Clarifying and Classifying Information Rights = Define those rights, please?

5 recent links now added below...

As I see it, we are approaching a critical need for clarification of the rights conveyed by ownership of ideas and information.  This theme is where privacy issues originate in an age of digital sharing done by people and machine alike. Before we narrow our focus to privacy issues though we must first acknowledge how the related issues are also in critical areas:

Patents The system is a mess. Some enterprises have learned to cheat rely on the advantage of deep pockets in all matters involving litigation and arbitration. ('First, let's see if forgiveness is really needed.') Others believe that software and business method patents stifle innovation. But if the small players innovate better but gain no benefit from doing so where is the incentive? A correction is needed here according to respected sources but what is it? Is it a free market fix or specific rules?

Copyright A real threat to content was the digital video recorder but now, even that concern seems a little pale out on the digital frontier where piracy across international borders is common now. The bigger players are beginning to see how delivering on the idea of consumer's Choice is a path to profitability and security, though there are no complete answers right now.

Enterprise privacy How can a company compete effectively when technical complexity makes stealing information so hard to defend against and even to prove later? This may sound identical to the patent concern above but it encompasses computer hacking community. Consider what we heard about at Lockheed Martin this week. Yes, what we see now is mostly isolated. They key to using this perspective is seeing how that general mindset will eventuallt shift and that will change how enterprises and entire industries behave.

Personal privacy In the 1970's, 80's we were urged to tear up the carbon paper from credit card receipts.  Today, not long after a historic peak in mood we hear about concerns about how all of our digitized information being aggregated and used (most times fairly, and only occasionally illegally with tough results). Behavioral profiling does indeed make the internet better for people but, the slowly evolving question is: do we really know all the concerns we should be aware of and how to work around them? Is that even possible? A conventional mindset would suggest, simply, that this is not a problem now or yet. Social mood shows us, again, how our perception of these potential events will change and as consumers, this will affect the perceived utility of various products and services.

The question behind these concerns is this: What rights come attached to the ownership of ideas (IP) and our various kinds of (personal and enterprise) information? Of course there are laws and rules now but how has the digital environment created the need for updating? How can we assign the right to use our personal information if we do not clearly understand the rules governing these agreements to use our data? Distinctions need to be made. What responsibility do enterprises have to consumers?  Is regulation really where this is headed? What if people began to think?, "If it is not going to be defined clearly in a way that is enforceable by me, then why participate in their desired interfaces that cater to both customer & enterprise convenience?"  The genie isn't going back in the bottle. Is that really true? What if some rules favor those that do revert to old behaviors where control exists? For instance: Will we go back to making phone calls for purchases because web sites have one set of rules and phone calls another? The trade offs I am suggesting here are indeed speculative but all transactions are evaluated and reevaluated as necessary by all market participants. Ok, as of today so far so good, right? My main point, right now, is how correcting social mood will influence this process considerably and it is not hard to see how it may develop directionally. This mindset is essential.

It may be easy to think I am taking this too far...making too much of nothing. The rest of this post provides limited background on my opinion about how if anything, I believe I am underestimating the challenges. So take note. The times they are a changing:

Historic perspective:

June 1966  Columbia Law Review (article) (you may need to go to the library to get access to full length article)

title: Science, Privacy, and Freedom; Issues and Proposals for the 1970's.  "American society is in the midst of a great debate over privacy precipitated by the development and use of new surveillance devices and processes by both public and private authorities"...

(This was forward thinking that came only months after the cycle degree third wave peak that produced the baby boom and right before a small (primary degree A wave) first leg down in a horizontal social correction. Maybe the main point here is how the corrective processes that are most likely to touch everyone are easiest to see coming early? In other Google search results for privacy you see many laws enacted near mood peaks and not too long afterward into the social correction...and a few big ones at the bottom)

 1974  FERPA becomes federal law (primary degree e wave in a cycle degree correction)

(excerpt below from Univ of Colorado web site)

What about Student Privacy?

Guidance from UC Denver Legal Counsel (today)

During the early 1970’s, privacy issues in all areas became hot political topics. Parents and students submitted horror stories of schools creating education records and then refusing to allow the parents and students to look at the contents of those records. ...

FERPA grants four specific rights to any student who is or has been in attendance at an institution of higher education in relation to their education records:

1. The right to inspect and view education records;
2. The right to seek amendment to education records if there are inaccuracies;
3. The right to consent to any disclosure of education records; and
4. The right to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education FERPA Compliance Office.

Two other big social privacy issues that touch most people in some way:

• Privacy Act of 1974 (among other things it protects your sensitive tax info info kept by the government)
  
• Fair Credit Reporting Act 1970 (governs the collection, use, and dissemination of consumer credit info)

 But the larger degree social correction in the early and mid 1930's produced evidence of even more profound concerns that were only slowly corrected as information flow was still very slow in the age of telegrams and early telephones being centrally located in some homes.

The concerns of the 1930's were often of a very different nature.

As I reflect on my own understanding of the 1930's (having read John Steinbeck and my parents were both very young early in that decade.) it was an age of domestic fights that were often not fair. Special interest groups took their power sseriously and wielded it with determination, often not offering a spirit of compromise in a very polarized social climate. Information and change moved more slowly but I do not believe it can be all blamed on a lack of technology.  This last point is why I have spent time trying to convey the importance of degree of trend issues when looking at social trends. The 1960's were socially trying times and hard stories came about from a dramatic young American generation that took issues seriously in the moment.

The significance of the national pain of the 1930's is missed by many people alive today.  The personal pain of crises that engulfed many hard working, honest, American families is simply out of context today. Hardship was a plague and society became stratified and many did not look beyond their smaller units of association out of fear.  Like the 60's music, 30's folk is a great reflection of the hard times. In many instances politics became religion and might became right. Nobody was an acid trip away from enlightenment in the 1930's. In many regions and for many extended families it was a time of pure, raw, survival.

It is tempting to compare periods of social correction on the surface without considering what degree of degree of trend is really implying. Perspective on these different earlier times is important, not because you need to prepare for the end of days but if you want to visualize where the weak seams exist, then you need to contextualize carefully. The development of a useful pragmatism is what larger degree social corrections are about and I certainly do not claim to uniquely possess that feature. Like all social adjustments to changing values, they are learned and passed along but you can be early in recognizing the magnitude of change and the likely difficulty gaining consensus. Both sides of my family had very different experiences in the 1930's and there were also core themes.

In a digital age that is also noted for exceptionally powerful institutions with remarkable political sway in federal and state government affairs, how will the ownership of ideas and information be negotiated and resolved so as to protect rights of both enterprise and ordinary people so they may control their own personal information assets? What could slow down fixes in a digital age?  Right now, the typical forecast from conventional forecasters is for fair winds and gentle surf. A lot can change, however, in the span of 12 months in a highly charged socially correcting environment.

So start thinking about changing attitudes toward ownership and the rights conveyed by it especially if these issues matter to your business. It is not going to be business versus consumers though it may seem that way at times. Businesses are servants of the people. They tend to recognize big shifts in social momentum with a very lagging emphasis. The more immediate threat to business interests is a reactionary, short dated Congress. (And for the record, I do not dislike Congress even if I bring this point up in more than this post. They have an impossible job juggling elections and the greater good, and whatever else that may motivate them. They too too are highly subject to social mood so add that to your speculations on potential new regulations, and re-regulation of existing regulation.) Think also about a charged international environment that is struggling to correct recent expansion. Regulation and international cooperation (or lack of it) may well be the issues that dominate the days ahead. An economy that relies so much upon the value created through IP will face these issues until they are somehow resolved. 

added 6 02 11  Last thought: All rights carry responsibility and that is why they are organized by society. Is there a digital society and are their digital rights? Not if there are not digital responsibilities. The headlines are filled with examples of just how broadly this issues in this post will affect everyone.

Many readers here have explored Prechter's books exploring socionomics. If not, there are many detailed discussions about degree of trend and detailed historic references.

developing links since posting:

• Email "Spearfishing" discussed in today's NYT. Who's responsibility is this? If it's caveat emptor in the end, then do we adjust all expectations with regard to what is appropriate for email? The polarity to watch here is "formality" with regard to protocols. If real pro's can fake any email they want, then the fix is with formal behavior that will rule out this being possible.
• Cyber Cops Stymied by Anonymous Hackers  BB (great short read)  “These are turning points we’re witnessing,” said Anup Ghosh, founder of the Fairfax, Virginia-based cyber security firm Invincea Inc. and a former Pentagon cyber scientist. “What you’re seeing is the loss of the U.S.’s competitive position on a global scale,” he said.
• Facebook Facing EU Probe Over Photo Tagging (permission)  “Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” said Lommel. Such automatic tagging “can bear a lot of risks for users” and the group of European data protection officials will “clarify to Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”.....The Article 29 group guides the work of national data protection agencies, which have the power to punish companies that break privacy rules.
• Citi Admits Customer Data at Risk After Breach  FT Hacking into companies is becoming increasingly common. Lockheed Martin, PBS and Sony have all recently had their security systems violated. But analysts said bank systems were considered very secure and it was unusual for a financial institution to experience such a breach directly. More common is for account information to be stolen indirectly, such as at Michaels Stores, the US retailer, where debit card check-out terminals were tampered with.... “For the actual breach to happen at a bank is a very big deal,” said Avivah Litan, an analyst with Gartner Research.
• Microsoft Loses Supreme Court Patent Appeal  FT (software patents)