Information Control

Chapter 3

In this chapter..
You will learn the concept on the following:
Information control Providing and keeping information Intellectual property Digital rights management Privacy

Introduction
It is true that governments, the military, spies and security agencies all impose information control on the information that they hold. Some countries also have 'freedom of information' acts that allow the public access to information in order to maintain the transparency of government and to prevent the possibility of creating the worst excesses of totalitarian states

Introduction
However, a far larger requirement for information control comes from commerce, industry and Copyright owners in general. But this is not the governmental inspiration for information control. Some of it is about keeping secrets inside a business, and some of it is about selling IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) to those prepared to purchase it.

Introduction
What we are interested in is commercial information control
What is it? How can it be readily implemented so that controls are
Efficient Effective Effortless

Group Activity
Form a group and read the quote from Thomas Jefferson Answer the following questions:
What is your understanding of exclusive property? How did Thomas Jefferson understand the notion of an idea as a non-exclusive property? Discuss amongst yourselves the possibility of an idea becoming exclusive Do you agree with Thomas Jefferson s idea of an idea ?

Prepare a 5-10 minute explanation in front of the class

Information Control
What is information control?
Information control is about allowing those who have appropriate authority access to and use of information on the basis of the authority that they hold.

Information Control
Why is there a need for control?
From a normative perspective, there are many arguments for and against various forms of information control, most common of which are for:
objectionable content defamation copyright Privacy

Regulations
Content control / Censorship: We must control information flows to protect children from objectionable content or all citizens against some other form of supposedly harmful speech (hate speech, terrorist recruitment, etc). Defamation control: We must control information flows to protect people s reputations.

Regulations
Copyright control: We must control information flows to protect the property rights of creators against unauthorized use / distribution. Privacy control: We must control information flows to protect against information flows that include information about individuals.

Intellectual Property
What is Intellectual Property?
a number of distinct types of intangible assets for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs

What is IPR?
Intellectual property rights (IPR) are the rights given to persons over their creations. They usually give the creator an exclusive right over the use of his/her creation for a certain period of time.

Intellectual Property
Copyright Digital Rights Patents Trademarks Trade Secrets
We will be focusing mainly on the first two

IP-Copyright
a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to the creator of an original work or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for public disclosure of the work and includes the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.

IP-Digital Rights
the permissions of individuals legitimately to perform actions involving the use of a computer, any electronic device, or a communications network. is particularly related to the protection and realization of existing rights in the context of new digital technologies, especially the Internet

IP-Patent
a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention. The exclusive right granted to a patentee in most countries is the right to prevent others from making, using, selling, or distributing the patented invention without permission.

IP-Trademark
a distinctive sign used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears comes from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from the others. Registration is not required, but the owner of a registered trademark may file for trademark infringement to unauthorized users of that trademark. The owner of a common law trademark may also file suit, but an unregistered mark may be protect-able only within the geographical area within which it has been used or in geographical areas into which it may be reasonably expected to expand.

IP-Trade Secrets
Businesses and organizations Contract
NDA (Non disclosure agreement)

Intellectual Property

Source: www.bsa.org

IP and DRM
What is Digital Rights Management?
used to describe the processes by which the author or publisher of a work exerts his rights to control what the purchaser of his work is entitled to do. represents the controls by which you can prevent someone from copying or printing or editing or otherwise making available your privileged information to other people.

Print age vs. Digital age

Print industry
copying and re-printing a physical book

Digital Age
Computer age Copies are made at zero cost with minimal detection Films, music, pdf files

DRM Techniques
The following are techniques designed to control access and reproduction of online information:
Encryption Digital locks
Serial keys

Scrambling Tag embedding

Privacy
In 1984, Stewart Brand famously said that information wants to be free. John Perry Barlow reiterated it in the early 90s, and added Information Replicates into the Cracks of Possibility. Unfortunately, information replication doesn t discriminate

Privacy
The natural state of data is to be copied, logged, transmitted, stored, and stored again. It takes constant fighting and vigilance to prevent that breach.

How private is private?

Yahoo s privacy policy:
Source: http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html

But think about it

How can we have privacy control? Is it possible to have such control?

Privacy-related Regulations
Do Not Track List Right to be Forgotten online

Therefore
Is there a need for information control in terms of all four instances?
Objectionable content Defamation Copyright Privacy

Control Issues
Efforts to control information today are greatly complicated by problems associated with:
Convergence Scale Volume Unprecedented individual empowerment/usergeneration of content

Convergence
Media content and information distribution outlets are blurring together today thanks to the rise of myriad new technologies and competitors. These new technologies and competitors generally ignore or reject the distributionbased distinctions and limitations of the past.

Convergence
In other words, convergence means that media content is increasingly being unbundled from its traditional distribution platforms and finding many paths to the consumers. As a result of these developments, it is now possible to disseminate, find, or consume the same content / information via multiple devices or distribution networks. In this way, convergence complicates efforts to create effective information control regimes.

Scale
In the past, the reach of speech and information was limited by geographic, technological, and cultural / language considerations. Today, by contrast, media can now flow across the globe at the click of a button because of the dramatic expansion of Internet access and broadband connectivity. While restrictions by nation-states are still possible, the scale of modern digital speech and content dissemination greatly complicates government efforts to control information flows.

Volume
The sheer volume of media and communications activity taking place today also complicates regulatory efforts. While it may have been possible to oversee a handful of newspapers or TV and radio stations in each community or country in the past, today s electronic media universe is so diverse and enormous and evolving so quickly that content controls significantly complicate enforcement burdens.

Unprecedented individual empowerment

In this new world in which every man, woman and child can be a one-person publishing house or self-broadcaster, restrictions on viewing, listening or uploading and downloading will be become increasingly difficult to devise and enforce By comparison, few of those opportunities were available to the citizenry in the past

In Conclusion
The shift from an industrial economy to an information based economy has raised the stakes concerning the control of information and ideas. Also, computer networks coupled with digitally stored information is significantly changing the way we interact and communicate.

In Conclusion
We will have to be much more careful about what we do and say in the future both publicly and privately. Any information or ideas that we disclose, including inventions, recipes, or sensitive personal information, might soon be bouncing around cyberspace for anyone to access

Case study intro

Why did 37% choose statement B? Is it true? Does IP make things more expensive?