[Air-L] Reputation Economies in Cyberspace Symposium (fwd)

[Barry Wellman]

Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:36:36 -0400
From: Laura Forlano
Subject: [mobile-society] Reputation Economies in Cyberspace Symposium

FYI

The Information Society Project at Yale Law School is proud to
present Reputation Economies in Cyberspace.  The symposium will be
held on December 8, 2007 at Yale Law School in New Haven, CT.

This event will bring together representatives from industry,
government, and academia to explore themes in online reputation,
community-mediated information production, and their implications for
democracy and innovation. The symposium is made possible by the
generous support of the Microsoft Corporation.

A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of
reputation economies in four panels: (1) Making Your Name Online; (2)
Privacy and Reputation Protection; (3) Reputation and Information
Quality; and (4) Ownership of Cyber-Reputation.  See below for more
detail on each panel; a current list of confirmed speakers is
available at the conference website.

Online registration is available now at: https://wems.worldtek.com/
RepEcon . There is a $95 registration fee, which includes lunch. Yale
students and faculty and members of the press may attend for free.
For more information, see: http://isp.law.yale.edu/reputation .


Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace

http://isp.law.yale.edu/reputation

Panel I: Making Your Name Online

Moderator:  Jack Balkin
Panelists: Michel Bauwens , Rishab A. Ghosh, Hassan Masum, Beth Noveck

This panel will discuss the shifts in the reputation economy that we
are witnessing, largely the transition from accreditation to
participatory, community-based modes of reputation management. Some
of the questions the panel will address include:

What are the new norms for cyber-reputation?
How do these depart from offline models?
How can reputation in one online system be transported to another?
How do SNS and reputation connect?
How do you bootstrap and cash out?

Panel II: Privacy and Reputational Protection

Moderator: Michael Zimmer
Panelists: Alessandro Acquisti , Danielle Citron, William McGeveran ,
Dan Solove , Jonathan Zittrain

Cyber-reputation management is based on transactions in information
that is often sensitive and is always contextual.  This brings up
many questions about the need to protect one's privacy and reputation
within and outside this system. Some of the questions the panel will
address:

How is participation in cyber-reputation systems related to
defamation and free speech?
What happens when cyber-reputation spills over into offline
activities and relationships like the political process, job
applications, or school admissions?
What happens when your second life meets your first?
Requiring divulgence of real name or other personal data. Is opting
out possible?
Pending legislation on S495 - data security and privacy (Senator Leahy)

Panel III: Reputational Quality and Information Quality

Moderator: Laura Forlano
Panelists: Urs Gasser, Ashish Goel, Auren Hofman, Darko Kirovski ,
Mari Kuraishi

Evidently, unlike traditional reputation mechanisms that relied on
small group acquaintances and formal accreditation mechanisms, the
cyber-reputation economy is heavily mediated by technology. This
raises the risk of breaking the delicate checks and balances that are
necessary for the system to ensure quality of both the informational
outcomes and the participants' reputation. This panel will try to
highlight the connections between the way the new systems are built,
and the outcome they produce. Some of the questions the panel will
address:

How can we assure quality in online reputation economies?
What is the connections between the system design and the quality
information?
How good are the alternative accreditation mechanisms and how easy
are they to hijack?
How can employment discrimination law adapt to the realities of
online reputation?

Panel IV: Ownership of Cyber-Reputation

Moderator: Eddan Katz
Panelists: John Clippinger , Eric Goldman, Bob Sutor, Mozelle
Thompson , Rebecca Tushnet

The data and information that are collected in online reputation
systems are both valuable and powerful. The ability to control this
information, store it, process it, access it, and transport it are
crucial to the maintenance of the reputation economy. This panel will
address the important set of questions that concern the ownership of
this information. Some questions the panel will address:

Who owns one's online reputation? Who owns the metadata?
How portable is online reputation? Should it be transportable from
one system to another?
How is reputation connected to the interoperability question? Should
we have international standards governing reputation?