry of Truth and its ability to make information appear and
disappear on a whim. As Orwell described it:
"This process of
continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books,
periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks,
cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation
which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.
Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date."
Powerful stuff, 1940s science fiction is.
Skip
forward exactly 60 years to the summer of 2009. There I was on a
perfect July day at the Universitat de Barcelona, about to launch into
my first lecture on Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics. Just before I did
so, a law student from Puerto Rico interjected, asking me about the
device that I was using to read my lecture notes.
"Its called an iLiad," I said.
"Is that the same thing as a Kindle?" she asked, referring to Amazon.com's increasingly popular e-book reader.
"Nope,"
I said. "Apples and Oranges. The Kindle was designed first and foremost
as a distribution vehicle for Amazon books, so its architecture is a
proprietary system that uses digital rights management (DRM) to tether
the downloaded content to the device, preventing copies from being
easily made or transferred to other readers or machines. My iLiad, on
the other hand, is an open source device that uses a Linux operating
system, allowing anyone with know-how (not me!) to tinker with it and
to create applications that improve its functionality for the broader
community of users. I didn't buy my e-reader to download and consume
popular novels. I chose the iLiad because it allows me to access a
broader range of research documents, not to mention greater control
over the information stored on my device."
It
never really occurred to me at the time just how central my somewhat
geeky response to that seemingly random question would be to the course
itself, with its lofty ambition of examining how our philosophical
conceptions of the law and our corresponding policy approaches change
in the face of autonomic computing and robotics.
My lecture that
day was an introduction to Asimov's brilliant idea that we can mitigate
people's fears about robots (the "Frankenstein Complex") by programming
the machines to "obey" certain rules. In essence, his three Laws of
Robotics provided a system of automated permissions for what people
could and could not do with robots. Instead of developing rules of
human conduct and imposing them on people (as law and morality seek to
do), the Laws of Robotics were rules designed by humans but programmed
directly into the machines. For example, if a human tried to get a
robot to injure another person or steal her books, the robot would shut
down, refuse or otherwise render itself incapable of carrying out the
command. It wasn't easy to convince or trick the robot into wrongdoing.
The robot's positronic brain was hard-wired to do no evil.
Not
surprisingly, my students loved thinking about the law and
rule-following/rule-breaking behaviour through the lens of Asimov's
adorable robots -- Speedy, Robbie and George-10. The challenge, of
course, was to get them to see that Asimov's approach is by now as much
science fact as it is science fiction.
As though by divine
providence, a teachable moment was delivered by the Google Alerts robot
to my inbox on the morning of my second lecture. Reports were starting
to circulate that Amazon had auto-deleted copies of George Orwell's
1984 and Animal Farm from law-abiding Kindle owners. According to the
news reports, Amazon mistook a "no" for a "yes" regarding the
publisher's decision on e-books. Fearing serious sanction from the
copyright owners after selling many e-copies, Amazon capitulated. Using
its robotic powers to trespass within the digital libraries of all
Kindle customers, Amazon electronically "seized" Orwell's books. It was
a classic Orwellian moment -- with a mouse click, The Ministry of Truth
expunged the offending material without notice or permission,
rectifying a mistaken past by replacing it with a perfected present.
Given
that the driver of this news item was copyright, I sent my students the
story and asked them to think about how automation technologies will
change the way we think about copyright law.
It didn't take long
for some of them to point out that the Kindle's DRM shifts the balance
between the owner's ability to control and the customer's ability to
access or use a work subject to copyright. Even though the end user
licence for the Kindle suggests that once you "purchase" an e-book its
yours, and even though the copyright in 1984 expired in Canada and
several other countries back in 2000 (putting the work back into the
public domain), Kindle owners found out the hard way that human laws
can be superseded by robotic laws.
This
month, Amazon offered to pay for or restore the deleted books and
apologized. But the Kindle-1984 SNAFU made it perfectly clear that,
marketing aside, electronic books are not the same as paper ones. DRM
can be used to change the rules.
As teachable moments go, all of
this timed rather nicely with the current events accompanying our third
day of class. On July 20, Canada's ministers of Industry, and Canadian
Heritage and Official Languages jointly launched nationwide
consultations to solicit Canadians' opinions on copyright reform.
Specifically, they expressed an interest in knowing how Canadians are
affected by copyright laws, how these laws should be modernized in
harmony with Canadian values, what reforms would best foster
creativity, innovation, competition and investment, and what kind of
changes to the law would best position Canada as a leader in the global
digital economy.
Although there is a longer story to tell here
that is told much better by my brilliant colleague Michael Geist
(speakoutoncopyright.ca), suffice it to say that the previous and
current approach to copyright reform is misguided. The previous Liberal
government tabled Bill C-60, which followed the U.S. approach by
including an "anti-circumvention" provision. This approach makes it
illegal for you to circumvent or otherwise alter the robotic laws that
permitted Amazon to auto-delete 1984. The Conservative government
followed suit with Bill C-61, which would have given even greater
protection to DRM. It too died on the order page when the first Harper
government fell. Finally, two Conservative ministers have been
reconsidering these issues under the recent copyright consultation.
During
all of this, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has been grovelling to his
consumer base, admitting that its actions were "stupid, thoughtless,
and painfully out of line with our principles." He promised that Amazon
would "use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make
better decisions going forward."
What he didn't promise was to
remove the DRM or rewrite its robotic laws so that The Ministry of
Truth's auto-delete functionality is no longer possible. As blogger
Cory Doctorow points out, Amazon also won't tell us much about whatever
else is lurking in the Kindle.
I am uncertain whether any of
these events meet Justice Binnie's threshold for genuine Orwellian
concern. What I do know is that copyright 101 is forever changed.
Copyright law in the age of the Kindle is no longer merely about
ownership of the means of (re)production. It is also about access to
knowledge, personal privacy, the citizen's right to read anonymously
and the consumer's right to control the devices that she owns.
When
the ministers, having just completed their copyright consultation on
Sept. 13, begin to draft new laws projected for the spring of 2010, I
hope that they recognize the power of the laws of robotics, reject an
approach that would enable The Ministry of Truth, and offer up a
legislative regime that truly balances the copyright owners' interests
with the rights of citizens, as twice promised.
Ian Kerr holds
the Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law and Technology and is a member
of the University of Ottawa's new Centre for Law, Technology and
Society.
MY SUBMISSION TO THE CANADIAN COPYRIGHT CONSULTATION 2009
My name is Ian Kerr. I am a Full Professor at the
University of Ottawa, where I hold a four-way appointment in the Faculties of
Law and Medicine, the Department of Philosophy and the School of Information
Studies. In 2001, I was awarded the Canada
Research Chair in Ethics, Law and Technology, the mandate of which included
the study of digital copyright reform. This Chair was renewed in 2005. I was
also the Principal Investigator of On the
Identity Trail, a four-year Collaborative Research Initiative, which
received one of the largest ever grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council and also included as part of its mandate an investigation of
the privacy/identity implications of digital copyright.
ever since i moved to ottawa, i have been a huge fan of cbc radio . so i was thrilled yesterday to be invited for the 3rd time to appear on the current to talk about our new book, lessons from the identity trail. below is the text of nancy wilson's introduction followed by a link to the podcast of our interview...
To some people the Internet is the world's biggest commons ... a
global public square. For others, it's a realm of shadowy, anonymous
figures hiding behind online aliases. But anonymity is becoming less
and less a feature of life online. We aired a clip with one perspective
on that trend, posted last May on the website, Mobuzz.tv.
Taking responsibility for your actions on line may be just one way you
relinquish privacy. Every day, millions of Canadians hop on the
Internet to check their e-mail, chat with their friends on social
networking sites, book a vacation or buy a gift. And each time they
click on a purchase or post a picture, they give up a little bit of
their privacy.
The online version will be released in three parts on April 8, April 28, and May 6.
Stay tuned for more information.
DREAMIN’ MAN: the role of idealism and pragmatisms in privacy advocacy
on june 19th, i had the good fortune of being invited to give a dinner speech to all of the speakers at UofA’s annual access and privacy conference, performing at the speed of change. although i fully understood the drill – they wanted a lighthearted and entertaining 20 minute speil – something happened to me on the plane that turned into a jerry mcguire moment. i decided instead to take a more heartfelt look at a difficult and often unaddressed set of issues in privacy advocacy.
many people who attended have urged me to post the speech, which i was
originally reluctant to do both because it was a kind of off-the-cuff
“moment”, and because a better, more rigorous version of it would have
avoided its central problem, which is attaching only a few faces to the
various positions rather than surveying a wide variety of people and
positions. i reiterate here that none of this was ever meant to be
about the people espousing the positions, rather to use famous examples
in order to raise interesting and important questions about the
appropriate roles of idealism and pragmatism.
ontario information and privacy commissioner
ann cavoukian was kind enough to provide me with some very useful
feedback on my ideas in spite of the fact that some of my remarks about
her position were critical and, as i put it in the address, “visceral”.
she is a total mensch.
among many other things, she warned me about the danger of citing the
statistics reported by edward greenspan, which she claims are in “wild
dispute” and, in some cases, “unequivocally incorrect”. ann also
rightly pointed out that my general argument about the politics
inherent in some technologies cuts both ways and will therefore work
against idealist approaches in many circumstances as well. she also
suggested that “privacy by design” can be used in some cases to
re-design the politics of technological systems.
i decided not to alter the original text and am trying to decide
whether my jerry mcguire moment ought to be transformed into an
academic study. let me know what you think !!
if you would like to read the original text, it is here
for those interested in listening to the speech, you can find it here
Searching for the right balance
We can reasonably be suspicious of sliding standards for subjecting Canadian citizens to searches by sniffer dogs -- or the next detection technology
While the Supreme Court put some restrictions on searches last week, it left the door open for the electronic 'noses' of the future, which can operate much more conspicuously and effectively than snoop dogs, writes Ian Kerr.
Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada released two important privacy-related decisions, both addressing an increasing trend in which Canadian law enforcement agencies use police dogs to conduct random searches of public spaces.
The first case took place at the Calgary bus terminal, where law enforcement officers had initiated a dog patrol. After getting off a 15-hour, all-nighter Greyhound trip from Vancouver, Gurmakh Kang-Brown was said to have aroused suspicion because of an "elongated stare" that he gave to an undercover officer who had been following him around the station. After the perceived staring incident and some to-ing and fro-ing within the bus station, a brief discussion ensued and ultimately a pooch named "Chevy" was brought over for a quick snoop. Chevy hadn't come to the bus terminal in anticipation of Mr. Kang-Brown's arrival; he wasn't a known suspect, nor was anyone else in the terminal. Chevy was there as part of a formal program to snoop-out anyone whom her handlers thought looked a certain way.
The second case involved an unknown teenager who wasn't even on the scene when the police opened his knapsack in the gym at St. Pat's High in Sarnia. His knapsack was left there, unattended, because the entire school had been locked-down to facilitate the police and a trusty K9 named "Chief." After sweeping the hallways and lockers, Chief and his handlers headed to the gym where he snooped the kid's bag, immediately indicating the presence of an odour of narcotics.
The officers had not been tailing the teen, known as A.M., as a "person of interest." They simply took up a standing invitation from the school's principal one year prior to search the school any time they wished, without warning or cause, in support of the school's zero-tolerance policy against drugs.
"In the sniffer dog business," opined Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie, "there are many variables."
he who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.
- nietzsche
in a few minutes, it will be midnight. I am sitting on the balcony of my rented san juan apartment. I just finished reading the IAAF report thwarting the olympic ambitions of oscar pistorius, the south african sprinter whose spirit has captured the imagination of the 24 students I am here to teach.
we started our three-week exchange seven days ago in ottawa, where 12 of my university of ottawa law students hosted 12 students from universidad de puerto rico. together, these two dozen outstanding students are enrolled in a course that I call "building better humans?" (please note the question mark in the title.)
one of the goals of this interdisciplinary course is to illuminate the murky line between therapy and enhancement in a world that seems to be drifting from "natural selection" toward what bioethicist john harris calls "deliberate selection."
what happens to people when science and technology are aggressively used to alter the human condition? what does the future hold for health and humanity as we move from Darwinian evolution to self-directed enhancement medicine?
in this three-week course, we are tackling such questions and thinking about whether or how to regulate emerging health enhancements in light of an evolution that operates at an exponential rather than a glacial pace.
mr. pistorius was previously unknown to most of my students.
but he is now poised to become a household name before the olympic torch lights the stage in beijing.
when oscar was born without fibulas 21 years ago, his parents had to make a difficult decision shortly before his first birthday: should they conform to societal norms by way of a medical intervention that would amputate both of his legs at the knee so that he could be fitted for prosthetic limbs? Or should they leave him with the legs he was born with, thus affirming his vari-ability? without knowing that bionics would, within a mere 20 years, transform from science fiction to science "fact," and without knowing that their son would become known as "the fastest man on no legs," they chose the route of medical intervention.
two decades later, and right around the time that the sports world began watching mr. pistorius close in on olympic qualifying times, the IAAF (international association of athletics federations) released rule 144.2, which prohibits the use of "any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides the user with an advantage over another athlete not using such a device." the rule was meant to ensure that the olympics remain "pure" -- that the competition remained between athletes and not between sports equipment manufacturers.
not long after the promulgation of 144.2, mr. pistorius sought confirmation that his carbon fibre prosthetics -- without which he could not compete -- did not run afoul of the rule. on monday, three days after I studied the issue with my students, the IAAF released its decision: mr. pistorius is now the fastest man on two springs.
the IAAF decision was based on an "independent scientific study," a biomechanical and physiological analysis of long sprint running comparing mr. pistorius with five two-legged athletes capable of similar levels of performance. among other things, the so-called "objective results" of this study revealed the following:
(1) "Pistorius was able to run with his prosthetic blades at the same speed as the able-bodied sprinters with about 25 per cent less energy expenditure";
(2) "the ... returned energy from the prosthetic blade is close to three times higher than with the human ankle joint in maximum sprinting"; and
(3) "the mechanical advantage of the blade in relation to the healthy ankle joint of a two-legged athlete is higher than 30 per cent."
on this basis, the IAAF concluded that mr. pistorius's prosthetic legs must be "considered as technical aids in clear contravention of IAAF Rule 144.2."
while it is tempting to jump on the bandwagon along with the many critics who rightly censure the IAAF for its inconsistent approach to what my colleague gregor wolbring has called "technological doping" (for example, pumping oxygen into your blood is prohibited but huffing and puffing in a little tent overnight till you achieve the same effect is not), there is something else that I find extremely curious about the decision.
rule 144.2 seeks to prevent athletes from using technology to gain relational advantages over one another. but as one of my students, ashley, astutely noted in class last week, the outcome of the analysis depends entirely upon which "other athletes" are chosen as the appropriate comparators. applying principles of equality law rather than biomechanics, ashley unpacked a key assumption within the study. although lauded as "objective" and "scientific," the study clearly privileges a certain body type.
those who work in the field of (dis)ability studies are all too familiar with this approach. the medical model upon which it is based imposes biological "norms" as the baseline for any, and all, analysis. through the narrow lens of biomechanics and from the exclusive perspective of two-legged runners, oscar pistorius's "cheetahs" are seen to confer a physiological advantage.
but even gert-peter brueggemann (the scientist who conducted the study) noted last week in an interview with the new york times that his scientific observations did not necessarily translate to a finding of general advantage.
mr. brueggemann, like every other scientist, is well aware that the outcome of every experiment depends entirely on the determination of its control groups. as a young einstein realized in his daydreams during his day job in the patent office, in science, assumptions about one's point of reference are key.
so what would happen if the IAAF had used a different point of reference in the study? instead of presuming two-leggedness as the baseline and then determining whether mr. pistorius deviated significantly from that norm, what if the interpretation of rule 144.2 adopted a relational approach that also took into account the many disadvantages experienced by mr. pistorius (biomechanical and social)?
I suspect that such an approach would not have yielded a result so clear-cut.
while it is important to be fair to the species-normative biological athletes against whom mr. pistorius hopes to compete, it is equally important to be fair to the bionic runners who wish to be able to become olympians, not paralympians. able, not in terms of being fast enough, but in terms of gaining access to the competition.
sports, like the practice of medicine, stands at a crossroad. in each case, it is no longer clear whether to favour natural ability or ultimate performance. as we continue to technologize sports (for that matter, as science continues to seek technological mastery of the body), the deepening merger between human and machine will only make these questions more difficult. as gregor wolbring has asked, once biological runners get "lapped" by their bionic counterparts, will the paralympics become the olympics and vice-versa?
and what does all of this mean for people?
MINDING THE MACHINES
amid all the hype about south korea's proposed robot charter, let's not
forget the more important question of whether robots should assume
human roles in the first place
a few months ago, as part of its bid to put a robot in every household
by 2020, the south korean ministry of commerce, industry and energy
announced its intention "to draw up an ethical guideline for the
producers and users of robots as well as the robots themselves ..."
responsible computer programming,
corporate accountability and consumer protection in the electronics
sector -- these are all good things.
pause. rewind. replay.
what? an ethical guideline for the robots themselves?
anticipating an event horizon -- only one bar mitzvah away -- in which
intelligent service robots become a part of daily life, the south
korean call for a "robot ethics charter" smacks of the science fiction
of isaac asimov.
when thinking through the south
korean agenda, asimov is definitely worth considering. intentionally or
not, his fiction charted a path that has inspired the actual
development and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). asimov
was totally underwhelmed by mary shelly's frankenstein and the "dull,
hundred-times-told tale" about humanly created, intelligent monsters
that will rise up to destroy us. so he constructed a new narrative
where robots "were machines designed by engineers, not pseudo-men
created by blasphemers."
south korea certainly seems to be
taking its cue from asimov's writings, imagining friendly, intelligent
robots that are dedicated to helping people. asimov's famous robbie,
for example, was a nursemaid tasked with caring for a child who loved
the robot like a best friend. asimov went to great pains in his
storytelling to normalize robots -- to undo a technophobia he dubbed
the "frankenstein complex."
to further ensure that humanity would
remain undaunted, the prolific asimov articulated the three laws of
robotics that he subsequently described as his most enduring literary
contribution. expressed in 61 words and examined in thousands of
stories and letters over a period of more than 40 years, asimov
imagined what would happen if we were able to embed core morality into
machine code and by doing so ensure that "it would never even enter
into a robot's mind" to intentionally break the following precepts:
- a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- a robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except when such orders would conflict with the first law.
- a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
leaving aside the thorny philosophical question of whether an AI could
ever become a moral agent, it should be relatively obvious from their
articulation that asimov's laws are not ethical or legal guidelines for
robots but rather about them. the laws are meant to constrain the
people who build robots of exponentially increasing intelligence so
that the machines remain destined to lives of friendly servitude. the
pecking order is clear: robots serve people.
and to the extent that it even
contemplates a code "for robots themselves," the korean robot ethics
charter is almost certain to follow suit.
it is interesting to ponder asimov's
laws in the context of technological development in south korea and
elsewhere. for example, could samsung's intelligent surveillance &
security guard robot be programmed to correctly resolve the tension
between asimov's first and second laws without abandoning its
fundamental purpose? funded by the south korean government to overcome
the limitations of human soldiers guarding its borders to the north,
samsung's machine-gun sentry robots (check 'em out -- they're on
YouTube) use precision automation technologies to discriminate friendly
from enemy activity and guarantee high shooting accuracy without the
need for human presence. what will the SK robot ethics charter say
about these?
when I began my academic career a
decade ago, the uniform law Conference of canada commissioned me to
conduct a study on the far less ominous but related question of how to
deal with computers that purport to negotiate and enter into contracts
completely independent from human review or interaction. without a law
resolving this novelty, there was concern that the future of e-commerce
was uncertain. in the years since, as canada research chair in ethics,
law and technology at the university of ottawa, i have been gearing up
for a book project tentatively titled: minding the machine -- a dual
investigation involving: (i) the AI project of putting minds into
machines; (ii) the corollary ethical and legal project of designing
appropriate prohibitions and oversight mechanisms to mind those
machines.
until the silicon hits the sidewalk,
i remain doubtful whether south korea's robot ethics charter will match
the media hype that it has received. (one author went so far as to
style it a "hippocratic oath for androids.")
my skepticism about all of this lies
mainly in the subtext. talk about burying the lede! in my view, the
south korean agenda has little to do with machine intelligence or
roboethics proper. once you sniff your way through the subterfuge of
south korea's jetson-esque utopia, you will see that there are two very
traditional drivers underlying all of this.
the first driver is financial. for
better or worse, the south korean government has identified robotics as
a key economic strategy in the coming decades. the BBC and the new york
times report that millions of research dollars are being pumped into
robotics in south korea. recognizing market saturation for industrial
and military robotics, the strategy is to create a global market that
does not currently exist -- a market for domestic service robots. south
korea is hoping that if they build it, we will come.
the second driver is social. with the
lowest birthrate in the world, it is predicted that south korea will
face significant workforce shortages in the coming years.
the current strategy for making up
the shortfall includes developing service "bots" such as asimov's
robbie that can perform a range of domestic chores, and become
companions and caregivers for the young and old.
in any case, if you find the idea of
using service robots to solve domestic labour issues somewhat exotic,
it should be remembered that such proposals have longstanding
precedents in north america. a nice example was offered me by a
brilliant cyberfeminist colleague in the following corporate slogan
from the 1920s: "clothes washing is a task for a machine, not for your
wife. turn the hard work into play. buy her a bluebird."
in light of this slogan, it is
intriguing to note the first of two central reasons offered to the
media for creating the robot ethics charter by one of its drafters.
recognizing the concerns that accompany the substitution of robots for
people as caregivers and companions, the drafter ponders, "imagine if
some people treat androids as if the machines were their wives."
before we spend valuable resources
commissioning working groups to invent "no-flirt" rules or other
robotic laws to avoid inappropriate human-machine bonding, isn't there
a logically prior line of questioning about whether a declining
birthrate is truly a problem and, in any event, whether intelligent
service robots are the right response?
a headline in the korea times a little over a year ago proclaimed a more intuitive approach: "gender equality essential to addressing low birthrate."
it is no coincidence that the word robot itself derives from robota --
a czech word that connotes involuntary servitude. aristotle was perhaps
first to recognize the politics of automation, speculating that "[i]f
every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating
the will of others, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters
slaves."
was he right? could robots be a
technology of emancipation? or does automation just as easily reinforce
existing gender stereotypes and an unjust status quo?
the answer to these questions surely
depends on how those robots are designed and used. not just the way
they are programmed but, more broadly, the social roles and values that
we ascribe to them.
despite my luddite sensibilities, i
have always remained a reluctant optimist about the potential of
ethically inspired automation technologies, AI and collective
intelligence. i am an adamant believer in the general project of
roboethics and ethical software design, and i commend much of the
excellent research in these fields by groups like the singularity
institute for AI and the european robotics research network.
at the same time, i am concerned
about robotic laws, charters and other sleight-of-hand that have the
potential to misdirect us from the actual domains of ethics and social
justice. let us hope that i am mistaken in what i described as the true
drivers of the south korean robotics agenda and that its robot ethics
charter will exceed its pre-release hype. only time will tell.
it was a
fun event, packed with many of cyberlaw’s rockstars.
i was on
the last panel of day two, looking at ‘the future of intermediaries’ along with
a great line-up that included ann bartow, rob heverly, dan hunter and david
post.
for me,
the most inspiring of the talks during the two day event was the one given by
ann. she took the question posed in the conference title seriously, choosing to
remove the bracketed-h and explaining why gender equality requires us to wither the ‘man’ in the middle.the publication deriving from this talk is
available here,
and i highly recommend it as an important diagnostic and prescription for the
way we use (and don’t use) the web.
in her
talk, ann provided some possible explanations for why there is not very much
legal scholarship devoted to gender issues on the internet and suggested that
there is a powerful need for cyberprofs and activists to pay substantially more
attention to the gender-based differences in communicative style and substance
that have been imported from real space to cyberspace.
ann also shared
a number of examples of gender discrimination online and off, including
experiences of her own upon her arrival to usc, including her first meeting
with a senior male colleague who greeted her with a question: ‘why should the faculty have hired a woman
instead of a man to teach ip?’
she told
us that it has since gotten a bit easier, that over time she was able to ‘flip’
this guy (i.e., he came to recognize her contribution to the faculty
and her field and he eased-up a little once she was able to ‘prove herself’).
during
the discussion period on our panel – when asked what could be done about all
this – ann replied by saying it-would-be-a-great-start
if male colleagues would simply add a gender component within the fields of
research that they are already conducting.
i
remember dan hunter and others promising that they would. i made a similar
promise to myself. while it has taken a lot longer than i had hoped to ramp up
my research and although it is still very early in my project, i am happy to
finally report to ann and the others in attendance that i have met the
challenge.
in
furtherance of my own recent work on the relationship between ‘identifiers’ and
‘identity’ (part of my idtrail project), last
wednesday, i gave a presentation at uOttawa’s shirley
greenberg feminist lunch time workshop series titled “new identifiers for victims of
abuse”.
unfortunately,
my talk was more of a description of the project than a finished research
product.
if you
are interested, the podcast is available here and the powerpoint
deck is here.
this post
is really just to offer my sincere thanks to ann for ‘flipping’ me, and also to
challenge dan hunter, greg latowska, and other men who promised they would meet
ann’s challenge — as well as all of the other men on this list who didn’t know
about ann’s challenge — to flip-it-forward!
Canada Research Chair in 
telephone:
fax:
post:
