Dropbox integration is an easy way to allow users to sync files between their iPhones or iPads and other devices. For example, an email application could allow users to attach files from their dropbox, rather than limiting them to files on their phone. Dropbox’s basic accounts are free, but users can upgrade to more storage by paying a monthly fee.

As we’ve mentioned before, Apple requires a 30% cut of all in-app transactions and subscriptions. This is one of the reasons organizations like the Financial Times switched to Safari-based web apps rather than making official applications that go through the App Store. Since Apple stands to benefit from in-app purchases, the store doesn’t permit workarounds such as opening up Safari to allow users to make an out-of-app purchase. Here’s the relevant portion of the App Store Review Guidelines:

11.13  Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app, such as a “buy” button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected.

Developers claim that Apple has cracked down on what constitutes an external mechanism for purchasing. Goran Peuc, the maker of popular application CamBox, posted a conversation with an Apple reviewer through Apple’s Resolution Center where Apple claimed that sending users to the Dropbox website to make an account constituted a violation of this rule.

From Dropbox’s perspective, this is a pretty unexpected triggering of the 11.13 restriction, mostly because of the minimum number of steps required to make an out-of-app purchase here.

1. User does not have Dropbox installed on their iOS device.
2. User is taken to a Safari page with the option to login.
3. User does not have a Dropbox account. Clicks the “desktop version” button or the “create account” button. (see image)
4. From “desktop version” or “create account” button, user can then navigate to a page with paid options for Dropbox as opposed to the default free account.

Going to a Safari page that allowed one to create a Dropbox account was forbidden because it might lead to users upgrading, paying Dropbox (but not Apple) money. It seems pretty clear that Dropbox was not acting maliciously or trying to bypass Apple’s subscription guidelines by including a “create account” link. The developers who use the Dropbox SDK (Software Development Kit) are often not affiliated with Dropbox. Having an in-app purchase of a Dropbox account could result in these developers having access to payment and possibly user information – a significant security risk. Dropbox could also require users download their application to create an account, but that would be even more clunky than a online login.

Dropbox quickly updated its SDK to eliminate the offending links, but the damage had been done – three to four other developers reported similar app rejections.  So far, Apple has confirmed that it was a violation of guideline 11.13 that led to the refusals, but has not yet accepted all of the affected applications. Kerfuffle mostly over, although with the recent launch of Google Drive and Microsoft’s increased push for its SkyDrive, both Dropbox competitors, Apple’s timing couldn’t have been worse. What’s the upshot?

Apple’s enforcement of its App Review Store guidelines has been capricious at best, and many developers agree that it has begun cracking down on practices that previously would not have disqualified an application. A single function call that might lead to a webpage where money could be made is now enough to prevent anyone from seeing an application.

The Dropbox rejections are another reminder that iOS developers are entirely dependent on Apple’s whims to reach users inside its walled garden. App rejections can lead to weeks of fixes and months of lost sales. Furthermore, Apple’s review system is non-transparent, the policies violated aren’t public and enforcement is subject to change. Developers can question reviewer rulings, but all of this takes place out of the public eye– hence Dropbox having no idea that apps using its SDK were being rejected till Peuc posted on the forum.

Although content producing businesses can move outside the Apple ecosystem with web apps, developers who need to use core phone functions are stuck playing the App Store game.  The rhetoric behind the App Store is that the restrictions are for protecting the users and their devices. Unfortunately, now they seem to be used to protect Apple’s business model, at the expense of users and developers.

Using H2O, professors can freely pull together materials for a course by selecting cases, editing those cases to the sections that are most relevant, and grouping them into readings. Once the materials are assembled, they can be copied in part or in whole by other interested faculty and then edited further.  H2O has been successfully piloted in JZ’s 1L Torts class, and will be rolling out further over the coming year.

H2O’s project manager will play a leading role in shepherding H2O into its next phase, which will focus on developing new materials and incorporating additional features, in order to expand the platform beyond its law school roots.

H2O is a  joint project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Harvard Law School library.  The Project Manager will be housed at the HLS Library and work in close collaboration with lead members of the Library Innovation Lab team; he/she will also work closely with the Berkman Center and current H2O teams. More info and job posting here.

I didn’t coin the phrase, and since it was featured (and attributed to me!) in wordsmith.org’s wildly popular “word a day” as a thought for the day accompanying the word “enceinte” — I sought to nail down its provenance.

The first use of the quote that we can find is as a comment within the famed MetaFilter community  in August 2010. The user’s name is blue_beetle, who might be someone named Andrew Lewis.  It’s entirely possible I saw it there, as MeFi is one of my five favorite sites on the Web.

Similar sentiments (whether drawn from that source or independently invented) have been expressed by Bruce Schneier in October 2010 and by Douglas Rushkoff in September ’11.

The phrase “you’re the product” also apparently appeared in a 1986 speech by President Reagan about the drug war.

Just say know.

–KA and JZ

Mountain Lion is slated to include a feature called Gatekeeper as part of the security and privacy settings. Gatekeeper allows administrators (those with full privileges on a Mac) to limit the applications that can run on the Mac.  They can choose among allowing apps downloaded from the Mac App Store only, or apps from outside the Store so long as they are digitally signed to Apple’s satisfaction by their developers, or apps from anywhere.  (The latter has been the way both Mac and Windows PCs have worked, for better or worse, since the introduction of the Apple II in 1977.)

We here at Future of the Internet will refrain from saying “I told you so” about the prospect of Macs only running applications from the Mac App Store.  Instead, we will note that there are benefits for enterprise Mac fleet managers to limit apps to the App Store only.  Most users on others’ (such as employers’) machines may not even miss the ability to “sideload” — there are plenty of Solitaire apps in the Mac App Store.  Moreover, users who have administrative permission have the option to override Gatekeeper at any time by Control-clicking and affirming their intention to go “off roading.” MacWorld has more information about the way Gatekeeper interacts with the existing security measures.

The second option, allowing applications from both the App Store and signed developers, is where the meat of this story is. John Gruber of Daring Fireball, reporting on a private product briefing, stated that developers will now be able to get free-of-charge developer IDs to sign code with. If true, this is a great step forward for continued generativity on the platform.  (So far the Apple Developer website has no mention of free options for signing code.) Signed code produced outside the App Store is excellent. It eliminates the concerns about App Store-pushed sandboxing (as expressed here) by allowing developers who write un-sandboxable programs to sign their code anyway, for verification purposes. It also means that developers who either don’t want to hand 30% of their revenue over to Apple (as a cost of entry to the App Store) or who want to produce applications with non-Apple approved content (like a comic by a Pulitzer Prize winner) can still signal to users that their work isn’t malware.

Will this help users make decisions about what kind of programs to install? The more that legitimate developers join the Developer ID program and start signing code, the more effective Gatekeeper will be at deterring users from installing malware. But if developers don’t sign up, it’s easy to see how Gatekeeper could turn into yet another click-through approval box, where users see so many warnings that they instantly click okay.

Gatekeeper in its current blueprint isn’t the end of Mac generativity.  The middle ground of allowing non-App Store signed code may represent the best of both worlds. However, one small tweak — lose that Control-click for sideloading — and OS X could fully merge with iOS, both in functionality and in security methods.  And that would be the worst of both worlds.  Perhaps a successful launch of Mountain Lion in its current plan can pave the way for iOS to become a little more generative.  That depends more on Apple’s desired business model for the app store than on maintaining security for the mobile platform.

–KA and JZ

Data-driven insurance pricing is nothing new. Research into the viability of GPS-based pricing goes as far back as 2003. Telemetry based insurance premiums have been around in the United States since at least 2008, when Progressive started using “Snapshot.” It measured numbers of miles driven, time of day and sudden stops to set rates rewarding less hazardous driving. However, Progressive’s Snapshot program did not integrate GPS data – it used a device that plugged into the car’s OnBoard Diagnostic port. And companies with large vehicle fleets have used it to track driver safety — an automated answer to “How’s My Driving?” through such services as SmartDrive.

It’s worth noting that one of the reasons that Motaquote may be moving towards telemetric data is that the European Court of Justice ruled  last year that car insurance rates based on gender were discriminatory. Insurance companies, not known as keen innovators, have been prompted to find new ways to distinguish good drivers from dangerous drivers, and telemetric data is perhaps more accurate than generalizing based on age or gender.

Still, the move to GPS-based calculation is sensitive. One reason that programs like Progressive’s have been uncontroversial is that they have not sent locational information to car insurance providers, and users have an option to view their data before opting-in to rates based upon it.  Although the Fair Pay system was just announced, its website suggests that drivers will opt-in before they can see how their driving will measure up.

Data privacy is also a serious concern. Will insurance companies be asked to turn over GPS data to law enforcement to show where a car (or driver) was at a specific time?  There’s currently no information on Fair Pay’s website about the privacy of the locational aspects of the data – something that anyone who wants a free GPS should consider first. Such policies don’t have to say “always” or “never” — but they should spell out the standards by which a company will respond to requests or demands for information, and more generally policymakers should set up standards to shield privacy from unwarranted intrusion, metaphorically and literally.

Telemetric data-based rates also mean that insurance-holders may be locked into specific providers. If a driver’s rate is based on years of good driving data, but that information is non-transferrable, he or she may not be able to switch insurance providers without a substantial rate hike. It would be better if insurance companies provided customers with options for data portability and download.  That would also help drivers make sure that insurance company rate changes were justified — instead of being told “Sorry, poor driving means you pay a higher rate,” without more, drivers could float their data to other insurance companies who could bid lower for the driver’s insurance account if it didn’t truly indicate poor driving.  That’s real competition, and it would provide the right incentives to insurance companies to refine their algorithms.  A sudden stop might actually indicate good driving — rabbit dashes in front of car and driver shows admirable reflexes.

There’s also some intriguing possibilities for complementary crowdsourcing of driver safety.  Lior Strahilevitz has written about this using the standard “How’s my driving” toll free number system, and I’ve mused on it for a fully saturating Internet environment.  I also weighed in for Marketplace Tech Report.

Fundamentally, there’s nothing wrong with GPS-based telemetric data setting insurance rates. Consumers have become more comfortable with locational tracking, and these types of plan are currently inherently opt-in. If the programs do indeed reward better drivers, then they can make driving (and walking or biking nearby) safer. The devil is in the details of how the data is collected, what companies do with it, and how consumers can access and use it.

–JZ and KA

Description:

Why does the Internet environment exist in the form it does today? What does its future, and the future of online life in general, look like? To what extent is this future malleable? Governments, corporate intermediaries, and hackers are empowered to different degrees by the space, and their interests and strengths are often in tension. This class uses academic as well as non-traditional texts to engender a broader understanding of Internet culture and technology, with an end focus on making informed choices about the future.

A Note about Reading:

The reading for this class will be anywhere between 30-100 pages per session. It will probably be helpful to read the selections in the order they appear in the syllabus, as some of the texts assume knowledge provided by the ones before them. Of course, inclusion of something in the syllabus should not be taken as an endorsement of its position or author. People are still wrong on the Internet.

Readings are subject to change. Material not available publicly online will be posted to the course iSite.

Class 1: Monday, January 30^th: The Internet’s Past

• Internet History
  • John Perry Barlow. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”
  • Johnny Ryan. “The Essence of the Net from A History of the Internet and the Digital Future.” Ars Technica.
• Who needs Cyberlaw?
  • Lawrence Lessig. “The Law of the Horse.” Harvard Law Review. 

Class 2: Monday, February 6th: Whatever Happened to Jurisdiction?

• Dow Jones v. Gutnick
  • Jonathan Zittrain. Jurisdiction. pages 4-9, 47-54
  • Felicity Barringer. “Internet Makes Dow Jones Open to Suit in Australia.” The New York Times.
• MegaUpload
  • MegaUpload Indictment. Pp. 1-65.
  • Nate Anderson. “Explainer: How can the US seize a ‘Hong Kong site’ like Megaupload?” Ars Technica.

Class 3: Monday, February 13th: Copyright and Free Speech

• Copyright
  • Terry Fisher. Copyright for Librarians. Module 1 + Module 7.
• Cancel-bots and Early Internet Speech
  • Skim: Wikipedia article on Scientology and the Internet.
  • Alan Prendergast. “Hunting Rabbits, Serving Spam: The Net Under Siege.”
• The Power of the Cease and Desist
  • Peruse: Chilling Effects.
  • Yochai Benkler. The Wealth of Networks. Pp. 225-233.
  • Kim Zetter. “Diebold Loses Key Copyright Case.” Wired. 
  • Cease and Desist Demand, Trevor Eckhart.
  • Andy Greenberg. Carrier IQ: A Case Study in the Streisand Effect Squared. Forbes. 

Class 4: Thursday, February 23^rd : Representing Ourselves Online

• Avatars
  • Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash, (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 35-44.
  • Nicolas Ducheneaut, Ming-Hui “Don” Wen, Nicholas Yee, Greg Wadley. “Body and Mind: A Study of Avatar Personalization in Three Virtual Worlds.” CHI 2009. (Intro, Discussion, Conclusion)
  • “City of Copies: Marvel. Vs. NC Soft.”
  • Memorandum of Points and Authorities of Amici Curiae Legal and Cultural Studies Scholars in Support of Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 
• Social Networks
  • Sherry Turkle. Alone Together. 181-199.
  • “What Happens When you Deactivate Your Facebook Account.” ReadWriteWeb.
  • Tim Carmody. “You Are Not Your Name and Photo: A Call to Reimagine Identity.“ Wired.

Class 5: Monday, February 27th: Defamation, Civility and Attribution

• The Wikipedia Biography Controversy and Section 230
  • Legal Guide for Bloggers- Section 230 Protections. Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  • Wikipedia Biography Controversy. Wikipedia.
  • Reliability of Wikipedia, False Biographical Information. Wikipedia. 
• Anonyminity and Pseudonymity
  • Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies). PennyArcade. WARNING: Language NSFW.
  • Rachel Cooke and Aleks Krotoski. “Should Internet commentators use their real names?” Comment is free.
  • Kee Hinkley. “On Pseudonymity, Privacy and Responsibility on Google+.” TechnoSocial. Published July 27th, 2011. Pgs. 1-16 (No longer available online, will distribute PDF.)
• Attribution
  • Aaron E. Kornblum. “Searching for John Doe: Finding Spammers and Phishers.”
  • David D. Clark, Susan Landau. “Untangling Attribution.”

Class 6: Monday, March 5th: Generativity

• Theories of Generativity
  • Jonathan Zittrain. “Protecting the Internet Without Wrecking It.” Boston Review.
  • Read one of the responses: Bruce M. Owen, Richard Stallman, Susan Crawford, David D. Clark, Roger A. Grimes, and Hal Varian. http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/ndf_internet.php
  • James Grimmelmann. “Applications and Applicances: A Conversation with Jonathan Zittrain.” The Laboratorium.
• What about Content?
  • Brad Stone. “Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle.” The New York Times.
  • Mark Frauenfelder. “Bezos apologizes for Kindle 1984 memory hole blunder.” BoingBoing.
  • Brian X. Chen. “iPad Apps Could Put Apple in Charge of the News.” Wired. 
• Bootloaders
  • Jon Brodkin. “The Right to dual-boot: Linux groups plead case prior to Windows 8 launch.” Ars Technica.
  • Peter Bright. “Windows 8’s locked bootloaders: much ado about nothing, or the end of the world as we know it?” Ars Technica. 
  • Ed Bott. “Linux won’t be locked out of Windows 8 PCs, but FUD continues.” ZDNet.

Class 7: Monday, March 19th: DRM and Circumvention

• The Playing Field
  • Fred Von Lohmann. “Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA.” Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  • Mark Stefik. “Trusted Systems.” Scientific American. March, 1997.
  • Decan McCullagah. “New Copyright Bill Heading to DC.” Wired.
• A Whole New World
  • Adam Marcus. “3D Printing: The Future is Here.”  The Technology Liberation Front.
  • “It Will Be Awesome If They Don’t Screw It Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology.” Public Knowledge. 
  • “Gang Used 3D Printers for ATM Skimmers.” Krebs on Security. 
  • Nick Bilton. “Disruptions: The 3-D Printing Free-for-all.” The New York Times. 

Class 8: Monday, March 26th: Crowdsourcing: Threat or Menace?

• Threat
  • Ernest Cline. Ready Player One. (New York: Crown, 2011), 1-36.
  • John C. Tang, Manuel Cebrian, Nicklaus A. Giacobe, Hyun-Woo Kim, Taemie Kim, and Douglas “Beaker” Wickert. “Reflecting on the DARPA Red Balloon Challenge,” Communications of the ACM 54 (4). (2011).
  • Jonathan Zittrain. COG. Publication forthcoming. 1-5.
• Menace
  • Brian Caulfield. “Turkish Delight.” Forbes.com.
  • “Internet Eyes, Fighting Crime from Home: Transcript.” On the Media.
  • Skim: “Ask HN: Are Freelancer sites (e.g. Odesk, Elance) useless?” Hacker News. 

Class 9: Monday, April 2nd: Gamification is…

• The Devil
  • Jesse Schell. “Design Outside the Box” DICE 2010. (Video Presentation) G4 TV.
  • “What’s the Point of Steam Achievements Anyway?”
  • Critical Distance.
• The Answer to Society’s Problems
  • The Cures of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit. Wired.
  • The Future is A Grind. Post-Hype.
  • Jane McGonigal. Reality is Broken. pgs. 53-79.
• Funny
  • Peter Bright. “Microsoft keeps it old-schools with a pricey text adventure game, Visual Studio 2010.” Ars Technica. 

Class 10: Monday, April 9th: Regulation, Governance and The Internet’s Future

• Short Term
  • Eliza Krigman. “Next battle over Net ramps up worldwide.” Politico.
  • Julian Sanchez. “Internet Regulation & the Economics of Piracy.” Cato@Liberty. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/internet-regulation-the-economics-of-piracy/
  • Ian Shapira. “Obama administration joins critics of US nonprofit group that oversees Internet.” The Washington Post. 
• Medium Term
  • Charles Stross. “USENIX 2011 Keynote: Network Security in the Medium Term, 2061 – 2561 AD.” Charlie’s Diary. 

Attendees:

• Ryan P. Adams – Assistant Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering of Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
• Susan Athey – Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Harvard University.
• David Autor - Professor and Associate Department Head, Department of Economics, MIT.
• Gabriella Blum – Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Harvard Law School.
• Daniel Dennett – Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University.
• Peter Galison – Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University
• Andrew Lo – Harris & Harris Group Professor, Director, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, MIT.
• John Markoff – Journalist, The New York Times.
• Andrew McAfee – Principal Research Scientist at Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management.
• John Palfrey – Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean, Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School, Harvard University.
• David Parkes – Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
• Steven Pinker - Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor, Department of Psychology, Harvard University.
• Lisa Randall – Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science, Department of Physics, Harvard University.
• Stuart Shieber – James O. Welch Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
• Marin Soljačić - Professor of Physics, Physics Department, MIT.
• Jeannie Suk – Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Harvard University.
• Jonathan Zittrain - Professor of Law, Harvard Law School/ Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.

Military:

We discussed the modern military use of drones and other semi-autonomous, non-human forms of warfare. There are some ways that robot technology represents merely a new technology in war, like crossbows or gun powder. However, as more and more decisions are aided by machines, there is some evidence that reliance on robots makes humans less likely to overrule in favor of their own judgment in circumstances not anticipated by the AIs. For example, the crash of Air France 447 was traced to the pilots not being trained to handle a situation when the autopilot was not functioning, and not trusting the non-autopilot instruments.

Internationally, forty-five states currently have drone technology, and it is becoming increasingly accessible to non-states. The uses of drones or very small surveillance robots for criminal purposes may become normal, and access to these technologies could increase the power of non-state actors. The combination of WMDs and drone technology could mean that a terrorist organization could deploy a weapon without putting a person on the ground.

Additionally, the lower prices of small surveillance robots and memory storage, and the rise of machine learning may mean that it could become commonplace to monitor activities of civilians at all times to determine appropriate targets. Imagine a microphone near every kitchen table in a small village in Afghanistan, listening for “insurgent” activity.  Law governing surveillance of activities in plain view currently typically relies on the fact that the cost and effort of monitoring and processing information is high enough that mass data collection is not effective.  What should happen when those assumptions no longer hold?

Another question raised by the military use of AI is how to evaluate decisions made by non-human actors. Would countries be responsible for explaining the variables they used and the algorithms that calculate drone decisions? In the past, increases in technological progress have decreased war casualties and, in the case of nuclear weapons, deterred countries from going to war. Wars may become more common as the potential for both collateral and symmetric loss of human life decreases. See, for example, Congress’s debate about drones in Libya – where the lack of human involvement was a reason why some politicians were wiling to get involved. How will norms related to killing change if there is no potential for a human to be harmed on the side of the attacker?

Finance

Recent flash crashes have shown the role of algorithms and high frequency trading in the New York Stock Exchange, and the potential for disaster. For example, in August 2007, a fifteen-minute glitch caused by programmers using a placeholder value of a penny in an algorithm triggered thousands of sell orders. Stock prices of some companies dropped from forty dollars to less than a dollar in minutes, and the NYSE rolled back a certain amount of trades.

High frequency trading is a form of algorithmic trading that is dependent on the ability to trade small amounts of stock quickly in order to make small amounts of money. Trades can be made in under a millisecond, and firms are now competing for servers as physically close to the stock exchange as possible in order to complete trades faster. It’s dubious that high frequency trading is adding significant value or benefit to the market (besides making a small number of people very rich). There is a definite wealth transfer between those with the technology and those without, and increased volatility – perhaps counterintuitive to the notion that quicker trades make for better liquidity and stability.

Inequality between firms with algorithmic potential and those without it is a significant concern. The algorithms are not patentable so firms keep them as trade secrets, and there is a definite gap between firms that can afford to develop algorithms and firms that can’t. Firms with technology will continue to make more money than those without, polarizing the market even further.

Given that flash crashes have already happened, a large portion of this session was devoted to discussing potential methods of regulation, including a tax on trades (“Tobin tax”) or a requirement that trades be posted for a certain amount of time. The Tobin tax has serious downsides, as there are reasons other than algorithmic or high frequency trading for a firm to make many trades quickly; for example, pension funds often need to liquidate lots of stock over a brief time frame. Posting trades for a small amount of time (say one second) has less obvious downsides, and could prevent crashes of the type that happened in 2007.

Because of the secrecy surrounding the algorithms, it has not been possible to measure the systemic risk posed by many automated traders acting at the same time. However, it seems that if limitations on trading are not imposed, regulators should attempt to determine the total risk and whether the rewards are worth it.

Labor:

The type of jobs that computers are able to do has changed significantly over the past couple of years. For example, law firms used to hire associates to do document review for discovery, but now can use computer programs. White collar jobs are becoming increasingly susceptible to automation.

During past revolutions in labor, technologies that improve productivity have not destroyed jobs entirely; they merely move them to different sectors. However, most of the jobs that were replaced were not knowledge workers, but blue collar or manual labor. Because of this difference in the type of jobs replaced, it’s possible that this labor shift won’t result in the same sorts of job movements as past shifts in labor. There is a fundamental disagreement about whether that trend will hold up in the future – whether robots and AI will destroy jobs or whether the jobs will just move to other areas. Some argued that the new jobs created may be “below human dignity,” underpaid or not ideal, but will exist – others saw more of a move towards robots in general, with humans not finding new areas of work.

Another key theme was the question of the appropriateness of computers or robots for jobs that require binding decision-making. So far, most of the advances in labor markets related to computers have been improving productivity, with humans still in control. However, as machines become more sophisticated, it’s possible that they will make fewer errors than similarly situated humans. For example, a parole board in Israel was found to parole 65 percent of prisoners seen at the beginning of the day but the number dropped to near zero by the end of the session when the judges were about to break for lunch. Robots, the claim goes, may be in a better position to make those kinds of decisions– they wouldn’t be swayed by emotional appeals, biases or time of day, and could evaluate based on a specific set of variables. If robots can do better than the equivalent human, should we be prepared to replace parole board members? How do we handle accountability for robot justices?  There was a spirited split within the group on this issue.

There’s a certain discomforting factor about life and death decisions being made by algorithmic processes, even given the foibles of human decision-making. Are there cases where we would want humans to make a decision, even if they are worse at it than an algorithm might be?

Education:

The workshop then had a mini-session about education and the role of the university professor as technology progresses. Examples of teaching affected by technology included Stanford’s AI class (with 54,000 people taking the class via the Internet) and the development of computer simulations of experiments. Using computers to speed up and aid research in some fields is easy; however, technological progress becomes more complicated when it is hard to scale the student-teacher experience.

Technology could help democratize the educational experience; however, some of the spontaneity and personal connections between professors and students might be lost. Allowing for universal access to educational materials may be beneficial, but how do you ensure quality control and preserve the ability of students to interact personally?

The Future:

It’s easy to make doomsday predictions without understanding the science, or to suggest regulation as a kneejerk response, but it’s important to realize that it’s hard to intervene without data.

For the Finance case, an intervention seemed most helpful because there were a clearly defined set of problems and actors. In military and labor, fundamental uncertainty about the next steps along the AI path meant that regulation (or even predictions) seemed unwise. However, all three cases made the participants wish for a better understanding of the systematic risks involved with changes that have already gone on, in order to better prepare for the future.

Summary by Kendra Albert.

“Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore found his iPhone app rejected because it contained “content that ridicules public figures.” Fiore was well-known enough that the rejection raised eyebrows, and Apple later reversed its decision. But the fact that apps must routinely face approval masks how extraordinary the situation is: tech companies are in the business of approving, one by one, the text, images, and sounds that we are permitted to find and experience on our most common portals to the networked world. Why would we possibly want this to be how the world of ideas works, and why would we think that merely having competing tech companies—each of which is empowered to censor—solves the problem?”

Apple’s approach is an example of a larger phenomenon. Microsoft recently released its guidelines for its new Windows 8 app store, and it looks like the company wants the same level of editorial control. From the Windows 8 Store Terms of Use:

You [the developer] may not include or submit any content that is untrue, misleading, defamatory, infringing, or harassing, that constitutes hate speech, that is or includes sexual content, that insinuates profanity, or that is otherwise objectionable.

This places Microsoft’s review team in the position of deciding what is untrue, infringing or otherwise objectionable (not to mention what “insinuates profanity” — a rather odd turn of phrase, perhaps meant to cover sanitized profanity like “sh*t”?).

There is at least one major difference between the current Microsoft store and the Apple store: Microsoft has phrased its licensing in such a way to allow free and open source software to be distributed through the store without breaking either license. In the license to customer section of its app developer agreement, Microsoft says:

Your license terms must also not conflict with the Standard Application License Terms, in any way, except if you include FOSS, your license terms may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of those Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use. “FOSS” means any software licensed under an Open Source Initiative Approved License.

It appears that the Open Source Initiative’s licenses (which include the GPL) will then be commensurable with Microsoft’s, meaning that software developers don’t have to give up their free and open source rights (and requirements) to use the Windows 8 Store.

Like Apple’s OS X App Store, the Windows 8 store is only one method of installing applications on machines running Windows 8. Users can still download applications from the Internet or buy software elsewhere to install on their machines: “sideloading.”

Microsoft reserves the right to retroactively delete from users’ machines any apps that it no longer wants to distribute through the store. It brings to mind the 1984 Kindle incident,where Amazon removed versions of Orwell’s 1984 from purchasers’ Kindles.  ”The death of the PC” is not a claim about the withering away of the PC form-factor — but rather, the end of commonly installing software without requiring the assent of an intermediary.  Apple’s products have provided a model for this end, one now replicated in part by Microsoft.

The linkage between real and virtual, however, paves the way for the meat of the compromise proposal.  It involves an obscure century-old U.S. entity: the International Trade Commission, an “independent, nonpartisan, quasi-judicial federal agency.”  From its website:

“The mission of the U.S. International Trade Commission is to: (1) administer U.S. trade remedy laws within its mandate in a fair and objective manner; (2) provide the President, the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and Congress with independent, quality analysis, information, and support on matters relating to tariffs and international trade and competitiveness; and (3) maintain the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States.”

In general, a U.S. company can complain to the ITC about anti-competitive practices by foreign competitors such as dumping (selling items far below cost to put others out of business) or patent or trademark infringement (making product knock-offs).  The ITC, in turn, can affirm that such practices are happening, which then leads to a complex process by which the U.S. Department of Commerce can impose punitive tariffs on the import of foreign goods.  You can see a list of “cases” pending before the ITC here. (Cases may belong in quotes because, as the ITC says, “The USITC is NOT a policymaking body. It is NOT a court of law. It does NOT negotiate trade agreements.”)

The ITC process takes awhile.  For example, in March of 2010 Apple lodged a complaint about HTC infringing its patents.  An administrative judge set a target date to rule about it around 15 months from the complaint; and the ITC made an initial determination in July of 2011.

With this background, we can infer how the framers of the SOPA compromise came up with the idea of bringing in the ITC. One big problem with the original SOPA proposal is that private parties could go directly to intermediaries like payment providers and ad networks with complaints about sites “dedicated to theft of U.S. property” and demand that they be cut off, with no disinterested party weighing in on the merits of the complaint. With the ITC, there’s a way to get some due process into the picture: under the compromise, private parties aggrieved by copyright infringement made possible by foreign web sites lodge complaints with the ITC over “digital imports … by foreign websites.”

If the ITC agrees the the foreign website is infringing copyright, it could issue a cease-and-desist order against the website, and the rightsholders could then use the order to compel domestic payment providers and ad networks to break off relationships with the foreign site.  There’s also provision for the ITC to penalize rightsholders who lodge frivolous claims.

But there are important issues left unresolved in the draft — which, at two pages, doesn’t cover many details.  On a mundane level, it’s not clear what counts as a foreign website.  SOPA’s definition was odd: it was any site that used an overseas registrar for its domain name.  That’s an unusual definition — it could include lots of sites that are hosted in the US but just happened to register a domain name by using an overseas name retailer.  Presumably the right definition covers only sites that are truly overseas, and perhaps completely so — ones beyond the reach of traditional U.S. civil law enforcement processes, which is why further legislation is called for.

More fundamentally, there’s a question about how well suited the ITC is to solve the due process worries of the original SOPA’s notice-and-takedown.   A look at the ITC’s current caseload shows comparatively low volume and long lead times — a few dozen open cases at any one time.  If the idea is to go after “kingpin” sites — the Pirate Bays of the world — then this may not be a problem. But if the proponents of Congressional action here are hoping to do voluminous takedowns of an expansive and rotating cast of sites, then the ITC’s involvement becomes tricky.  The proposal alludes to “boost[ing] the ITC’s administrative capacities,” perhaps in anticipation of having to buff up the commission’s infrastructure to handle an influx of claims.  However, more staff doesn’t address the deeper problem of a punt to the ITC.  To sort out meritorious claims of undue infringement from borderline ones from frivolous ones, each adjudication would likely take days or weeks.  That pace would likely not satisfy IP holders, who want to be able to whack the moles as they pop up.  But to make the process hours instead of days would eliminate the value of getting a quasi-public agency into the mix to determine the validity of claims.  HTC isn’t going anywhere, so Apple can bring a case to the ITC about its claimed patent infringement.  It’s a different story with a site like listen4ever.

As a political matter, SOPA may have represented an opening bid in a negotiation — after which the SOPA proposers found themselves surprised that it might actually pass unamended. Pushback across the spectrum has made that outcome less likely, and this compromise could be a continuation of a negotiation.  (To be sure, the Congressional proponents of SOPA appear to be unimpressed by this compromise, while suggesting that some changes will be made.)

The question Congress ideally would take up before passing anything is an empirical one, because overseas copyright infringement is a classic example of a public policy issue that hungers for real data.  We’d do well to have less unanchored rhetoric around this topic and more information about just what kinds of sites proponents want to target and what evidence they can produce to show the harm these sites are causing. Then Congress could evaluate how risky or costly legislative action against those sorts of sites would prove.  This is an earnest plea — we really could benefit from good data here.

Without it, any compromise may be simply pitted against a caricatured initial proposal — when both are ill-considered.  Bottom line: the Wyden compromise is significantly better than the original SOPA proposal, and it might form the basis for a new law against egregious overseas “kingpin” infringement.  A narrowly tailored proposal fleshing out the compromise would test how much the publishers seeking the law mean to go after only the big fish.  And developing some real data on the scope of the problem and the impact of solutions is both desirable and doable.