A Rebuttal Zittrain, Jonathan
Privacy Journal,
03/2011, Volume:
37, Issue:
5
Trade Publication Article
The Internet works thanks to loose but trusted connections among its many constituent parts, with easy entry and exit for new Internet service providers or new forms of expanding access. That is not ...the case with, say, mobile phones, in which the telecom operator can tell which phone placed what call and to whom the phone is registered. Establishing this level of identity on the Internet is no small task, as we have seen with authoritarian regimes that have sought to limit anonymity.
This article begins with a premise that intellectual property and privacy have something significant and yet understated in common: both are about balancing a creator's desire to control a particular ...set of data with consumers' desires to access and redistribute that data. Both law and technology influence such balancing, making it more or less palatable to use data for particular purposes-whether one is an individual making a copy of a popular song for a friend, or a hospital selling a list of maternity ward patients to a day care service. In the shadow of the Internet's rapid development and concomitant easing of barriers to data sharing, holders of intellectual property are pairing increased legal protection with the technologies of "trusted systems." I describe how these technologies might allow more thorough mass distribution of data, while allowing publishers to retain unprecedented control over their wares. For instance, an e-Book seller might charge one price for a read-only copy that could not be printed or forwarded and charge an additional fee for each copy or printout made. Taking up the case of medical privacy, I then suggest that those who worry about the confidentiality of medical records, particularly as they are digitized by recent congressional mandate, might seek to augment comparatively paltry legal protections with trusted systems technologies. For instance, a trusted system could allow a patient to specify how and by whom her records could be used; within limits, she could allow full access to her primary care physician, while allowing only time-limited access to emergency care providers, non-personally identifiable access to medical researchers, and no access at all for marketing purposes. These technologies could allow for new kinds of privacy protection, without sacrificing the legitimate interests of the consumers of medical records.
Current tax law makes it difficult to enforce sales taxes on most Internet commerce and has generated considerable policy debate. In this paper we analyze the costs and benefits of enforcing such ...taxes including revenue losses, competition with retail, externalities, distribution, and compliance costs. The results suggest that the costs of not enforcing taxes are somewhat modest and will remain so for several years. At the same time, compliance costs and the benefits of nurturing the Internet diminish over time. When tax costs and benefits take this form, a moratorium provides a natural compromise.
Headlines from the likes of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post would have us believe that clever fakes may soon make it impossible to distinguish truth from ...falsehood. Deepfakes--pieces of AI-synthesized image and video content persuasively depicting things that never happened--are now a constant presence in conversations about the future of disinformation. Here, Bowers et al argue the dangers of deepfakes are overblown, but they still require journalists to give thought to how they handle unconfirmed information. To navigate this tricky dilemma, one which balances the important values of journalistic ethics against the need to ensure that newsrooms can continue to fulfill their role as a critical societal counterweight to disinformation, they offer suggestions. First, newsrooms must accelerate their ability to come to accurate conclusions about synthetic or tampered media. Second, newsrooms might, in the immediate term, favor reporting on their process rather than waiting for a conclusive outcome. Third, contextual clues around media remain a critical part of assessing veracity and the agenda of those who might seek to spread disinformation.
How to Save the Internet Zittrain, Jonathan L
The Wilson quarterly (Washington),
06/2006, Volume:
30, Issue:
3
Journal Article, Magazine Article
Todays rapidly proliferating threats to Internet security have the potential to provoke a backlash among computer users, creating consumer demand for protective measures that would fundamentally ...change the nature of the Internet. ...that accessibility also opens the door to danger, as the experience of CERT, an independent Internet security organization based at Carnegie Mellon University, graphically illustrates. The recent spread of automatic software updating via the Internet could allow, say, the providers of operating systems such as Windows to block users' access to material on the Internet that somebody deems inappropriate.
A break from the bench Poeppel, David; Brown, Mike; Solomon, Susan ...
Nature,
07/2009, Volume:
460, Issue:
7255
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
Open access
Archer leads the reader to a simple yet accurate picture of climate changes, ranging from geological time scales to current warming, ice ages and prospects for the future. The influence of food ...production and distribution on social change, political organization, geographical competition, industrial development, military conflict and economic expansion are likened to "an invisible fork that has, at several crucial points in history, prodded humanity and alerted its destiny". First published by John Murray: 1859.
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