Review and Synthesis

PrivacyProperty

Informed Consent

Privacy

• The right to be left alone

• How necessary is privacy to the exercise of autonomy– Provides a protective space in which we formulate and

imaginatively test our life projects and plans

• As a right it can trump (overrule) goods, even social goods

• But in the U.S., privacy frequently gives ways to other concerns such as security– Patriot Act and protection against terrorism

Privacy

• Kinds– Accessibility– Decision– Information

• Privacy and Context– In the triangle of privacy, the context (envisioned

by filling out the triangle) “determines” whether information is private or shared

Information is publicwhen directly relevant

to relation between A and B

A:Person with Information

B: Person Who

Wants Information

C: Information

InContext

Privacy TriangleWhen information is not

private. Relevance to social relations and

context is crucial

Privacy and Toysmart

Is privacy as a right the best way to understand and protect the interest customers have in controlling access

to their PII and TGI?

Labor Theory of Property• John Locke. Second Treatise on Civil Government.

• Property is a natural extension of the body and the body is the paradigm of ownership– “1. A person has exclusive rights over, ‘owns,’ his own body and its labor.– 2. Land, in its natural state is unowned; that is, no one individual can rightfully claim

exclusive control of it.– 3. Therefore, when someone’s labor, which is owned, comes to be ‘mixed’ with land that

is unowned, the exclusive rights over his or her labor are transferred to the land. That person comes to own the land.”

• I own that with which I mix my labor. Or I own that which I transform through my labor or work. (I take a stretch of unoccupied land, clear it off, and plant corn. I tend the corn and when it ripens I am entitled to harvest and eat the food.)

• Center argument for labor theory of property quoted from Des Jardins, (1993) Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy 1st Edition, Wadsworth, 36

Property is a bundle of associated rights

• Des Jardins characterizes property, not as a single right, but as a “bundle of associated rights.” These include the right to…– “possess, control, use, benefit from, dispose of, and exclude

others” from one’s property– This gets a bit tricky when the property in question is intellectual

property such as an idea or even music that has been digitalized on a CD.

• The bundle is assembled according to the context in question.– We possess DVDs. But this ownership is limited. There are limits

to how we can use them and how much we control them. (Can’t collect money for a public showing and can’t copy them.)

– Joseph Des Jardins. (1993) Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy, 1st edition. Wadsworth: 37

Property justified by consequences• Found in the U.S. Constitution

• Negative Argument: not protecting property results in undesirable consequences. (No incentive to invent and innovate)

• Positive Argument: protecting property results in desirable consequences (With incentives, talented individuals invent and innovate)

• Constitution seeks balance by protecting property to maximize positive consequences and minimize bad consequences.

• It protects intellectual property as…– Copyright– Patents– Trade Secrets

Thomas Jefferson• If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all

others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; – but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of

every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.

• Ideas are non-rivalrous. – He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself

without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

• Ideas are non-exclusive – when she [nature] made them, like fire, expansible over all space,

without lessening their density at any point, – and like the aire in which we breathe, move, and have our physical

being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. (Quoted by Lessig in Code, 132)

Jefferson’s Metaphors• Intellectual Property is non-rivalrous

– My having an idea does not prevent you from having the same idea– Lighting your candle from my candle, extends the flame but does

not diminish mine.

• Intellectual property is non-excludable– Like the air it expands and cannot be contained in a limited,

controlled region.

• These two characteristics make intellectual property both essential to and useful for developing an intellectual commons– Intellectual commons = a repository of the collected ideas of our

culture and civilization– we all have access to these ideas which we use as raw material to

build new culture

Copyright, Patents, and Trade Secrets

Next three slides are quoted from "Glossary" Online Ethics Center for Engineering 1/31/2006 6:57:46 PM National Academy of Engineering

Accessed: Thursday, December 13, 2007 www.onlineethics.org/CMS/glossary.aspx”

Copyright

• Legal right (usually of the author or composer or publisher of a work) to the exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of some work for a specified period.

• What is protected by the copyright is the “expression,” not the idea.

• Notice that taking another’s idea without attribution may be plagiarism, so copyrights are not the equivalent of legal prohibition of plagiarism.– Most acts of plagiarism violate copyright but not all copyright

violations are plagiarisms. Copyright is the broader category.

Patent• (special, alienable, prima facie) legal right granted by the

government to use, or at least (in the cases where other patents that such use would infringe) to bar others from using a device, design, or type of plant that one has created.

• In the United States restriction s last for 17 years for useful devices, and 14 years for designs.

• Specific provisions of the U.S. patent law may soon change to bring it into conformity with the provisions of other technologically developed countries.

• To patent a device one must prove that it is useful, original,, and not obvious.

• Patents are subject to challenge in court and may be upheld or overturned.

Trade Secret• Device, method, or formula that gives one an

advantage over the competition, and which must therefore be kept secret if it is to be of special value

• It is legal to use reverse engineering to learn a competitor’s secret.

• “Know how” concerning research procedures may function as something like a trade secret.

The Shrinking Intellectual Commons

• There is a social value in having a common “space” where information is shared.

• Unrestricted exercise of intellectual property rights may cause damage to the intellectual commons.– Extension of copyright terms prevents

material from entering the commons. (Turns off the tap)

The shrinking intellectual commons• 1998 was a watershed year for the

intellectual commons with the commercialization of the net, DMCA, SBCTA, the NET act, were all passed.

–Digital Millennium Copyright Act–Sonny Bono Copyright Term

Extension Act• The NSF turned domain naming over to

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)

Should information be converted into property?

Access to PII and TGI are determined by creating a marketplace of ideas

Locke theory of property argues that only those who add value can profit from my PII

and TGI

Free and Informed Consent

• Consent of risk taker to understand the nature and breadth of the risk he or she is being asked to take

• In Toysmart:

• the consent of the individual to the collection, storage, and dissemination of his or her PII or TGI

Opt-in vs. Opt-out

• Out-out.– Transferring the information is the default. Your PII will be

transferred unless to take positive action to prevent this.– Usually a procedure that requires you to fill out a card and

send it to the information holder

• Opt-in– The stronger privacy practice– Your PII will not be sent unless you expressly consent.

Here not sending the information is the default. – To override you have to consent.

Third Party Transfers

• Information can be transferred to third parties if…– Third party shares the values of the current holder– Third party takes over the promises made by the

current holder as information was collected– Third part commits to the same uses as the

current holder committed to when collecting the information

Pivots to the Present

Other Privacy and Property Cases

Recent Decision Concerning Facebook• http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=133575667

– Associated Press story accessed through National Public Radio– See also Steve Greenhouse, “Company Accused of Firing Over

Facebook Post”, New York Times, February 8, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/business/09facebook.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Facebook+Connecticut+ambulance+company&st=nyt

• Employee fired for criticizing her boss on Facebook

• National Labor Relations Board successfully sues Connecticut ambulance company– Workers can discuss with co-workers issues such as wages,

hours, and working conditions– Compared to a conversation next to the water cooler– Is it a “concerted protected activity” (See Greenhouse article)

Related Privacy Cases

• Wire tapping phone booth used by mob figure

• Using infra-red detectors to determine if suspect is growing marijuana inside house

• Major corporation secretly installs cameras in bathrooms to find who is damaging them

• Facebook: Supervisor finds negative comments about him posted by employee in Facebook. Fires employee

• Carnivore: FBI tries to force OSPs to install packet filter to identify terrorists who are using Internet

Related Property Cases

• Disney works to extend copyright term limits yet makes use of fairy tales that are part of public domain

• Are aggressive RIAA measures to stop pirating CDs and DVDs justified?– Recently, choose universities, send students letter telling to

confess or face legal action

• Lawrence Lessig discusses Eric Eldred case in Free Culture– Eldred wanted to develop online library to post classical authors

and works– But Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act blocked this in the

case of poems by Robert Frost as well as others– Sued unsuccessfully to get permission to include these works in

library