[Air-L] on the Wayback Machine (was public/private [part 1 of 2])

Lois Ann Scheidt lscheidt at indiana.edu
Mon Aug 13 17:40:59 PDT 2007


My point was not related to the actual capturing of the pictures or 
their posting on the web...I have lots of questions about the ethics of 
both those acts.  My point is that once they were posted on a publicly 
accessible website, the late night talk show hosts didn't substantially 
increase the potential audience for the posted pictures.

As for your final comment...clearly we disagree on that one in relation 
to research at least...and as I am not a lawyer I will make no comments 
outside that limitation.

Lois Ann Scheidt

Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana
University, Bloomington IN USA

Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and
IUPUC, Columbus IN USA

Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com


Quoting Michael Zimmer <michael.zimmer at nyu.edu>:

> How are they not adding to the potential audience? When I'm sitting
> in the park, there are a finite number of people in the park who
> happen to be looking in my direction at the precise moment my finger
> enters my nose. Isn't that often part of the calculus when people do
> embarrassing things in public - that few people will see it, and
> those that do don't know me, etc.
>
> Now, having said action captured by a camera -- a camera, mind you,
> that no one gave consent to (many public CCTV systems are required to
> at least post notice - not so with Google's cute little cars roaming
> our cities with their 11-lens cameras) -- and then indexed and
> uploaded by one of the world's largest brokers of information
> constitutes a significant shift in my expectations of the visibility
> of my action. I had never considered (nor had any say in the matter)
> as to whether it would be recorded, meta-tagged with a location
> (perhaps even the date), nor made available online.
>
> Even if we feel that isn't a violation of contextual integrity (see
> Nissenbaum), I could perhaps rest assured that it is highly unlikely
> that someone happens to stumble upon that particular image from the
> millions captured by Google. Surely, few will find it, let alone my
> mother. Enter Mr Leno & Mr Letterman (don't know if it was them - but
> for sake of example...). Now, instead of me relying on the obscurity
> of the particular image to protect my embarrassment, its existence
> and URL has been broadcast to millions by two popular and trusted
> celebrities. Ping!
>
> IMO, the whole "you did it in public anyway" argument holds little
> water...
>
> -mz
>
> -----
> Michael Zimmer, PhD
> Microsoft Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School
> e: michael.zimmer at nyu.edu
> w: http://michaelzimmer.org
>
>
>
> On Aug 13, 2007, at 6:43 PM, Lois Ann Scheidt wrote:
>>
>> Not to mention the potential embarrassment to the gentleman from
>> Arizona - I think it was Arizona - who was captured sitting on a park
>> bench picking his nose.  The potential embarrassment would be
>> increased
>> - at least in some writers estimation - because all the late night
>> talk
>> show hosts pointed directly at this guy in their monologues...even
>> giving the URL in some cases.
>>
>> HOWEVER, since the action in question - said nose picking - took place
>> in public and was captured and posted on the web...the late night talk
>> show hosts might have been shining a brighter light on the whole thing
>> but they were not adding to the potential audience.
>>
>>
>> Lois
>>
>
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