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

jeremy hunsinger jhuns at vt.edu
Tue May 10 15:16:02 PDT 2011


On May 10, 2011, at 5:52 PM, Michael Zimmer wrote:

> Like Alex, I now have a better understanding the how/why you're trying to make this strong distinction between "documents" and "human subjects". But my broader concern is that some of the statements made seem to indicate that even if we decide a particular item under study is not a "human subject", then we don't need to consider any possible impact on the human connected to that document. 

there is a perfectly extensive ethics of things, but I'm not certain how much we really need to say... worry about a research ethics where one is researching say.. toasters connecting to the internet.  It isn't that there aren't ethical implications it is just that the questions of either Harm or Autonomy associated with questions of researching something are mitigated to an extent to make them mostly moot, but that does not mean they should not be 'cared' for in our judgment or reflexivity, it is just that we should not believe that the 1 in say 10000 possibility that this will have any harm at all... is really to be the center of our focus. 
> 
> To me, research ethics reaches beyond strict "human subject" distinctions or whether a project is strictly under the purview of an IRB.

Ethics can extend all over the place according to personal preference, but I should think that research ethics are a bit beyond that, and then the question becomes, as an association, should we be promoting a minoritarian perspective which could in the future come back to really impinge our ability to do research.
> 
> Things brings me back to my earlier concern with Jeremy's apparent assertion that once something is published, it is no longer private, and thus we needn't worry ourselves with privacy/ethical concerns.  And I'm reading his meaning to include cases where that publication is without the explicit knowledge or consent of the subject.  Please correct me if I'm mistaken here, Jeremy, because it then begs the question about how the publication of illegally obtained data would fit into your framework.

as i sort of indicated, i wasn't interested so much in the legal/illegal bit, because i don't think it really is a central question.  Have you ever seen illegally obtained data?  I don't think i've ever seen it and I look.  I have seen unethically obtained data, and it is now in a book that is expected to be a best seller.  


>  If Anonymous publishes personal data from the Sony PlayStation database breech, can we researchers use that data without concern over subject privacy?

I don't think you can legally contract with Anonymous that would guarantee anything... would you use that data?  I don't know any researcher that would use it if they couldn't really know they had rights to use it by its owners  But for instance, if Bethesda Gameworks gave you data including all information about users of their game, all kinds of data that was given to them, even if the company promised to keep the data for some purpose, and not distribute it, i do not think anyone would have any problem with using that data if it was legally contracted from that company.  

Is it unethical to use illegally provided data?  I think that would depend, I can imagine a situation where it might be viewed as heroic and worldchanging in an and entirely ethical way to use such data.  Have I seen people use that data in such a way?  no.  So am I worried about that problem, No.  Do i think we should be telling people what data they can use that might be illegally obtained?  no.  Let the lawyers do that.


>  Are you suggesting that users took the risk that Sony might have flawed security, and users automatically lost any interest in the data once they submitted it to the 3rd party?

That very well can be the case too whether the data is legally or illegally obtained.  Some people give up their rights to their data through a  contract.  We might be against the giving up those rights, but I do not think we are unethical if we get that data legitimately and possibly if we don't.    I do not think the ethics of this problem lies with the ethical researcher as much as it lies with the problem of information literacy and other issues.   This I see as one of the problems of researching myspace or facebook where in the U.S. many of the users do not even have the capacity to consent in this country, as such if you are given data or even just use api access to view that data... what are you doing?  isn't that unethical, don't you need irb approval to view the website?  I will say... no, even with protected classes unable to consent, viewing the data isn't a problem for research ethics.   The abstracted representation of data is not working with human subjects in and ethical manner in this case, it is just interacting with a set of documents that form a website.


Jeremy Hunsinger
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
Virginia Tech



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