Identifying Difficult Problems in Cyberlaw - User contributions [en]

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2020-08-13T10:47:13Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1297036800

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

If you are a student, please see [[Course Logistics]]. All regular class meetings will be at '''Stanford Law School Classroom 272'''.

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.

==WEEK ONE: Theory and Problems==

<center> '''Monday, January 3th: 5pm to 7pm''' </center>

:Professor Zittrain will give a lecture on the technological workings of the Internet.
:There will be time made for brief student introductions.

''Required Readings For Class'':
*Read [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wlyLMWKKY2WD51h6oU-xcR_vAVRaQPprAaKnu6NopzI/edit?hl=en&authkey=CN6RnL4C/ Brief Angry Statements of Confusion: How the Internet is Covered]
*Read Chapter 2 of [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/archives/10/ The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It]

''Recommended Readings'':
*Salzter, et al [http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf/ End-to-End Arguments in System Design]

<center> '''After Class Reception! 7pm to 8:30pm''' </center>
:Please join us for a celebratory first-day-of-class reception, directly after class.

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<center> '''Tuesday, January 4th: 11:30am to 1:30pm''' </center>

:Privacy and Technological Points of Control

'''Guests'''
*Fred von Lohman [http://w2.eff.org/about/staff/fred_von_lohmann.html/ EFF]
*Dean Hachamovitch [http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/Hachamovitch/ Microsoft]

''Required Readings for Class'':
*Read Zittrain's [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=388860 Internet Points of Control]
*Read [http://news.cnet.com/Supreme-Court-rules-against-file-swapping/2100-1030_3-5764135.html “Supreme Court rules against file swapping”] (June 2005)
*Read [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/internet_explorer_do_not_track/ “Microsoft unveils 'do not track' option for IE9”] (December 7 2010)

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<center> '''Wednesday, January 5th: 5pm to 7pm'''</center>

:Cybersecurity and Diplomatic Transparency

'''Guests'''
*Ben Scott [http://www.state.gov State Department]

''Required Readings for Class''
*Read Clark and Landau's [http://docs.google.com/document/d/1xT-j_mLv6wXppsa8p5YP0r6mDWQakq5qS-2kBt8STcs/edit?hl=en&authkey=CNek64YG/ Untangling Attribution] (sections in italics are recommended, not required)
*Read Zuckerman's [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/2010_DDoS_Attacks_Human_Rights_and_Media.pdf Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites] (pp 48 through 58 required; pp 8-25 recommended for technical background)
*Read Zittrain and Sauter's [http://futureoftheinternet.org/wikileaks-cable-faq Wikileaks FAQ]
*Read Clinton's [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/21/internet_freedom?page=full Internet Freedom] (January 21, 2010)
*Read The New York Times's [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/middleeast/23response.html Defense Department's Response to Iraq War Logs] (October 22, 2010)
*Read The Wall Street Journal [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704694004576019944121568506.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us Air Force Blocks Media Sites] (December 14, 2010)
*Read Roy Revie's [http://pulsemedia.org/2010/12/08/wikileaks-and-21st-century-statecraft/ Wikileaks and 21st Century Statecraft]

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<center> '''Thursday, January 6th: 11:30am to 1:30pm'''</center>

:Privacy and Reputation

'''Guests'''
*Peter Kazanjy [http://www.honestly.com/ Honestly.com]

''Required Readings for Class''
*Read Chapter 9 of Zittrain's [http://futureoftheinternet.org/static/ZittrainTheFutureoftheInternet.pdf The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It] (pp 200-221, 225-231 required)
*Read Chapter 8 of Solove's [http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text/futureofreputation-ch8.pdf The Future of Reputation]
*Read Craig Newmark's [http://www.cnewmark.com/2010/04/trust-and-reputation-systems-redistributing-power-and-influence.html/ Trust and reputation systems: redistributing power and influence]
*Read Evlyn Rusli [http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/unvarnished-honestly-kazanjy-funding Unvarnished Becomes Honestly.com, Raises $1.2 Million And Opens The Floodgates] (October 19, 2010)

''Recommended for Class''
*Attendance at Zittrain's [http://liberationtechnology.stanford.edu/events/minds_for_sale_1_6_2011/ Minds for Sale] lecture is highly recommended. (4:30pm to 6:00pm, Wallenberg Theater)

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<center> '''Friday, January 7th: 9:30am to 11:30am'''</center>

:Crowdsourcing and The Four Quadrants

'''Guests'''
*SpamGirl, admin of [http://turkers.proboards.com/index.cgi Turker Nation] forums
*Lukas Biewald, [http://crowdflower.com Crowdflower]

''Required Readings for Class''
*Explore [http://turkers.proboards.com/index.cgi Turker Nation] forums.
*Explore Panos Ipeirotis's [http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com research blog]
*Read [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/difficultproblems/Class_3 Cloudwork Best Practices]
*Read Zittrain's [http://fordhamlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/Vol_78/Zittrain_Vol_78_May.pdf The Four Quadrants]

''Recommended for Class''
*Though class will run into this event, if you can make it after class, it should be really interesting: [http://www.techamerica.org/nstic/ National Strategies for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace] (11 AM - 12 PM)
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==WEEK TWO: Analysis through the Four Quadrants==

<center> '''Monday, January 10th: 6pm to 8pm''' </center>

:Government Regulation/Corporate Monopolies (Quadrant One)
:Review of groups' work thus far
:Discussion and lecture of Professor Zittrain's "The Four Quadrants."

''Required Readings For Class'':
*Read sections of Wu and Goldsmith's Who Controls the Internet

''Recommended Readings'':
*Review Zittrain's [http://fordhamlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/Vol_78/Zittrain_Vol_78_May.pdf The Four Quadrants]

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<center> '''Tuesday, January 11th: 11:30am to 1:30pm'''</center>

:(Corporate) Self-Regulation (Quadrant Two)

'''Guests'''
*Andrew McLaughlin http://twitter.com/mcandrew
*Charlie Cheever of [http://www.quora.com/Charlie-Cheever Quora]
*Steven Lurie and Jay Monahan of [http://www.zynga.com Zynga]

''Required Reading for Class''
*Read Grimmelmann and Ohm's [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=james_grimmelmann Dr. Generative]

''Field Trip!''
*to [http://www.mozilla.org Mozilla]!

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<center> '''Wednesday, January 12th: 5pm to 7pm''' </center>

:Cyberanarchy! (Quadrant Three)

'''Guests'''
*[http://joindiaspora.com Diaspora]
*Steven Levy, author of [http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Levy/dp/0141000511 Hackers] and journalist at Wired

'''Required Reading for Class'''
*Watch Coleman's [http://turbulence.org/blog/2010/04/13/free-speech-anonymous-vs-scientology Old and New Net Wars Over Free Speech and Secrecy or How to Understand the Lulz Battle Against the Church of Scientology] (about an hour of video altogether)

'''Field Trip!'''
*Reception at [http://www.augustcap.com/ August Capital] with [http://www.augustcap.com/team/david_hornik/ David Hornik]

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<center> '''Thursday, January 13th: 11:30am to 1:30pm''' </center>

:Communitarian (Quadrant Four)

'''Required Reading for Class'''
*Read Chapter 5 fro Joseph Reagle's [http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1zjQTDbNrS6G-n5FnQY0ngNIp3Iw3d1-A4h5BMlSLXOxG8mlyC5OqZq0494Ao&hl=en&authkey=CMHpiPoC Good Faith Collaboration]
*Read pp 127-148 of Professor Zittrain's [http://futureoftheinternet.org/static/ZittrainTheFutureoftheInternet.pdf The Future of the Internet]

'''Field Trip!'''
*to [http://www.wikimedia.org Wikimedia]
*and [http://twitter.com Twitter]!

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[[Pharos]]

'''Winter class: Please disregard the below links for now.'''

[[Class Schedule]]

[[Class Notes]]

[[Topic Sign-up!]]

[[CrowdConf Brainstorm page]]

[[New Difficult Topics]]

GROUP TWO

2020-08-13T10:46:39Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1297036800

Issues of online identity and reputation bankruptcy deserve to be called difficult problems: Eric Schmidt's comment in a Wall Street Journal interview that soon “every young person…will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites” [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html] stirred a heated debate [http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2010/09/reputation-bankruptcy.html] (even though when interviewed for this project he asserted it was only a "joke"). The controversy raised in this area provided enough motivation for our team to take a closer look at the problem.

We start by providing some evidence of the importance of online identity and reputation, with a particular focus on looking towards the future and impact of reputation on the internet to future generations. We then dive into the recent scholarship and other proposed solutions, organizing the field using Lessig's framework of Law, Code, Market and Norms [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Code_and_Other_Laws_of_Cyberspace] before presenting our proposed solution: a law, supported by code and norms, which we call the Minor's Online Identity Protection Act. We are aware of the potential implications and concerns and present some of them in the following section.

Our solution will ultimately benefit both children and adults. We seek to provide better protection for children, when still minors, from any damaging content that either they or others post about them. Looking forward, we seek to protect adults from earlier "youthful indiscretions" or "hijinks" and other damaging records from when they were minors, analogous to juvenile record sealing and expungement.

==Importance of Online Identity and Reputation==

As the first generation to grow up entirely in the digital age reaches adulthood, what has already been identified as a difficult problem could have serious and damaging consequences. Already vast amounts of personal content have been digitally captured for perpetuity, and more content is added every day. As one New York Times article aptly observed, the Internet effectively takes away second chances so that "the worst thing you've done is often the first thing everyone knows about you." [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html] Others have noted that "[t]he Internet erases inhibitions" which tends to make people, especially young people, more likely to act out or behave badly online. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/us/05bully.html?hp] In addition, the viral dynamics of the Internet and search engines -- which are able to quickly rank information based in part on popularity -- may amplify reputation damage. Moreover, as major advances in facial-recognition technology continue to develop, there will be a stark challenge to "our expectation of anonymity in public." [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html]

Minors are particularly vulnerable to these advances because they are the least able to fully comprehend the ramifications of online behavior, and are unlikely to exercise the maturity and restraint that we expect of adults (even if such restraint is not always exercised in practice). Congress has already recognized the importance of protecting children in this regard by passing several pieces of legislation, the most relevant of which is the [http://www.coppa.org Children's Online Privacy Protection Act] (COPPA). One failing of COPPA, however, is that protection ends at age thirteen. While young children may be the least cognitively advanced, it is older children and adolescents who are more likely to have sensitive and damaging content posted about them on the internet (e.g. photos of the youth drinking or smoking with friends, or sexually charged material). More importantly, COPPA has proven ineffective even at shielding the age group it is designed to protect: studies show that as many as 37% of children aged 10-12 have Facebook accounts, and there are approximately 4.4 million Facebook users under age thirteen in the United States despite the fact that Facebook's policy is in compliance with COPPA standards. [http://internet-safety.yoursphere.com/2010/11/facebook-ignores-coppa-yoursphere-law-enforcement-team-member-speaks-out.html]

The lack of effective protection for minors, coupled with the staggering numbers of minors who post private content on the Internet, begs for a solution. This youthful web-based content also raises serious implications for these people's lives going forward; a recent Microsoft study reports that 75% of US recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their companies require them to do online research about candidates, and many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html] While these reputational problems similarly exist for those who posted content as adults, the problem of online identity and reputation is particularly compelling in the case of minors.

==The Recent Scholarship and Other Proposed Solutions==

===Law-Based===

The primary existing law to protect children on the internet is the [http://www.coppa.org Children's Online Privacy Protection Act] (COPPA). The scope of COPPA is directed to the operators of websites and dictates: "If you operate a commercial Web site or an online service directed to children under 13 that collects personal information from children or if you operate a general audience Web site and have actual knowledge that you are collecting personal information from children, you must comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act." This law, however, is quite narrow and does little in practice to protect children on the Internet. Children under the age of thirteen can simply lie about their dates of birth when creating accounts. As a result, there are few repercussions for content hosts and intermediaries who do not try to prevent even such blatant tactics, as long as they do not have actual knowledge. It should be noted though that the FTC has successfully pursued some financial penalties and settlements. [http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/02/hersheyfield.shtm]

Congress has passed additional laws to protect children in the online realm, with differing results. One such law, the [http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html Children's Internet Protection Act] (CIPA) requires that schools and public libraries employ certain content filters to shield children from harmful or obscene content in order to receive federal funding. The constitutionality of this law was upheld by the Supreme Court in the ''United States v. American Library Association''. [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-361.ZS.html] On the other hand, the [http://www.copacommission.org/ Children's Online Protection Act] (COPA), which was designed to restrict children's access to any material deemed harmful to them on the internet, did not survive its legal challenges. In upholding a lower court's preliminary injunction, the Supreme Could found the law unlikely to be sufficiently narrowly tailored to pass First Amendment scrutiny. [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZS.html]

In state law, there are some existing tort remedies for privacy violations, though not necessarily geared towards children. For example, in thirty-six states, there is already a recognized tort for "public disclosure of private fact." Essentially, this tort bars dissemination of non-newsworthy personal information that a reasonable person would find highly offensive. [http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts] Some state laws are more specific. For example, criminal laws forbidding the publication of the names of rape victims (for a discussion in opposition to such laws see Eugene Volokh [http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/privacy.htm#SpeechOnMattersOfPrivateConcern]). Anupam Chander has argued in a forthcoming article, "Youthful Indiscretion in an Internet Age," that the tort for public disclosure of private fact should be strengthened. (forthcoming in "The Offensive Internet" 2011 [http://www.amazon.com/Offensive-Internet-Speech-Privacy-Reputation/dp/0674050894/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290199043&sr=1-1]).

Chander also recognizes two important legal hurdles to overcome in strengthening the public disclosure of private fact tort. The first is that the indiscretion at issue may be legitimately newsworthy. This raises serious First Amendment concerns. The second hurdle is that intermediaries are often protected from liability under the Communications Decency Act (CDA). Despite these obstacles, Chander persuasively argues that such protection is needed, particularly in the context of nude images, because the society's fascination with embarrassing content will not abate. Moreover, he observes that an individual's humiliation "does not turn on whether some activity is out of the ordinary or freakish," but rather that common behavior can still cause significant personal damage.

Other legal proposals have also been put forward to curb the problems of online identity and reputation. One set of proposals is geared toward employers. For instance, Paul Ohm has supported a law which would bar employers from firing current employees or not hiring potential new employees based on their legal, off-duty conduct found on social networking profiles. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html] [http://paulohm.com/] Germany is also considering a law, to protect people's privacy, that would ban employers from mining information on jobs from social networking sites such as Facebook. The law would potentially impose significant fines on employers who violate it. German government officials have noted, however, that the law could be difficult to enforce because violations would be difficult to prove. [http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS338070983320100826]

Meanwhile, Dan Solove has considered a legal proposal which would give individuals a right to sue Facebook friends for certain breaches of confidence that violate one's privacy settings. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html][http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text.htm] He finds problematic the fact that the law provides no protection when others wrongfully spread your secrets. He also believes that the United States should adopt a regime which would better protect people from such transgressions. [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/15/time_for_a_muzzle/]. In some other countries, such as England, the law does provide for broader protection where friends and ex-lovers have breached a duty of confidentiality. [http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/15/time_for_a_muzzle/]

A more drastic idea, mentioned by Peter Taylor, would be to create a constitutional right to privacy or “oblivion” to allow for more anonymity. [http://blog.petertaylor.co.nz/2010/07/22/%E2%80%9Cconstitutional-right-to-oblivion-%E2%80%9D-the/] Less radical, but still significant in its own right, Cass Sunstein has proposed "a general right to demand retraction after a clear demonstration that a statement is both false and damaging." [http://www.amazon.com/Rumors-Falsehoods-Spread-Believe-Them/dp/0809094738][http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html] This bears some resemblance to defamation and libel laws, but where those laws would normally only require that the speaker or publisher pay adequate reputation damages, Sunstein's approach is specifically geared towards the removal of the material. In fact, his proposal is largely based on the existing [http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/pl105-304.pdf Digital Millennium Copyright Act] (DMCA) notice-and-takedown system for unauthorized uses of copyrighted material. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html]

On the other hand, some have criticized legal solutions to these issues that would in any way restrict the free flow of information. Eugene Volokh [http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/privacy.htm#SpeechOnMattersOfPrivateConcern] has expressed concern about highly troubling "possible unintended consequences of various justifications for information privacy speech restrictions." [http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/privacy.htm#SpeechOnMattersOfPrivateConcern] Volokh observed that children, as Internet consumers, are not capable of making contracts and thus any assent on their part may be invalid. He did not, however, discuss the topic in any detail.

===Code-Based===

Legal scholars have proposed several code-based solutions to the problem of online reputation. Jonathan Zittrain has discussed the possibility of expanding online rating systems, such as those on eBay, to cover behavior -- beyond the simple buying and selling of goods -- to potentially include more general and expansive ratings of people. The reputation system that Zittrain describes would allow users to declare reputation bankruptcy, akin to financial bankruptcy, in order "to de-emphasize if not entirely delete older information that has been generated about them by and through various systems." [http://futureoftheinternet.org/reputation-bankruptcy]

Alternative code-based proposals would allow for the deletion of content stored online via expiration dates, in an attempt to graft the natural process of human forgetting onto the Internet. A major proponent of this theory is Victor Mayer-Schonberger, who wrote about such digital forgetting through expiration dates in his book “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8981.html]. Similarly, University of Washington researchers have developed a new technology called "Vanish" which encrypts electronic messages to essentially self-destruct after a designated time period. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21crypto.html].

A less extreme code-based option would be a "soft paternalistic" approach proposed by Alessandro Acquisti, where individuals would be given a "privacy nudge" when sharing potentially sensitive information about themselves online. [http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/acquisti-privacy-nudging.pdf] This nudge would be a built-in feature for social networking sites, for example, and could either give helpful privacy information to users when posting such content, or contain a privacy default for all such sensitive information that users must be manually switch on. Such a "privacy nudge" has been analogized to Gmail's "Mail Goggles," which is an optional paternalistic feature designed to prevent drunken users from sending email messages that they might later regret. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html]

Hal Abelson recently provided a useful framework to think about technology that could support information accountability [http://www.w3.org/2010/policy-ws/slides/09-Abelson-MIT.pdf]. In particular, the capability to allow users to "manipulate information via policy-aware interfaces that can enforce policies and/or signal non-compliant uses" is relevant, especially in the context of our proposal.

Ted Kang and Lalana Kagal, from MIT [http://www.csail.mit.edu/ CSAIL], have proposed a "Respect My Privacy (RMP) framework." [http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2010/Papers/Privacy2010/tkang-rmp/paper.pdf] Their framework generates privacy and usage control policies for social networks, such as Facebook, and visualizes these policies to users. Semantic Web technologies [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Semantic_Web] enable extensive functionality such as "dynamic definition, extension, and re-use of meta-data describing privacy policy, intended purpose or use of data." RMP currently offers five restrictions: no-commercial (similar to Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/] counterpart), no-depiction, no-employment, no-financial, and no-medical.

[[Image:figure1_rmp.png|450px|center]]
[[Image:figure2_rmp.png|450px|center]]

===Market-Based===

Some believe that reputation problems on the Internet are best solved by allowing market forces to determine the outcome, uninhibited by other regulations. [http://www.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.290/pub_detail.asp] In the wake of concern over reputation online, a number of private companies have emerged to defend reputation. One such company is [http://www.reputationdefender.com/ Reputation Defender], created in 2006, to help "businesses and consumers control their online lives." [http://www.reputationdefender.com/] For a monthly or yearly fee, Reputation Defender claims it will protect a user's privacy, promote the user online, or suppress negative search results about the user. [http://www.reputationdefender.com/products] Companies like Reputation Defender do offer the average individual some measure of protection. However, there are several problems with such market solutions. The first problem is cost. Some features on Reputation Defender carry price tags as high as [http://www.reputationdefender.com/business $10,000], which is far outside the limits of what an ordinary individual can afford to spend sanitizing his or her search results. Even the less expensive services appear to cost between $5-10/month, which may be more than many individuals can afford, especially for long-term protection. Another serious issue with this type of market solution is effectiveness. It is unclear which exact tactics such companies use, but for the most part they can only offer short-term solutions -- which will face increasing challenges as advances in technology, such as facial-recognition technology, make it easier to find people online and harder to protect their identities. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html]

===Norm-Based===

It is also possible that reputational issues could be solved by the development of norms. David Ardia, for example, has argued for a multi-faceted approach, where the focus would be on ensuring the reliability of reputational information rather than on imposing liability. Moreover, he advocates for the assistance of the community - including the online community - in resolving reputation disputes through enforcing societal norms. [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1689865]

Norms could also be as simple as asking others "Please don't tweet this" when discussing sensitive or private topics, and expecting that norms will compel others to respect such requests. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html] As the public grows to better understand and become comfortable with technological advances, such norms could help to curb the problem of personal information being leaked online.

Another norm-based solution would be to simply educate the public about reputational and privacy concerns in the context of the Internet. This has the potential to be especially effective with children and youth, who will be growing with advances in technology but may not understand the full repercussions of their actions. One example of a norm-based solution is the European Union's youth-focused education campaign, "Think before you post!" designed to "empower[] young people to manage their online identity in a responsible way." [http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/10/22]. After years of pressure, a number of content intermediaries have voluntarily adopted self-regulatory initiatives with a goal to improve minor's safety on social networking sites in Europe. [http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/10/22] Recent follow-up reports, however, have demonstrated that the success of the program has been less than resounding. Specifically, despite their promises to do so, a majority of the involved companies failed to implement some of the important changes, such as "to ensure the default setting for online profiles and contact lists is 'private' for users under 18." [http://ec.europa.eu/news/science/100209_1_en.htm] Moreover, after many companies added an avenue for youth to report harassment, apparently few of the companies ever respond to such complaints. [http://ec.europa.eu/news/science/100209_1_en.htm] Thus, while educational and norm-based proposals are a step in the right direction, they may lack sufficient force to bring about their desired changes.

The "Respect My Privacy (RMP)" proposal, mentioned above in the discussion of code-based solutions, also has norm-based features. The authors note that "an accountable system cannot be adequately implemented on social networks without assistance from the social network itself ([http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/technology/30face.html] in [http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2010/Papers/Privacy2010/tkang-rmp/paper.pdf]). In other words, norms and best practices are required in addition to purely code-based solutions to provide a successful, comprehensive solution.

==Proposed Solution==

===Overview===

We are proposing the creation of a personal legal right to control content depicting or identifying oneself as a minor, limited by an objective standard, supported by best-practice code and norms for Content Intermediaries to annotate content depicting minors. The specific proposal and its scope are outlined below.

'''Minor's Online Identity Protection Act (MOIPA):'''

MOIPA will take the form of a notice-and-takedown system. The requester will have to demonstrate that his or her request falls within the scope of MOIPA. We are envisaging a wide adoption by the leading Content Intermediaries to watermark content depicting minors, as described further below. A digital watermark will serve as prima facie evidence that the content depicts or contains identifying information about minors. Absent a watermark or other metadata (or in the event of a challenge to a watermark), the requester will have to provide other evidence proving the age and identity of the minor depicted or identified in the content in question (via government-issued ID / notary notice). Standardized simple notice forms would be available to fill out and send online.

It is important to highlight that MOIPA requires affirmative action on the part of the individual. It would be used only in very limited instances where there is an individual who feels very strongly about the content ''and'' all the required criteria is met. Nothing would be removed or deleted automatically (cf. Juvenile record sealing and expungement).

'''Supporting Code and Norms:'''

MOIPA goes hand in hand with a set of best-practice code and norms which will help to simplify the notice-and-takedown process. Recent advances in technology, particularly semantic web technologies, make it possible to digitally tag and augment all forms of content, even text, to provide additional information -- such as identity information of the Individual Depicted, the Content Creator as well as the Content Sharer in addition to date/time information relevant and available. One of the solutions presented in the section above, RMP by Ted Kang and Lalana Kagal [http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2010/Papers/Privacy2010/tkang-rmp/paper.pdf], was based on semantic technologies, in particular a custom-made ontology, to annotate content. As in their proposal, we believe a mix of code and norms is necessary to complement MOIPA to make it successful.

The content could either be automatically tagged to accounts identified as belonging to minors or require an affirmative check box (or both) if the content depicts or identifies minors (similar to “I have accepted the terms of service” or “I have the right to post this content” boxes)

[[Image:Facebook_Example.PNG|500px|center]]

Ideally, every piece of relevant content submitted to a Content Intermediary would have such annotations; this is particularly important in the context of the role of Search Engines, as explained below.

'''Objective Limitation:'''

MOIPA would also contain an objective limitation to make sure that only reasonable and legitimate requests are honored as well as to limit any potential abuses of the law. The limitation would also help ensure that MOIPA would pass First Amendment scrutiny if challenged. The limitation would be similar to that seen in many torts, including the public disclosure of private fact tort, which provides a cause of action where (among other elements) the disclosure would be “offensive to a reasonable person." [http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts]

It is important, however, that the law remains relatively simple to implement and does not produce many prolonged legal battles that would waste time and resources. Instead, simple or streamlined ways of enforcing the objective limitation would be preferable. One potential option for the objective limitation that would also co-opt technology would be to crowd-source the determination to a number others (possibly a "jury" of 12) for their opinion on whether the content is objectively embarrassing, unfavorable, or offensive. More broadly, these outsiders could make a determination simply of whether it is objectively "reasonable" for the individual to request that the identifying or depicting content be taken down. A simple majority finding that the content is sufficiently embarrassing or offensive could suffice. Such participants would not be able to download the content and would be subject to an agreement not to share or disclose the content themselves.

===Involved Parties===

We have identified the following parties to be of importance when discussing our proposed solution.

*'''Individual Identified or Depicted'''

The Individual Identified or Depicted is at the center of our proposal and our attention. MOIPA is a personal right designed to be available to an individual with respect to conflicting content about him or her as a minor.

*'''Content Creator'''

The Content Creator is the person who creates content i.e. takes a picture and typically has the copyright over the content.

*'''Content Sharer'''

The Content Sharer is a person who uploads content to Content Intermediaries. In most cases, Content Sharer and Content Creator will be the same person, but not always.

*'''Content Intermediaries'''

Content Intermediaries span personal blogging platforms such as Wordpress or Blogger as well as social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
Facebook is already using semantic technologies (without going into too much detail, Facebook has been using RDFa, a semantic web mark-up language to provide additional meta-data about its content [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_the_semantic_web.php]) and could easily expand the provided meta-data to cover privacy/minor information as suggested above. The same is true for popular blogging services such as Wordpress or Blogger.

*'''Search Engines'''

Search Engines, such as Google or Microsoft Bing, could play an important part in the successful implementation of our proposal. Google already uses RDFa to augment search results (for more information see, for example [http://www.slideshare.net/mark.birbeck/rdfa-what-happens-when-pages-get-smart]). Similarly, Google could implement a MOIPA best practice directive which would, for example, exclude certain content related to minors, annotated in a particular way. Search engines, because of their vast power over what content people actually find and see on the Internet, are an ideal target for a law like MOIPA. Even a focus solely on search engines, although not our current proposal, is a possible alternative to be considered in the future, especially since it might be easier to implement than the suggested Notice-and-takedown system.

''Note: some of these parties could be the same person in a given scenario''

===Scope===

In our opinion, the scope of MOIPA has to cover all pieces of content that depict or identify minors. In order to satisfy First Amendment concerns, minors who are of "legitimate public interest" (i.e. celebrities, performers/actors, and possibly children of famous public figures) will be excluded from the scope of our proposal.

'''Identity-related content:'''

Within the scope of our proposal, identity-related content can take various formats, ranging from pictures, to videos, to text.

While a general discussion of Star Wars Kid [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Star_Wars_Kid] is not necessarily harmful to the boy, content that links Star Wars Kid's real name to the footage is potentially harmful to him and moreover adds very little public value. While this content should not be removed or deleted automatically, he should have the right to have the identifying information removed.

'''Minors:'''

In our opinion, minors present a particularly compelling case for MOIPA. The age of 18 is a cutoff already recognized by the government and drawn in numerous instances. As a reference point, one could refer to the various provisions to wipe juvenile criminal records (e.g. expungement) [http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/expungement/expungement-state-info.html].

With respect to the age barrier, four scenarios are possible, as illustrated in the chart below.

(1) Content about oneself and at the time of posting still a minor (younger than 18)

(2) Content about another minor and at the time of posting the poster is a minor (younger than 18)

(3) Content about a minor and poster is an adult at time of posting

(4) Content about oneself and at the time of posting the poster is an adult

[[Image:moipa2.PNG|420px|center|alt MOIPA Scope]]

While our proposal clearly covers scenarios (1), (2), and (3), we believe (4) deserves further discussion. While it might be theoretically less compelling, it is practically easier to implement and more efficient, in our opinion.

There are certain other scenarios when MOIPA would not be available; for example, due to contracts that were entered into over the content in question. The chart below provides a framework for what is and what is not covered under MOIPA. The chart is designed from the view of a person looking for ways to remove content about him- or herself.

[[Image:moipa1.PNG|center|alt MOIPA Scope]]

===Is a Legal Measure Necessary?===

It is possible that the burgeoning problems of online identity and reputation will dissipate on their own in a natural fashion. Thus, it might not ultimately be necessary to respond with a law or other significant change, so we do not recommend the immediate adoption of our proposal. Instead, it may be worthwhile to observe the trends in hopes that less drastic yet effective solutions appear.

For example, some believe that society will adapt to the ramifications of the Internet and either adjust its (online) behavior accordingly, or such transgressions will become so commonplace that any negative impact will be lost. Much of the information available now, however, suggests that will not be the case. Since the birth of the Web in the early 1990s, the Internet has rapidly become indispensable to a broad cross-section of society -- yet we observe few behavioral changes to protect personal content. If anything, users of all ages have grown more willing than ever to share their private information, personal photos, and more. Yet our sensibilities to social and cultural "transgressions" have remained largely unchanged. Employers continue to conduct Internet and social network research on prospective (and current) employees, and then make hiring and firing decisions based on that information. The public has not grown to accept these circumstances as normal: embarrassing situations continue to be embarrassing and can carry severe consequences, seemingly no matter how universal they are or how many times similar conduct occurs (see, e.g. Chander’s discussion on whether “society will become inured to the problem” [http://www.amazon.com/Offensive-Internet-Speech-Privacy-Reputation/dp/0674050894/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290199043&sr=1-1]). Ideally, society would evolve and adapt to the changes naturally, but so far in this area there has been no significant change. Moreover, children and adolescents are probably the least likely to pick up on these social cues and to understand the full ramifications of their online behavior. Our primarily legal-based solution is thus a possible avenue for government to protect the online identity and reputation of minors absent any other meaningful changes.

Before adopting such a law, which carries some significant ramifications of its own, some time should be taken to see if other solutions will appear. But at the current time such solutions seem unlikely. For example, at present there is no real pressure on content-hosting platforms or search engines to adopt any code-based or norm-based solutions, and there is no reason to suspect that they will spend time, money, and other resources to voluntarily adopt any protective measures that are not required (notably, even with the pressure from the European Union's efforts to protect youth's privacy online, more than half of the companies involved in that effort failed to follow through on their promises [http://ec.europa.eu/news/science/100209_1_en.htm]). To the extent that companies such as Reputation Defender exist to solve these problems, they are problematic in that they are (i) limited to only those who can afford them, and (ii) cannot offer full protection because they lack any real power or authority over the sources. Thus, absent any unexpected and meaningful changes, the MOIPA proposal is an effort to adequately protect the most vulnerable segment of the population and ensure that youthful mistakes do not forever haunt an individual.

==Implications and Potential Concerns==

===The First Amendment===

Any law which restricts speech or expression raises important First Amendment concerns. In relevant part, the [http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights#amendmenti First Amendment] reads: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” [http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/billofrights#amendmenti] This prohibition has been interpreted to allow restrictions on various narrow and defined categories of speech [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0315_0568_ZS.html] (e.g. [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0413_0049_ZS.html obscenity]; [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0315_0568_ZS.html fighting words]; [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0458_0747_ZS.html child pornography]). MOIPA does raise certain First Amendment concerns, but its objective limitation and exception for minors of legitimate public interest, coupled with the state’s compelling interest in protecting the well-being of minors, should be sufficient for the law to survive constitutional challenge.

The Supreme Court has long recognized the well-being of minors as a legitimate and even compelling state interest, permitting legislation in this realm even where constitutional rights (including First Amendment rights) are implicated. For example, in ''Globe Newspaper v. Superior Court for Norfolk County'', the Court expressly acknowledged that the interest in “safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor is a compelling one.” [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0457_0596_ZS.html] Moreover, in the context of regulation of child pornography, the Court observed: “we have sustained legislation aimed at protecting the physical and emotional well-being of youth even when the laws have operated in the sensitive area of constitutionally protected rights.” [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0458_0747_ZS.html]

The Supreme Court has also required that such regulations on speech and other constitutional rights be narrowly tailored to the interest such that they are not unnecessarily broad or restrictive. [http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0457_0596_ZS.html] In excepting content on celebrity minors or other minors that fit into the category of legitimately newsworthy, we have aimed to tailor MOIPA such that it is not overly broad. In addition, the objective limitation – resembling many state public disclosure of private fact torts – further tailors MOIPA so it is no more broad than necessary to shield minors in instances deserving protection. The objective limitation also curbs potential abuses of the law. Otherwise, MOIPA could be vulnerable to abuse as a legal lever for personal grievances. For instance, to the extent that violating MOIPA may be grounds for a civil lawsuit, one could imagine a scenario where a minor girlfriend breaks up with a boyfriend, and then threatens a lawsuit if the ex-boyfriend does not scrub all records of her from his social networking sites. Likewise, if content intermediaries shared liability, lawsuits against Facebook could become commonplace. The objective limitation can thus also serve to limit the ability of the individual from seeking judicial remedies and avoid any potential undue burden on the justice system.

Furthermore, it is important to note that the scope of MOIPA only covers the identifying or depicting information or content. Only that content which specifically identifies or depicts an individual would have to be removed (e.g. a person must only redact the minor's name from a discussion, while the rest of the discussion would be outside the reach of the law; one can blur, crop or cut the minor's image from a photo or video). Thus, any content not related specifically to the minor's identity would remain untouched by MOIPA. This narrowed focus protects the identity of the minor while allowing important First Amendment discussion and expression to continue.

===Technical Limitations ===

In theory, the use of semantic web technologies to annotate content would be sufficient to provide the necessary identification. However, people might scrape content or repost pictures. A combination of both semantic web annotation technology and digital watermarks might therefore offer better protection. However, as with all technical solutions, loopholes will persist (for example, someone taking a picture with a camera of a computer screen and posting that picture).

There is also a question to be raised whether the proposal would result in an abuse and/or overuse of the digital watermarks and metadata. We don't see any strong evidence for that, however, given the well-defined scope of the proposal and the fact that the watermark only creates a rebuttable presumption. Were this to become a serious or pervasive problem, it would also be possible to include a misuse clause whereby if someone repeatedly misused or abused the digital watermarks, they could lose their takedown rights under MOIPA.

===Notice and Takedown===

The notice-and-takedown system should not require payment to utilize (unlike the DMCA) -- the right to control should be available to all. Otherwise, MOIPA could result in a social imbalance where the most well-off have the most "clean" records, or are more likely to engage in "youthful indiscretions" knowing they can make corrections later. The cost of cleansing a reputation is one of the primary concerns with market-based solutions, such as Reputation Defender.

In general, takedown notices could be sent to whatever contact information is provided for a given website, content intermediary, or search engine. To properly implement an efficient and effective system, it might be prudent to require sites to list a MOIPA-designated agent (similar to a DMCA-designated agent; in fact, such an agent could serve both functions) for sending takedown notices.

===Impact for Content Intermediaries===

MOIPA would have a significant impact on content intermediaries, such as search engines and social networking sites, who are significant aggregators of content posted by or about youths. A central question is who is responsible for what? Does an intermediary like Facebook have the same degree of liability as its third-party partners who create apps and make use of Facebook data? There will be advantages and disadvantages of MOIPA on content intermediaries, including:

'''Advantages:'''
:*Public goodwill (parents might feel more comfortable with children using the site)
:*Gain additional insights from enhanced user/content meta data
:*Potential new market for content management systems: i.e. search, track, and delete material across the Internet

'''Disadvantages:'''
:*Penalties for violating MOIPA?
:*Could databases and archives include references to deleted data? i.e. write "removed"?
:*What if aggregators include copies of photos that lack metadata?
:*Differentiate liability of main intermediaries and third-party app makers?

As we consider the effects on intermediaries, meta-data tags for material about minors might have an unintended consequence: encouraging new marketplaces for such material. For example, it may be relatively easy to design an aggregator that could compile photographs of minors then sell this material to third parties for whatever purposes. One application would be a company that compiles photos, then contacts the featured people and requests payment for scrubbing the photos from the Internet (issuing and managing notice and takedown requests). A more ethically dubious version of this would be a service to spot embarrassing photos (perhaps a crowd-sourced GWAP-style game to enlist taggers of the most humiliating material) and request payment for scrubbing them. These situations are purely hypothetical, yet such unintended consequences should be factored into the design and implementation of MOIPA. By allowing for the personal legal right to be exercised without any fee (or costly judicial proceeding), and attempting to simplify the notice-and-takedown system to a brief online form, we have aimed to address these concerns, but still recognize that no system is without its imperfections.

===Effects on Behavior of Minors===

To insure that MOIPA has a net social benefit, it will be important to educate minors about best practices for posting and removing content now and in years to come. One may assume that if minors have seen and heard about the reputational damage inflicted on those who post material with reckless abandon and are well-educated about the MOIPA response, they will be less prone to posting "risky" material -- especially about other minors -- out of concern that they may eventually need to remove it years later and could even be subject to legal action if they do not. Yet it's also possible that new protections afforded to minors' content may have the opposite, unintended consequence: lowering inhibitions and promoting even more risky behavior online. Given their ability to retract photos and text later, teenagers may assume they have a temporary "free pass" to post whatever they wish. Perhaps the deciding factor will be the eventual ease or difficulty of managing material about minors. Youths may be least inhibited if a commercial content management service (yet to be invented) allows posters to easily search dates and friends' names and remove hundreds of offending images with a few clicks. Absent such a service, minors should be educated about the needless effort that will be required of them if they share large volumes of risky or unfavorable content about themselves with the intention of tracking it down and trying to have it removed later. Moreover, the objective limitation is such that they are not guaranteed to have the material removed even if desired. Overall, many lay people (as with most laws) will probably be largely unaware of or disinterested in MOIPA unless they have serious reputational issues linked to content about them on the internet. Even among those who are fully aware of their rights under MOIPA, most will probably be unwilling to exert the effort to locate instances of such content and initiate a takedown, in part because much of the content about minors will not be so damaging as to induce them to utilize (or to qualify for) MOIPA's benefits.

===Implications for Adults===

A challenging situation is raised by adults who post material about themselves from when they were minors. Should this material be protected? Theoretically, it's more difficult to justify protecting this material on moral grounds (as society holds adults more responsible than youths for their actions), but on a practical level it may be necessary to extend protections to any material about minors -- regardless of when it is posted. This is largely because content can get copied and reposted on many other sites so that it can be hard to follow the trail of content to find when, where and by whom it was originally posted. To the extent that discovering the original posting information of content could lead to lengthy or complicated factual investigations, it goes against the simplified aim of the notice-and-takedown system.

Given the potential liabilities of posting material about minors, it's possible that this law would have a chilling effect: discouraging adults and institutions from posting any materials about minors. For example, school systems may be reluctant to post class photos -- out of concern that alumni may issue notice and take-down requests to remove themselves from group pictures, forcing the school to either remove or digitally alter the photos. For a single group picture, one can imagine a steady stream of such requests over years and decades, so that the school is forced to progressively remove faces until only a few children remain. Given hundreds of class photos, the task could become daunting. Alternately, it would be far easier (and less expensive) for the school to prohibit the posting of all photography, which could have a detrimental effect on the students and historical records. These potential concerns are contemplated by MOIPA's objection limitation, however, and it is highly unlikely that banal photographs such as class photos from school would warrant an actual takedown of the material. It is so unlikely that most people would probably recognize this fact and not send a notice in the first place.

Another implication for adults is that parents and guardians might seek to invoke the law on behalf of their children. For example, in the school photo scenario above, one can imagine a mother who does not like the depiction of her 5-year-old son and is empowered to take action against school. Or, more broadly, an over-protective parent requests that photos from birthday parties be removed from a friend's Facebook site. Although it is hoped that before resorting to MOIPA parents would first simply ask the friend to remove the offending photo, as would probably occur absent the law. MOIPA is intended as a resort for those with a real reputational grievance; it is not intended to -- nor is it likely to -- replace social norms. Nevertheless, any negative impact of such a parental response is again tempered by the objective reasonableness limitation in the law. School photos and ordinary birthday party photos would be very unlikely to satisfy all of the takedown requirements.

==Relevant Sources for Further Reading==

*[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html “The End of Forgetting” NY Times 7/25/10, Jeffrey Rosen]
:*Discusses the implications associated with how the web takes away "second chances" such that "the worst thing you've done is often the first thing everyone knows about you."

*[http://www.amazon.com/Offensive-Internet-Speech-Privacy-Reputation/dp/0674050894/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290199043&sr=1-1 "Youthful Indiscretion in an Internet Age," Anupam Chander]
:*Supports a strengthening of the public disclosure tort while recognizing two principal legal hurdles: (1) the youth’s indiscretion may itself be of legitimate interest to the public (newsworthy) and (2) intermediaries can escape demands to withdraw info posted by others because of special statutory immunity.

*[http://futureoftheinternet.org/reputation-bankruptcy "Reputation Bankruptcy" Blog Post, 9/7/2010, on The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it, Jonathan Zittrain]
:*Suggests that intermediaries who demand an individual's identity on the internet "ought to consider making available a form of reputation bankruptcy."

*[http://dig.csail.mit.edu/2010/Papers/Privacy2010/tkang-rmp/paper.pdf “Enabling Privacy-awareness in Social Networks,” Ted Kang and Lalana Kagal]
:*Proposes a “Respect My Privacy” framework focused on using code to display privacy preferences in order to make users more aware of the restrictions associated with shared data and relying largely on social norms for compliance.

*[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1689865" Reputation in a Networked World," David S. Ardia]
:*Argues that the focus should be on ensuring the reliability of reputational information rather than on imposing liability and advocates community governance.

*[http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/privacy.htm#SpeechOnMattersOfPrivateConcern "Freedom of Speech and Information Privacy: The Troubling Implications of a Right to Stop People From Speaking About You", Eugene Volokh]
:* Finds that "[t]he possible unintended consequences of various justifications for information privacy speech restrictions... are sufficiently troubling" enough to oppose them.

GROUP ONE

2020-08-13T10:46:39Z

BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1297036800

The prominence of user generated content and the permanence of online memory has created a difficult problem that could threaten the futures of many people today.<ref> We would like to thank Viktor Mayer-Schönberger for all of his assistance with this project</ref> Social networks, blogs, and other websites have become incredibly popular locations to put pictures, videos, and text about an individual, his opinions, and his actions. Many of these items may not be considered objectionable at first, but they could become sources of embarrassment in the future.<ref>Alan Finder, ''For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Résumé'', The New York Times (June 11, 2006), http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11recruit.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=For%20Some,%20Online%20Persona%20Undermines%20a%20R%C3%A9sum%C3%A9&st=cse&scp=1.</ref> As of now, information on the Internet is long-lasting, if not permanent, and many individuals do not have the ability to remove media and information that depicts or references them. This permanence could lead to negative ramifications in a short period of time when an individual seeks a new job or relationship. Our project seeks to remedy this medium-term harm by establishing a process by which users can have information about themselves removed from "walled gardens" like social networks and blogs. We hope this will allow people to recover from mistakes, not be doomed by them.

=Introduction=

Perhaps the seminal discussion on privacy is Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis’ Harvard Law Review article [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html''The Right to Privacy''] from 1890. The authors wrote this article in response to the invention of new camera technology that allowed for instantaneous photographs. Warren and Brandeis feared that such technology would expose the private realm to the public, creating a situation in which “what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.” Their article argued that a tort remedy should be available for those whose privacy had been violated in such a way. Warren and Brandeis's thesis exemplified a trend in legal thought that would achieve more prominence in the Internet Age: the need for normative, legal and governmental structures to protect private and undesirable information about people from reaching the public.

The Internet has created a world of permanence, in which whispers in the closets are not only “proclaimed from the house-tops” but also never disappear. In Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s ''Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,'' Mayer-Schönberger describes how the digital age changed the status quo of society, which had been “we remembered what we somehow perceived as important enough to expend that extra bit of effort on, and forgot most of the rest.” <ref>Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, ''Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age'' 49 (2009)</ref>. Four technological advances (digitization of information, cheap storage, easy retrieval, and the global reach of the Internet) have made all memories permanent. <ref>''Id''. at 52.</ref> This change has forced humans to constantly deal with their past, preventing them from growing and moving on.

The permanent past created by the Internet has increased the availability of information that can be used to judge people. Lior Jacob Strahilevitz discusses the effect of this flood of information on reputation and exclusion in his article [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1028875 ''Reputation Nation: Law in an Era of Ubiquitous Personal Information'']. The ability of a Google search or a social networking site to deliver personal information allows people to utilize online and real world reputation when making decisions in a way that was not feasible years ago. Strahilevitz discusses both the positive and negative ramifications of this information surplus, but other scholars have focused on its negative effect on offline lives. Daniel Solove in [http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text.htm ''The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet''] describes many of these concerns. Solove relates many stories demonstrating the negative ramifications of online information, such a girl whose refusal to pick up her dog’s waste led to her picture becoming famous online. A commenter on a blog which discussed this picture stated “[r]ight or wrong, the [I]nternet is a cruel historian.” Solove states that the ability of information, especially that which is considered scandalous or interesting, to spread quickly and become permanent has distorted how we judge people. Many different types of people (family, friends, employers, etc.) can evaluate each other using personal information and gossip that many would consider to be unfair factors in such an evaluation. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/40041279 Solove] in his article ''A Taxonomy of Privacy'' notes that “disclosure can also be harmful because it makes a person a "prisoner of [her] recorded past." People grow and change, and disclosures of information from their past can inhibit their ability to reform their behavior, to have a second chance, or to alter their life's direction. Moreover, when information is released publicly, it can be used in a host of unforeseeable ways, creating problems related to those caused by secondary use. Solove refers to Lior Strahilevitz's observation that "disclosure involves spreading information beyond existing networks of information flow." According to Solove, the harm of disclosure is not so much the elimination of secrecy as it is the spreading of information beyond what user wished. One inappropriate Facebook picture or malicious blog post can haunt someone for the rest of his life.

Today's young adults and teenagers are especially aware that they are growing up in a world where camera phones and constant access to the Internet create the potential for their lives to be displayed publicly. A May 2010 [http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Reputation-Management.aspx Pew Internet and American Life] study suggests that privacy is highly valued by the next generation of social networking users. The report found that “Young adults, far from being indifferent about their digital footprints, are the most active online reputation managers in several dimensions. For example, more than two-thirds (71%) of social networking users ages 18-29 have changed the privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others online.” This generation is concerned about the effects of youthful indiscretion and do not want one mistake to limit their future prospects.

A [http://ssrn.com/abstract=1589864 study] by scholars at the University of Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, Center for the Study of Law and Society, and the University of Pennsylvania - Annenberg School for Communication found privacy norms that are consistent with and provide some support for the privacy theory underlying our model. For instance:
:Large proportions of all age groups have refused to provide information to a business for privacy reasons. They agree or agree strongly with the norm that a person should get permission before posting a photo of someone who is clearly recognizable to the internet, even if that photo was taken in public. They agree that there should be a law that gives people the right to know “everything that a website knows about them.” <ref> Chris Hoofnagle et al., ''How Different are Young Adults from Older Adults When it Comes to Information Privacy Attitudes and Policies?'' 11 (April 14, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1589864. </ref>.

And a large majority of members of each age group agree that there should be a law that requires websites and advertising companies to delete “all stored information” about an individual.” <ref>''Id.''</ref>. The following is a chart from the study demonstrating the popularity of a deletion requirement:

[[Image: Right to Delete.jpg]]<ref>''Id.''</ref>

=Proposed Mid-term Content Management System=

==Our Approach==

[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/difficultproblems/GROUP_ONE#Literature_Review Many proposals regarding online reputation and information] share several characteristics: significant government intervention and a focus on dramatic short-term reputation harm. Regarding government intervention, many scholars devote a portion of their articles and books to discussing various legal problems with their proposals, namely First Amendment challenges. Eugene Volokh in his article [http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/privacy.htm#SpeechOnMattersOfPrivateConcern ''Freedom of Speech and Information Privacy: The Troubling Implications of a Right to Stop People From Speaking About You''] discusses how broad information privacy regulations would not be allowable under the First Amendment and how allowing such regulations could create negative legal and social ramifications. Many proposals that involve the government restricting speech would likely face significant First Amendment roadblocks.

Often proposals focus on the highly objectionable material that would warrant liability or a complete erasing of one’s online reputation. Yet these approaches do not address the embarrassing yet legal and mundane content, such as a drunk picture or an inappropriate Facebook group on which an individual once posted. Such activities likely do not rise to the level warranting litigation or complete erasure of one's online identity, but they could negatively affect one’s professional and personal relationships. They are the equivalent of putting one's foot in one's mouth.

Our project departs from these proposals both in its focus and implementation. We have divided online reputation into three different types: short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Short-term harms are exemplified by those involved with the [http://jezebel.com/5652114/college-girls-power-point-fuck-list-goes-viral-gallery Duke sex powerpoint scandal], in which an incendiary piece of information creates immediate and dramatic ramifications for one’s reputation. Long-term reputational content is something that has been built over many years, such as one’s [http://pages.ebay.com/services/forum/feedback.html eBay rating]. Medium-term reputational content is not necessarily immediately recognized as harmful, but its ramifications may come up when establishing a relationship or looking for a job. For example, a freshman in college may have a picture of himself drunk on Facebook. Such a picture may not be an issue now but could become one when he looks for a job in several years. Our proposal will address these medium-term issues.

Our proposal relies on a combination of a market- and norms-based approaches. Jonathan Zittrain creates a classification system for such approaches to online issues in his article [http://law.fordham.edu/assets/LawReview/Zittrain_Vol_78_May.pdf ''The Fourth Quadrant'']. This system uses two measures: how “generative” the approach is and how “singular” it is. An undertaking that is created and operated by the entire community (not just by a smaller entity separated from the community) and is the only one of its kind utilized in the online realms falls into what Zittrain terms the “fourth quadrant.” Our system will be created and implemented by the social networks’ and blog’ community, both their operators and users. The government will not implement or enforce anything. Since our system is optional for websites, it initially will be one of several potential approaches dealing with the medium-term harms to reputation. However, our hope will be that its advantages and benefits (including its ability to attract users through promises of increased privacy) will allow it to become a popular system and, therefore, eventually become part of the fourth quadrant.

We believe that a market and norms-based approach avoids the First Amendment issues, is more responsive to the needs of users and internet service providers, and is more likely to be implemented as a bottom up approach that can be tailored to meet the specific preferences of different demographics interfacing with different forms of online expression.

==Assumptions==

As discussed above, there are three distinct phases of reputation: short term, mid-term and long term. Our model is targeted solely at mid-term reputational issues. Short and long term issues will require other mechanisms and should be considered independently.

When composing our model, we had four core assumptions:
*1) All user-generated content should expire and cease to be publicly available after a set length of time, unless is it actively renewed. This theory follows from Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s work. <ref> ''See'' ''Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age''</ref>
*2) The path of least resistance should result in the socially optimal outcome. This means that whenever a user follows default settings or acts in a lazy or apathetic fashion, the end result should be desirable. The model should make doing the “right” thing as easy as possible.
*3) Direct, personal communications between real people lead to more cooperative outcomes. A user can empathize and be more receptive to an individualized appeal from another person than he would be to an automated message. Building these sorts of communications into the system fosters a social norm of cooperation and understanding.
*4) The system should be content neutral so as to increase efficiency and avoid arbitrary implementation. If the system discriminated in how it treated content based on what type of content it was, then the process would get bogged down in the minutiae of moralistic review.

Our model will present a process by which content expires or renews, depending on how implicated parties intervene or abdicate. In the model, P is a user who initially posts content, Q is a user who is represented in the content, and R is a third-party bystander.

The system would be applied by social media websites that choose to apply it. There is no feasible method of mandating its use, nor is there a reason to. These websites will want to implement this system or one similar to it of their own accord. Here’s why:
*1) The system will make a website more desirable to users who value their privacy and reputations.
*2) The system creates a stickiness that will keep users coming back to the social media website that uses it.
*3) The system does not substantially impede a website's ability to profit from data mining, thus allowing it to promise greater privacy protections to its users without hurting the company’s source of revenue.

Finally, it is important to note that the system is not designed to be 100% effective at addressing all potentially problematic content. The goal is solely to create a process that is easy to implement, easy to understand, and will achieve the socially optimal result in the vast majority of cases.

==Model==
[[Image:New Model.jpg]]

*1) A user, P, is presented with preferences when he first uses the system. He can either use the presets chosen by the website or adjust the preferences to his taste. These preferences would determine his default actions for expirations, renewals, notifications, protests, etc.
*2) P posts content on the website.
*3) P chooses an expiration date for his content or uses his default expiration settings.
*4) The content might contain a representation of Q. Q can then be “marked” on the content by P, Q or R. To be “marked” means that Q is alerted that he is implicated in this content and is given the option to be notified when the content comes up for renewal.
*5) If no one is marked on the content, then P will, in accordance with his preferences, receive a notification 30 days prior to the content’s expiration date. P can then choose to renew the content or do nothing. If P does nothing, the content expires.
*6) If Q is marked but never opts in for notification, then the content is treated as if no one is marked.
*7) If Q is marked and opts in for notification, and if P chooses to renew the content, then Q will receive a notification that P chose to renew the content.
*8) Q can ignore this notification and the content will renew as per P’s decision.
*9) Alternatively, Q can “protest” P’s decision to renew the content. This means that Q would send a message to P saying that he doesn’t want the content renewed and explaining why. This protest would contain standard options that Q could select for his reasoning, but Q would also be required to compose a personalized message to P.
*10) P, upon receiving Q’s protest, can choose to move forward with the renewal (with or without modifying the content), halt the public renewal, or do nothing.
*11) If P does nothing, the content will expire, as per Q’s wishes.
*12) If P halts the public renewal, the content will still be kept in P’s private archive but will not be viewable to any other users.
*13) If P chooses to move forward with the renewal (with or without modifying the content), P must then send a response to Q explaining why P chose to renew the content over Q’s protest. This would also be a personalized message.
*14) Upon receiving P’s response, Q might be satisfied with P’s reasons or modifications. If Q does nothing, the content will renew.
*15) If Q is partially dissatisfied with P’s response, Q could chose to add an “asterisk” to the content. This would be a discrete message that viewers of the content would see, consisting of Q’s protest to P. The content would renew with the asterisk.
*16) If Q is substantially dissatisfied with P’s response, Q could appeal the renewal to an adjudication process. This process would determine whether or not the content renews.

==Explanation of the Model==

'''Users will set preferences or use default preferences for expiration and notification to streamline decisions.''' These will help triage content to prevent users from being deluged with notifications.
*For example, presets could allow users to auto-ignore, auto-opt in to notify, or auto-protest based on the identity of the other party. Certain groups might get trusted automatically, while others would be automatically suspect.
**E.g. If your mother marks you in a photo, you know that most of the time you probably don’t need to worry about its content.
*However, because the purpose of the system is to expire valueless content, users would not be allowed to set their preferences to auto-renew their content.

'''When P chooses an expiration date, P can opt to receive or not receive notice prior to expiration.''' Presumably, most content, being transitory, will be allowed to expire w/o notice (e.g. status posts, comments, tweets, etc). Thus, only truly substantive content would ever even require subsequent action by P or Q.

'''Only an actual person depicted by the content would have “standing” to be marked.'''
*This rule’s efficient application will compensate for its under-inclusivity. Trying to get 100% inclusivity for all affected users or content would make the perfect the enemy of the good.
*The rule will also help prevent large groups from ganging up to harass one person.

'''Captchas would be used to ensure that only real people will be able to mark content. <ref>Interview with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (Nov. 17, 2010).</ref> '''

'''Q should not have the ability to prevent expiration.''' The content belongs to P; if he wants to expire it, that’s his right.

'''R should not have the ability to prevent either expiration or renewal.''' Being neither the owner of the content (P) nor someone implicated in the content (Q), a third party should have no rights to dictate what happens or doesn’t happen with the content.

'''Users could maintain a private archive of their content that will not expire, subject to their preferences.''' Many users use online social media websites as multimedia diaries of their lives. Users should have the option of permanently retaining all of their own content for private viewing. But they should not be able to keep such information publicly viewable without going through the system.
*Our chief concern is controlling mid-term reputational effects. Thus, if something is private, it cannot substantively affect someone else’s reputation and does not need to be constrained.

'''No one will be able to search for asterisks. <ref>''Id.''</ref> ''' Asterisks serve to explain content that Q finds objectionable. By their very nature, asterisks will be associated with controversial content. If a user could search for an asterisk then these asterisks would serve as homing beacons for the very content that Q wants to disappear in the first place.

'''The adjudication process might be styled after either the Uniform Domain-Name Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) or eBay’s adjudication process. <ref>''Id.''</ref> ''' It is likely that this process would be contracted out to established 3rd parties. Allowing this service to be contracted out to the market will allow different methods to develop competitively to foster innovation and efficiency.
*It should be noted that the adjudication process is the only part of the model that will take a substantive look at the nature of the content.

==Concerns and Responses to the Model==

'''1. How do we prevent a deluge of expiration notifications and other notifications from the process?'''

'''Concern''': The model is likely to create a considerable amount of email notification both for P and for Q. Online social media users are generating content everyday so the flow will be constant. This flood of emails could discourage some walled gardens from implementing the model if they fear their users will abandon their network, because their mailbox is constantly flooded. Are users going to take concerns seriously when they receive so many of them over short periods of time?

'''Response''': Like in every architectural design (both physical and technological), there are tradeoffs. The benefit of the model is that it facilitates interactions and keeps users constantly apprised about content they generate and content generated about them. The con is reflected in the benefit: they are constantly being kept informed, which means they are constantly receiving notifications. Asides from the benefit of being aware, there are some tools users could employ to avoid mailbox flooding.

Users could use their default settings to have content scheduled to expire automatically, without notification. They could do this for all their content and select it as a default or they could manage pictures, status updates, posts, etc. individually. The more tailored their control over the system, the more easily users could manage their data and notifications. Content generators seeking to avoid notification from those marked to their content could also benefit from the use of default settings. Perhaps they could set their default settings such if someone would like the content taken down, it would automatically defer to that user. The walled garden settings could also permit individuals to differentiate by user or group. For example, a default setting could look something like: I do not want to be notified if Family and Good Friends object to content being renewed and I will defer to their requests, but I would like to be notified if Pete Campbell or someone from the High School group objects.

'''2. Should there be a modified system for children? Should this system only exist for children? Should there only be one period of atonement for coming of age?'''

'''Concern''': Minors are arguably the most susceptible to generate content they later regret, is embarrassing, or could effect them in the future. They are also, on the whole, not as mature as the rest of the population and should be further protected from the permeability of content generated about them online. Similar to how the criminal records of minors are often expunged in the legal system, should the model guarantee minors greater protection or should the model only exist for minors?

'''Response''': Individual walled gardens are best situated to determine the individual needs of their users. While the authors of this model maintain that the model should apply universally, there is no doubt that minors are perhaps the most in need of the model. That said, individual sites that will adopt this model can best determine how they want to implement it and to what population of their users they would like to make it available to.
Perhaps there could be variations in the model for children, such as no renewal after valid complaints on the content or the availability of content expiration more frequently or when the minor comes of age. This question, however, we believe is better resolved by individual walled gardens.

'''3. Should expired content be deleted forever? Are there ways to preserve one’s content?'''

'''Concern''': One of the primary reasons individuals post content online is to share and preserve it in digital form. The model favors the deletion of information and could cause content that would have otherwise remained available for storing or sharing to be removed. What if the individuals generating the content or featured in the content want to preserve it for themselves, friends, or future generations?

'''Response''': There are ways to preserve one’s content. Users under the model will be allowed to have a private archive. But other methods could be used as well. Expired content generated by individuals could be stored in another private mechanism: both online and offline. The most secure way to retain your personal data would be off a could and stored on a personal hard drive, but perhaps a user would like to have their content in a cloud. Either way, there are multiple devices currently where users can store data that is not publicly available.

'''4. What happens if people circumvent the process and simply repost the material?'''

'''Concern''': While in theory the model may work well, what is to stop users wanting to avoid the effort of the process from simply agreeing to delete their content and reposting it again or allowing everything to expire, only to repost it again in a few years, months, days, minutes, or seconds?

'''Response''': Like any law or system, there will always be those that look for loopholes and areas of the technological court that are poorly defended. The additional affirmative effort required by users to repost content is in itself a moderate discouragement. Furthermore, the establishment of a model and the social norms governing its usage also serve to discourage users from running a red light even when they think they will not get caught. However, it is undeniable that for at least a sector of online users, the additional effort required to repost content and norms alone are not enough.

Walled gardens could develop software that is able to detect when content is reposted or identify content that is posted as the same as other content that was previously posted. Other individuals featured in the reposted content could be allowed to file a complaint with the walled garden notifying them that the content posted had already expired or was somewhere in the process of expiration.

'''5. Will this have a chilling effect on speech?'''

'''Concern''': Individuals that do not want to be over-flooded with complaints or notifications might avoid posting content that is arguably beneficial to society, simply because they know some individuals might object and they do not want to deal with the burdensome process of responding to complaints.

'''Response''': While the model in its current state might prevent content from being renewed, it certainly should not prevent individuals from originally posting the content. Individuals could set their default settings to avoid receiving notification of marking. They would thus only encounter resistance when renewing the content.

'''6. Who has standing to mark themselves to content?'''

'''Concern''': If there are no minimum requirements for standing, then content generators could be flooded by complaints and notifications form individuals that have no direct reputational stake in the content. Content that is political or otherwise controversial could be deluged with marks in order to get the content generator to remove.

'''Response''': Standing should be limited to those individuals directly featured in the content. If it is a picture, then the individual must be in the picture. If it is text, then the individuals name should be mentioned in the text. Walled gardens should establish some mechanism for verifying that those marking themselves to content actually have the standing to do so. In walled gardens such as Facebook that might be easier to accomplish, but perhaps facial recognition software can be employed or some other mechanism that can verify who markers are and whether they have indeed have standing. Perhaps the process could be outsourced to mechanical turks?

'''7. What about pictures that have social or even historical value, but the originator of the material either does not recognize such value or does not want to put forth the additional effort to preserve it?'''

'''Concern''': A model that favors the expiration and possible deletion of content online carries the risk of permanently deleting or creating greater access barriers to content that has social and historical value either currently or in the future.

'''Response''': A model favoring the expiration and public deletion of user generated content could certainly result in the loss of some content that has social and historic value. But this is not a new problem. Famous authors often leave manuscripts unpublished upon their death and often leave clear instructions that such material should not be published. Famous artwork is often kept in the hands of private owners and is not made available for the public at large to see.

It has always been the job news corporations and media to cover events of historical significance and obtain licensing or copyright release upon citizens who capture events of historical or social significance. It is arguably only in the last few years through the Internet that user generated content has been elevated to its current importance and presence in the public media.

Furthermore, this model should not be applied to certain institutions.<ref>''Id.''</ref> Traditional news media and even current semi-news media sites should not be subject to expiration dates. Archives of newspapers and important events and news should remain available indefinitely.
Moreover, this model does not cause the deletion of material. It simply might discourage its prolonged existence online. So while the costs of acquiring content of social and historic value might have increased, they are not insurmountable.

Finally, it should be noted that this model is attempting only to address the medium-term issues. Problems of historical value are long-term issues that will likely need to be addressed and integrated into systems targeting those long-term issues. Ultimately the short-term, medium-term and long-term systems should be compatible and integrated, but we can only take one step at a time.

'''8. Are we creating an environment that discourages responsibility?'''

'''Concern''': If content we generated or that is generated about us is more easily purged from the public Internet, then people will be less accountable for their actions and perhaps even act more recklessly. Furthermore, they will continue to commit follies, because the consequences are not as permanent. People should take responsibility for their actions rather than rely on deletion.

'''Response''': The above is a matter of preference. It is true that in at least some cases bad actors will make poor choices because their misgivings are more forgiven under this model, but we would argue that a good majority of bad actors are not considering the consequences of their actions at all in the moment. Perhaps getting burned by the current system could influence their behavior in the future, but the reputational damage suffered by the individual might be steeper than the lesson learned. Furthermore, it is not as if the individual is being isolated from the worse immediate effects of his follies. It is only the medium-term effects that the model shields him partially from.

'''9. What is the adjudication process? Should there even be an adjudication process?'''

'''Concern''': If the content generated and the marked individual does not come to a mutual agreement or solution, then what happens? Are we left back at square one?

'''Response''': There are several things that could happen. First, nothing could happen. This could be a system based solely on the contact hypothesis and social psychology research that suggests that individuals are more likely to say yes to another’s individualized request for aid or help. In a large percentage of cases, the model resolves the problem without the need for some other mechanism than the mere facilitation of interaction between two human beings.

Second, there could be a final arbitration or mediation facilitated by a third party. This third party could be in house or outsourced. A good example of outsourcing to a third party would be SquareTrade. SquareTrade conducted dispute resolution for eBay a few years back and was quite successful in doing so.<ref>''Id.''</ref> The benefits of using an outsourced third party would be that if something had to be taken down, walled gardens would potentially be able to continue asserting their Section 230 Communications Decency Act shield by not directly or editing content on their site.

A third option would be for the walled garden to generate its own dispute resolution process. The site could do so by hiring a panel specifically assigned to do just that. The site could elect particular members of the site to vote (however, this might cause more unwanted attention to the content an individual necessarily wants eradicated).

'''10. Should certain institutions be exempt from expiration dates?'''

'''Concern''': There is certain content on the net that society would be hurt if expired: like news media organizations and websites.

'''Response''': We only intend this model to be applied by walled gardens of social media and only on user generated content.

=Literature Review=

Many academics have proposed ways to deal with the flood of personal information and gossip in a way that mitigates their effects on everyday life. The ensuing categorizations represent the best fit, but many elements overlap.

==Tort==

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/privacy/Privacy_brand_warr2.html Warren and Brandeis’] seminal suggestion of a tort remedy for those whose privacy had been invaded has been seen as a potential solution to the issue of unwanted information on the Internet.

[http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text/futureofreputation-ch7.pdf Daniel Solove] argues that the law should expand its recognition of duties of privacy. This expansion would allow the law to see the placing of certain information online as a violation of privacy. Solove also proposes that only the initial entity who posts gossip online, not subsequent posters, should be liable.

Solove also develops [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1373222 justifications for protections against the disclosure of private information] and claims that speech of private concern is less valuable than speech of public concern. He argues that the value of concealing one's past can, in many circumstances, outweigh the benefits of disclosure. Moreover, privacy protects against certain rational judgments that society may want to prohibit (such as employment decisions based on genetic information).

Lior Jacob Strahilevitz proposes a [http://www.jstor.org/stable/4495516 revised standard of distinguishing between public and private facts in privacy torts] using insights gleaned from the empirical literature on social networks and information dissemination. He argues that judges can use this research to determine whether an individual had a reasonable expectation of privacy in a particular fact that he has shared with one or more person: if the plaintiff's previously private information would not have been widely disseminated but for the actions of the defendant, the individual had a reasonable expectation of privacy that tort law should recognize.

==Norms==

Drawing from Lawrence Lessig’s four modes of control, our model is based more heavily on norms. Based on the works of others, such as Robert Ellickson’s ''Order Without Law'',<ref>Robert C. Ellickson, ''Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes'' (1994).</ref> we assume that in certain circumstances norms can be as powerful motivators as law in swaying people to act in socially desirable ways. Our model is a norms-based solution that relies on social psychology’s Contact Hypothesis. <ref>Gordon W. Allport, ''The Nature of Prejudice'' (1954).</ref> The contact hypothesis, originally based on racial attitudes,<ref>''Id.''</ref> postulates, that all other things being equal, contact creates a positive intergroup or individual encounter that solidifies bonds and motivates people to act more positively than they otherwise would have had they not been individually approached. For example, individuals are more likely to contribute financially to a political campaign if they are contacted personally by the candidate, than if they are mass mailed. Recent studies have also shown that individuals underestimate the willingness of strangers to aid them if they ask for help.<ref>Francis J. Flynn & Vanessa K.B. Lake, ''If You Need Help, Just Ask: Underestimating Compliance With Direct Requests for Help'', 95 J. of Personality and Social Psychology 128 (2008).</ref> One study found that:

When people were asked to assume the role of the potential helper rather than the role of the help seeker, they gave higher estimates of others’ willingness to comply. In addition, people in the role of the potential helper gave relatively higher estimates of how discomforting (e.g., awkward, embarrassing) it would be to refuse to comply with a direct request for help compared with those in the help-seeker condition. This perceived-discomfort variable mediated the influence of assigned role on estimated compliance.<ref>''Id.'' at 135.</ref>

The Contact Theory’s utility in cyberspace has also recently been explored.<ref>''See'' Y. Amichai-Hamburger & K. Y. A. McKenna, ''The Contact Hypothesis Re-Considered: Interacting Via the Internet'', 13 J. Computer-Mediated Comm. (2006).</ref> The model above seeks to benefit from this largely proven theory by requiring individual contact between parties.

Other solutions to reputation management online have looked at social psychology theories to advance their propositions. Lior Strahilevitz’s ''How’s My Driving For Everyone and Everything'',<ref>Lior Strahilevitz, ''How’s My Driving for Everyone and Everything'', 81 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1699 (2006).</ref> looks at a norms-approach way of shifting individuals from a loose and large social network to a smaller one that creates repeat players with reputations at stake with their interactions with strangers driving on the road. Similarly, this model seeks to personalize and humanize interactions among strangers or loose-knit community members to maximize the utility of community norms. In his article ''Social Norms from Close-Knit Groups to Loose-Knit Groups'', Strahilevitz explains that “Loose-knit environments give us an opportunity to study norms in contexts where a rational choice account of how norms arise and are enforced is implausible.”<ref>70 U. Chi. L. Rev. 359, 362 (2003).</ref> Relying on social norms, others have suggested that privacy contracts among online social network users that would express their privacy preferences would be followed, not only because of legal enforceability, but also because of norms respecting the wishes users have when sharing their personal information. <ref>Patricia Sanchez Abril, ''Private Ordering: A Contractual Approach to Online Interpersonal Privacy'', 45 Wake Forest L. Rev. 689, 707 (2010).</ref>

James Grimmelmann in [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=james_grimmelmann ''Saving Facebook''] stresses that any solution to privacy concerns on Facebook must comport with how users perceive their social environment. Solutions like restrictions on certain uses of social media or strong technical controls on who can see what information will not work because they do not align with the nuances of social relationships and the desire of young people to subvert attempts to control their behavior. Conversely, solutions that take into account what Facebook users’ expectation of privacy are and how they interact with their online friends will have a greater chance for success.

[http://futureoftheinternet.org/reputation-bankruptcy Jonathan Zittrain] proposes the concept of “reputation bankruptcy”, in which an individual would be able to wipe out the entirety of one’s online reputation, both the good and bad aspects of it. The following is a quote from Zittrain's article in which he discusses his proposal:

:Like personal financial bankruptcy, or the way in which a state often seals a juvenile criminal record and gives a child a “fresh start” as an adult, we ought to consider how to implement the idea of a second or third chance into our digital spaces. People ought to be able to express a choice to de-emphasize if not entirely delete older information that has been generated about them by and through various systems: political preferences, activities, youthful likes and dislikes.

Zittrain suggests that the lack of selectivity would help prevent excessive use of this tool. Zittrain’s proposal could be compatible with all categories depending upon how he further defines it.

Lauren Gelman in [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1520111 ''Privacy, Free Speech, and “Blurry-Edged” Online Networks''] argues for a norms-based approach to privacy online. She describes the online world as having “blurry edges” in the sense that information online that is intended for a select group of people can be accessed by the entire online community. She proposes a technological solution in which information that an individual posts online can include tags stating that individual’s preferences regarding privacy and how the information may be used. Gelman asserts that online users will likely accept this request if it is presented immediately upon users accessing the information, an assertion that is in line with the aforementioned Contract Theory.

==Technological==

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger’s solution in ''Delete'' shares Grimmelmann’s focus on user-expectations, as Mayer-Schönberger seeks to establish in the online world our natural expectation of forgetting. He proposes the application of expiration dates to information, whereby creator(s) set expiration dates for their data. Mayer-Schönberger allows for government involvement to determine when expiration dates could be changed or who should be involved in setting the date. Also, this system allows for no gradual decay or modification; expiration dates can only be extended by social mandate. <ref> ''Delete''. at 184-192.</ref>

==Regulatory==

Frank Pasquale in [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=888327 ''Rankings, Reductionism, and Responsibility''] and in [http://www.law.umaryland.edu/academics/journals/jbtl/issues/3_1/3_1_061_Pasquale.pdf ''Asterisk Revisited: Debating a Right of Reply on Search Results''] proposes government regulation of search results that would give individuals a right of reply thorugh an asterisk placed next to a search result. The asterisk would lead to the individual in question’s own statement on the undesirable result. Our model includes a similar right of reply at the phase when the status of renewed data is contested; that is, when a content creator renews data that implicates one or more parties against their objection. The model allows the party to opt for an asterisk that can provide context for the objectionable image.

The [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8112702/EU-proposes-online-right-to-be-forgotten.html European Union] is considering an online “right to be forgotten.” Users will able to tell websites to remove all personal information the website has about them. If a website did not comply, it could face official punishment. On November 4th, 2010, the European Commission announced that it will propose new legislation in 2011 to strengthen EU data protection and unveiled a series of proposals as part of its overall strategy to protect personal data. Vice-President Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, called the protection of personal data a fundamental right. With respect to personal data online, the European Commission [http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/11/eu-to-create-right-to-be-forgotten-online.html stated] that “[p]eople should be able to give their informed consent to the processing of their personal data . . . and should have the "right to be forgotten" when their data is no longer needed or they want their data to be deleted.”

Cass Sunstein in his book ''On Rumors'' suggests the creation of a notice and take down procedure for falsehoods similar to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. <ref>Cass Sunstein, ''On Rumors'' 78-79 (2009).</ref> Sunstein describes this as a “right” rather than a norm, demonstrating the need for government action. Also, this proposed notice and takedown system only deals with falsehoods, not with embarrassing information that is true.

[http://volokh.com/posts/1176705254.shtml Orrin Kerr] suggests conditioning immunity for websites with objectionable under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act on whether the site owner prevented search engine bots from taking up its content. If a search engine did pick up the content, the website would be liable for the content the search engine displays. Under this suggestion, the objectionable content would still exist, it just could not be found through a search engine.

==Market==

[http://preibusch.de/publications/social_networks/privacy_jungle_dataset.htm Joseph Bonneau and Soren Prebusch] at the University of Cambridge conducted the first thorough analysis of the market for privacy practices and policies in online social networks. They conclude that “the market for privacy in social networks is dysfunctional in that there is significant variation in sites’ privacy controls, data collection requirements, and legal privacy policies, but this is not effectively conveyed to users.” They also find that “privacy is rarely used as a selling point, even then only as auxiliary, nondecisive feature.” Bonneau and Prebusch advocate “a privacy communication game, where the economically rational choice for a site operator is to make privacy control available to evade criticism from privacy fundamentalists, while hiding the privacy control interface and privacy policy to maximize sign-up numbers and encourage data sharing from the pragmatic majority of users.” Their proposal is in tension with our model insofar as it would make privacy policies even more inaccessible to users; our proposal seeks to market privacy as a selling point based on user-preferences and principles of reputation-management, while protecting the ability of site operators to use member data.

Many articles discuss privacy and data management in the context of online commercial transactions. <ref> ''See, e.g.'' Mary J. Culnan and George R. Milne, ''Strategies for Reducing Online Privacy Risks: Why Consumers Read (or Don't Read) Online Privacy Notices'', 18 J. of Interactive Marketing 15, 18 (2004) (concluding that reading is related to concern for privacy, positive perceptions about notice comprehension, and higher levels of trust in the notice); Eve M. Caudill and Patrick E. Murphy, ''Consumer Online Privacy: Legal and Ethical Issues'', 19 J. of Pub. Pol'y & Marketing 7 (2000), available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/30000483; George R. Milne, ''Privacy and Ethical Issues in Database/Interactive Marketing and Public Policy: A Research Framework and Overview of the Special Issue'', 19 J. of Pub. Pol'y & Marketing 1 (2000).</ref> Viktor Mayer-Schönberger has also stressed that privacy could be a powerful selling point for social networks seeking to attract new users. <ref>Interview with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (Nov. 17, 2010).</ref> Privacy's market appeal can be seen in [https://joindiaspora.com/ Diaspora's], a Facebook alternative that emphasizes user privacy and control of content, [http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diaspora-open-facebook-project/ success in acquiring funding].

==Property==

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/4093335 Paul M Schartz] has proposed a model for propertized personal information that would help fashion a market that would respect individual privacy and help maintain a democratic order. His proposal includes 5 elements: “limitations on an individual's right to alienate personal information; default rules that force disclosure of the terms of trade; a right of exit for participants in the market; the establishment of damages to deter market abuses; and institutions to police the personal information market and punish privacy violations.”

==Other Research==

A Stanford Law Review Symposium<ref>Stanford Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 5, Symposium: Cyberspace and Privacy: A New Legal Paradigm? (May, 2000)</ref> on cyberspace and privacy provides a number of instructive articles on legal and theoretical prescriptions for privacy problems on the internet. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229511 Pamela Samuelson] suggests that information privacy law needs to impose minimum standards of commercial morality on firms that process personal data, and proposes that default licensing rules of trade secrecy law can be adapted to protect personal information in cyberspace. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229519 Michael Froomkin] discusses leading attempts to craft legal responses to assaults on privacy, including self-regulation, privacy-enhancing technologies, data-protection law, and property-rights based solutions. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229515 Jessica Litman] explores property and common law solutions to protecting information property. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229517 Julie Cohen] argues that the debate about data privacy protection should be grounded in an appreciation of the conditions necessary for individuals to develop and exercise autonomy, and that meaningful autonomy requires a degree of freedom from monitoring, scrutiny, and categorization by others [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229513 Jonathan Zittrain] discusses how “trusted systems” technologies might allow more thorough mass distribution of data, while allowing publishers to retain unprecedented control over their wares.

=Notes=
<references />

Future of Work Conference

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1297036800

==Future of Work Conference==

We'll be remotely attending the Future of Work Conference this class (whoah, it's like the future!). Please use this page to submit questions for the conference attendees.

Four Quadrants

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BerkmanSysop: UTurn to 1297036800

== Introduction ==

Cyber-security has emerged as a [http://www.pattonboggs.com/news/detail.aspx?news=1054 hot topic] for social and legal scholars. Despite the widespread interest, it remains unclear what the problem entails and how we can work towards one or more solutions. This Wiki attempts to define key terms used in cyber-security, clarify the problems and solutions identified by various scholars, and view these approaches through Professor Zittrain's four-quadrants framework.

== Terms ==

===Definitions===

'''Cyber''' as a prefix refers to electronic and computer-based technology. Cyber-space is “an operational domain framed by use of electronics to … exploit information via interconnected systems and their associated infra structure.” (Kuehl cited in ''[http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/cyber-power.pdf Joseph Nye]'', 2010: 3) According to ''[http://www.amazon.com/Profiling-Hackers-Science-Criminal-Applied/dp/1420086936 Raul Chiesa]'' there is a

: “need to avoid terms such as ‘real-world’ and ‘virtual reality’, which have been and still are abused, apart from being evidently wrong. In fact, those who commit electronic attacks not only don’t consider there to be any difference between the two, but indeed the second category does not exist, as whatever takes place on a network, Web, or ‘behind the scenes’ of telephone exchanges or lines is not at all virtual but real. We believe it to be more precise and less misleading to talk about electronic world and physical world.” (Chiesa et al, 2009: XXII)

'''Cyber-space''' is therefore “a unique hybrid regime of physical and virtual properties,” hardware and software, which is all of the computer networks in the world including the Internet plus the other networks separate and not linked to the Internet. (Nye, 2010: 3; ''[http://www.amazon.com/Cyber-War-Threat-National-Security/dp/0061962236 Clarke and Knake]'', 2010: 70)

'''Cyber-security''' can be divided to face four major threats: espionage, crime, cyber war, and cyber terrorism (Nye, 2010: 16). The possibility for the existence of a threat in the first place goes back to three sources: “(1) flaws in the design of the Internet; (2) flaws in the hardware and software; and (3) the move to put more and more critical systems online.” (Clarke and Knake, 2010: 73)

'''Cyber-warfare''' has been defined by Clarke and Knake as “the unauthorized penetration by, on behalf of, or in support of, a government into another nation’s computer or network, or any other activity affecting a computer system, in which the purpose is to add, alter, or falsify data, or cause the disruption of or damage to a computer, or network device, or the objects a computer system controls.” (Clarke and Knake, 2010: 227)

The ''[http://www.unicri.it/emerging_crimes/cybercrime/cyber_crimes/hpp.php Hackers Profiling Project]'' of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) proposes a typology for actors in cyber-space. They identify Wannabee Lamer; Script-kiddie; the “37337 K-rAd iRC #hack 0-day exploitz” guy; Cracker; Ethical Hacker; Quiet, paranoid, and skilled hacker; Industrial Spy; Cyber-warrior; Government Agent, Military Hacker. (Chiesa et al, 2009: 52-56, 61) As these types sometimes overlap, they can be reduced to the following three groups relevant in cyber-warfare:

*'''Cyber-warrior''': private actors who are highly skilled mercenaries hacking for money or for ideals

*'''Government Agent''': “the civilian state actor” - hackers employed by a country’s civilian government for (counter)espionage, information monitoring of governments, terrorist groups, strategic industries, and individuals without the authority to cause physical death through the use of the electronic world. (Chiesa et al, 2009: 56)

*'''Military Hacker''': “the military state actors” - hackers employed by a country’s military potentially with the authority to cause physical death through the use of the electronic world in times of war.

This categorization is more elaborate than Clarke and Knake’s general usage of the term "cyber warriors," which simply distinguishes between criminals and military hackers. The UNICRI-based categories provide greater clarity to differentiate between the various actors in cyber-warfare, state and non-state as well as military and civilian.

'''Cyber Equilibrium 1.0'''. In the 20th century the cyber environment from a hacker’s point of view can be described as an equilibrium between “three different entities in our society – superpowers that are competing against each other: the hacker community, governments, and the Internet community in general […] a shift in the balance of power and consequently concentrating it all in one group’s hands […] is unacceptable for hackers, as power should always be equally shared between the three entities […] Hackers have no concept of a hierarchical, authoritarian (vertical) relation between the three entities, but that only an equal relationship (horizontal), peer to peer, can be considered synonymous with true democracy.” (Chiesa et al, 2009: 114-15)

'''Hacker ethics''' played an important role. (Chiesa et al, 2009: 172-76) This ideal picture began to crack at the end of the 1990s when hacking became increasingly politicized. Before hacking was considered apolitical by its nature in the sense that the political actions of hackers were reduced to ensuring the aforementioned equilibrium. However, eventually “hacktivism” emerged, political activism through hacking. Hacking moved from being an end in itself to being a means for achieving a different political end. The first HackMeeeting took place in Florence in 1997. It remains unclear if the events in Estonia in 2007 were also an expression of a nationalist Russian hacktivism. At the same time, the hacker crackdowns started driving hackers into the underground. (Chiesa et al, 2009: 120, 162)

'''Cyber Equilibrium 2.0'''. The 21st century paints a different picture. During most of the 20th century the vast majority of Internet users were Westerners who shared a common set of norms. That is why the equilibrium was a representation of citizens vs. governments or rather the individual vs. the state. The cultural difference between a hacker in the US, the UK, or Spain was much smaller than their cultural similarity in opposing their respective government in restricting their hacking activity. But with the rapid expansion of Internet users around the globe and the politicization of hacking, this has changed. A new type of alliance has emerged as illustrated by the activities of hackers after 9/11 in support of the U.S. government or the Russian hackers supporting the Russian government during its [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_South_Ossetia_war war with Georgia] in 2008. While the Cyber Equilibrium 1.0 continues to exist in the various societies though less openly as a result of the crackdowns, it is now complemented by an internationalized Cyber Equilibrium 2.0 that resembles more a classic balance of power concept.

'''Cyber-power''' “is ‘the ability to use cyberspace to create advantages and influence events in other operational environments and across the instruments of power.’ Cyber power can be used to produce preferred outcomes within cyberspace or it can use cyber instruments to produce preferred outcomes in other domains outside cyberspace.” (Kuehl cited in Nye, 2010: 4) A good overview of the different techniques of hacking is given in UNICRI’s ''Profiling Hackers – The Science of Criminal Profiling as Applied to the World of Hacking''. (Chiesa et al, 2009: 20-32) In addition to power derived from the mastering of hacking techniques, a legitimate source of power is the root authority which is “the power to issue orders respecting domain names and numbers and have those orders obeyed.” (Goldsmith and Wu, 2008: 32) This power is currently in the hands of ICANN, which is under contract of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Given the U.S. government’s interpretation of such contractual relationships when dealing with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel#The_US_takeover_of_the_DNS_Root_Authority Jon Postel and the MoUvement] in the 1990s, it is safe to argue that through ICANN, it is the U.S. government that controls the root authority (''[http://www.amazon.com/Who-Controls-Internet-Illusions-Borderless/dp/0195340647/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292883705&sr=1-1 Goldsmith and Wu]'', 2008: 29-46).

'''The Internet''' as the biggest network in cyber-space is designed to be “open, minimalist, and neutral.” (Goldsmith and Wu, 2008: 23) Similar to the constructivist critique of the realist balance of power, the Internet’s architecture is contingent, however, and “ a choice – not fate, not destiny, and not natural law.” (Goldsmith and Wu, 2008: 90) Alternative manifestations can be found in China or Saudi-Arabia. The “bordered Internet” that emerged through national changes of the Internet’s architecture is the result of national laws, technological developments enabling the implementation of certain policies, and on a broader level the preferences of different cultures. (Goldsmith and Wu, 2008: 149-50)

===The Four Quadrants===

In his article, ''[http://flslive.lawnet.fordham.edu/assets/LawReview/Zittrain_Vol_78_May.pdf The Fourth Quadrant]'', Professor Zittrain develops a four quadrant framework for thinking about the Internet. This framework looks at two criteria: (1) how generative something is, and (2) how singular it is.

The generativity of a phenomena is assessed on a scale from entirely “top-down” to entirely “bottom-up.” The range of singularity runs from “hierarchy” to “polyarchy.” This is captured in the following chart from the article:

[[Image:Zittrain Four Quadrants.png]]

Professor Zittrain uses precise (sometimes unconventional) definitions of these terms:
*'''Top-down''': systems in which “there is a separation between those who make the rules and those who live under them . . . .”
*'''Bottom-up''': systems where the rules can come from any person without separation between the people who make the rules and people who live under them.
*'''Hierarchy''': a system in which "gatekeepers control the allocation of attention and resources to an idea" or "a system for which there is no alternative, either because it does not exist, because it would be too costly, or because law precludes it."
:*Note: to see how Professor Zittrain's definition of hierarchy might differ from the lay person understanding, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy#History_of_the_term Wikipedia].
*'''Polyarchy''': being able to choose between multiple regimes or systems and pursue ideas independently.

For more on this system, see ''[http://yupnet.org/zittrain/archives/13 The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It]'', chapter 4.

== Proposals ==

This section will summarize the proposals of various cyber-security authors. The next section will attempt to map these proposals onto Professor Zittrain's framework.

=== Richard Clarke & Robert Knake ===

In their book ''Cyber War'' Richard Clarke and Robert Knake discuss “the next great threat to national security.”

Clarke and Knake identify the following key vulnerabilities:
: I) Internet addressing system using the Domain Name System
: II) routing among ISPs, the Border Gateway Protocol
: III) openness, unencrypted Internet
: IV) propagation of intentionally malicious traffic, malware
: V) one big network with a decentralized design

They recount the cyber attack on Syria on 6 September 2007, the DDoS attack on Estonia in May 2007, and on Georgia in 2008. Aware of the near impossibility to attribute an attack to its source, they outline the '''range of possible means of attacks''' such as logic bombs, ghost nets, and botnets. Their book tells the story of the internal fight within the US government over who has authority in the cyber realm ultimately resulting in the creation of the U.S. Cyber Command headed by the head of the NSA. The USG also adopted a ''[http://www.dod.gov/pubs/foi/ojcs/07-F-2105doc1.pdf National Military Strategy for Cyber Operations]''.

Some of what seemed far-fetched in the book (published in April 2010) has since become reality:

'''Wikileaks''':
:The “sneakernet threat” posed by the air gap between the unclassified and secret level network SIPRNET is at the core of the current Wikileaks affair (p. 171).
:''[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11863618 BBC: SIPRNET]''

'''Stuxnet''':
:The description of a manipulation of generators resembles the latest analyzes of the Stuxnet virus altering centrifuges (p. 100).
:''[http://www.economist.com/node/17147818 The Economist: A Worm in the Centrifuge]''
:''[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/11/ahmadinejad-publicly-acknowledges-stuxnet-disrupted-iranian-centrifuges/67155/ The Atlantic: Stuxnet]''

:For more information on major cyber attacks from the past few years, see the recent article in [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827915.100-are-states-unleashing-the-dogs-of-cyber-war.html NewScientist]. The article looked at each attack's level of sophistication and the likelihood that it was state-sponsored, presenting its results in a useful [http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2791/27915101.jpg image].

[[Image:sshot-1.jpg]]

'''KEY QUESTIONS (pp. 152-154)'''
: 1) What do we do if we wake up one day and find the western half of the U.S. without electrical power as the result of a cyber attack?

: 2) Is the advent of cyber war a good thing, or does it place us at a disadvantage?

: 3) Do we envision the use of cyber war weapons only in response to the use of cyber war weapons against us?

: 4) Are cyber weapons something that we will employ routinely in both small and large conflicts? Will we use them early in a conflict because they give us a unique advantage in seeking our goals, such as maybe affecting a rapid end to the conflict?

: 5) Do we think we want to have plans and capabilities to conduct “stand-alone” cyber war against another nation? And will we fight in cyberspace even when we’re not shooting at the other side in physical space?

: 6) Do we see cyber space as another domain (like the sea, airspace, or outer space) in which we must be military dominant and in which we will engage an opponent while simultaneously conducting operations in other domains?

: 7) How surely do we have to identify who attacked us in cyberspace before we respond? What standards will we use for these identifications?

: 8) Will we ever hide the fact that it was us who attacked with cyber weapons?

: 9) Should we be hacking into other nations’ networks in peacetime? If so, should there be any constraints on what we would do in peacetime?

: 10) What do we do if we find that other nations have hacked into our networks in peacetime? What if they left behind logic bombs in our infrastructure networks?

: 11) Do we intend to use cyber weapons primarily or initially against military targets only? How do we define military targets?

: 12) Or do we see the utility of cyber weapons being their ability to inflict disruption on the economic infrastructure or the society at large?

: 13) What is the importance of avoiding collateral damage with our cyber weapons? How might avoiding it limit our use of the weapons?

: 14) If we are attacked with cyber weapons, under what circumstances would, or should, we respond with kinetic weapons? How much of the answer to that question should be publicly known in advance?

: 15) What kind of goals specific to the employment of cyber weapons would we want to achieve if we conducted cyber war, either in conjunction with kinetic war or as a stand-alone activity?

: 16) Should the line between peace and cyber war be brightly delineated, or is there an advantage to us in blurring that distinction?

: 17) Would we fight cyber war in a coalition with other nations, helping to defend their cyberspace and sharing our cyber weapons, tactics, and targets?

: 18) What level of command authority should authorize the use of cyber weapons, select the weapons, approve the targets?

: 19) Are there types of targets that we believe should not be attacked using cyber weapons? Do we attack them anyway if similar U.S. facilities are hit first by cyber or other weapons?

: 20) How do we signal our intentions with regard to cyber weapons in peacetime and in crisis? Are there ways that we can use our possession of cyber weapons to deter an opponent?

: 21) If an opponent is successful in launching a widespread, disabling attack on our military or on our economic infrastructure, how does that affect our other military and political strategies?

'''PROPOSALS '''

After a chapter on what the authors call “Defensive Triad Strategy”, a chapter on the limits of offensive use, and a chapter on an international framework for a cyber peace, the following recommendations conclude the book:

: 1) '''Thinking About the Unseeable''':
:: A broad public dialogue to raise awareness and allow for an open discussion of strategies and the balance of values they represent

: 2) '''The Defensive Triad''':
:: i) stop malware on the Internet at the backbone ISPs
:: ii) hardens the controls of the electric grid [while it is unclear why the authors do not include all SCADA controlled systems]
:: iii) increases the DoD networks and integrity of its weapons

: 3) '''Cyber Crime:
:: Combat cyber crime, reducing the economic incentive, prevent safe havens

: 4) '''Cyber War Limitation Treaty (CWALT)''':
:: CWALT I – initial agreement
:::- establish a Cyber Risk Reduction Center to exchange information and provide nations with assistance;
:::- create as international-law concepts the obligation to assist and national cyber accountability;
:::- impose a ban on first use cyber attacks against civilian infrastructure, a ban that would be lifted against another nation when (a) the two nations were in a shooting war, or (b) the defending nation had been attacked by the other nation with cyber weapons;
:::- prohibit the preparation of the battlefield in peacetime by the emplacement of trapdoors or logic bombs on civilian infrastructure, including electric grids, railroads, etc.; and
:::- prohibit altering data or damaging networks of financial institutions at any time, including the preparation to do so by the emplacement of logic bombs

: 5) '''A New Internet Architecture'''

: 6) '''POTUS''': establish clear lines of authority with the President at the top and required to approve emplacement of logic bombs, trapdoors, etc.

=== Jonathan Zittrain ===

Professor Zittrain begins his forthcoming article, ''A Mutual Aid Treaty for the Internet''*, by describing mutual aid theory broadly and applying it to individuals on the Internet. By taking mutually beneficial, reciprocal actions, individual Internet participants can deal with real problems more efficiently.

This mutual aid framework is then extended to the World Wide Web. To ensure that cyber attacks cannot take down a website, Professor Zittrain proposes “Mirror As You Link.” This proposal takes the following form:
:1. You visit a website.
:2. The website appears on your computer.
:3. As the site loads, your computer follows any links on the page and makes a local copy of these pages.
:4. If a link no longer works, you can ask the linking site “to show you its best rendition of what you’re missing at the linked site.”

This system would require a change in the code, modifying the way Web servers work. Because Microsoft and Apache control 80% of the web server market, however, this would not be difficult. Additionally, if someone didn’t want their website to participate in Mirror As You Link, they could choose to block your computer from making a local copy.

-*This piece isn't currently available on the Internet. For a brief summary of these arguments see Professor Zittrain's New York Times piece on the subject, [http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/can-google-beat-china/#jonathan What Websites Can Do].

=== Jack Goldsmith ===

There are two relevant pieces by Jack Goldsmith in which he explores his thoughts on cyber security: the book he coauthored with Tim Wu, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=GsylX8a_npcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=goldsmith+who+controls+the+internet&source=bl&ots=mzmdkDFC8N&sig=axkQkdD8P-06YzSPRRSACyZf_VI&hl=en&ei=WDAOTdLhFYT48Aa4ze3nDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false Who Controls The Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World]'', and a recent article published in The New Republic titled ''[http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/75262/the-new-vulnerability The New Vulnerability]''.

'''Who Controls the Internet'''

Globalization has diminished the importance of borders, territory and locations, and has undermined the role of nation state's governments as the central institution for the governance and regulation of human affairs. The Internet has been seen as the catalyst of globalization and therefore it is essential in re-assessing if, and how, the role of governments has changed. Goldsmith and Wu conclude that physical coercion by government, which is a feature of traditional legal systems, has not been affected by the Internet and by globalization and remains today more important than expected. A number of examples gives evidence of this allegation: from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China actions taken by Chinese government against dissidents], to the softer approach taken by western governments in inducing ISP to filter [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LICRA_vs._Yahoo offensive communications] and fighting [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship P2P file sharing].

*''The role of governments''
:Goldsmith and Wu contend that governmental powers around the globe are striving to shape the architecture of the Internet through the use of their coercive power. This is leading to the de facto establishment of different local networks, more or less far from the open, free and worldwide Internet we have seen so far.
::*According to this thesis, the openness of the Internet is not an inherent feature of the architecture, but rather a contingency due to the governmental coercion model that has prevailed so far. The differences between models for controlling the Internet would lead to a new technological cold war, where each side would push its own model for architecting the Internet, with the result of transforming the Internet into a collection of nation-state networks, separate from each other for many purposes.

*''The role of communities''
:In spite of the prominent role that governments still have on the Internet, Goldsmith and Wu suggest that private self-governing communities can still be an alternative to traditional government.
::*At the same time, they suggest that this alternative governance model based on social norms, morality and the market cannot survive without an “underlying system of territorial government and physical coercion”. [http://www.icann.org ICANN] is brought as an example of this: a self-governance model based on technology and technocracy has managed to emerge and survive on the basis of the guarantees provided by the US government.

*''Cybercrime''
:In this context of nation-states networks, the book still calls for a global solution to cybercrime, a solution that would establish international legal instruments prohibiting computer invasion and disruption and set standards for inter-governmental cooperation.
::*However, the authors also points at the inefficacy of a traditional international treaty in tackling cyber threats. The one example currently in place, for instance, the [http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=185&CL=ENG Council of Europe's Cybercrime Convention], has only been implemented by a scarce number of states and the response mechanisms set forth therein are deemed to be inappropriate.

*''Cybercrime: an architectural solution''
:The conclusion reached by Goldsmith and Wu is that the future of the Internet's security is not likely to rest on a traditional international treaty, but rather on an architectural solution.
::*A “global law”, it is argued, already exists and it is the domain name system managed by ICANN. ICANN has been portrayed by the US as a form of bottom-up governance, serving and drawing inputs from the Internet “community” in the spirit of self-regulation.
::*It is also pointed out that along the years the US has abandoned the rhetoric about a self-governed ICANN and has asserted that the control over ICANN will not be relinquished. While Goldsmith and Wu do not take a position on the outcome of the battle over control of ICANN, they stress that, as a matter of fact, the actors of such battle are nation-states rather than Internet communities and private companies.

'''The New Vulnerability'''

In a recent article published in [http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/75262/the-new-vulnerability ''The New Republic''], Goldsmith takes a stand on Clarke's book [http://www.richardaclarke.net/index.php ''Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It"]. The main areas of criticism in Clarke's approach indicated by Goldsmith are the following:

:*Excessive focus on cyber war
:*The terrorism threat is underestimated
:*Greatest cyber threats come instead from espionage and theft
:*Private actors are becoming more dangerous and sophisticated
:*Potentiality of enormous economic damages

On the other hand, Goldsmith identifies several distinct difficulties that the US faces in tackling the new cyber threats:

:*Companies underinvest in cyber safety: private profit vs. larger national interest
:*Government fails to regulate software quality and service providers to avoid raising the costs of Internet access
:*US skepticism in extensive Government action prevents a governmental involvement in defending private computer networks

=== Joseph Nye ===

In his article, ''[http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/cyber-power.pdf Cyber Power]'', Joseph Nye argues that barriers to entry into the cyber domain are so low that non-state actors and small states can play significant roles at low levels of cost. He points to three characteristics of cyber warfare, which distinguishes it from other kinds of traditional warfare:
:1. High number of players
:2. Ease of entry
:3. Opportunity for concealment

Each actor in the cyber domain has, according to Nye, specific powers and different sets of vulnerabilities, as shown in this chart from Nye's article:

[[Image:Nye2.png|500px]]

Providing security is a classic function of government according to Nye, and increasing insecurity is believed to lead to an increased role of government in cyberspace. Nye indicates four major threats that should lead in principle to different solutions:
:1. Economic espionage
:2. Crime
:3. Cyber war
:4. Cyber terrorism

According to Nye, currently '''the highest costs come from the first two categories''' (economic espionage and crime), i.e., crimes committed by individual and small groups targeting civilian infrastructures and organizations. However, Nye envisages a change in the upcoming future, with cyberwar and cyber terrorism gaining importance.

*'''Nye's proposals'''
:Cyberwar:
:*can be managed through inter-state deterrence, along with offensive capabilities to be used in the event that deterrence fails.
:*can be regulated in the medium/long term through evolving norms of warfare comparable to the ones developed in relation to traditional warfare, such as proportionality.

:Cyber terrorism:
:*is harder to contrast.
:*Insofar as the attacks are directed against private infrastructures and organization, the threat can be dealt by incentivizing private actors, particularly owners of strategic infrastructure, to join secure systems rather than relying on the open Internet.

:International treaties:
:*Large scale formal treaties regulating cyberspace, according to Nye, are unlikely at the moment.
:*While governments will end up remaining the stronger actors, cyberspace is likely to increase the diffusion of power to non-state actors.

=== William Lynn ===

In his article, ''[http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66552/william-j-lynn-iii/defending-a-new-domain Defending a New Domain, The Pentagon Strategy]'', William Lynn starts from the assumption that the US government's digital infrastructure gives the US critical advantages over other countries. On the other hand, reliance on computer infrastructures exposes the US to disruptive attacks. The strategy adopted by the Pentagon, according to Lynn, must be based on the peculiar features of threats in cyberspace. In fact, the distinctive characteristics of cyberspace have led the Pentagon to recognize it as a new domain of warfare, as critical to military operations as other more traditional domain like air, space and land.

:'''Government role'''
:*Cyber warfare is asymmetric. Cyber weapons can be obtained at a relatively low cost, with high potentiality for disruptive results. This leads to ineffectiveness of a traditional deterrence model based on the acquisition of offensive capabilities against potential attackers.
:*Lynn focuses instead on '''“active defense”''' mechanisms, capable of anticipating intrusion and attacks. This should be implemented through the new unified [http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2010/0410_cybersec/ Cyber Command].

:'''Private sector and international level'''
:*Lynn recognizes that any plans aimed at defending military networks would be ineffective if civilian infrastructures are not secured against potential attacks, which could also be a target in military conflicts.
:*In order to achieve the goal of enhanced security the Pentagon should further explore how major private companies can help the public sector in tackling cyber threats. Additionally, the US should also find ways to exploit the private sector's innovative capacity in information technology, especially since a dramatic importance in the cyber defense is predicated on the human factor, namely the availability of highly trained human resources. The dynamism and fast development capabilities of the private sector are also taken by Lynn as an example.
:*In addition to this internal connection between military and civilian infrastructures, Lynn also points out that any efforts made by the US must take into account allied countries in order to cooperate in the monitor of computer networks intrusions.

=== Wesley Clark ===

''“Sabotaged circuits cannot be patched; they are the ultimate sleeper cell.”''

General Clark's article, ''[http://cognosys.net/classes/fall10/cs446/resources/Securing%20the%20Information%20Highway-foreign-affairs-1109.pdf Securing the Information Highway]'', focuses on the problem of compromised hardware -- usually computer chips with built-in rogue transistors that allow another party to gain control of a system. Clark believes this is the greatest threat for cyber security.
*Software attacks, on the other hand, “are generally detectable, are mostly curable, and, until now, have been largely containable through the use of software patches."

:'''Two challenges''' with enhancing hardware security:
::1. Ensuring authenticity.
::2. Detecting malevolent function inside the device.

:'''Other problems''' that are making things worse:
::1. Americans have a false sense of security.
::2. We’re not doing anything – the longer we wait, the better adversaries will get.

'''Clark’s Solution''':

We need to learn from the '''open-source community''' and create security standards that allow us to quickly discover and correct security flaws.
*We “need to endow U.S. networks, software, and even hardware with a digital immune system—one that is openly described and freely discussed.”

:Clark proposes a '''two-step approach''':
::1. Diversify the digital infrastructure.
::*We need more diversity in both hardware and software (operating systems) to make it harder to attack large sections at once.
::2. Secure the supply chain for hardware.
::*Embed compact authentication codes directly into devices.
::*Anti-tamper safeguards after devices are produced

::Note that this doesn’t mean we have to manufacture everything here – that’s a practical impossibility given the demand. We just need to ensure foreign-made products are “authentic and secure.”

=== Robert Knake ===

In its report for the Council on Foreign Relations,
''[http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Cybersecurity_CSR56.pdf Internet Governance in an Age of Cyber Insecurity]'', Knake examines the current position of the United States in dealing with cyber-security at the international level and the challenges faced by the international community.

Knake points out that while the US have refused to cooperate at the international level on a new governance for the Internet, China, Russia and other non democratic regimes have been organizing a united front to promote a new model for the Internet, tightly controlled by states. According to Knake, a free and open Internet is in the US’ national interest and therefore the government should actively fight the threats arising from cyber crime, espionage and warfare while at the same time preserving the democratic infrastructure of the web.

In order to reach this goal Knake indicates three basic principles, to be implemented through a three-part agenda the US should implement:
:1. '''Take a networked and distributed approach'''
:2. '''Establish accountability''' of states for their actions, the actions of their citizens, and their systems
:3. '''Start cleaning up the US national network'''

The above three principles should be implemented through the following three-part agenda:

:'''1. Create a stronger sets of international regimes to fight crime in cyberspace'''

::*Knake appears to be a supporter of a hands-off approach to the Internet. He points out that so far the US has only maintained control of one necessary infrastructure component (the DNS, Domain Name System) which needs active management, but otherwise has taken the position that the role of the government should be limited.
:::*According to Knake this approach should be adapted at changing times and increased cyber threats at the international level. New times demand the development of new international instruments to fight cyber crime and implement real-time mechanisms for international cooperation in fighting and investigating cross-border attacks.

::*Russia has been pushing since 1998 for a UN treaty to address conflicts in cyberspace creating a centralized international body to tackle cyber security issues. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/world/28cyber.html?pagewanted=all NYT]
:::*Knake, however, opposes a state-centric intergovernmental organization in that contrary to US interests, but rather supports a cooperative solution involving non-governmental organizations and the private sector in the development of new norms and the implementation of a more secure infrastructure.
:::*In certain areas, however, governmental intervention is the only practicable solution, where decentralized and inclusive approach does not work. Cyber crime (and relating problems of investigating, apprehending and prosecuting cyber criminals) is one of these areas. Council of Europe's convention on cybercrime helped in establishing laws to criminalize computer crimes and a mechanism for cross-border cooperation. However, according to Knake, it did not lead to a reduction of cybercrime. Further, such convention only envisages bilateral and prosecutorial mechanisms, ineffective in preventing attacks or tackling an attack when it occurs.

::*Knake suggested the creation of national level criminal laws and development of less formal mechanisms of cooperation through a “light” intergovernmental body. Knake's goal is a stronger international governance of the Internet, but “tailored to specifically address a narrow set of security concerns surrounding crime and warfare”. An approach clearly opposed to Russia's and China's “information security”.

:'''2. Constrain state actors in cyberspace'''

::*In order to solve the attribution problem (i.e., the extreme difficulties in tracking the origin of attacks in the cyberspace) Knake suggests that US should commit to pursue criminal prosecution of citizens engaging in hacktivism against foreign countries.
:::*Foreign states should do the same, and failure to cooperate in doing so should be deemed as a sign of complicity. States should be accountable for their actions, as well as those of their citizens and their systems.

::*In the past decade US has been focusing on cybercrime and refused to enter into negotiations on warfare and espionage.
:::*Knake says US should now overthrow the perception that US wants to maintain exploitation and attack capabilities at a level above other states. While keeping such capabilities is in the US interest, giving away such perception may be detrimental, and refusing in particular to enter into negotiations on state limitations to cyber warfare attracts critics.
:::*Knake suggests a renewed engagement of the US, but not as set forth in current treaty options. The Russian proposal, for instance, would commit signatories to abstain from developing offensive cyber capabilities while not providing any mechanism for the verification of their compliance. His proposed solution would be not to focus on limiting state actors offensive capabilities, bur rather limiting their penetration into civilian infrastructures (power grids, financial infrastructures).

:'''3. Secure the Internet's underlying technology'''

::*Knake suggests that it is now time to shift the focus of international and local attention from coordination and interoperability to security.
:::*The development of more secure technical protocols is much needed, Knake argues, and the government should provide guidance in the technical area.
:::*The private sector should be involved in a centralized forum established by the government to coordinate the Internet governance agenda, including big US corporations such as Microsoft and Symantec.

== Mapping Onto the Four Quadrants ==

===Four Quadrants: Elaborated===

Professor Zittrain mapped existing political philosophies onto his four quadrants. The result was presented in his article:

[[Image:Four_Quadrants_Detail.png]]

We have taken this framework and tried to determine which Internet groups generally occupy each quadrant.

[[Image:chart1.png|600px]]

:1. We believe that the first quadrant is the traditional domain of '''governments'''. Governments promulgate and enforce rules, and generally offer few or no alternatives.
:2. The second quadrant is occupied by '''corporations''', who act similarly to governments but offer the choice between numerous systems.
:3. '''Hackers''' are the best example of the third quadrant. These groups create their own hacker ethics from the bottom-up, and encourage polyarchy.
:4. The fourth quadrant is occupied by "'''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netizen Netizens]'''" -- active users of Internet sites like Wikipedia. These groups typically promulgate their own rules, but offer a more hierarchical structure.

===Mapping the Proposals===

====''Why the mapping?''====

The four quadrants can be a useful tool to dissect each of the proposals examined above: placing each proposal on a map allows the reader to more fully understand the interests at stake, the actors involved, and the consequences of each approach.
The mapping of the proposals is also helpful in understanding where each proposal actually stands, as opposed as where it purports to stand. In this respect, we argue that the perception of a proposal may determine how much support it can gain, but such perception does not necessarily capture all the implications of that proposal.

====''Difficulties with Mapping''====

Consider Professor Zittrain's article: at a first glance the Mirror As You Link approach would clearly place his proposal in the fourth quadrant, due to the communitarian and distributed nature of the solution. However, it is also suggested that the practical implementation should not occur through an action by users, but through a basic technological change adopted by two major servers manufacturers, Microsoft and Apache (an "architectural" modification). Does this way of implementation place this proposal in the second quadrant along with other solutions enacted by corporate actors? Would an article called the Second Quadrant be perceived in the same way and gain the same support?

[[Image:chart2.png|600px]]

Clarke's solution for increasing the security of the US national network encompasses a nation-wide scanning and sanitization of all the communications entering, or passing through the US computer infrastructure. This solution appears to be a typical form of government action that would place this proposal in the first quadrant. On the other hand, Clarke argues that the proposed security barrier should not be managed by governmental authorities themselves, but rather by private actors entrusted to do so by the government. How would the role of private corporations in implementing Clarke;s solution affect their position on the four quadrants? Should they be moved to the second quadrant? Why would the privacy concerns expressed by Clarke be better assessed by a corporate solution?

[[Image:chart3.png|600px]]

If we take into consideration the proposed solutions (Clarke's and others) at the international level, it is even harder to identify their position on the map, and how their approach should be defined. When confronted with the plurality of state actors on the international scene, even proposals that focus on governmental intervention may be easily shifted to other parts of the map due to the very nature of intergovernmental interaction.

[[Image:chart4.png|600px]]

====''More Clear''====

:'''Quadrant 1'''
:*'''Nye''': Nye's proposal appears to fall squarely in the first quadrant. He believes governmental authorities to be the most important actors in the cyber domain, and while he calls for the enhancement of private sector infrastructures' security, he seems to suggest that it should be done through government intervention. Furthermore, Nye do not believe that an international solution would be easily found.
:*'''Clarke&Knake''': The proposal of Clarke and Nye to implement the Defensive Triad Strategy together with a stronger cetnralized role of POTUS in authorizing and monitoring cyber-activity including cybercrime falls clearly into Quadrant 1. It aims to create a more hierarchical, top-down structure within a democratic system.

:'''Quadrant 2'''
:*'''Wesley Clark''': Clark's proposal clearly falls in the second quadrant. His call to diversify the digital infrastructure is a polyarchical solution. Additionally, Clark intends for the government to promulgate all of these rules, which is a top-down solution.
:*'''Clarke&Knake''': The idea of redesigning the Internet's architecture seems to be part of Quadrant 2. Despite a potential stronger governmental role, the polyarchical corporate sector would remain the key actor providing the infrastructure and top-down implementation.

:'''Quadrant 4'''
:*'''CWALT''': this proposal from Clarke & Knake calls for nations to create rules for one another, which is a bottom-up approach, but is structured to prevent individual nations from pursuing other systems independently.

====''Less Clear''====

'''Quadrant 1 or 2?'''

:*'''Lynn''': His approach appears prima facie based on strong government intervention, which would place his proposal in the first quadrant. However, Lynn also stresses the importance of vital energies that can be found in the private sector, and in particular the need to actively involve in the prevention of cyber threats private actors having technological know-how and capabilities.

'''Quadrant 1 or 4?'''

:*'''Clarke&Knake''': An international framework among states can fall either into Quadrant 1 or 4 depending on the perspective. As all of the actors are governments - authoritarian, liberal, or democratic - one could argue the CWALT falls within Quadrant 1. However, from an international relations point of view and the anarchy of the international system, a CWALT would exhibit more of a communitarian approach as a symbol of the notion of an international "community/society" and could therefore also be situated within Quadrant 4.

:*'''Knake''': At a first sight Knake's set of proposals appears to fall within the fourth quadrant. He is in fact proposing a ''Networked and distributed approach'', to be implemented through the active involvement of a wide range of participants from the technical community, the private sector, as well as users and consumer groups, to shape policy and avoid state-centric processes. Not a single forum, at either national or international level, bur rather a range of forums.

:::*At a deeper reading of Knake's arguments, however, it appears more clear that - in his mind - the US should nurture and indirectly control his proposed "light intergovernmental body". When Knake urges the US to be involved in international negotiations concerning the fight of cyber crime, he does so to avoid a "perception" that would eventually turn out to be detrimental to the US. Even private actors, such as Microsoft and Symantec, would be captured in the governmental sphere, by being made aware of the goals of the US government and actively help in achieving such goals.

:*'''Goldsmith''': His approach appears to rely heavily on communitarian, self-governed mechanisms to face the new cyber threats, which would place it in the fourth quadrant. However, Goldsmith himself acknowledges that governmental intervention is to some extent necessary to support and guarantee the efficacy of community organizations.

'''Quadrant 2 or 4?'''

:*'''Mirror As You Link''': Professor Zittrain's proposal allows Internet users to download a website from different servers, which seems to be a polyarchical solution. Additionally, this system needs to be adopted and maintained by web server vendors, which are top-down institutions. This seems to indicate that Mirror As You Link is a first quadrant solution. It could be argued, however, that this system also falls in the fourth quadrant. Mirror As You Link could be adopted in such a way that rules are agreed upon by the Internet users themselves, and it's unclear whether there would be an ability for users to choose between multiple linking regimes.

'''Quadrant 3 or 4?'''

:*'''Clarke&Knake''': The idea of a broad public dialogue is clearly closer at the bottom-up end of the vertical axis but seems to move along the horizontal one. The question is to what degree the public at large can be engaged or if the technical required knowhow will limit the extent to the breadth of the dialogue.

====''A New Mapping''====

How did the use of the four quadrants tool impact our analysis? Below is our attempt to map all of the approaches onto a single chart:

[[Image:ourchart1.png|600px]]

Existing Services

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Human rights videos are currently disseminated through a variety of traditional and new media outlets. While these services have allowed many important human rights videos to reach an unprecedented audience, they are currently inadequate in two ways. First, none of the existing solutions have the proper alignment of incentives to effectively and fully support human rights media. Second, no existing service provides both secure anonymous uploading mechanisms and tools to ensure the anonymity of the videos’ subjects.

==Alignment of Incentives==

To explain why none of the current solutions have adequately solved the problems facing human rights media, it is helpful to plot these solutions along two important axes. First, the horizontal axis measures how susceptible organizations are to government and financial pressures. Organizations that are more susceptible to pressure can be found on the right-hand side of the chart, while organizations that are resistant to these pressures reside on the left-hand side. Second, the vertical axis looks at the extent to which an organization filters the content it publishes. At the top, non-hierarchical organizations generally take a hands-off approach to the content available on their websites, accepting most forms of user-generated content. Hierarchical organizations, on the other hand, exercise great control in the selection and promotion of the content that they publish. The basic chart is presented below.

[[Image:CurrentOrgs1.png]]

===Mapping the Competition===

====Second Quadrant====
The Second Quadrant, in the upper right of the chart, includes for-profit, multinational organizations that host user-generated content. YouTube and Facebook are two popular organizations that fall directly into this quadrant.<ref>Other organizations might include Flickr, Vimeo, Veoh, and Metacafe.</ref> Anyone with access can upload content to YouTube and publish it to the world, as long as it does not violate YouTube’s Community Guidelines (e.g. the video contains pornography or graphic violence).<ref>See [http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=GB&hl=en-GB YouTube Community Guidelines].</ref> Although YouTube is well-suited to host and disseminate large amounts of human rights media, it is still subject to outside pressures. Governments can force YouTube to limit the availability of certain content by threatening to block the site in their country. In 2008, for example, YouTube removed a controversial video critical of Islam in order to end Pakistan’s ban of the site.<ref>See Greg Sandoval, [http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines?gl=GB&hl=en-GB Pakiston Welcomes Back YouTube], CNet (Feb. 26, 2008).</ref> Such actions illustrate precisely why Second Quadrant organizations are insufficient to serve as publishers of human rights media: although they host most forms of user-generated content, their profit-seeking status leaves them susceptible to pressure to censor that content.

====Third Quadrant====
Actors in the Third Quadrant also do not provide an ideal platform for promoting human rights media. This space is dominated by traditional news organizations such as The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press, as well as newer user-generated services like CNN iReport. Although these organizations are subject to many of the same financial pressures as Second Quadrant organizations, they are generally less willing to cater to oppressive governments. The real problem with using these organizations to promote human rights media, however, is the hierarchical structure they use to select content. Many organizations lack a system by which users can send in their content for publication, forcing them use services like YouTube. Even if an organization does accept user-generated content, editors ultimately decide which information is worthy of the limited time or space they have to present the news. When these large news organizations cover human rights abuses, they often focus on countries where Western powers have some involvement.<ref> For example, one study of The New York Times found that "[a]ttention to abuses occurs primarily in countries that were strategically instrumental during the cold war and in countries where there is clear U.S. involvement." See Caliendo et al., [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/harvard_international_journal_of_press_politics/v004/4.4caliendo.html All the News That's Fit to Print? New York Times Coverage of Human-Rights Violations].</ref> Thus, Third Quadrant organizations are also insufficient to serve as publishers of human rights media, since important human rights media may not be chosen for publication.

====Fourth Quadrant====
The Fourth Quadrant contains most of the current existing human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Witness.org. These groups are non-profit organizations with a dedicated focus on promoting human rights. Although governments can forcibly block these organizations' websites, it will be more difficult to pressure them into compromising their ideological positions than it would be for profit-seeking organizations. Like CNN and The New York Times, however, Quadrant Four organizations all currently employ hierarchical methods for publishing human rights content, making value judgments about which content the world should see. Some organizations even chose to shoot their own footage of human rights events. Amnesty International, for instance, frequently publishes its own content gathered by affiliates rather than user-generated videos.<ref>See [http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/video-and-audio Amnesty International Video and Audio]. Most of the videos on this site are accompanied by Amnesty International commentary and background on the country being highlighted.</ref> Additionally, organizations like Witness.org have shifted their focus away from curating and hosting human rights videos. The mission of Witness.org is now to encourage people on the ground to produce human rights videos by giving them access to equipment and training.<ref>See [http://www.witness.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=266&Itemid=196 What is WITNESS?].</ref> Therefore, Fourth Quadrant organizations are also insufficient to serve as publishers of human rights media.

[[Image:CurrentOrgs3.png]]

===A Gap in the First Quadrant===

While existing organizations do encourage people to create human rights media and often bring these videos to the attention of the world, we believe many important human rights are never seen. There is currently no viable organization dedicated to human rights media that is both resistant to pressure and non-hierarchical. In other words, no dedicated human rights solution exists in Quadrant One.

To fill this First Quadrant gap, we propose Pharos. Pharos’ non-profit status leaves it immune to many of the tactics that governments have effectively used against profit-seeking companies. Additionally, the non-hierarchical nature of Pharos’ content publishing allows it to effectively disseminate human rights media and make it widely available.

[[Image:CurrentOrgs2.png]]

====A Quick Word about BitTorrent, Twitter, and The Hub====

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that exists in the First Quadrant, but it is not a viable solution to the problems we have identified. First, it would be impossible to guarantee that all of the videos on a BitTorrent server were related to human rights, and these servers would likely be overrun by spam and other content. Second, in order to download content using BitTorrent, another user must be hosting that information. In countries with serious human rights abuses, Internet access may not be consistent or users may not wish to host the content for fear of being identified by the government. It will also be difficult to convince users to download videos in the first place, and then upload them for others. If users stop uploading a video it can disappear from the torrent forever, whereas a video on Pharos would remain available forever. Third, there are simply not enough people on BitTorrent to make it an effective solution. While everyone has access to an Internet browser, BitTorrent requires additional software that most users will not be willing to install. Fourth, BitTorrent lacks an effective interface that would allow users to quickly browse and share important human rights videos. Thus, the effective and timely dissemination of human rights media will require something more than BitTorrent.

Additionally, Twitter currently falls somewhere between the First Quadrant and Second Quadrant. In the past few years it has been fairly resistant to outside pressure.<ref>See, e.g., Erik Hayden, [http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Twitter-Resists-WikiLeaks-Subpoena-6521 Twitter Resists WikiLeaks Subpoena].</ref> However, there are two potential problems with this service. First, it is difficult to upload human rights videos to Twitter<ref>Twitter does not offer this service directly; users must rely on third-party services like [http://www.twitvid.com TwitVid].</ref> and also to find these videos once they have been uploaded.<ref>This is true even if the uploader uses a common hashtag, because Twitter does not curate Tweets that are irrelevant or contain spam.</ref> Second, and more importantly, as Twitter grows it will likely move firmly into the Second Quadrant. When Twitter starts to make money and opens offices in foreign countries, it will be more likely to succumb to outside pressures and comply with requests from local governments.

Another potential First Quadrant organization is the Hub, which was an offshoot of Witness.org that hosted user-submitted human rights media from 2007 to 2009. However, it has since shut down. <ref>See [http://hub.witness.org/ Important Update About the Hub].</ref> While over 3000 videos remain on the site, no new videos can be uploaded.<ref>See Priscila Neri, [ http://hub.witness.org/en/HUB2Years 2 Years of the Hub – A Look Back].</ref> This organization served an important function, and we believe Pharos should pick up where the Hub left off. Unlike the Hub, however, Pharos will anonymize all user-generated content and facilitate its publication on other popular news sites.

==Anonymization==

In addition to being uniquely incentivized to support human rights media, Pharos solves another critical problem that no other existing organization solves: anonymity. Pharos offers anonymity in two ways. First, people can upload their human rights videos anonymously, so that oppressive governments cannot trace the video to a specific individual. Second, Pharos offers services to strip metadata and blur identifiable faces in the videos themselves. Neither of these services are currently offered by any of the organizations presented above. Anonymity has simply not been as important in the past, because it was difficult or impossible to trace the origin of a video or identify the people in it. As governments grow increasingly tech-savvy, however, we believe anonymization services will become crucial for human rights organizations that wish to receive important content without putting their sources in danger.

==References==
<references/>

Crowdsourcing

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== Crowdsourcing: Background and Working Definitions ==
=== Definitions ===

At present there is no generally accepted definition of crowdsourcing, and commentators have used many different meanings. Therefore, we believe an overview of the various definitions offered is helpful for further discussion of different types of crowdsourcing. For the purposes of our discussion, we will be using the terms "crowdsourcing", "crowdwork", and "cloudwork" interchangeably.

The most widely accepted definition of crowdsourcing comes from Jeff P. Howe, who recognized it as "the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call."[http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/06/crowdsourcing_a.html]

He further clarified that the form of crowdsourcing could be either peer production (when co-workers interact and collaborate on projects) or sole individuals (when co-workers, if any, are isolated from one another). Under Howe's definition, the employer must be an organization (in most cases, a corporation), because he was considering crowdsourcing as a new type of corporate business model, by which corporations could raise current productivity or establish new businesses that were not possible before. Nevertheless, we do not think the employer using crowdsourcing, as a matter of definition, must be an organization; individuals can certainly outsource a task to an online crowd.

Kleemann and Vob (2008) argue that "central to the concept of crowdsourcing is the idea that a crowd of people, collaboratively (or at least simultaneously) contribute to an aspect of the production process or to the solution of a design issue or other problems."[http://www.sti-studies.de/fileadmin/articles/kleemannetalstivol4no1.pdf]

Although we agree that simultaneous or collaborative work is a significant type of crowdsourcing, it is not the only one. The Best Practices entry for crowdwork, developed last year and reposted on [[Class 3]], divides crowdwork into three categories: "First, a large group of workers may do microtasks to complete a whole project; the best-known platform in this arena is Amazon Mechanical Turk. Second, companies may use cloudwork platforms to connect with individual workers, or a small group of workers, who then complete larger jobs (e.g., Elance[http://www.elance.com/p/landing/buyerA5.html] and oDesk[http://www.odesk.com/#reloaded]). Finally, a company may run 'contests,' where numerous workers complete a task and only the speediest or best worker is paid (e.g., InnoCentive[https://www2.innocentive.com/] and Worth1000[http://www.worth1000.com/]). In some contests, the company commits to picking at least one winner; in others, there is no such guarantee." It is clear that when the crowdsourcing takes the form of competitive bidding, not every participant works on a single aspect of the task; each of them works on the whole task, and they do not have to work at the same time. Only the final winner gets compensated. It is possible that only one individual or organization joins the bidding process and no competing parties are involved.

Another concept that Reichwald and Piller (2006) used to describe crowdsourcing is "interactive value creation". They further differentiate two types of crowdsourcing: mass customization and open innovation.[http://www.sti-studies.de/fileadmin/articles/kleemannetalstivol4no1.pdf] We do not think Reichwald and Piller's approach is convincing. First, the general term "interactive value creation" can be used to cover many types of online collaborative activities traditionally not recognized as crowdsourcing, e.g., open source development. Second, mass customization refers to an isolated customer's activity to tailor one particular product, rather than contributions to a general product. Their second type, "open innovation", correctly points out that crowdsourcing should be outsourced through a open call, but we do not believe a strong degree of "innovation" is necessary, especially for highly divided microtasks.

Based on the above discussion, we believe that there are two core elements of crowdsourcing, both of which may be facilitated by an online platform (such as Amazon Mechanical Turk[https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome])

1. The task is outsourced through an open call from the employer;

2. The recipients of the call, whether or not they elect to participate, comprise a large, amorphous crowd.

The following discussion of crowdsourcing reflects our understanding of three of the most significant types of crowdsourcing: microtasks, "professional" tasks, and "game" tasks. Microtasks facilitated by platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk [https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome] might be the typical type of crowdsourcing in literature.[http://www.clickadvisor.com/downloads/Howe_The_Rise_of_Crowdsourcing.pdf] Not only is there an open call by an employer to the crowd, the crowd also collaborates on the whole task by each member addressing a small piece of the pre-divided work. Professional tasks, in contrast, might have multiple people working on them, but there is no collaboration among them, and their work usually involve a higher degree of innovation. Game tasks are again a different animal, since they copy many attributes of the other two, but add another layer by aiming to be entertaining as well as purposeful.

=== General Information on Crowdsourcing ===
*''General Information''
**For a quick overview by Jeff Howe, author of ''Crowdsourcing'',[http://books.google.com/books?id=ge_0LBOcwWsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=crowdsourcing&hl=en&ei=QinGTKS9AcGAlAeHtLX-AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] take a look at this YouTube clip.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0-UtNg3ots]
**Northwestern University Professor Kris Hammond also explains crowdsourcing, but argues that its downsides are worker rewards and quality.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX7RiV-wa_s&feature=related]
**Our very own Jonathan Zittrain discusses crowdsourcing in his talk, ''Minds for Sale''.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw3h-rae3uo]
**Several individuals gathered to discuss crowdsourcing in a panel moderated by New York Times correspondent Brad Stone.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyUaWSblaA]
*''In the News''
**The New York Times recently ran an article on crowdsourcing featuring two crowdsourcing companies:[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/business/31digi.html?_r=1&ref=technology] Microtask[http://www.microtask.com/] and CloudCrowd.[http://www.cloudcrowd.com/]
**It's interesting to note that these companies are attempting to monetize crowdsourcing in exactly the way in which Howe says it cannot be monetized successfully.
*''Examples of Crowdsourcing''
**Take a look at Wikipedia's compilation.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crowdsourcing_projects]

== Crowdsourcing Literature ==

=== General Overview ===

Although the idea of crowdsourcing--if not the word itself--has been around for many years, the Internet has made it much easier, cheaper, and efficient to harness the power of crowds. The power of crowds was popularized in 2004 when James Surowiecki published a book entitled, ''The Wisdom of Crowds.''[http://books.google.com/booksid=hHUsHOHqVzEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+wisdom+of+crowds&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=T0DtTI2FGYP88AbA78GaAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] This book purported to show how large groups of people can, in many cases, be more effective at solving problems than experts. According to Surowiecki (2004: xiii), "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." Two years later, journalist Jeff Howe coined the phrase "crowdsourcing" to refer to work that was performed by the "masses" online.[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html] Since Howe's article was published in 2006, numerous authors have written books on crowdsourcing, each choosing to focus on different aspects of the topic. Howe himself took up the topic in 2008, proclaiming crowdsourcing to be a panacea--a place where a perfect meritocracy could thrive.[http://books.google.com/books?id=ge_0LBOcwWsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=crowdsourcing&hl=en&ei=QinGTKS9AcGAlAeHtLX-AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] Howe examined crowdsourcing from a variety of perspectives: what benefits it can provide, what kinds of tasks it can accomplish, and the potential changes it may bring about. Howe's prognosis for crowdsourcing was positive--in it he saw many potential solutions and few potential problems. Others have followed Howe's lead in describing the benefits of crowdsourced work. Clay Shirky has published two books--''Here Comes Everybody'' (2008)[http://books.google.com/books?id=UNxU-2s2sQYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=clay+shirky+here+comes+everybody&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=TEHtTMD6FIT58Aa54JVs&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] and ''Cognitive Surplus'' (2010)[http://books.google.com/books?id=_U1nQgAACAAJ&dq=cognitive+surplus&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=f0XtTMnsFcOC8gaD4MGRAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6wEwAA]--in which he describes how technology does more than enable new tools, it also enables consumers to become collaborators and producers. Although Shirky's books are not expressly about crowdsourcing per se, they mirror the optimism Howe expresses, both in terms of collaborative enterprises and the Internet's power to enable them.

These books have provoked an academic interest in finding out ''who'' is the crowd, or why the crowd moves the way it does. Some have looked at scientific crowdsourcing, asking what characteristics make someone a successful crowdworker/problem-solver.[http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-050.pdf] Part of answering that question, it turns out, requires asking why people attempt to be part of the innovating crowd in the first place. The authors of this study found that the crowd was highly educated. They also found heterogeneity in scientific interests, as well as monetary and intrinsic motivations, to be important drivers of "good" problem-solvers. Others have examined non-scientific endeavors and asked similar questions. One report, for example, examined workers on iStockphoto.[http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2159/1969] This report found that most iStock crowdworkers developing photographs were highly educated and motivated primarily by money. Jeff Howe, however, takes a different perspective as to crowdworkers' motivation: "There are . . . two shared attributes among almost all crowdsourcing projects: participants are not primarily motivated by money, and they’re donating their leisure hours to the cause. That is, they’re contributing their excess capacity, or 'spare cycles,' to indulge in something they love to do." (''Crowdsourcing'', pgs. 28-29.)

While some focused on the potential consumer revolution or the composition of the crowd, others examined the business-related aspects of crowdsourcing. Identifying attributes of successful crowd innovators also has a business dimension. One researcher suggests that having experience spanning across a variety of communities or disciplines makes one likely to be considered 'innovative.'[http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:Ro0Ij3Y41wMJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=40000000&sciodt=40000000] Others focus more broadly on how to use the crowd to maintain or bolster business or brand. In ''Groundswell'' (2008),[http://books.google.com/books?id=YOVuQFXNcP4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=groundswell&hl=en&ei=ZF_tTKjtLIL58Ab-tu26AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff focus on how to most effectively use crowdsourcing to advantage businesses. The authors highlight how user bases of products can undermine a product or brand.[http://books.google.com/books?id=YOVuQFXNcP4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=groundswell&hl=en&src=bmrr&ei=tUPtTPOeAYP-8AbcxemdAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] As a result, the authors propose that businesses use the "groundswell" to their advantage, fostering communities that can provide valuable feedback and economic payoffs. Marion K. Poetz and Martin Schreier have also taken a business perspective on crowdsourcing,[http://ssrn.com/abstract=1566903] arguing that the crowd is capable of producing valuable (but not always viable) business ideas at a low cost. Other researchers have found that young entrepreneurs who were attempting to start businesses frequently belonged to these kinds of communities.[http://ssrn.com/abstract=1022358] For a related discussion on user innovation and user communities, see Eric Von Hippel's books[http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/books.htm] and William Fisher's article in the Minnesota Law Review.[http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/content/implications-law-user-innovation]

Other authors have pointed out some of the problems with crowdsourcing. Dr. Mathieu O'Neil has argued that, despite its benefits, crowdsourcing can have inconsistent quality, can lack the diversity needed to draw on the "wisdom of the crowd", and can contain many irresponsible actors.[http://www.paris-sorbonne.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/oneil-2.pdf] Miriam Cherry has argued that some crowdwork can be exploitative, sometimes forcing people to work for absurdly low wages.[http://ssrn.com/abstract=1499823] She argues that we need a legal framework for addressing low wages, proposing we apply the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to crowdsourced work like that found on Mechanical Turk. In a forthcoming article, she takes a more systematic (but still legal) approach to suggesting solutions for the problems faced by different kinds of virtual work.[http://ssrn.com/abstract=1649055] Cherry seems to be the only law professor to have written on addressing crowdsourcing from a doctrinal perspective.

Much of the other literature on the subject concerns the problem of quality. Soylent--which is essentially a crowdsourced editing program--has been a prime example of how lack of quality can limit the commercialization of a innovative and useful crowdsourcing product.[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4409122] Cheat detection--the ability to filter out individuals who complete tasks without actually reading them in the hopes of receiving money without doing the work--has also recently drawn attention. For instance, a possible crowdsourced solution to cheaters has been proposed for sentence translations, relying on principles such as crowd consensus and logical parallelism in sentence structure and word choice. [http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/A08798F3F7A3476A8525777E005C6AD2] Others have attempted to increase the quality of the traditionally-automated mechanism used to translate words by crowdsourcing translation tasks.[http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/A08798F3F7A3476A8525777E005C6AD2] In addition to simple crowdsourcing, one set of authors suggests combining human crowdwork with machine work. This process, according to the authors, the system can specific a specific "speed-cost-quality tradeoff," which is based on an allocation of tasks among computers and humans.[http://alexquinn.org/papers/CrowdFlow,%20Integrating%20Machine%20Learning%20with%20Mechanical%20Turk%20for%20Speed-Cost-Quality%20Flexibility%20(Quinn,%20Bederson,%20Yeh,%20Lin).pdf] John J. Horton, David Rand, and Richard Zeckauser have addressed using the online crowd for quality experimental research.[http://ssrn.com/abstract=1591202]

=== Other Problems ===

The literature on crowdsourcing often discusses either broad or specific issues. Books tend to have an overall argument about the value of crowdsourcing, its core attributes, and how it needs to be structured. Articles, conversely, tend to describe specific studies or problems within a particular community. There is little room for systematically addressing common crowdsourcing problems. Instead, the platforms offering crowdsourcing, such as Mechanical Turk, address these problems internally. 99designs--a website that allows people to solicit creative logo designs--has several policies regulating the behavior of those who request[http://99designs.com/help/contestholder/guidelines] and perform[http://99designs.com/help/designer/codeofconduct] work. Most crowdsourcing services have similar policies or recommendations. In January 2010, a small group of students from Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School gathered in Palo Alto for three weeks to talk about these more general problems. They produced a document of Best Practices ([[Class 3]]), which sought to identify and propose a framework to address problems endemic to crowdsourcing. That document identified six major issues that needed to be addressed in cloudwork:

1. Disclosure: Workers want to know the identity of the employer, so disclosure should be the default preference.

2. Fairness: Employers sometimes underpay, pay late, or don't pay at all, so employers should pay fair and just wages on time.

3. Feedback and Monitoring: Judging the worker, task, or company is difficult for each player, so platforms should work to enable better feedback and monitoring systems.

4. Healthy Work Environment: Workers face the risks of stress from repetition, alienation and isolation, and addiction, so platforms should explain risks and companies should implement strategies to reduce risks.

5. Reputation and Portability: Workers who do good (or bad) work cannot capitalize on (and employers cannot avoid) their work, so platforms and companies should work to keep records of worker information and use it to track performance and confirm identities.

6. Privacy Protection: Workers are concerned with employers sharing their (potentially sensitive) information, so platforms should protect information and not release it.

The Best Practices document provides a good starting point because it identifies several major issues common to all crowdsourcing. It does not, however, capture all potential problems. Additionally, it tends to focus concerns only on the workers, but platforms and companies also face similar problems. Moreover, because the document is meant as a general framework, it is hard to get a sense of whether it could be effectively implemented across the board. There is room, then, to explore problems that are both broad enough to have implications for a variety of actors, but specific enough to merit a context-specific solution.

== Our Addition: Identifying Areas, Exploring the Problems ==

Given the body of literature and the Best Practices document, we found the idea of addressing systemic problems both attractive and difficult. Instead of replicating the Best Practices, or simply writing an overview of crowdsourcing, we decided to take a different angle. Unlike the Best Practices document, which classified problems generally and then worked downward to devise specific solutions by applying them to different types of crowdwork, we worked from the bottom up. We identified three types of crowdwork that suggested a variety of important, but (context-)specific problems. At the beginning stages, we had only our intuition to guide our "sense" of the problems. As we delved further into them, however, they crystallized. From our discussions we identified three types of crowdwork in which specific problems arise, some of which are systemic problems with crowdsourcing that the Best Practices does not address. Nevertheless, we wanted to draw on the Best Practices document to determine whether some of its strategies seemed workable or needed to be expanded, refined, or discarded. To accomplish this goal, we attempted to integrate the Best Practices approaches into our framing of both the problems and the solutions we discussed.

=== An Introduction to Our Approach ===

Our discussion of various crowdsourcing environments suggested a variety of ways to slice the pie. In the end, we settled on three areas of crowdsourcing, reaching a rough classification based on the type of work performed. In that sense, our division followed the Best Practices division of work into microtasks, connective tasks, and contest tasks. But there was an important difference: our classification of work depended also upon the purpose for which the work was being put, focusing on a specific case study for each. In other words, it mattered to us that one task was framed as a "game" versus a "survey." We cared not just about the framing, but also the motives of employer and the worker. We asked questions like, "For what purpose is the employer requesting this task?" and "Why does the worker choose to perform the task?" Our aim was not to analyze every kind of crowdwork using motive and purpose; rather, these questions provided a general framing for dividing crowdwork into analytical categories--places where we could identify specific problems that may differ depending on the answers to these questions. After significant discussion, we settled on three types of tasks, choosing a case study to explore each one:

1. Microtasks: ''Amazon's Mechanical Turk'', ''Microtask.com'', and ''Soylent''[https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome];

2. Tasks requiring "professional" skills: ''99designs''[http://99designs.com/] and ''InnoCentive''[http://www2.innocentive.com/]; and

3. "Game" tasks: ''Gwap''[http://www.gwap.com/gwap/].

For each of these tasks, we attempted to identify salient "problems": issues that cause concern for workers, employers, platforms, businesses, or society generally. In identifying problems, we had two goals. The first was to provide a set of new issues for others to build upon in future work. The second was to explore a small number of issues and propose our own context-specific solutions. In this sense, it was an exercise in both applying the Best Practices and inventing new solutions that either context or framing prevented the Best Practices from solving. In what follows, we explain each topic, the problems it presents, and specific solutions to selected problems. Although we think the solutions we propose have some teeth, they are not meant to be final. Indeed, our goal in presenting these solutions and problems is to provide a base from which others can build.

=== The 3 Crowdsourcing Environments and Problems ===

==== Microtasks: Amazon Mechanical Turk; Microtask.com; Soylent ====

Microtask is a type of crowdsourcing that refers to an employer dividing a task into smaller subtasks that require human intelligence (Human Intelligence Task, HIT [https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=overview]), and then assigning the microtasks to workers in the crowd. Each microtask can be completed independently of any information about the other microtasks. Although some tasks might require the worker to have certain qualifications to complete them, such as knowledge of a language, the human intelligence required to complete a HIT is minimal--i.e., the average (or even below average) workers can do the job. Workers earn income by the number of tasks that they complete and are approved by the employer.[https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=worker#how_paid] By definition, workers do not always earn monetary benefits: in some cases, they feel a sense of achievement by completing a task or winning virtual points in the form of games (as discuss in the final section, e.g., Gwap [http://www.gwap.com/gwap/]), or earning no benefits at all (e.g. ReCaptcha [http://www.google.com/recaptcha]). In this section, we limit our discussion to microtasks with some kind of monetary reward.

An introductory video of Microtask.com [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SteMdhKSS18] is a good illustration of the nature of the microtask-type of crowdsourcing. Microtask.com also offers two typical examples that are particularly suitable for microtasks: form processing, which helps clients such as banks and insurance companies transfer hand-filled forms into digital forms compatible with databases[http://www.microtask.com/solutions/]; and digitization, which helps clients such as national archives and libraries proofread their scanned and OCR'ed files and digitize them into a format that is searchable and machine-readable [http://www.microtask.com/solutions/].

===== Quality Control =====

''Problem''

One concern is that the quality of crowdsourced projects may not always be satisfactory. Below is a sample of text revised by Soylent [http://projects.csail.mit.edu/soylent/] from the second paragraph of Prof Zittrain's book [http://yupnet.org/zittrain/archives/6].

"This was not the first time Steve Jobs had launched a revolution. Thirty years earlier, at the First West Coast Computer Faire in nearly the same spot, the twenty-one-year-old Jobs, wearing his first suit, exhibited the Apple II personal computer to great buzz amidst “10,000 walking, talking computer freaks.” The Apple II was, a machine for hobbyists who did not want to fuss with soldering irons:, had all the ingredients for a functioning PC were provided in a convenient molded plastic case. It lookedWhile clunky, yet it could be at home on someone’sfit on a home desk. Instead of puzzling over bits of hardware or typing up punch cards to feed into someone else’s mainframe, Apple owners faced only the hurdle of a cryptic blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen: the PC awaited instructions. But the hurdle was not high. Some owners were inspired to program the machines themselves, but true beginners simply could load up software written and then shared or sold by their more skilled or inspired counterparts. The Apple II was a blank slate, a bold departure from previous technology that had been developed and marketed to perform specific tasks from the first day of its sale to the last day of its use."

A comparison between the above text with the original might suggest the the quality of the original is not improved; in fact, it added typos and errors that the original does not contain. Another example would be a worker who does not actually use human intelligence, but just clicks the mouse randomly. For instance, in a task where a worker is supposed to tell the sex of the person in a photo, or tell the major color of a picture, one could randomly choose the result in order to complete as many tasks as possible. Although workers of a task only earn income when the requester approves their work,[https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=worker#how_paid] the approval of requesters are generally procedural rather than substantive. The dilemma is that employers cannot check each microtask (since it would mean that the employer would have to do the work all over again), nor can they use machines to do so (otherwise they would not have outsourced the task to the crowd in the first place).

''Solutions''

Improving the quality for crowdsourcing means, not only that current tasks can be completed with better quality, but also that the crowd will develop a greater capacity to assume more complex responsibilities. There are two critical approaches that can be considered to improve the quality: 1) result verification/evaluation, and 2) worker grouping. While neither is a perfect solution by itself, a superior system might be a hybrid of the following methods.

*1. Verifying microtasks. One approach to maintain the quality of microtasks is to have the results checked. The dilemma here is that, on one hand, employers are unable to verify each microtask in substance (because if they could, crowdsourcing would be unnecessary); on the other, machines cannot verify the result because the microtasks usually require human intelligence that is difficult for machines to process. Therefore, possible solutions lie back with the crowd.
**a. Repetition. As a mechanism that some platforms, e.g., Soylent, [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/uid/other-pubs/soylent.pdf] have already adopted, the employer can have each microtask repeated by multiple workers. A task is only accepted as valid when the majority (e.g., 2/3 or 3/4) of workers produce the same results. An assumption must be made that majority of workers in the task are of good faith, i.e., they work genuinely exercising their human intelligence. Obviously, if most workers click randomly, even such a mechanism will not guarantee high-quality products. Another issue is cost. From the efficiency point of view, each microtask can be solved by one competent worker. In order to verify the result by repetition, the costs of labor multiply hugely (depending on the number of repetitions that the employer designates).
**b. Gold standard. Another mechanism that some employers use, if the nature of the task allows, is to mix in test questions where the result is already known to check the quality of the worker's performance. (''See, e.g.'', Qin Gao & Stephan Vogel, "Consensus versus Expertise: A Case Study of Word Alignment with Mechanical Turk", Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, pg. 31.) For instance, if legal journals wanted to crowdsource subciting[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bluebook], they could include an incorrect citation where they already knew what the correct version was, and use that as a standard against which to measure the worker's overall performance of the task.

*2. Differentiating the crowd. One way of differentiating a group of workers from the rest of the crowd for a specific purpose for a crowdsourcing task (e.g., if it is a task that requires workers who are more experienced or more competent in a particular area) is to impose qualifications based their prior experience, which can either be their experience in the off-line world or their online performance regardless of their actual background in the off-line world, or a qualification test specifically for the potential workers before they start.
**a. As in the off-line employment market, crowdsourcing platforms can group workers based on their education, professional qualifications, etc., and an employer may specify such requirements to admit workers for its task. The difficulty here is that there is no reliable way of verifying the off-line information. If relying on self-reporting, the employer may receive fake information from workers who want to have more opportunities to work. While the employer (or the platform) can have workers upload evidence for the backgrounds (e.g., an electronic version of degree certificate, an .edu email address), workers can still fake evidence [http://www.nd-center.com/2006/05/fake-degree-certificate.html]. Moreover, there are acute concerns about privacy: people may not want to upload their real copies of certificates, even to large online service providers like Amazon or Google, who usually have better privacy protection mechanisms, so they might upload fake ones instead or not upload at all.
**b. Another approach is to completely ignore people's off-line identities and focus only on their online experience. A rating system is commonly established for this purpose. A requester may choose how many points a worker can earn for each microtask. A platform may choose to adopt more specialized rating system (categorizing experience into different types of tasks), or a uniform rating system (experience accumulates by the number of tasks completed, as in Mechanical Turk's system[http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/]). A uniform rating system might be unfair for newcomers because they lack the required experience points to start, especially since workers who have sufficient points might have earned them from tasks that are irrelevant to the current task. A categorized rating system seems to be more reasonable. (Rating systems are discussed in more detail in the next sections problems on reputation for professional work.)
**c. Some requesters do not consider either off-line background or online experience. They set up a training session and final quiz for candidates, and only those who can pass the quiz qualify to work [http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/]. The limitation of the qualification test is that it only ensures the competence of the worker; it does not guarantee that he or she will genuinely do the work as expected.

===== Protection of Workers =====

''Problem''

The Best Practice document composed by [[Class 3]] of the last winter course discusses many issues that involve the protection of workers' interests. We agree that crowdsourcing (and the microtask-type of crowdsourcing in particular) creates a unique virtual environment where co-workers are isolated, and therefore reveals new issues in the employer-worker relationship. It is also important to recognize that crowdworkers are a heterogeneous group, not merely in terms of skills or other work-related differences, but in terms of backgrounds as well. For instance, recent studies on demographics of Mechanical Turk [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1585030][http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jwross/pubs/RossEtAl-WhoAreTheCrowdworkers-altCHI2010.pdf] show that there is an increasing number of Turkers from India. In March 2008, the platform was dominated by U.S. participants (76%) and only 8% Turkers were from India. As of November 2009, although U.S. people still accounted from more than half (56%), the Indian portion had skyrocketed to over one-third (36%). Mechanical Turk is becoming more and more international, and the diverse workforce complicates the issues concerning the protection of their interests. Therefore, we will attempt, when appropriate, to treat workers with different backgrounds and purposes separately when discussing the protection of their interests in crowdsourcing work.

''Solutions''

*1. Unionize. Felstiner (2010) argued that the current statutory framework based on the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is insufficient to address the legal issues on crowdsourcing; he further suggested that workers do not need to wait for legislative action, but rather can use their collective power to protect their interests now.[http://works.bepress.com/context/alek_felstiner/article/1000/type/native/viewcontent] This suggestion raises a question: what kind of collective action is appropriate for crowdsourcing? One side of the spectrum is for organizations, such as trade unions in the off-line world. We believe this approach is problematic for several reasons. First, only the platform possesses complete information of all the workers, and due to the wide geographical distribution, establishing a union entails disclosure of employer's contact information. Second, employers of commercial tasks rely on the isolation of workers to take advantage of the benefits of crowdsourcing without compromising trade secrecy and confidentiality. However, communications among workers might enable them to reassemble microtasks and reproduce the entire task, which may not be an acceptable risk for the employer.

An online forum is another possibility. Compared to a union, online forums are loose, and satisfy the need of anonymous communication by workers. Existing forums includes Turker Nation [http://www.turkernation.com] and mTurk Forum [http://www.mturkforum.com], which seem to be functioning well. On those online forums, workers can discuss any issues of mutual interest and try to create bargains with the employers or the platform. Meanwhile, the identities of workers and details of the tasks they are working on stay confidential unless they reveal them deliberately. The risk of breach of confidentiality can be solved by rules of forum discussion and enforced by the the administrator of the online forum.

*2. Minimum wage. Cherry (2009) argued that the minimum wage requirements should be extended to "virtual work", including crowdsourcing in cyberspace.[http://www.law.ua.edu/lawreview/articles/Volume%2060/Issue%205/cherry.pdf] Given that a large portion of Indians are working on Mechanical Turk and that the average household income is relatively low in India, as seen in the demographic studies noted above, some Indians (less than 10%) have started to rely on crowdsourcing as their primary source of income. For the other workers in India, although crowdsourcing is not their sole employment, it is a relatively significant portion of their incomes.[http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jwross/pubs/RossEtAl-WhoAreTheCrowdworkers-altCHI2010.pdf] Even in the U.S., more than half of Turkers consider monetary reward as their primary reason to participate in crowdsourcing.

However, given the global nature of workforces on Mechanical Turk, the details of setting a minimum wage for crowdsourcing are extremely unclear and difficult because of jurisdictional differences in labor law, taxation, etc. For example, should the minimum wage law in the U.S. apply merely because the platform (Amazon) is registered in the U.S., even though both the requester and workers are from outside the U.S.? If so, the trend appears that more and more workers from developing countries would join crowdsourcing because the economic incentives are more attractive to them.

On the other hand, we can see that the need of minimum wage less compelling for those who do not rely on crowdsourcing as their major employment. Most microtasks require a low level of attention, and people can easily multi-task when they are watching television and online chatting. Crowdsourcing enables them to take advantage of their "spare cycles", and meanwhile enables employers to utilize human intelligence at very low cost. In these cases, imposing minimum wage may diminish some of the advantages of crowdsourcing.

==== "Professional-Grade" Tasks: 99designs & InnoCentive ====
99designs is a website that allows individuals or companies that need a design to ask for it by crowdsourcing.[http://99designs.com/help/what-is-99designs] InnoCentive is a company that allows individuals and entities to post scientific problems that anyone can attempt to solve.[http://www2.innocentive.com/innovation-solutions/corporate-innovation] These companies are a particularly interesting form of crowdsourcing because they enable the crowd to perform work typically performed by "professionals." Although services like Mechanical Turk also "deprofessionalize" work, 99designs and InnoCentive do so much more directly. Typically, designs are created (at 99designs) or problems are solved (at InnoCentive) by professional companies, the employees of which typically have some formal training. This platform raises a variety of concerns. We focus here on two: deprofessionalization and reputation.

===== "Deprofessionalization" =====

In some sense, graphic design and other industries such as science are "professionalized." What, exactly, "professional" means is open for debate. One definition might focus on how the "professional" occupation or industry regulates or doesn't regulate itself. Lawyers and doctors, for example, are self-policed professions with codes of ethics and oaths. Additionally, though, we often think of many other areas as professional because the individuals who occupy them have formal training (and many times formal education). Under this latter definitional component, many types of work qualify as "professional." The traditional occupations like lawyer, doctor, and clergy certainly fall within it; but so too do other kinds of work, such as graphic design. A more restrictive definition--one that includes both definitional components--might exclude a wide variety of occupations. But let's assume a common sense distinction between professional and amateur or non-professional works. For the past several years, crowdsourcing has crept into these "professionalized" areas without much fanfare. In science, for example, InnoCentive has provided a platform for corporate employers to crowdsource complex science problems that require formal training. In the "creative" space, 99designs performs a similar function: it enables companies to crowdsource graphic design work.

When thinking about both of these "professionalized" environments, it helps to understand professionalism from two perspectives. The first perspective views professionalization as a beneficial gatekeeping mechanism--it vets people before they can perform certain work. The second perspective views it as merely reinforcing existing structures that disadvantage certain individuals; i.e., those without connections or formal training. There is probably some truth to both claims--but the focus here is on how crowdsourcing affects either perspective. From the first perspective, professional crowdsourcing platforms reduce the role of industry or profession as gatekeeper--and has the potential to eliminate it entirely. From the second perspective, crowdsourcing opens opportunities to those who otherwise are shut out of the industry by the gatekeeping mechanisms of formal education or training. Given that both of these perspectives probably have merit, there are a variety of problems we could address. We chose instead to identify two "problems," while remaining open to the possibility that others, with more time and resources, might be able to do further work on them. This might be analysis proclaiming these "problems" as non-issues, or it may be elaborating and expanding on the issues identified here.

''Specific Problems''

*1. Cannibalization/Wage Reduction. If 99designs or InnoCentive lowers entry barriers and costs, it could stimulate a race to the bottom. 99designs' Business Development and Marketing Manager, Jason Aiken, has already acknowledged that the company has created "a tension" with the traditional market for graphic design--and it may be driving down wages.[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyUaWSblaA] (Clip at 34:16.) In this world, professionals could not earn a living because "amateurs" or other professionals that do not have jobs will drive down prices for crowdsourced design work. With low prices and an abundance of crowdworkers, companies may shed their traditional means of acquiring designs. So crowdsourcing, which started off as a way to lower specific business costs or solve thorny problems, becomes the sole means of (research &) design work. In this environment, which designers worry about,[http://www.xemion.com/blog/99designscom-a-warning-to-freelancers-67.html] the professional industry collapses because wages are too low. Alternatively, a new web-based professionalization occurs. That, of course, depends on a variety of factors, including the ability of crowdworkers to maintain a coherent identity/reputation online (see Reputation below).

*2. Devaluing of Education. If deprofessionalization occurs and an industry cannibalizes itself, there will be a concomitant and precipitous drop in the market value of education. In scientific areas, many crowdworkers tend to have advanced degrees, or are highly educated. Their ability to perform sophisticated or professional crowdwork is therefore partly dependent upon their education. But the crowdwork market undervalues the educational experience of the worker because, at present, most highly-educated workers are engaged in part-time, non-sustenance activity. As crowdwork becomes more popular for professionals, wages fall and crowdwork replaces traditional professional work. The cost of education, however, remains constant. This means that sophisticated crowdworkers will pay the same amount for school but will be full-time, instead of part-time, crowdworkers. Given the low wages, people will not be making an adequate return on their educational investment. Several possibilities then result--but we focus on the most dire here. Knowing their inability to generate an adequate return on their investment, low wages could deter individuals from higher education. This, in turn, will cause a brain drain, where fewer and fewer people obtain advanced degrees. As a result, the market for professional crowdworkers shrinks. Given the technological growth rate, the demand for crowdworkers will continue to grow. The shorty supply and high prices will mean the end of crowdsourced professional work for two reasons. Costs will rise to the point where crowdsourcing is no longer more economical than traditional professional services. Second, and more importantly, the lack of workers means that, given the growing technological and cultural demands our society makes, tasks simply cannot be crowdsourced effectively. Although one might argue that markets will correct for the supply/demand problems, it may not do so at fast enough rates. The legal education market, for example, has continually grown despite decreasing demand.[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-04-27/business/ct-biz-0427-chicago-law-students--20100427_1_law-school-law-firms-national-law-journal] The same thing is happening with for-profit colleges.[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/][http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Mount-a/66027/] The market has not yet corrected itself because the government is so willing to issue loans. When the problem finally comes to the fore, there will be serious costs, both to society, to students, to graduates, and to the industry. The mere fact that the market will correct the problem eventually doesn't mean we should wait for it to do so, especially when the correction may be painful and enduring.

''Solutions.''

One might wonder whether concerns over deprofessionalization are overstated. The criticism--the one Howe addresses the first chapter ("The Rise of the Amateur") in his book[http://books.google.com/books?id=LRbsMBxR9ykC&printsec=frontcover&dq=howe+crowdsourcing&hl=en&ei=xj_4TMLDIcGB8ga3w5mLAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false]--is that we are worried simply about "amateurs" displacing "professionals." Howe certainly has a point: if *other* individuals can do the work of professionals at less wages and through crowdsourcing, then what are we worried about? We do, of course, like things to be efficient. We are concerned, however, that some industries could, over the long run, suffer damage if efficiency is our only concern. That doesn't mean that industries will necessarily suffer damage, but they may. And we feel that it's worth considering what could happen if we place all our bets on markets and efficiency, and the dealer comes up 21. One place where we are starting to see problems of relying on market is with traditional media outlets. We may think that "amateurs" can report just as well as many professionals--and their doing so may be more efficient. But we have other concerns, such as whether the reporting is reliable and whether the facts check out. Similarly, in design work, efficiency and opportunity are good things. But what happens when the market for professionals has disappeared, and only low-wage crowdworkers remain? Alternatively, what if all legal work were crowdsourced? The quality of work may decrease, relationships between employers and workers may fray, and the industry may have significant difficulties. As noted, though, this is not the only scenario. The industry may adapt to these changes and do just fine. The exercise here, though, is to think about deprofessionalization and education devaluation as problems, and pose potential solutions while recognizing they may not materialize. Here are a few solutions we might consider:

*1. Wage Scale. Industries and professionals could collaborate to set wages they think are reasonable. The Best Practices document recommends "fair" wages, but seems to presume that only employers will be the ones deciding what wages to set. In this professional-crowdwork context, it might be wise to allow collaboration of interested parties, rather than rely only on employers to set a fair wage. One could see such a wage scale being set by various stakeholders, and perhaps some "non-stakeholders."
*2. Wage Determinants. Wages could be set according to some or a series credential-measures. This could take several forms, some of which could be combined.
**2a. Workers with a degree or work experience in a related professional field may be entitled to a higher wage than a worker with no higher education. The problem with this approach is that it reduces the "meritocracy" aspect of crowdsourcing. It also seems to devalue the diversity that crowdsourcing thrives on.
**2b. If the platform implements an effective reputation or rating system (detailed or simple), workers could use their reputations to generate more work. This solution faces some technical and privacy problems, but seems like at least one plausible way of ensuring favorable wages for better performers. This also has the benefit of showing which workers are repeatedly good at performing tasks. This is important because many InnoCentive solvers, for example, never solve more than one problem.[http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/07-050.pdf] One drawback of this method is that it decreases the "perfect meritocracy" that some seem to think can persist forever (if it exists at all).
**2c. Workers could be paid according to the contributions they make. For this system to work, a platform and employer would have to work together. They would have to create a framework that allowed an initial screening for those who held the requisite qualifications or ratings, and then pay them according to the amount of time worked and contributions made. (Here some kind of algorithm might be useful.)
*3. Educational Reform. Change educational components to provide skills that crowdsourcing cannot cover. This could include non-compartmentalizable tasks or exposure to a broader range of subjects. There are many problems with reforming the educational system. Aside from the many practical difficulties, there are two specific problems. First, it may be difficult to identify in advance what problems are crowdsource-able, as the capacity to crowdsource work is likely to change in the future. Second, because we don't yet know enough about crowdsourcing, it's difficult to say what skills or exposure to ideas one needs to perform certain tasks well--or outperform crowdsourcing.
*4. Discourage wage reductions/crowdsourcing by having platforms require disclosure when crowdsourcing. This, however, may discourage crowdsourcing generally. The goal should be to reap crowdsourcing's benefits while minimizing its potential downside. Still, this solution could be used to less extreme degrees to pressure companies to offer competitive wages for crowdsourced tasks.
*5. Incentivize pay-friendly behavior by using reputation system (see below). The various approaches here could be combined with or pushed into a reputation system. We explain various problems with reputation systems below. Here, we focus on the potential benefits of a three-way reputation system. "Three-way" means that the system involves all parties: workers, employers, and platforms. A reputation that engages all three parties can incentivize each party to engage in wage-friendly behavior. A reputation system, for example, that allows workers or platforms to assign reputational rankings to employers can cause wages to increase. If workers know that Corporation A generally pays 2x as much as Corporation B, workers can identify "fairer" wages. Similarly, companies may be willing to offer better wages if they can screen out "low reputation" workers.
*6. Regulation. One of the benefits of crowdsourcing is the lack of regulation. That is sure to change, and it might be that regulating crowdsourcing, either as to wages or work, could benefit everyone.

===== Reputation =====

Reputation is an issue for all parties involved in professional crowdsourcing: the worker, the employer, and the platform. The Best Practices document focused on some of these issues in the microtasking environment. Many of these reputation mechanisms may be able to be imported from user-based reputation systems--and there is literature on how to design reputation such systems.[http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596159801] Concerns there were focused on speed, efficiency, and work quality. The Best Practices also focused solely on the relationship between individual workers and employers. These concerns also exist in the professional environment. There are, however, other problems to confront. Specifically, worker quality may become more important for professional work because the work done is more time-, labor-, and skill-intensive. Additionally, because tasks are fewer in number and take longer, each contest or task completed also has greater influence on, and importance for, worker reputation. Finally, if professional work pays more than microtasks, the reputational stakes are higher.

''Reputation Concerns for Workers, Employers, and Platforms''

* Workers. As crowdsourcing increases and professionalized crowdworkers have success, crowdworkers want to signal to potential employers that they have done good work in the past. Workers may also want to list their professional experience, education, or training (as one can do on Gerson Lehram Group[http://www.glgroup.com/]). Workers also will seek to ensure that antisocial behavior among themselves is counted against a worker's reputation. The literature on crowdsourcing emphasizes the community that exists in crowdwork environment, and ensuring the community functions well is important. 99designs has numerous instances where a crowdworker accuses another of "stealing" someone's design. Workers also will want to know the reputation of an employer. This could include factors like the amount paid, the quickness of payment, and the type of work offered.

* Employers. Reputation would also be valuable for employers--they'd prefer work from people with high reputations, not only to ensure good work, but also to ensure the work was not copied from somewhere else. While copying from the worker's perspective is important as a social matter, from an employer's perspective copying is important as a legal matter. Employers want to avoid copyright infringement or any claims of copyright infringement. Employers also want to broadcast their "good" reputations.

* Platforms. Platforms have an incentive to ensure that workers' and employers' desire for a reputation system is met. It will, in many cases, be up to the platform to institute a system that can deal effectively with reputation, antisocial behavior, and legal issues. 99designs has implemented a system that seeks to deal with the latter two, but does not address reputation.

''Problems.''

*1. Portability. As the Best Practices document notes, workers and employers may want have a coherent identities across a variety of platforms. In doing this, they may want to keep their identities secret but their reputations public. If a worker moves from 99designs to iStockphoto, for example, they may have to create a totally new profile and build up a reputation, even though some aspects of their previous reputation may be relevant.[http://blog.reppify.com/tag/crowdsourcing/]

*2. Reliability. Any feedback-reputation system needs to be reliable. That is, it needs to accurately reflect the quality and quantity of work performed. One way to ensure diversity in feedback, and therefore reliability, is to have a (platform-mediated) reputation system, where workers vote on both each other (where applicable) and employers, and employers do the same (vote on workers and each other). The system could then be mediated by the platform.

''Solutions''

*1. Platform-specific solution. The Best Practices document suggests that each crowdsourcing platform implement its own measures to track reputation. This is a reasonable solution. 99designs and InnoCentive do not yet have such a system. This kind of solution would allow each platform to identify the reputational characteristics necessary for the kind of work offered. 99designs, for example, could track worker reputation based on cooperation among workers, number of contests won, and portfolio ratings from other users. It could also track employer reputation based on payment amount and speed, and copyright licensing terms. InnoCentive, by contrast, could focus on credentials characteristics, such as degrees obtained or relevant work experience. It could track employers based on potential for future projects with the same company. The Best Practices document also suggests that workers have access to their data, and presumably envisions a way to use reputation information at one provider or another. Here, the solution could be for each platform to issue a "portable reputation," which would explain the reputation of the worker on that site, the work performed, and the average/median rating of a worker on the site (with similar work performed). In this scenario, platforms would have to have some interoperability, a problem on which some already are working.[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1839707.1839723] Each platform, for example, could agree to host the reputational information provided by another. In such a situation, the worker could 'import' his or her data from, say, 99designs to iStockphoto. When that worker completes a task or uploads a photo, an employer could click on the worker's profile to view various bits of reputational information. (Perhaps they could all agree to a specific file (type) that included certain information?) In one iteration, this could include "Reputation Homepage" that displayed the logos of various platforms for which the worker had completed tasks. Scrolling the mouse over the logo might reveal some general reputational information,such as a reputation score (with the appropriate scale for the platform). This idea, though, requires cooperation among platforms--something that has been difficult in the past. One reason for this difficulty is because large, established platforms have a perverse incentive to keep a reputation system closed. These platforms already have a user base that depends upon the platform. Portability threatens what they perceive as theirs: the reputations earned through their platforms, which make the platform a desireable place to conduct business. eBay, for example, objected when Amazon allowed users to import their eBay reputations, claiming proprietary interest.[http://www.unpcdc.org/media/6406/reputation%20mechanisms%20and%20electronic%20markets%20-%20economic%20issues%20and%20proposals%20for%20public%20procurement.pdf] (p. 237.) This confirms Randal Picker's contention that, as far as portability on the Web goes, "law matters."[http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/colloquy/2008/25/LRColl2008n25Picker.pdf] (p. 8.) [http://sandeepkumar.org/my/papers/2009_CAT_PortableReputation.pdf][http://www.igi-global.com/Bookstore/Chapter.aspx?TitleId=30454]

*2. Uniform Reputation. Another approach to reputation would use a centralized entity to manage worker/employer reputation across all platforms. One can imagine a universal reputation platform that draws information from various sites and aggregates it--maybe it has agreements with all the platforms to provide it reputation-related information. (There are already sites that purport to provide reputational rankings of websites--see, e.g., Webutation.[http://www.webutation.net/#]) In other words, this entity would maintain a database of all crowdsourced employers/workers reputations. Reputational information would be aggregated automatically from all participating crowdsourcing platforms, which would automatically submit data to this entity. Theoretically, employers and workers could consult this platform to determine worker reputations. To enable this "reputation finding," the reputation database could contain various "categories" of workers and employees, and allow an individual to sort based on various reputational scores, which would be determined based on a variety of metrics and the information provided to the centralized entity by the crowdsourcing platforms. So, for example, a company could find someone with a high "creative reputation" (e.g., logo design) or someone with a high "engineering" rating. It may also allow users to disaggregate reputational information across platforms to see how the users has performed/behaved in each. Additionally, a central reputation-authority would allow people to move "with" their reputations and stay "anonymous"--they won't disclose their real identity. As noted, this all would require platforms to (automatically) submit information to this reputation database/entity. Because platforms (in the hypothetical world) would automatically submit worker reputation info to the site, there are essentially two ways the site could work at the level of individual reputations. Both methods of operation work from the premise that individuals and employers are searchable by reputation. Search results might display an aggregate reputation or a simple ranking with no reputational score accompanying it. The first way resembles the solution described above: once a user is selected, a visitor is taken to a reputation homepage that displays a worker/employer reputation from different platforms, and provides information about each. This provides at least one benefit for platforms: they don't have to generate interoperability--they can delegate reputation aggregation to one entity, which could probably collect and display the information more effectively. Two authors have already sketched a design for a similar system.[http://sandeepkumar.org/my/papers/2009_CAT_PortableReputation.pdf] A second method would be to for the reputation site to create its own "general" reputation for each worker based on the information it receives from platforms. We can imagine a situation in which workers or employers can ask the reputation site to rank workers based on specific, general, or a combination of characteristics. This would allow employers to sort workers by reputational characteristics they deem important to a particular type of work. Once sorted, employers could provide an open-call project to the narrowed crowd of workers. This system also would require the centralized agency to weight different sites or reputational attributes. This is a problem of reliability, discussed below. One other advantage of a unified reputational system would be allowing some user control over reputation. We can imagine a place in a user profile where the user can fill in information, provide explanations, or otherwise comment on past work experience and the like. (There may also be room for a centralized-decentralized approach, where the user claims authority over her reputation and distributes it how she wants. Jon Udell outlined such a concept in his recent talk at the Berkman Center.[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/12/udell])

*3. Reliability for Platform-Specific Versus Uniform. Each system of reputation (platform specific and uniform) will have issues of reliability. By reliability, we mean a platform can accurately report to a user how well or poorly a specific individual has performed in the past, where performance is based specific criteria. Because reputation systems rely on information, what information is used and who discloses it can influence the reliability of a reputation system.[http://www.unpcdc.org/media/6406/reputation%20mechanisms%20and%20electronic%20markets%20-%20economic%20issues%20and%20proposals%20for%20public%20procurement.pdf]
**Platform-specific reputational systems would likely achieve greater reliability because they would be localized. As self-contained systems, each platform could respond to user demands, as well as tinker with existing formulae that garner ratings. Still, it's not clear how reliable these local reputational systems could be across platforms. Assuming for the moment that each platform can in some way support the reputational rating of another platform, we still might have the problem of "overload": individuals will have ''too many'' reputational scores from ''too many'' different platforms. Employers may then look or sort only to the lowest rating of any given platform on a user profile. Thus, platform specific rating systems could actually work to the detriment of the users.
**A uniform reputational system may face more reliability issues than an interoperable platform-specific reputational system. For one thing, a unified system will be drawing reputation data from hundreds of different platforms automatically. There is a risk for gaming the system on two levels here. First, a user at a relatively unsophisticated platform may try to manipulate the system and boost their own reputational rating. Second, the platform itself may have an incentive to give its users higher reputational scores. Why? Because assuming the unified system computers some aggregate reputational score, any platform can boost their users' scores and give them an advantage in the market place. Another problem arises as to weighting reputational scores. Should a reputation score from InnoCentive be "worth" more than one from Gerson Lehrman? Do reputation scores from Threadless even translate into anything meaningful? If so, should they be treated the same as scores from 99designs. All of these questions illustrate that there is no easy way to decide how scores should be weighted, though we can think of a variety of factors, including number of users, length of existence, customer satisfaction, etc. Part of the problem also is that different platforms may use different rating systems--some may use only one general rating, while others may parse ratings into various categories. How these issues are dealt with impacts the "reliability" of reputation. It also, therefore, impacts the trust that crowdworkers have in a reputational system.

==== "Game" Tasks: Gwap ====

Gwap is a website comprised of '''g'''ames '''w'''ith '''a''' '''p'''urpose (i.e., gwap).[http://www.gwap.com] That is, when its users play the games, they are simultaneously doing tasks that, in the aggregate, perform some function that improves our state of knowledge and/or advances our technology. For instance, the most well-known game on Gwap is called the ESP Game, where two players are shown a photo, each enters a list of suggested tags that the other player cannot see, and then they win points when they have a matching tag. The purpose behind the game is to create tags for images online, so that search engines can sift through them more easily when a user enters a query.[http://www.gwap.com/gwap/about/] As Gwap's tagline states, "When you play a game at Gwap, you aren't just having fun." While such platforms offer an innovative way to draw on the 'wisdom of the crowd,' they also raise concerns about the potential exploitation of users and its concurrent effects.

=====Addiction=====

''Problem.''

The question of addiction has arisen both in the context of crowdsourcing generally [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/13691181003624090] and in the context of so-called "social games", [http://www.gamespot.com/news/6284524.html][https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Social_gaming] such as FarmVille. [http://www.farmville.com/] In a paper entitled ''Moving the Crowd at Threadless'',[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/13691181003624090] Daren C. Brabham offers some insight into the various motivations of the crowd at Threadless,[http://www.threadless.com/] a website that sells t-shirts and applies crowdsourcing through its solicitation of the crowd for designs and slogans.[http://www.threadless.com/submit] In particular, Brabham discusses how members of Threadless use the language of "addiction" when talking about their participation in Threadless. In his view (2010: 3, 17), the language of addiction illuminates the significance of building a community in order for crowdsourcing to be truly effective, such that organizations that use crowdsourcing "need to allow the crowd to truly support the problem-solving mission of a crowdsourcing venture for the public good, to generate in the crowd a sense of duty and love – and even addiction – to such a project", although he ultimately concludes that members of Threadless are most likely not actually addicted in the pathological sense.

On the social gaming side, Gamespot--the self-styled "go-to source for video game news, reviews, and entertainment"[http://www.gamespot.com/]--recently ran a story on the ethics of the social games market.[http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/11/25/0634243/The-Ethics-of-Social-Games?from=rss] Here, the concern is that social games have crossed the line from being fun to being addictive. As Edmund McMillen [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Edmund_McMillen] put it, "There's a difference between addicting and compelling . . . . Crack is addicting, but it's not a fun game."

So how does this affect crowdsourcing games? Since games like those at Gwap involve both crowdsourcing and social gaming, the concern is that the risk for addiction is more acute. Although undoubtedly hyperbole, players of the ESP Game, for example, have said that it is "strangely addicting" and that "it's like crack!" (See video [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143#] at 22:30.)

''Solutions.''

There are a number of safeguards, detailed below, that can be built directly into the platforms. Ideally, such changes would be made voluntarily, but legal regulation can be used as a tool to accomplish the necessary changes as well.

*1. Platforms can kick people off after a specified amount of time. For instance, Gwap will kick users off if they have played for 15 hours straight, or 10 hours if they are from an .edu domain. (See video [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143#] at 14:54-15:02.)

*2. Platforms can notify the player after a specified period of time has elapsed. (5 hours) 'Just to let you know, you've been playing for quite a while.' (10 hours) 'Are you ''sure'' you want to keep playing?' (12 hours) 'Really, you should go outside.' (15 hours) 'All right, that's it. I'm kicking you off for your own good.' The principle behind both this solution and #1 mirrors the one that led to the development of applications designed to prevent people from sending drunken e-mails that they rue when sober, such as Gmail's Goggles[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html]; namely, that sometimes a little check on people can keep them from making decisions that they might later regret.

*3. Platform can have built-in termination of the games. In other words, games should have an established end to them. For instance, with games like Life[http://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-4000-Game-of-Life/dp/B00000IWD7/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1291326858&sr=1-1] and Candyland[http://www.amazon.com/Hasbro-4700-S5-Candyland/dp/B00000DMF5/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291326875&sr=8-1], the game ends when one or more players reaches the end of the trail. In contrast, games like Taboo[http://www.amazon.com/Parker-Brothers-14677-Taboo/dp/B001RN88DK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291326894&sr=8-1] and Apples to Apples[http://www.amazon.com/Apples-Party-Box-Hilarious-Comparisons/dp/B00112CHCK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291326919&sr=8-1] continue until the players themselves call an end to the game. Built-in termination of the game would also be an effective tool to address addiction concerns for social games in general--imagine if FarmVille actually ended at some point.

*4. Is it really a problem? It should be noted that there is little, if any, support for these assertions by way of rigorous studies. Moreover, it is hard to see how addiction is more of a problem for crowdsourcing games than for television or other kinds of entertainment that, despite the substantial amount of time people spend doing them, we do not regulate with regard to their potential addictiveness.

=====Disclosure=====

''Problem.''

Another concern that arises with these games is that the players may not know the underlying purpose. For instance, on Gwap, there is an 'About' section that describes the purpose behind the ESP game as an example of what is meant by "games with a purpose",[http://www.gwap.com/gwap/about/], yet there is no place on the website that describes the purpose of any of the other six games. Although Luis von Ahn, the main creator of Gwap and hailed as the "father of human computing", [http://www.academicproductivity.com/2009/luis-von-ahn-on-doing-research-vs-writing-papers/] describes the purpose and features of Gwap's games in academic papers (see his CV [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biglou/CV.pdf] for a list of his papers), chances are that few users have access, know-how, or interest in hunting down and reading them. But that does not mean that they would not want to know if given the opportunity.

''Solutions.''

*1. Objective Standard. As noted in the Best Practices, there should always be as much disclosure as possible. However, it is not always easy to see how this general principle should be applied in different situations. Perhaps one useful tool would be to employ an objective standard in deciding whether and to what extent certain information should be disclosed. In securities law, the materiality of information is measured by what a reasonable investor would want to know [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b-5#Language_of_the_rule], so perhaps a good standard for crowdsourcing games would be what a reasonable person would want to know in deciding whether to play the game.

One may argue potential players could care less what the underlying purpose of a given game is, since they are only playing it for enjoyment. The obvious response to such an argument is that it depends on the purpose of the game. For instance, most people are probably either neutral or positive towards the ESP Game's purpose of labeling images to make them easier to sort, but they would most likely have a negative reaction towards a game whose purpose was to spam people with porn ads.

There is also the possibility that disclosure may not always be feasible for the game to work as intended. For instance, a psychology lab might formulate a game to test x, but if Player A is aware that they are testing x, it might inhibit or otherwise change how she plays the game, making the results useless for the purposes of study. So perhaps the caveat should be added that companies should disclose any information that a reasonable person would want to know in deciding whether to play the game, "except for information that, if disclosed, would have an adverse effect on the underlying task, aside from making the player unwilling to play." So "employers" would still be required to disclose as much as possible, but not to the point of comprising the underlying purpose of the game.

One question that has arisen is what to do when the nature of the task/game relies on nondisclosure, such as making edits to a document discussing the employer's trade secrets. One possible solution is to require workers to sign a confidentiality agreement. Another would be for workers to have some sort of profile where they indicate what employers they are or are not willing to work or play games for (e.g., Google-philes could indicate that they do not want to play any games sponsored by Microsoft). A third possibility is that employers could do something like a privilege log in discovery, where they indicate why they are not disclosing, and a designated third party (the equivalent of the judge in discovery) could decide whether the nondisclosure is okay.

But an alternate answer is that employers should simply not use crowdsourcing for particularly sensitive tasks. If it is that important to make sure something stays confidential, keep it in-house. When employers exponentially increase the number of people to whom the information is exposed, they are exponentially increasing the risk that that the information will be leaked -- they should either accept that risk or go elsewhere.

*2. Timing. A further option would be to require additional disclosure after the player has finished the game, since the task will have been completed at that point, and then giving her the option of voiding her results. However, this may lead to people voiding their results for reasons other than taking issue with some aspect of the company or task, such as embarrassment or discomfort with how they acted during the game.

*3. Review Process. If additional oversight is needed to ensure that companies are in compliance with this standard, companies could set up internal review boards. Alternatively, an outside party, such as the government, a non-profit, or a coalition of companies, could set up an independent review board that is responsible for reviewing and approving (or not) the proposed games and accompanying information, much like researchers are required to submit their proposals to an institutional board when the study involves human subjects.[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Institutional_review_board] Approval by such a board could be required before the game is crowdsourced, and/or the board could be given the authority--either by the government or by agreement among the companies--to do random audits or investigate complaints, just like the SEC can investigate and determine whether a company has failed to disclose material information with regard to its securities.[http://www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml]

=====Compensation=====

''Problem.''

One question that has come up with regard to crowdsourcing games is whether players should be compensated for doing tasks through the guise of a game.[http://vonahn.blogspot.com/2010/07/work-and-internet.html] Although the task is structured to be fun, it is still work that employers need done and would ordinarily pay for, were it not set up as a game. So are they exploiting the crowd by somehow 'tricking' them into doing work for free when the companies would have to pay for it otherwise? Does it make a difference whether people are aware of the underlying purpose? In the preceding section, we argue that people should know the task behind the game so that they can make an informed decision about whether to play it based on their personal values, but would the lack of compensation also play a role in their decision? Does it depend on whether they perceive it as work? More importantly, if people will do it anyway, why should companies pay for it?

''Solution.''

Players should remain uncompensated for a number of reasons. First of all, if people don't find the games fun, they won't play them. For instance, one game on Gwap is called Squigl, in which two players are shown an image and a word, and have to trace the object described by the word.[http://www.gwap.com/gwap/gamesPreview/squigl/] If their traces match, they earn points. One of the authors of this page, doing laborious, intensive research for this section, found the game excruciatingly dull. So she stopped playing. As von Ahn himself wrote, "The key property of games is that people want to play them." (Luis von Ahn & Laura Dabbish, ''Designing Games with a Purpose'', Communications of the ACM, August 2008, vol. 51, no. 8.)

In other words, crowdsourcing games aren't really "free" -- companies have to spend time and money figuring out a way to convert a task into a game that is sufficiently fun that people will play it voluntarily. While the total sum might be significantly less than what it would cost to pay each worker/player, it lessens the sense that the crowd is being exploited if creating such games is not without effort and cost to the employer. Moreover, offering compensation might bring players closer to the brink of addiction: if players were earning money, however trivial an amount, they might feel compelled to keep playing, more so than if they were only playing it for enjoyment, although further research is needed on this point. Alternately, players might actually play ''less'' if offered a token amount to play rather than an amount that reflects of the value of their work, because they would feel exploited, even though they would be getting more than if they were paid nothing, similar to the psychology behind the ultimatum game.[http://money.howstuffworks.com/ultimatum-game.htm] Again, however, more research is needed.

According to von Ahn, people played over '''9 billion hours''' of Solitaire in 2003. (See video [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143#] at 7:00-7:04.) Solitaire is a game without a purpose, other than to entertain.[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Solitaire] So if von Ahn's statistic is accurate, people are perfectly willing to devote a significant amount of time to entertaining themselves. If the games on Gwap serve that function, why should they be penalized for simultaneously being useful?

One might argue that the issue is not that companies would be penalized were they forced to compensate the players for playing games with a purpose, but rather that the workers are being currently penalized through the lack of compensation because they are unwittingly contributing free labor when they are entitled to a fair wage for their work. The question then becomes whether playing such games is indeed "work." We would argue that it is not, because people are playing the game primarily for its entertainment value: if it stops being entertaining, then they will stop playing it. Alternatively, if they are playing it because they support the underlying purpose, then that purpose is clearly important enough to them that they are doing it for free, so they already have sufficient incentive to do the work. After all, do we want to encourage a value system where everything must be set at a price? (If the answer to that question is yes, Wikipedia is in trouble.)

Moreover, it should also be noted that not all workers get paid; some are volunteers. For instance, in ''Crowdsourcing'', Jeff Howe talks about the contribution of the crowd to tasks like NASA’s "Clickworkers" project (2006: 62)[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Clickworkers] and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird project (2006: 31)[http://ebird.org/content/ebird/about]. In both examples, the crowd knows that what they are doing is work, but they still do it, even though they are contributing information for free, because they support the purpose for which they are laboring. If anything, this emphasizes the importance of disclosure rather than compensation.

== Summary ==

Each of the three types of crowdsourcing discussed above presents interesting challenges based on the unique characteristics that each possesses. While there is some overlap among them -- for example, the ESP Game is essentially a microtask designed as a game -- each manifests its "difficult problems" in a different way. For instance, while compensation is a potential issue for all three, there is a concern present with microtasks that workers are not sufficiently compensated to make a living wage; unease that higher education is being devalued through lower wages for "professional" tasks; and a question whether workers are somehow being duped into doing work for free with crowdsourcing games. While the Best Practices document outlines great general solutions to problems, we felt that the different types of crowdsourcing required more tailored responses. Thus, we have attempted here to offer specific answers to some of the problems within each kind of crowdsourcing, while also providing a look at crowdsourcing generally and the disputes currently taking place in the literature. The next step from here might be to do a series of demonstration projects, utilizing and testing some of the suggestions here.

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