A couple of posters have already alluded to this - the field of information privacy is full of ethical issues.
To begin with, the pedagogue might ask the students to try and define why privacy is valuable - that in itself is a tricky question. Different models could be proposed, such as universal anonymity or, by contrast, Brin's universal openness. What are the reactions? Is privacy about your one big dark secret, or about a myriad of little factoids about you that you don't mind sharing with others, but which, when collated, help large organizations (commercial / governmental / NGO / terrorist) manipulate your desires and fears?
Once the class has reached some sort of compromise argument as to why privacy might be valuable, the pedagogue could go on to try and measure that value. Is it worth money? How much? How many students have given a factoid about themselves in return for "10 e-credits"? This can branch into a discussion of public awareness of the ability of modern IT to spin numerous factoids into a detailed profile. Should people be saved from the consequences of their ignorance? What if they know but don't care, like someone who chooses to take up smoking these days with knowledge of the dangers - should the state prevent that? (Note that I didn't specify smoking tobacco - an example of disparate treatment of different types of voluntary addiction by notionally autonomous and responsible citizens).
How about lives? Should we trade security for privacy, and how much? This can develop into a political argument, in which the role of privacy in enabling resistance to oppressive government is discussed (with real world examples, of course). The idea that liberty is worth spilling blood for is generally accepted - so, connect privacy to liberty and see if the students would agree that privacy is also worth spilling blood for.
Privacy is, IMO, a good testing-ground for many ethical issues in that it touches so many facets of our lives - economic, social, psychological, political and military. The different ways in which technology raises these issues - through web bugs, ubiquitous cameras, face-recognition technology, thermal imaging and massive datawarehousing - can provide enough material for an entire semester...
As another comment has pointed out, "Ibn" means "son of" (in Arabic). A more likely etymology for the worthy professor's name, however, is the Hebrew "Even", meaning "stone". Hebrew uses the same letter for B and V. Combine this with his affiliation with the Tel-Aviv University's Faculty of Law, and I think there's a strong case to be made for the Hebrew derivation of Eben. Of course, it could also be an abbreviation of Ebenezer (as in, "the Scrooge").
I report, you decide;)
I wonder if they could shift to a slashdot-type system... Post an article, then let any accredited reader moderate it. Initially, set moderation strength based on number of articles the particular reader has published in the relevant journals (weighting them for prestige of the journal)... after that, set moderation strength according to karma, which you get by posting an article and having it moderated upwards.
One can imagine various enrichments to this model (e.g., allowing a reviewer to go back and change his opinion of the article if he finds he cannot replicate the results in his laboratory), but I think you get the basic idea. Having everything in the open domain will indeed shut down the revenue for academic journals, but that doesn't mean that the time-honored system of peer review has to go down the drain, it just needs to be updated.
(Note: Reviewers who haven't yet published anything, and who do not have tenure at a recognized academic institution, will be awarded zero moderation strength; this is still a closed system for academics, even though it is based on openness. The usual disclaimers for strength of encryption - to ensure no impersonations - apply.)
Hmmmm. This "consensual virus" may have quite a bit of potential... Imagine a low-level employee at a hypothetical large corporation (let's call it "MacroSoft") opening this sort of e-mail, and agreeing to the terms. Now imagine that the EULA specifically requires the employee to agree on behalf of the corporation as the corporation's duly authorized agent and employee.
Now, what did MacroSoft agree to? Be creative. Did it agree to grant you non-exclusive and irrevocable distribution rights to various programs on its network? Or perhaps did it agree to your modifying its software on an as-needed basis? Or, maybe it agreed to grant you access rights to financial information stored on its system? Endless possibilities...
We keep berating EULAs for ramming indecipherable terms down our throats and depriving us of what we generally see as our rights when buying a product (warranty etc.). But EULAs can be used in the opposite direction, as a means of obtaining legal (if not real) consent from an organization, such as MacroSoft. Why is this consent useful? Because many laws criminalize various actions "unless done with consent of the other party" - things like obtaining information from a system, etc. So having the organization's consent can let one enter its system as an "authorized" rather than "unauthorized" user.
If MacroSoft doesn't think this is fair, well, it can always go file a complaint in court. In Panama.;) ["The terms of this agreement are to be governed solely by the laws of the Republic of Panama...."]
Well, but then he wouldn't be able to unlock the value of the idea. A better solution might be to argue that, while Alcatel has ownership rights over the idea, they will have to PAY Evan for the privilege of him expressing the idea.
Remember the scene in the Merchant of Venice, where Shylock is told, "You can get your pound of flesh - it is yours - but if you spill a single drop of blood when taking it, we'll hang you"?
Similar concept. "You can get the idea - it is yours - if you have some way of getting at it without my cooperation, be my guest. But if you want my cooperation in putting it down on paper, there are some fees involved... oh, and did I mention the royalties?"
Section 5(a) of the FTC Act (check Cornell law school's helpful online United States Code at 15 U.S.C. section 45(a)) prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. Omission of a material fact can be deceptive if the facts that are revealed are misleading in the absence of the omitted fact. If the words "search engine" (and the other text appearing on the engine's web site) lead most people to believe that the sites are ranked solely by relevance, then omitting the fact that some less-relevant sites are bumped up in return for a fee paid to the search engine could be misleading. What is "material", you ask? Well, nobody really knows for sure, but a typical formulation is "anything which significantly changes the totality of information available to the consumer" (to paraphrase a Supreme Court ruling in the securities law context), or "anything which a reasonable consumer would like to know in making his/her decision to use that particular search engine".
First Amendment implications? Sheesh. Do you think Land'O'Lakes _enjoys_ disclosing the number of calories in a butter stick? Or that RJ Reynolds puts "Surgeon General" warnings on its cigarettes as a marketing ploy to appeal to the subconscious deathwish of the nihilistic Gen X? Or that troubled businesses disclose profit warnings in order to attract investors? They disclose these things because they are forced to, because failure to do so would expose them to potentially massive liability. That is no different from forcing a search engine to make a disclosure about its sorting algorithm. No First Amendment problems in preventing fraud...
I'm not sure how likely the hardwired "content protection" scenario is... but, a pessimist by nature, I think we should start preparing as though it is going to happen.
The simplest version is if Intel unilaterally decided to cave in to Disney, AOL/TW, RIAA etc. and build its own hardware with little censor chips in them. In this case, the response is straight-up economic. Turn to alternative hardware vendors. I don't just mean in your personal purchases. Slashdot readers who are sysadmins or IT specialists at corporations should start preparing their explanations of why the company really should move away from the risks inherent in having unintelligent censorware control the use of potentially mission-critical data. If large corporate clients start abandoning Intel as a result of content-control, you can guess which product-line will get scrapped pretty quick.
The two other scenarios are legislation and regulation that will prevent anyone from seeking out alternatives, by making those alternatives illegal. This is more problematic, because slashdotters punch well below their weight politically. However, in both cases there will be a political "hook" - in the case of legislation, one can write one's congresscritter (for whatever good that will do), and in the case of FCC regulation, there will be a notice-and-comment period. So take notice, and make comments:)
As a penultimate line of defense, there is always the courts. In addition to the obvious first amendment claims, there could be an interesting "restraint of trade" (antitrust) claim based on denial of "essential facilities" (computing services).
In the long run, however, I think the answer to content protection is, "fine, go take away your ball and go play with it by yourself. I have a better game now." When all manner of content (not just free software) is made without any desire to restrict it, and when that content is both quantitively and qualitatively superior to restricted content, there will be no point to having hardwired censors. Even if people all use "approved" monitors and computers, they will be using them to view "free content" (free as in free speech, not free beer). So the "oligarchy" will wither, and there will no longer be any significant force pushing Intel to continue making hardwired censors...
How likely is that end-scenario? *shrug* Ask yourselves.
One of the beautiful things about a free country is that if you don't like something, you can act to change it. If there is a need you feel is unmet, a want that is unfulfilled, you can provide the answer - and be rewarded for it.
If you don't like the way drug companies refuse to share the fruit of their investment except at a high price, go the FSF route. Start your own drug company. Hire researchers (maybe part-time volunteers?), lease (or build) sophisticated labs, rent computer time (or initiate a SETI@home-type project for distributed computing), somehow find the funds to conduct the various stages of testing demanded by the FDA...
And then, offer the drug free to anyone who is too poor to afford to pay for it.
Take a moment to imagine this scenario.
If it is feasible - by all means, do it!
If it is not feasible (e.g., where will you get funding? any venture capitalist will laugh his/her guts out upon hearing your plan, so you'll need other sources of capital...), then perhaps by putting yourself for a moment in the shoes of a would-be drug company, you will have gained a partial understanding of why they operate the way they do.
In general, before criticizing an industry, it is often useful to think, "What prevents me from going into that industry myself, making a better/cheaper/freer product and wiping the floor with those guys?"
Slashdot Mirror
A couple of posters have already alluded to this - the field of information privacy is full of ethical issues.
To begin with, the pedagogue might ask the students to try and define why privacy is valuable - that in itself is a tricky question. Different models could be proposed, such as universal anonymity or, by contrast, Brin's universal openness. What are the reactions? Is privacy about your one big dark secret, or about a myriad of little factoids about you that you don't mind sharing with others, but which, when collated, help large organizations (commercial / governmental / NGO / terrorist) manipulate your desires and fears?
Once the class has reached some sort of compromise argument as to why privacy might be valuable, the pedagogue could go on to try and measure that value. Is it worth money? How much? How many students have given a factoid about themselves in return for "10 e-credits"? This can branch into a discussion of public awareness of the ability of modern IT to spin numerous factoids into a detailed profile. Should people be saved from the consequences of their ignorance? What if they know but don't care, like someone who chooses to take up smoking these days with knowledge of the dangers - should the state prevent that? (Note that I didn't specify smoking tobacco - an example of disparate treatment of different types of voluntary addiction by notionally autonomous and responsible citizens).
How about lives? Should we trade security for privacy, and how much? This can develop into a political argument, in which the role of privacy in enabling resistance to oppressive government is discussed (with real world examples, of course). The idea that liberty is worth spilling blood for is generally accepted - so, connect privacy to liberty and see if the students would agree that privacy is also worth spilling blood for.
Privacy is, IMO, a good testing-ground for many ethical issues in that it touches so many facets of our lives - economic, social, psychological, political and military. The different ways in which technology raises these issues - through web bugs, ubiquitous cameras, face-recognition technology, thermal imaging and massive datawarehousing - can provide enough material for an entire semester...
As another comment has pointed out, "Ibn" means "son of" (in Arabic). A more likely etymology for the worthy professor's name, however, is the Hebrew "Even", meaning "stone". Hebrew uses the same letter for B and V. Combine this with his affiliation with the Tel-Aviv University's Faculty of Law, and I think there's a strong case to be made for the Hebrew derivation of Eben. Of course, it could also be an abbreviation of Ebenezer (as in, "the Scrooge"). I report, you decide ;)
One can imagine various enrichments to this model (e.g., allowing a reviewer to go back and change his opinion of the article if he finds he cannot replicate the results in his laboratory), but I think you get the basic idea. Having everything in the open domain will indeed shut down the revenue for academic journals, but that doesn't mean that the time-honored system of peer review has to go down the drain, it just needs to be updated.
(Note: Reviewers who haven't yet published anything, and who do not have tenure at a recognized academic institution, will be awarded zero moderation strength; this is still a closed system for academics, even though it is based on openness. The usual disclaimers for strength of encryption - to ensure no impersonations - apply.)
Now, what did MacroSoft agree to? Be creative. Did it agree to grant you non-exclusive and irrevocable distribution rights to various programs on its network? Or perhaps did it agree to your modifying its software on an as-needed basis? Or, maybe it agreed to grant you access rights to financial information stored on its system? Endless possibilities...
We keep berating EULAs for ramming indecipherable terms down our throats and depriving us of what we generally see as our rights when buying a product (warranty etc.). But EULAs can be used in the opposite direction, as a means of obtaining legal (if not real) consent from an organization, such as MacroSoft. Why is this consent useful? Because many laws criminalize various actions "unless done with consent of the other party" - things like obtaining information from a system, etc. So having the organization's consent can let one enter its system as an "authorized" rather than "unauthorized" user.
If MacroSoft doesn't think this is fair, well, it can always go file a complaint in court. In Panama. ;) ["The terms of this agreement are to be governed solely by the laws of the Republic of Panama...."]
Just a thought.
Well, but then he wouldn't be able to unlock the value of the idea. A better solution might be to argue that, while Alcatel has ownership rights over the idea, they will have to PAY Evan for the privilege of him expressing the idea.
Remember the scene in the Merchant of Venice, where Shylock is told, "You can get your pound of flesh - it is yours - but if you spill a single drop of blood when taking it, we'll hang you"?
Similar concept. "You can get the idea - it is yours - if you have some way of getting at it without my cooperation, be my guest. But if you want my cooperation in putting it down on paper, there are some fees involved... oh, and did I mention the royalties?"
IANAL either, but for what it's worth:
Section 5(a) of the FTC Act (check Cornell law school's helpful online United States Code at 15 U.S.C. section 45(a)) prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. Omission of a material fact can be deceptive if the facts that are revealed are misleading in the absence of the omitted fact. If the words "search engine" (and the other text appearing on the engine's web site) lead most people to believe that the sites are ranked solely by relevance, then omitting the fact that some less-relevant sites are bumped up in return for a fee paid to the search engine could be misleading. What is "material", you ask? Well, nobody really knows for sure, but a typical formulation is "anything which significantly changes the totality of information available to the consumer" (to paraphrase a Supreme Court ruling in the securities law context), or "anything which a reasonable consumer would like to know in making his/her decision to use that particular search engine".
First Amendment implications? Sheesh. Do you think Land'O'Lakes _enjoys_ disclosing the number of calories in a butter stick? Or that RJ Reynolds puts "Surgeon General" warnings on its cigarettes as a marketing ploy to appeal to the subconscious deathwish of the nihilistic Gen X? Or that troubled businesses disclose profit warnings in order to attract investors? They disclose these things because they are forced to, because failure to do so would expose them to potentially massive liability. That is no different from forcing a search engine to make a disclosure about its sorting algorithm. No First Amendment problems in preventing fraud...
I'm not sure how likely the hardwired "content protection" scenario is... but, a pessimist by nature, I think we should start preparing as though it is going to happen. :)
The simplest version is if Intel unilaterally decided to cave in to Disney, AOL/TW, RIAA etc. and build its own hardware with little censor chips in them. In this case, the response is straight-up economic. Turn to alternative hardware vendors. I don't just mean in your personal purchases. Slashdot readers who are sysadmins or IT specialists at corporations should start preparing their explanations of why the company really should move away from the risks inherent in having unintelligent censorware control the use of potentially mission-critical data. If large corporate clients start abandoning Intel as a result of content-control, you can guess which product-line will get scrapped pretty quick.
The two other scenarios are legislation and regulation that will prevent anyone from seeking out alternatives, by making those alternatives illegal. This is more problematic, because slashdotters punch well below their weight politically. However, in both cases there will be a political "hook" - in the case of legislation, one can write one's congresscritter (for whatever good that will do), and in the case of FCC regulation, there will be a notice-and-comment period. So take notice, and make comments
As a penultimate line of defense, there is always the courts. In addition to the obvious first amendment claims, there could be an interesting "restraint of trade" (antitrust) claim based on denial of "essential facilities" (computing services).
In the long run, however, I think the answer to content protection is, "fine, go take away your ball and go play with it by yourself. I have a better game now." When all manner of content (not just free software) is made without any desire to restrict it, and when that content is both quantitively and qualitatively superior to restricted content, there will be no point to having hardwired censors. Even if people all use "approved" monitors and computers, they will be using them to view "free content" (free as in free speech, not free beer). So the "oligarchy" will wither, and there will no longer be any significant force pushing Intel to continue making hardwired censors...
How likely is that end-scenario? *shrug* Ask yourselves.
One of the beautiful things about a free country is that if you don't like something, you can act to change it. If there is a need you feel is unmet, a want that is unfulfilled, you can provide the answer - and be rewarded for it. If you don't like the way drug companies refuse to share the fruit of their investment except at a high price, go the FSF route. Start your own drug company. Hire researchers (maybe part-time volunteers?), lease (or build) sophisticated labs, rent computer time (or initiate a SETI@home-type project for distributed computing), somehow find the funds to conduct the various stages of testing demanded by the FDA... And then, offer the drug free to anyone who is too poor to afford to pay for it. Take a moment to imagine this scenario. If it is feasible - by all means, do it! If it is not feasible (e.g., where will you get funding? any venture capitalist will laugh his/her guts out upon hearing your plan, so you'll need other sources of capital...), then perhaps by putting yourself for a moment in the shoes of a would-be drug company, you will have gained a partial understanding of why they operate the way they do. In general, before criticizing an industry, it is often useful to think, "What prevents me from going into that industry myself, making a better/cheaper/freer product and wiping the floor with those guys?"