Seeking Changes to the DMCA
CNet (03/31/06) Broache, Anne; McCullagh, Declan
The entertainment industry has been lobbying the U.S. Copyright Office to
head off changes to the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) of 1998 that security experts have been pushing for to protect their
research. Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten
said that he and J. Alex Halderman, a graduate student, discovered the Sony
rootkit vulnerability a month before it became public knowledge, but were
unable to come forward for fear of a lawsuit under Section 1201 of the
DMCA, which prohibits such a disclosure without the authorization of the
record company. "A great many of consumers were at risk every day," due to
the delay, Felten said. "Our exemption request is fundamentally asking for
protection for those consumers." Previously, security researchers would
notify vendors directly upon finding a flaw, though since the DMCA took
effect, the climate has become tainted by fear of litigation, and some
security researchers have actually left the field, Felten said. He claims
that once he discovered the Sony vulnerability, he contacted his lawyers
and opted not to publish his results immediately. Others have argued that
Felten would not have had any legal liability had he published his
findings, and Steven Metalitz of the International Intellectual Property
Alliance, an organization representing major copyright holders, has said
that Section 1201 already gives security researchers ample latitude to
conduct their work. Sony's first attempt at an uninstaller for the rootkit
was severely flawed, and Felten and other security experts developed
alternatives to better protect against inadvertent reinstallation, though
he says that they still fear litigation. Rules against circumventing
copyright technologies create risk, said Matthew Schruers of the Computer
and Communications Industry Association. "So that raises for me a
perplexing question: Why on earth are we putting cybersecurity in the hands
of copyright lawyers?"
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In a Wired South Korea, Robots Will Feel Right at
Home
New York Times (03/02/06) P. 4; Onishi, Norimitsu
After successfully bringing broadband connectivity to 72 percent of all
households in the last five years, making it the most wired country in the
world, South Korea is now mobilizing its scientists and business leaders to
develop robots that can integrate into human society, teaching children to
speak English or performing public safety tasks. The Ministry of
Information and Communication, which has already amassed a development team
of more than 30 companies and 1,000 scientists, wants to have a robot in
every household between 2015 and 2020, if not sooner. On the heels of the
1997 Asian financial crisis, South Korea determined that a sound future lay
in extensive technological investment, and to that end deregulated
telecommunications and Internet service and invested in companies laying
cable throughout the country. Thanks to government-subsidized technology,
South Koreans have been able to watch free TV on their cell phones since
January. And later this month, South Korea will roll out WiBro, a
nationwide, 10-Mbps wireless Internet service. Roughly 17 million South
Koreans of a population of 48 million belong to Cyworld, a Web service
where people share opinions and interact through an interconnected cluster
of home pages. Technology has transformed South Korean society to a
greater extent than perhaps any other country, as the ubiquity of the
Internet enables opinions to spread with lightning speed and has given rise
to broad-based social movements virtually overnight, while also raising
some ethics and usage issues. South Korea wants to become the world's
third-largest robot producer by 2013, having opted to develop service
robots that gain intelligence by being connected to a network, rather than
autonomous robots designed for military or industrial purposes.
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An Affordable Future for Eye Tracking in Sight
IST Results (04/03/06)
The IST-funded COGAIN project is exploring current eye-tracking
technologies in an attempt to standardize the available products and bring
costs down, ultimately delivering more independence to people with
disabilities. "It's a big project and it's novel in that it brings
together all the interested parties," said project coordinator Kari-Jouko
Raiha, a computer science professor at the Finnish University of Tampere.
The project could help people who have lost all capacity for motion except
in their eyes, which become their only means of communication. The project
could also improve the quality of life for those stricken with Cerebral
Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Existing
equipment at the cutting edge operates with impressive spatial and temporal
resolution, though the camera, computer, and software to integrate the two
are very expensive, says Raiha. By partnering with manufacturers, COGAIN
expects to bring down the cost of equipment and standardize control of the
proprietary software so that anyone can develop applications. COGAIN could
also develop its own applications, such as a new method of text entry, like
the system being developed at the University of Cambridge, a project
partner, that enables users to select letters as they move across the
screen by fixing their gaze on them. Other researchers are exploring
software to manipulate environmental controls and steer a wheelchair by
tracking eye movements. While the project's immediate aim is to improve
the quality of life for the disabled, the project could have an impact on
commercial applications beyond health care, such the rapidly growing
video-game industry, or in cars to alert drivers when they become drowsy.
"Though we wouldn't be pursuing these specialized applications," Raiha
said, "we are more interested in potential mainstream applications."
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Engineering and IT Majors Getting Notice
Dallas Morning News (04/02/06) Jacobs, Scott
Graduating college seniors with degrees in IT and engineering are entering
a welcoming a job market offering more jobs and higher salaries according
to recruiters and placement officers. "We have seen a big increase in the
number of companies that are recruiting engineering students," said Michael
Powell, director of the Engineering Career Assistance Center at the
University of Texas in Austin. Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports that
this year's entry-level job market is the best since 2001, while the
National Association of Colleges and Employers predicts a 4.3 percent
increase in salaries for civil engineering majors, and included computer
science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information
sciences and systems, computer engineering, and chemical engineering on its
list of the 10 most in-demand majors. This year's graduating class is also
the first to have entered college knowing about the tech bust, suggesting
that IT graduates are more likely to be drawn to the field out of a genuine
interest than by the promise of huge salary, according to Michael Doty,
director of the career center at the University of Texas at Dallas. Doty
says that among the healthiest IT fields are auditing, accounting, and
security. Challenger CEO John Challenger says that applicants improve
their chances by getting as much practical experience as possible in the
form of part-time jobs, internships, and co-ops throughout college.
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Computers to Learn Cardiff Accent
BBC News (03/30/06)
A group of researchers from the University of Birmingham is visiting
Cardiff, Wales, in search of people with a genuine local accent to build
better speech recognition software, which often falters when trying to
discern regional accents. Qualified subjects will have lived near Cardiff
all their lives, and have parents who hail from the same area. Speech
recognition is being used more widely in devices such as cell phones,
computers, and cars, but its ability to recognize different accents has
lagged behind. "People adapt to new accents very quickly, but it is
extraordinarily hard to make computers do the same," said lead investigator
Martin Russell, adding that his team's research will also provide insight
into the multitude of accents in the British Isles of the 21st century.
Russell's team will interview people in 17 different locations across
Britain and Ireland.
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An Open-Source Run-Time for Distributed HPC
HPC Wire (03/31/06) Vol. 15, No. 13,Feldman, Michael
Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Ralph Castain says the
open-source OpenRTE project aims to: Supply a seamless, transparent
distributed computing environment where users can perform their
applications in a single cluster or on multiple clusters, and/or blend
individual applications, without having to revise their application code;
generate a resilient, production-quality platform where high-performance
computing (HPC) applications are executable; and create a malleable system
built atop a component framework that lets developers "overload" any
OpenRTE operation, thus effecting the required research to support new
enhanced features in a production environment. Castain describes OpenRTE
as both complementary to and an evolution of grid computing technology.
OpenRTE's design owes something to developers' previous experience with
grid-based computing, but there are notable distinctions. Unlike grid
computing, OpenRTE uses a component- rather than Web-services-based
architecture and is designed to work exclusively on the user level and
concentrate solely on scientific or technical applications. The
evolutionary nature of OpenRTE lies in its support of the distributed,
interconnected computing model at the core of grid computing. Castain
expects the evolution of OpenRTE to move forward in two domains--the
enablement of new HPC capabilities and the simplification of HPC computing.
The scientist believes the latter of these two developments will encourage
more people to join the HPC community.
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The Best of Times in Science and Tech
CNet (04/03/06) Olsen, Stefanie
In a recent interview, SRI International CEO Curt Carlson shared his
thoughts on the future of science and innovation. Carlson said that SRI,
an autonomous nonprofit since its spinoff from Stanford University in 1970,
is conducting extensive research in bio-informatics, using computing
technology to develop new drugs. An SRI technology for a robotic surgery
that uses probes to allow a doctor to work inside the chest cavity without
having to make a large incision, or even be physically present during the
procedure, spawned Intuitive Surgical, now a $4 billion company. DARPA has
recently awarded SRI and Intuitive Surgical a grant to scale the technology
down further to make it usable in battlefield situations. Carlson believes
in the "genius of the team" when it comes to innovation, insisting that
everybody in an organization must be involved in the process to create a
true climate of innovation. The convergence of different discoveries has
transformed the way scientists practice their craft and ushered in an era
of unprecedented opportunity in science and technology, according to
Carlson, who noted that since 1950, the greatest increase in productivity
in a five-year period has been in the last five years, in spite of the
dot-com bust, the Sept. 11 attacks, and the war on terror. In computing,
Carlson said the Internet still needs to be faster and safer, and that a
whole new architecture is needed. He also notes that the United States
fails to produce enough computer scientists, and that declining levels of
interest come from the media reporting more about an industry in decline
rather than the tremendous opportunities available today. Carlson believes
that scientific research is in good shape, but that the key to success is a
collaborative approach, rather than the do-it-yourself model of the large
corporate facility. SRI focuses now on putting together teams of experts
from different organizations to move quickly and in a decentralized
fashion, and considers team building one of the disciplines of
innovation.
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Internet Injects Sweeping Change Into U.S.
Politics
New York Times (04/02/06) P. 1; Nagourney, Adam
With November's midterm election fast approaching, Democrats and
Republicans alike are stepping up their use of email, interactive Web
sites, candidate and party blogs, and text messaging to organize
get-out-the-vote efforts and assemble crowds for rallies. One reason why
party operatives say they are increasingly relying on the Internet to get
their message across is because using the Web is far more efficient and
less costly than traditional methods such as knocking on doors or running
telephone banks. In addition, new technology--such as podcasts featuring a
daily downloaded message from a candidate, or so-called viral attack
videos, designed to set off peer-to-peer distribution by email chains
without being associated with any candidate or campaign--allows campaigns
to target a more specific audience than a TV ad. Analysts also say the
Internet could be a good way for both parties to target young voters.
Carol Darr of the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet at
George Washington University says that 80 percent of people ages 18 to 34
who contributed to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign made their
contributions online. But although the Internet has proven useful for both
parties to reach their political base--who tend to visit and linger at
political sites--it has proven to be less effective at swaying voters who
are not interested in politics. And in this age of multitasking, voters
are not as captive to a Web site as they may be to a TV ad or a campaign
mailing. "It's very easy to look at something and just click delete," said
Carl Forti with the National Republican Congressional Committee.
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U.S. Slow to Switch to New Web Protocol
Washington Times (03/31/06) P. C11; Caterinicchia, Dan
Although the Defense Department began to switch over to IPv6 in 2003, the
United States has fallen behind many nations in Asia and Europe in the
transition as the 2008 deadline approaches. Under the current IPv4, less
than 24 percent of the possible addresses are unused, while the new
protocol could provide trillions of unique addresses for every human being.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) set the 2008 deadline for
federal agencies to adopt the new protocol after a Government
Accountability Office report found that the Defense Department was alone
among federal agencies in preparing for the transition. The Chinese
government is subsidizing the transition for its telecommunications
companies, and Japan and the EU are offering incentives for businesses to
make the switch. U.S. transition activities have been predominantly funded
by the private sector. China is also preparing to host the 2008 Summer
Olympics, which it intends to use as a showcase for its technological
capabilities. To keep pace, some industry members have called for the
creation of a dedicated transition office, though OMB has no intentions of
creating such an organization. "IPv6 is part of the IT investments that
are already included in the E-Gov and IT offices' responsibilities," OMB's
Alex Conant said. Only about 10 percent of the world's 8,000 Internet
service providers currently offer IPv6, and practical benefits of the new
protocol for consumers are not likely to appear earlier than three or four
years.
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Technologist Proposes Net Neutrality Solution
Telephony Online (03/29/06) Wilson, Carol
Former FCC CTO David Farber has proposed the formation of an independent
group of experts to determine the future of Net neutrality, much as such
groups have addressed issues such as spectrum allocation in the past. Such
a group will allow for a coherent debate without the glare of the press.
"We can get together under the auspices of CMU [Carnegie Mellon University,
where he is currently affiliated] and Penn and people can talk and say
things they mean without attribution," says Farber. He says, "It has to be
fast and it has to inform the Congress with a set of facts." The group
Farber has in mind would be comprised of expert economists, regulatory
officials, and technologists. The debate over Net neutrality pits cable
and telecom firms against content providers such as Google and Yahoo! as
well as providers of various services, including VoIP. Normally, Farber
says such issues would be handled by the National Research Council, but
that process takes too long. Farber has an extensive background in
Internet technology and distributed computing. He was involved in the
design and implementation of Computer Science Net, NSFNet, and NASAs
Research and Education Network, all forerunners to today's Internet. He
also worked for 11 years at Bell Labs, where he helped design the first
electronic switching system, which is now core technology for today's phone
network.
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U.S. Retakes Lead in Ranking of Tech Readiness
Associated Press (03/28/06)
The United States has recaptured its ranking as the most tech-ready nation
in the World Economic Forum's networked readiness index after temporarily
losing it to Singapore, marking the third time in five years that America
has led the rest of the world. The forum based its assessment on such
factors as low telephone and Internet pricing and the quality of math and
science education. "The long pipeline of scientific and technological
innovation is a remarkable source of strength for the U.S. economy," noted
report co-editor Augusto Lopez-Claros, while co-editor Soumitra Dutta with
the INSEAD international business school cited the ready availability of
venture capital as well as broad collaboration between research entities
and business. The forum still awarded high marks to second-place holder
Singapore, which made the top three rankings of the index for the fourth
year in a row on the strength of its outstanding regulatory domain and
world-class levels of education and training. Denmark was ranked the third
most tech-ready country, while Iceland, Finland, and Sweden ranked fourth,
fifth, and eighth, respectively; the Nordic nations were cited for their
friendliness toward new business ventures and a bent for embracing the
latest technologies.
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Native Language Domains Threaten 'Net
Network World (03/27/06) Vol. 23, No. 12, P. 7; Marsan, Carolyn Duffy
ICANN's delay in implementing internationalized domain names (IDNs)
threatens the foundations of the Internet itself, say experts. While ICANN
this summer plans to run a test bed for IDNs, countries such as China,
Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are moving ahead with plans of their own
without the approval of ICANN. These and other countries that do not use
the Roman script no longer want to wait for ICANN to implement suggestions
made by the IETF in 2003 regarding the introduction of non-English language
characters in the DNS infrastructure. Currently there is a single DNS root
run by ICANN, but the introduction of alternative naming systems could
splinter that root, which would lead to multiple networks run by individual
countries. The issue will likely be at the forefront of the upcoming ICANN
meeting in New Zealand. "ICANN's lack of action with IDNs has created a
vacuum that is the prime enabler of countries that are interested in
running alternative roots," says Rodney Jaffe, chairman and CTO of UltraDNS
and a member of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which is
scheduled to present a report detailing the status of IDNs and the
possibility of alternative DNS roots. "Instead of being 12 or 15 countries
that talk about running their own root infrastructure, there will probably
be 40 to 60 countries talking about it at the New Zealand meeting."
ICANN's test bed will include two approaches, one inserting IDN records
into the root zone of the DNS and the other, advocated by the IETF, which
changes non-ASCII characters into ASCII equivalents. IDNs are already
available for some country codes and gTLDs such as .info and .org.
Microsoft plans to provide support for IDNs in the next version of Internet
Explorer, due out later this year, while other browsers, including Mozilla
and Netscape, are already IDN-capable. "We think IDNs are going to
snowball," says Register.com's Rob Holmes. "We currently have IDNs in 40
extensions. The greatest preponderance of them is in .com, .net and .org.
But a big growth area is for .de [Germany] and .cn [China]."
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On the Fly
Defense News (03/27/06) Vol. 21, No. 13, P. 24; Fabey, Michael
Developers at Boeing Phantom Works have designed software to collect and
process data from the Global Information Grid (GIG) that military planners
can use to reroute planes in the middle of a mission. The software
connects to the GIG through modules that are essentially plug-and-play.
"These GIG-enabling technologies demonstrate they can provide both the
aircrew and the commanders with an unparalleled view of the common
operating picture, as well as improved real-time situational awareness,"
said Boeing's Patrick Stokes. "This dramatically improves their ability to
complete missions in a dynamic, time-critical environment." Existing
communications channels lack the speed to relay maps, sensor tracking data,
and other electronic information about a changing battlefield landscape to
jets already en route in real time. Targets change positions more
frequently and rapidly today than they did even in recent engagements such
as Desert Storm. Some time next decade, the U.S. Air Force will launch the
Transformation Satellite (TSAT) constellation, which will enable aircraft
to connect to the GIG, though in the meantime defense contractors are
preparing software and patches to upgrade the existing communications
infrastructure. Boeing claims that pilots and crew members can use the
software to receive and transmit images, maps displaying the position of
friendly and hostile forces, and other tactically relevant information.
The Air Force Research Laboratory has contracted Boeing Phantom Works since
2004 to develop machine-to-machine communication in an attempt to deliver
the same data to air and ground crews. The Air Force calls this the
infosphere, the "system of systems that integrates, aggregates, and
distributes information to users at all echelons, from the command center
to the battlefield," taking advantage of technologies used in Web
development and e-commerce.
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2020 Computing: Science in an Exponential World
Nature (03/22/06) Vol. 440, No. 7083, P. 413; Szalay, Alexander; Gray, Jim
With the volume of scientific data doubling annually in many disciplines,
the traditional scientist's notebook is no longer sufficient to manage and
analyze the results of most research projects, and the fundamental methods
by which science is practiced could be shaken to their core as data
production continues its exponential progression, write Johns Hopkins
University's Alexander Szalay and Microsoft Research's Jim Gray. Though
most scientists use some type of desktop application to manage their data,
these programs cannot scale to the level required to analyze datasets with
millions of records, let alone the petabyte-level of data production soon
to materialize from projects such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
Databases have become an essential tool for pattern identification and
analysis, but there is a shortage of adequate data-visualization tools.
Experiment documentation and reproduction also become serious concerns as
science comes to rely more heavily on computer programs that change
rapidly, take on new formats, or become obsolete. The growing trend of
interdisciplinary collaboration means that data sets travel between
departments, requiring graduate students to have at least a basic
familiarity with data management, statistics, and the concepts of
computation. Data sharing standards are critical in the areas of
formatting, semantics, and workflow to ensure that scientists sharing
information are not hindered by proprietary formats. Multidisciplinary
databases enable scientists to build on existing repositories with new
data, expanding the shared knowledge base and enriching the value of their
own experiment. Though shared data sets are designed to prevent scientists
from having to reinvent the wheel, the speed of the Internet has not
increased apace with the volume of data, and distributed computing raises
questions about security, cost, and public access to the information, which
few archives currently address.
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March of the Qubits
New Scientist (03/25/06) Vol. 189, No. 2544, P. 42; Cho, Dan
University of Oxford physicist David Deutsch has revised his timetable for
the development of a practical quantum computer from 20 years to 10, thanks
to a discussion with Oxford researcher Simon Benjamin about cluster states,
also known as one-way computing. All approaches to quantum computing,
which exploits both the superposition and quantum entanglement of quantum
bits (qubits), have thus far run up against the same obstacle: The
challenge of maintaining entanglement while executing calculations.
One-way computing, proposed five years ago by scientists at Germany's
Ludwig Maximilian University, offers a new quantum computer architecture in
which the qubits are arranged so that all entanglements needed for the
calculation are established at the outset. Every step of the calculation
boasts its own series of qubits in a cluster state, as opposed to the
traditional method of performing multiple operations over time on a given
set of qubits. This necessitates the computer configuring entangled qubits
into a grid divided into columns, measuring the state of the qubits in the
first column and making the appropriate physical modifications to the next
column, and so on until the answer to the calculation is yielded in the
measurement of the final column. Several research teams have proposed a
system in which the properties of "stationary" qubits and photons are
combined, allowing any qubit to be measured or manipulated without
interfering with its neighbors. The technique should give quantum
computers the scalability for carrying out bigger and bigger
computations.
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The Spies Inside
InformationWeek (03/27/06)No. 1082, P. 34; Chabrow, Eric
Law enforcement officials, IT professionals, and industry watchdogs are
taking new approaches to controlling PC adware and spyware, as past efforts
have yielded few effective measures. Organized criminal groups are
involved in much of the spyware designed to steal individual identities,
money, and trade secrets, according to Chris Painter with the U.S. Justice
Department. Spyware is a problem with an international scope, and is
harder to curb because much of the malware installed on PCs hails from
nations where virtual crime is a great temptation to skilled but
underemployed people. Adware, meanwhile, is employed to track users' Web
habits for marketing and advertising purposes, sometimes without users'
consent; critics draw little if any distinction between adware and spyware,
given the surreptitious nature of both, according to Overstock.com's
Jonathan Johnson. The threat of adware and spyware is prompting PC users
to exercise more caution when surfing the Web or trying new software. FTC
action against adware company 180solutions was requested by the Center for
Democracy and Technology in January on the grounds that the company
repeatedly and intentionally attempted to trick Internet users into
downloading intrusive software. 180solutions paid Web publishers or
affiliates to distribute the software without adequate oversight to make
sure installation proceeded only when user permission was secured;
180solutions claims it spent $2.5 million on software to deter this
practice, but the software is not foolproof. Criticism from the likes of
the Center for Democracy and Technology may spur adware to reform such
deceptive methods and attain a measure of legitimacy as an advertising
medium, eventually becoming a workable tool for people to access free
content.
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Searching and Ranking Ontologies on the Semantic
Web
University of Southampton (ECS) (03/29/06) Thomas, Edward; Alani, Harith;
Sleeman, Derek
Applications for ontology searching, retrieval, and ranking are becoming
increasingly essential enablement tools for ontology search and reuse. One
such example is OntoSearch, which can be used to capture and mine
ontologies on the Semantic Web. With OntoSearch, a user can specify
different kinds of criteria (types of files to be returned, types of
entities to be matched by each keyword, partial or precise matches on
entities, and a sub-graph to be searched for), and retrieve a number of
ontologies that match the criteria for the user to visualize and assess.
OntoSearch currently allows two search strategies: A structure-based
search using a simple query language that permits the inclusion of all
identified requirements, and a more narrow, keyword-based search for
classes. The first type of search describes sub-graphs that might be found
in an ontology via an N/Triples-based query format, and builds queries from
several such fragments, assigning dollar signs to variables to link each
fragment and assemble structural searches, and then returning matching
ontologies to the user. The second type of search looks for
correspondences in class names, labels, and comments, using keywords and
other data inputted into the search form to construct a query in a language
used for all other OntoSearch queries. The system returns both a reference
for every criteria-matching ontology and the URL of each matching class
contained in that ontology. AKTiveRank is a prototype ontology-ranking
system that applies class match, hierarchical centrality, structural
density, and semantic similarity measures to all returned ontologies, and
aggregates them into a overall ontology score.
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Six Degrees of Reputation: The Use and Abuse of Online
Review and Recommendation Systems
First Monday (03/06) Vol. 11, No. 3,David, Shay; Pinch, Trevor
Cornell University's Shay David and Trevor Pinch probed online economies
of reputation and user practices in online product reviews at several
leading e-commerce sites through quantitative and qualitative analysis, and
they indicate that hundreds of product reviews on Amazon.com might be
duplicates, based on cases whereby book and CD reviews were partially or
entirely copied from one item to another. "What we hoped to gain from
studying these cases is a better understanding of the system as a whole,
not only where it 'fails' but also to get a sense of its potential when it
functions properly," the authors write. David and Pinch say the production
and exchange of these information goods is being affected as barriers
between authors and readers collapse, and they take note of the methods
authors, editors, and readers use to guarantee the promotion of their
agendas and the forging of expert identities. Of the various reputation
management strategies and practices the authors study, the most common
usage for reused reviews was the promotion of an agenda, product, or
opinion. The authors suggest a framework for talking about the changes of
the authorship, creativity, expertise, and reputation classifications being
re-negotiated as the reputation economy transitions to a tiered model.
They cite Lawrence Lessig's model of norms, law, markets, and code and
their interactions as a useful tool for comprehending the shifting
landscape of online recommendation systems, as the four categories
collectively establish regulations on acceptable and unacceptable human
behavior, which in turn determines the regulation of individuals, groups,
organizations, communities, or states. David and Pinch also point to
Lessig's axiom of how power nexuses influence a combination of these
categories to bolster their long-standing interests, and that the creation
of a more just and equitable society hinges on an understanding of and
intervention in such interplay. The authors observe that code, norms, and
law directly influence what is evidently an activity within a
market--online CD and book sales, in this case--while markets should play a
role as the system matures; users' power to interpret technologies and
employ them in increasingly novel contexts should be added to the equation,
David and Pinch contend, and the kinds of user practices they document lead
to the conclusion that the online reviewing system will stabilize to a
certain degree.
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