Privacy as an Asset

Many attempts to define privacy have been made over the last century. Early definitions and theories of privacy had little to do with the concept of information and, when they did, only in an informal sense. With the advent of information technology, the question of a precise and universally acceptable definition of privacy in this new domain became an urgent issue as legal and business problems regarding privacy started to accrue. In this paper, I propose a definition of informational privacy that is simple, yet strongly tied with the concepts of information and property. Privacy thus defined is similar to intellectual property and should receive commensurate legal protection

Thou Shalt is not You Will

In this paper we discuss some reasons why temporal logic might not be suitable to model real life norms. To show this, we present a novel deontic logic contrary-to-duty/derived permission paradox based on the interaction of obligations, permissions and contrary-to-duty obligations. The paradox is inspired by real life norms

Bots as Virtual Confederates: Design and Ethics

The use of bots as virtual confederates in online field experiments holds extreme promise as a new methodological tool in computational social science. However, this potential tool comes with inherent ethical challenges. Informed consent can be difficult to obtain in many cases, and the use of confederates necessarily implies the use of deception. In this work we outline a design space for bots as virtual confederates, and we propose a set of guidelines for meeting the status quo for ethical experimentation. We draw upon examples from prior work in the CSCW community and the broader social science literature for illustration. While a handful of prior researchers have used bots in online experimentation, our work is meant to inspire future work in this area and raise awareness of the associated ethical issues.Comment: Forthcoming in CSCW 201