[Air-L] Legal challenges for research

Wed Oct 28 07:40:08 PDT 2020

Hi,

This might be of guidance, in this post Christian Sandvig is giving some background to his ordeal with the U.S. government: https://socialmediacollective.org/2016/07/01/why-i-am-suing-the-government/ 

And a copy of the commentary from the Sandvig vs. Sessions court case: https://casetext.com/case/sandvig-v-sessions

Quote from the first paragraph: 

"It's a dangerous business, reading the fine print. Nearly every website we visit features Terms of Service ("ToS"), those endless lists of dos and don'ts conjured up by lawyers to govern our conduct in cyberspace. They normally remain a perpetual click away at the bottom of every web page, or quickly scrolled past as we check the box stating that we agree to them. But to knowingly violate some of those terms, the Department of Justice tells us, could get one thrown in jail. This reading of federal law is a boon to prosecutors hoping to deter cybercrime. Yet it also creates a dilemma for those with more benign intentions. Plaintiffs in this case, for instance, are researchers who wish to find out whether websites engage in discrimination, but who have to violate certain ToS to do so..."

Some more reading tips: 

“Do Researchers Need to Follow TOS?” SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee, November 30, 2017. https://medium.com/sigchi-ethics-committee/do-researchers-need-to-follow-tos-f3bde1950d3c.

Vaccaro, Kristen, Karrie Karahalios, Christian Sandvig, Kevin Hamilton, and Cedric Langbort. “Agree or
Cancel? Research and Terms of Service Compliance.” 2015 CSCW Workshop on Ethics for Studying
Sociotechnical Systems in a Big Data World, 2015.

Eriksson, Maria et al. The Spotify Teardown (this brought on some legal controversy between Spotify, the researchers and the Swedish research funding Vetenskapsrådet)
http://umu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?language=sv&pid=diva2%3A1296860&dswid=4693

Best,
Evelina

Den 2020-10-28 15:34 skrev "Air-L på uppdrag av Casey Fiesler" <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org på uppdrag av Casey.Fiesler at Colorado.EDU> följande:

    Hi Mirko -   This is just one piece of the issue, but I recently published a paper analyzing legal issues in researchers violating terms of service when collecting data. https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/7290

    —
    Casey Fiesler
    Assistant Professor
    Department of Information Science
    University of Colorado Boulder

    www.caseyfiesler.com<http://www.caseyfiesler.com>
    @cfiesler

    On Oct 28, 2020, at 8:26 AM, Schaefer, M.T. (Mirko) <m.t.schaefer at uu.nl<mailto:m.t.schaefer at uu.nl>> wrote:

    Dear all,

    probably, you have seen the latest reports of Zoom shutting down a panel on Zoom censorship or Facebook's cease and desist letter to the NYU's political ad targeting project. I am interested whether there are more examples of legal challenges for researchers. I am particularly interested in issues revolving around GDPR and social media research, contract law and data collection from services such as LexisNexis or others, and terms of use and platforms.

    I am also interested in the role of university DPO's in reviewing research design, and the infrastructure or the modus operandi put in place (or not) by universities to enable researchers to comply with GDPR, and the legal support (or the lack of it) universities provide for their researchers to carry out their tasks.

    I'd be very grateful for hints to literature, case examples, your own experience etc.

    Thanks a lot and best wishes,
    mirko
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