[A2k] Yale ISP's Reputation Economies in Cyberspace Symposium - Dec. 8, 2007

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The Information Society Project at Yale Law School is proud to present
Reputation Economies in Cyberspace.  The symposium will be held on December
8, 2007 at Yale Law School in New Haven, CT.

This event will bring together representatives from industry, government,
and academia to explore themes in online reputation, community-mediated
information production, and their implications for democracy and innovation.
The symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Microsoft
Corporation.

A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of reputation
economies in four panels: (1) Making Your Name Online; (2) Privacy and
Reputation Protection; (3) Reputation and Information Quality; and (4)
Ownership of Cyber-Reputation.  See below for more detail on each panel; a
current list of confirmed speakers is available at the conference website.

Online registration is available now at: https://wems.worldtek.com/RepEcon.
There is a $95 registration fee, which includes lunch. Yale students and
faculty and members of the press may attend for free. For more information,
see: http://isp.law.yale.edu/reputation.


SYMPOSIUM ON REPUTATION ECONOMIES IN CYBERSPACE

Panel I: Making Your Name Online

Moderator:  Jack Balkin - Director, Information Society Project and Knight
Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School
Panelists:
Michel Bauwens - Founder, The Foundation for P2P Alternatives
Rishab A. Ghosh -  Senior Researcher, United Nations University -MERIT
Auren Hofman -  CEO, Rapleaf
Hassan Masum - Senior Research Co-ordinator, McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for
Global Health
Beth Noveck - Professor of Law and Director, Institute for Information Law
and Policy, New York Law School

This panel will discuss the shifts in the reputation economy that we are
witnessing, largely the transition from accreditation to participatory,
community-based modes of reputation management. Some of the questions the
panel will address include:

What are the new norms for cyber-reputation?
How do these depart from offline models?
How can reputation in one online system be transported to another?
How do SNS and reputation connect?
How do you bootstrap and cash out?



Panel II: Privacy and Reputational Protection

Moderator: Michael Zimmer - Microsoft Resident Fellow, Information Society
Project and Post-Doctoral Associate, Yale Law School
Panelists:
Alessandro Acquisti - Assistant Professor of Information Technology and
Public Policy, H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management,
Carnegie Mellon University
Danielle Citron - Assistant Professor of Law, University of Maryland School
of Law
William McGeveran -  Associate Professor, University of Minnesota Law School
Dan Solove - Associate Professor, George Washington University Law School
Jonathan Zittrain - Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford
University; Visiting Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Harvard
Law School

Cyber-reputation management is based on transactions in information that is
often sensitive and is always contextual.  This brings up many questions
about the need to protect one's privacy and reputation within and outside
this system.

Some of the questions the panel will address:
How is participation in cyber-reputation systems related to defamation and
free speech?
What happens when cyber-reputation spills over into offline activities and
relationships like the political process, job applications, or school
admissions?
What happens when your second life meets your first?
Requiring divulgence of real name or other personal data. Is opting out
possible?
Pending legislation on S495 - data security and privacy (Senator Leahy)


Panel III: Reputational Quality and Information Quality

Moderator: Laura Forlano - Visiting Fellow, Information Society Project
Panelists:
Urs Gasser -  Associate Professor of Law, University of St. Gallen
Ashish Goel - Associate Professor, Management Science and Engineering and
Computer Science, Stanford University
Darko Kirovski -  Senior Researcher, Microsoft Corporation
Mari Kuraishi - President, Global Giving Foundation
Vipul Ved Prakash - Founder, Cloudmark

Evidently, unlike traditional reputation mechanisms that relied on small
group acquaintances and formal accreditation mechanisms, the
cyber-reputation economy is heavily mediated by technology. This raises the
risk of breaking the delicate checks and balances that are necessary for the
system to ensure quality of both the informational outcomes and the
participants' reputation. This panel will try to highlight the connections
between the way the new systems are built, and the outcome they produce.

Some of the questions the panel will address:
How can we assure quality in online reputation economies?
What is the connections between the system design and the quality
information?
How good are the alternative accreditation mechanisms and how easy are they
to hijack?
How can employment discrimination law adapt to the realities of online
reputation?

Panel IV: Ownership of Cyber-Reputation

Moderator: Eddan Katz - Executive Director, Information Society Project and
Lecturer-in-Law and Associate Research Scholar, Yale Law School
Panelists:
John Clippinger - Senior Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society,
Harvard Law School
Eric Goldman - Assistant Professor and Director, High Tech Law Institute,
Santa Clara University School of Law faculty
Bob Sutor - Vice President Open Source and Standards, IBM Corporation
Mozelle Thompson - Thompson Strategic Consulting; (former FTC Commissioner)
Rebecca Tushnet -  Professor, Georgetown University Law Center

The data and information that are collected in online reputation systems are
both valuable and powerful. The ability to control this information, store
it, process it, access it, and transport it are crucial to the maintenance
of the reputation economy. This panel will address the important set of
questions that concern the ownership of this information.

Some questions the panel will address:
Who owns one's online reputation? Who owns the metadata?
How portable is online reputation? Should it be transportable from one
system to another?
How is reputation connected to the interoperability question? Should we have
international standards governing reputation?