[ecrea] CFP: Whose information is it?

Whose Information Is It Anyway?  In Search of a New Balance

A by-invitation experts’ workshop

New America Foundation and the Penn State Institute for Information Policy

September 10-12, 2014



CALL FOR PAPERS: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JULY 25



Traditional notions of individual and public rights with respect to 
information are being redefined across a broad front, raising profound 
challenges to freedom of speech, assembly, association, and 
communication.  The aggregation, archiving and use of information also 
have profound implications for the future of national security and 
business strategy. Currently, decision-makers are responding to 
capabilities enabled by new technologies, for which appropriate usage 
norms have not yet emerged, and are struggling to formulate coherent 
strategies addressing some fundamental questions.  Can and should the 
legitimate demands of border security, law and order and the prevention 
of terrorism limit an individual's rights over personal and/or private 
information? What restraints on the collection, aggregation and use of 
personal information should exist?  How do we balance the principles of 
zones of personal privacy, the right to control one’s most personal 
information, and ownership rights over digital media, with the benefits 
of vibrant markets in information goods and services?  Is there a 
general right to have one’s personal information removed from all 
commercial digital databases?  Are there practical models that respect 
human dignity without crippling data aggregators?

Vociferous information ownership debates are taking place in the 
copyright and intellectual property fields as well. The digitization of 
content has enabled access to works that have not been in circulation 
for years, if not centuries. Yet some copyright/IP holders have 
suggested that works in the public domain, if not actively defended, 
should be privatized, and works that currently benefit from the 
time-limited protection of law for the public’s benefit should become 
the permanent property of private rights holders, effectively ending the 
“public domain.”  There are modest examples of alternatives: the Open 
Source community; the Creative Commons/ copyleft movement; the 
increasing emergence of collaborative no-charge academic journals, etc.  
What are the practical models that strengthen the public domain, and 
still provide sufficient incentives for creative productions?

We've heard the traditional answers to these questions and invite 
prospective authors to comment in an independent, scholarly, and 
innovative way on topics regarding control of information in the 21st 
Century.  Multidisciplinary approaches are encouraged that combine 
theory and evidence to evolve integrative and long-term perspectives on 
information rights.

The Institute for Information Policy (IIP) at Penn State and the X-Lab 
at the New America Foundation (NAF) are pleased to announce this call 
for papers that offer new (or updated) perspectives and theories about 
the balance between the rights of individuals, states, businesses and 
the public in information and personal data. Authors of selected papers 
will be invited to present them during a three day, invitation-only 
workshop designed to bring together a diverse group of experts and to be 
held at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. This Workshop is 
the 9th in a series of events on “Making Policy Research Accessible,” 
organized by the IIP, with the support of the Ford Foundation and the 
Media Democracy Fund. Presenters at the workshop will be invited to 
submit their completed papers for review by the Journal of Information 
Policy (www.jip-online.org). The workshop will take place on September 
10-12, 2014, the days leading to the 42nd annual TPRC conference.

Invited topics include, but are not limited to:

·       Information policy and national security

·       Balancing privacy and security

·       Data mining and privacy

·       The SOPA/PIPA debate aftermath

·       New avenues for academic publishing

·       Personal freedoms in the digital age

·       Cybersecurity

·       Patent reform and patent “trolls”

·       Individual ownership of personal information

·       The “right to be forgotten”

·       The relationship of government agencies and data-based enterprises

·       New theories of digital intellectual property

·       The future (if any) of the “first sale” doctrine

·       Are we compromising our security? The U.S. role in data insecurity

·       Are commercial/trade secrets the same as national security secrets?

·       “Big Data,” AI, and data security and privacy in the inter-cloud

·       Extraterritoriality of the U.S. I.P. regime

·       Privacy and the “Internet of Things”

·       Bio-enhancements and privacy

·       Smart infrastructure, surveillance, and privacy



Abstracts of up to 500 words and a short bio of the author(s) should be 
submitted to

(pennstateiip /at/ psu.edu) by July 25, 2014. Please write IIPXLABWS: YOUR NAME 
in the subject line. Abstracts not sent according to the above 
instructions will not be reviewed. Accepted presenters will be notified 
by August 1, 2014.

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