[Air-L] a question about privacy protection and copyright in Internet research

jeremy hunsinger jhuns at vt.edu
Tue May 10 09:18:04 PDT 2011


so i guess we should be clear here:

we have nations, states and laws, that is one level of argument

nation states and laws also have ethical review systems 

ethical review systems for research is another level of argument

research ethics fit within those ethical review systems and are generally recognized by them

though you may or your discipline may hold standards above and beyond those standards that you need to deal with

my main issue here is to  promote the construction that published documents are not a matter of human subjects, or if they are it is in very rare cases, so rare that they need not really even be considered by human subjects review, which currently they are exempt in the u.s..  I want to resist the academic temptation to turn every textual object into a representational ethical subject and say.. no.. this is just like a book, or this is jut like a newspaper, and in the rare cases when it is not, i want to be very explicit about why it is not.  In terms of databases, I want to compare them to existing database practices in the social sciences and say this is just like x, and we have been treating x like this for z number of years years, if it is not like x, then say why.  However, any time you say why it is not like x, you cannot in my mind be using an argument that they could have used in the past.  In short, I'm trying to encourage and promote a rigorous approach to differentiation between subjects and non-subjects in research ethics on the internet, because in my mind, it is needed and we strongly need to resist the temptation to turn everything into a research subject.  

I am not trying to say that we do not need judgment, nor am I trying to argue that the traditions we have need updated, what I am saying is that we need rigorous clarity much more than not.  We need to say this is a document, this is not a subject, and this is a subject and this is not a document, here are the categories where there is confusion.

the two categories we seem to be confused about in this discussion are:

privacy

property/copyright

my position on privacy is that a document is public and not private, and if you have private information in a document you should really investigate the nature of that private information, because it has been published and may not even be private anymore.

and the latter category is not really my expertise, we have lawyers on the list that can tell you much more closely about it.  But my suspicion is that most of the issues of privacy are confusions about who actually owns data or owns what rights to the data.  and what that means.


so to reiterate, I'm taking a strong line that tries to make clear the differences between document and subject, and I welcome arguments, but i also see it as a process, i admit that i am arguing a standpoint and occasionally i am also playing devil's advocate to force an issue or to force debate on an issue, and I'm happy to be wrong, so long as I am wrong and we have much more clarity.  







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