From: OII Newsletter [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 23 March 2009 15:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OII News [2009.03.23]: Database State Report Released / News and Events
Dear friends and colleagues,
Is the Internet creating a need for new perspectives on law and regulation? To what extent is it challenging current legal practice and principles? Over the next few months, the OII in collaboration with the Society for Computers and Law will be running a series of lectures on the Internet, Law and Society which will raise key questions about new and emerging challenges to core legal principles, and their implementation and enforcement in cyberspace.
The series will begin with a lecture by Professor Roger Brownsword of King's College, London (30 March) that will ask how well law performs in controlling for risks presented by rapidly developing technologies such as ICTs and biotechnologies and how lawyers might better contribute to debates about shaping the right regulatory environment. This will be followed by Professor Elizabeth Judge (6 May) on digital copyright reform and Professor Jonathan Zittrain (19 May) on informal regulation by non-state actors.
The series aims to encourage participation by a wide audience, so venues are split between London and Oxford (check Events Diary). Responses to the lectures will be invited from lawyers and social scientists in order to offer a broad range of perspectives, and audience discussions will follow. We hope you will be able to attend.
Best wishes,
Dr Victoria Nash
Policy and Research Fellow
1. Events Diary: March / April
2. Report on Britain's 'Database State' Released Today
3. Yorick Wilks Awarded 2009 BCS Lovelace Medal
4. Call for Participation: Trust 2009
5. OxIS 2009: Latest News
6. Webcast: Matthew Hindman on Online Audiences
7. Web Science Conference 2009: The Round-up
8. Christine Madsen Awarded First Balliol-Bodley Scholarship
9. Student Diary: Internet and Personhood in Brazil
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1. Events Diary: March / April
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Thurs 26 March:
Modes of Governance in Digitally Networked Environments: Interdisciplinary Workshop
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=236
Thurs 26 March:
Michael Cusumano: The Changing Business of Software
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=233
Mon 30 March:
Roger Brownsword: Regulating Technologies
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=241
Tues 31 March:
David Bollier: Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=247
Wed 1 April:
Renato Martini / Mauricio Coelho: Personal Identity and the Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=249
Mon 6 - Wed 8 April:
Conference: TRUST 2009
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=243
Monday 27 April:
The New Economic Context of Internet Governance
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=251
Tues 28 April:
Ana Maria Nicolaci: The Internet and the Construction of New 'Psychic Configurations'
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=248
Wed 6 May:
Elizabeth Judge: Presumed Intentions and the Copyright Bargain: Digital Copyright Reform, the Making Available Right, and Implied Licence for Public Body Uses of Copyrighted Works
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=240
Thurs 7 May:
Monica Seeley: Addressing Your Email Productivity Paradox: A Master Class
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=208
Tues 19 May:
Jonathan Zittrain: The Future of the Internet: Private Sheriffs in Cyberspace
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=252
Thurs 4 June:
Marcus Foth: The Second Life of Urban Planning
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=245
All the Events:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/
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2. Report on Britain's 'Database State' Released Today
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OII Senior Research Fellow Dr Ian Brown is one of the authors of a report released today by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust entitled 'Database State'. Written by a team of internationally renowned information policy experts, this first ever comprehensive map of Britain's 'database state' charts the sheer scale and financial cost of data collection, the methods used to maintain and secure the data, and the treatment of critical issues such as consent.
Database State Report [pdf, 900 kb]:
http://www.jrrt.org.uk/uploads/Database%20State.pdf
The report examines each of the 46 major public sector databases which hold personal information on at least a significant minority of British citizens, using a 'traffic light' system to assess whether each system is illegal under human-rights or data-protection law; whether the collection and sharing of sensitive personal data are disproportionate, or done without the person's consent, or without a proper legal basis; or whether there are other major privacy or operational problems.
The report recommends new measures to promote scrutiny and transparency of all IT projects, radical initiatives to select and train civil servants to handle complex systems, and changes to public-sector procurement rules to favour more medium-sized systems over the large-scale projects that have damaged so many government departments.
Press coverage of the report has included:
Times Online: 10 government databases 'will break the law'
The Guardian: Right to privacy broken by a quarter of UK's public databases, says report
BBC News: Call to scrap 'illegal databases'
The Independent: Quarter of UK's databases are 'illegal'
The Telegraph: One in four government websites illegal
Reuters: Quarter of state databases "should be scrapped"
Links to press coverage available at:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/about/press/
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3. Yorick Wilks Awarded 2009 BCS Lovelace Medal
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OII Senior Research Fellow Prof. Yorick Wilks has been awarded the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, their major award for research, for 2009. The Lovelace medal is awarded to individuals who have made a contribution which is of major significance in the advancement or understanding of Information Systems.
Yorick Wilks:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/faculty.cfm?id=31
Yorick will be presented with the award at an event in London in Spring 2010, at which he will then give the 2010 Lovelace lecture.
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.5932
The 2007 medal was awarded to Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the 2008 (posthumously) to Prof. Karen Sparck Jones, both of whom have been associated with the OII.
2007 Lovelace Lecture (Berners-Lee)
The Web: Looking Back, Looking Forward
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.9996
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4. Call for Participation: Trust 2009
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Registration is now open for Trust 2009, an international conference on the technical and socio-economic aspects of trusted computing:
6-8 April 2009, University of Oxford
http://www.trust2009.org/
The conference will feature around 15 high-quality papers on technical topics and around six more on socio-economic themes: the conference is designed to allow a meeting of minds from these different perspectives. Confirmed keynote speakers are: Prof. Sean Smith (Dartmouth), Prof. Eugene H. Spafford (Purdue) and Dr Jens Reigelsberger (Google). A special session sponsored by Green Hills Software will describe their newly certified INTEGRITY operating system.
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5. OxIS 2009: Latest News
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The Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) 2009 recently went into the field. Updates to the survey include more questions about user-generated content, mobile use of the Internet and the quality of the experience that people have online. We hope to conclude the fieldwork by April, in time to launch the OxIS 2009 Report on 22 June 2009 in London.
Meanwhile, you can check the OxIS website for the latest publications and forthcoming events. Note that academics can now request the 2007 OxIS database (see website).
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/microsites/oxis/
Thank you for your interest and support for the Oxford Internet Surveys so far. We hope you will continue to collaborate with us in making this the best available study on the use and non-use of the Internet in Britain.
Dr Ellen J. Helsper
Survey Research Fellow
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6. Webcast: Matthew Hindman on Online Audiences
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Dr Matthew Hindman (Arizona State University)
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: Online Audiences and the Paradox of Web Traffic
http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20090306_271
Many areas of Internet scholarship make strong (often erroneous) assumptions about patterns of Web traffic. There has been little comprehensive research on how online audiences are distributed, and even less work on how site traffic changes over time. Using three years of daily Web traffic data, and new models adapted from financial mathematics, Hindman examines large-scale variation in Web traffic and finds that audience distribution is extremely stable - limiting the number of prominent outlets. These results challenge many accepted notions about online life. In particular, the talk discusses what these traffic patterns mean for the openness of the online public sphere.
This was the opening event for a recent workshop 'Internet and Democracy: Lessons Learnt and Future Directions' co-organised by the OII, the Berkman Center and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
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7. Web Science Conference 2009: The Round-up
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Oxford University sent 15 people to Athens for the recent Web Science Conference organised by the Web Science Research Initiative in collaboration with various partners including the OII. Intended to bring together social and computer scientists in order to develop the emerging discipline of Web Science, over 300 people registered for the conference, with over 1000 people attending Sir Tim Berners-Lee's opening lecture. Professor Helen Margetts represented the OII and the Social Sciences, as Programme Co-chair on the Conference Committee.
Papers presented by the OII were: Helen Margetts on 'Experiments for Web Science: Examining the Effect of the Internet on Collective Action', Alison Powell on 'Lessons from the Net Neutrality Lobby: Balancing openness and control in a networked society' and Wolf Richter on 'Designing effective regulation for the 'Dark side' of the Web'. Posters were presented by Fadhila Haeri Mazanderani (online health), Han Teng Liao (Wikipedia) and Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon (discussion networks). The OII DPhil students who attended were supported through the Networks for Web Science project, funded by the EPSRC.
All the Papers and Posters:
http://www.websci09.org/proceedings/
WebSci09 on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/websci09
One of the participating journals was Policy and Internet, the first major peer-reviewed journal investigating the implications of the Internet and associated technologies for public policy. It is an OII/PSO journal, published by BEPress.
Policy and Internet
http://www.bepress.com/pso_internet/
Call for Papers [pdf, 30kb]
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/journal/Call_Policy_and_Internet_200902.pdf
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8. Christine Madsen Awarded First Balliol-Bodley Scholarship
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Bodleian Library announces the first Balliol-Bodley Scholarship
Oxford University Library Services Release: 11 February 2009
http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/news/2009_feb_11
The Bodleian Library together with Balliol College have established a new joint scholarship for graduate students. The Balliol-Bodley Scholarship was initiated by Balliol Old Member Gillian Einhorn (2007) to enable a suitable Balliol graduate student to participate in the work of the Bodleian Library.
The first scholar to be awarded the scholarship is OII DPhil Student Christine Madsen, whose research focuses on the most pressing issues at the intersection of libraries, librarianship, and the Internet. She said: 'I am very honoured and excited to serve as the first Balliol-Bodley Scholar. I truly look forward to being able to work with the extraordinary people and resources of the Bodleian.'
Chris Fletcher, Head of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian Library said: 'We are delighted to be involving research students from Balliol in some of the wide-ranging work undertaken by the Bodleian Library. This is an excellent way for Library staff and the academic community to share expertise, understand one another's work and ultimately to help further scholarship.'
Cristine Madsen:
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/students.cfm?id=125
***
Final deadline for 2009/10 OII DPhil Applications: 8 April 2009 (tbc)
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/teaching/dphil/
What is it like to study at the OII? Watch the video:
http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20081027_265
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9. Student Diary: Internet and Personhood in Brazil
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Marcelo Thompson is convening (with Dr Timothy Power of the Brazilian Studies Programme) the BSP/OII Seminar Series, which is aimed at understanding the ways in which the use of the Internet and related technologies is changing the cultural, political and otherwise social landscape in 21st Century Brazilian society. This first set of two seminars to be given at the OII by distinguished Brazilian officials and scholars will focus on the theme of 'Internet and Personhood in Brazil' - that is, on the transformations that Brazilian society is experiencing in different dimensions of its very understanding of personhood.
On 1 April, Renato Martini and Mauricio Coelho will address 'Personal Identity and Brazilian Public Key Infrastructure': how authentication and identification technologies are increasingly delimiting the presentation of personal attributes and the acquisition and exercise of rights and duties in the Brazilian information environment.
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=249
On 28 April, Ana Maria Nicolaci will cover 'The Internet and the Construction of New 'Psychic Configurations'': discussing the contours of a new 'psychic configuration' which is emerging in Brazil as a result of the diffused use of information and communication technologies.
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/details.cfm?id=248
Attendance is free, but we would kindly ask you to email your name and affiliation to: mailto:[log in to unmask] to confirm your participation.
***
Tobias Escher writes:
The doctoral students of the OII have set up a second student trip (last year we went to Berlin) ... joined by students from the Web Science Research Initiative we had an exciting day out at Bletchley Park. Being the former domain of Alan Turing and his fellow WWII code breakers this proved to be a fitting destination for students of the societal implications of technology with the added benefit of setting sights on some of the first computers in the National Museum of Computing.
http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/escher/
During the recent Internet and Democracy workshop at the OII I presented a part of my current doctoral research into political participation online. Using recent data from a comprehensive survey of users of British eDemocracy website WriteToThem.com I showed how the existing biases in participation are further exacerbated by the use of online tools. While in this particular case previously inactive people would be motivated to contact their political representatives these would be primarily from groups with high income and formal education.
http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/escher/
[Editor: David Sutcliffe]
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
1 St Giles Oxford OX1 3JS
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287210
Fax: +44 (0)1865 287211
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk
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