Exploring neuromarketing and its reliance on remote sensing: social and ethical concerns

This article evaluates the consequences of neuromarketers’ reliance on direct and indirect forms of remote sensing. These remote sensing strategies, tactics, and resources include various sophisticated techniques for evaluating neuronal and behavioral responses to commercial messages with the aid of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. The information generated with the aid of fMRI, in combination with inferences drawn from the massive data analyses enabled by machine learning techniques, is expected to contribute to the power and influence of marketoriented segmentation and targeting. After characterizing the current state of and future trends in applied neuromarketing research, we discuss how reliance on descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive communications strategies enabled by remote sensing will affect the life chances and well-being of segments of the global population. We conclude with a discussion of the moral and ethical implications of these developments, primarily in the context of public policy deliberations related to privacy and surveillance that we associate with remote sensing

Catch 1201: A Legislative History and Content Analysis of the DMCA Exemption Proceedings

17 USC Section 1201(a)(1) prohibits circumventing a technological protection measure (TPM) that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. In the name of mitigating the innocent casualties of this new ban, Congress constructed a triennial rulemaking, administered by the Register of Copyrights, to determine temporary exemptions. This paper considers the legislative history of this rulemaking, and it reports the results of a systematic content analysis of its 2000 and 2003 proceedings. Inspired by the literature on political agendas, policymaking institutions, venue shifting, and theories of delegation, we conclude that the legislative motivations for Section 1201 were laundered through international treaties, obscuring the anticircumvention clause’s domestic origins. Further, we conclude that the exemption proceeding is constructed not to protect noninfringing users, but to limit courts’ ability to exonerate them via the traditional defenses to copyright infringement. We then conduct a content analysis of the first two proceedings, conducted in 2000 and 2003. Exemption proponents generally interpret the law’s intent in terms of policy goals such as fair use, whereas opponents see jurisdictional, procedural, and definitional obstacles to the granting of exemptions. The Register of Copyrights’ interpretation of the law closely resembles that of opponents and, on more than one key point, she refers proponents back to Congress. We conclude that the Register has constructed a venue that is hostile to the interests of noninfringing users; in light of congressional rhetoric to the contrary, this constructs a catch-22 for many who earnestly wish to engage in otherwise legal activities

The Profiling Potential of Computer Vision and the Challenge of Computational Empiricism

Computer vision and other biometrics data science applications have commenced a new project of profiling people. Rather than using 'transaction generated information', these systems measure the 'real world' and produce an assessment of the 'world state' - in this case an assessment of some individual trait. Instead of using proxies or scores to evaluate people, they increasingly deploy a logic of revealing the truth about reality and the people within it. While these profiling knowledge claims are sometimes tentative, they increasingly suggest that only through computation can these excesses of reality be captured and understood. This article explores the bases of those claims in the systems of measurement, representation, and classification deployed in computer vision. It asks if there is something new in this type of knowledge claim, sketches an account of a new form of computational empiricism being operationalised, and questions what kind of human subject is being constructed by these technological systems and practices. Finally, the article explores legal mechanisms for contesting the emergence of computational empiricism as the dominant knowledge platform for understanding the world and the people within it

Consumer credit default and collections: the shifting ontologies of market attachment

Existing accounts of consumer credit market making have done much to explore the business models, technologies and advertising practices of lenders, and the financial circumstances of borrowers. However, the space of interface between consumer credit debtor and debt collector remains underexplored. Drawing on interviews with debtors and an exposition of debt collections technologies, the paper demonstrates how this market domain, in seeking to prompt calculative engagement, depends on its ability to intersect successfully with the everyday lives of economic agents. Critically engaging with key currents emerging out of the “economization” programme, it builds on its attention to the socio-material mechanisms of market making. However, the paper argues that materially sensitive economic sociologies need to account more thoroughly for the place of affect in markets. This is particularly relevant when studying consumer markets, where exchanges routinely centre on intimate and embodied encounters between economic actors

Gerçek Dijital Uçurum: Tüketiciye Karşı Vatandaş

Yeni medya çalışmaları birçok açıdan ele alınabilir. Bu konuda Faydalı olabilecek bir yaklaşım, yeni medyayı farklı perspektifler içinde değerlendirirken kullanıcı veya tüketici açısından incelemektir. Araştırmacılar, izleyici açısından yapılan araştırmalar konusunda üç öne çıkan yaklaşımdan bahsediyorlar: • Bunlardan birincisi izleyiciyi alınıp satılan bir mal olarak (commodity) görme yaklaşımıdır. Bu yaklaşıma göre izleyici medya sistemi tarafından reklamcılara ve sponsorlara ikna edilerek satılmak için üretilen bir maldır. • İkincisi, İzleyici medyanın ürettiği bilgi ve eğlenceyi tüketen kişilerdir. • Üçüncüsü de İzleyiciyi korunmaya muhtaç bir kurban olarak gören yaklaşımdır. Bu yaklaşım akademik çevrelerde genellikle kullanılan bir yaklaşımdır. Belli içerikteki medya mesajlarına sürekli maruz kalan bireyler üzerinde araştırmalar yapılır.Araştırmacıların bu konuda göz ardı ettikleri bir durum vardır. Bu da izleyicin giderek görmezden gelinen bir kamu alanı paylaşanı olarak onun vatandaşlık kişiliğidir. Bu vatandaş dediğimiz birey, kamunun bir paylaşıcısıdır. Medya, bu izleyiciye medya tecimselleşmeden önce, daha doğrusu, sadece kamu yararına yayın yaptığı zamanlarda da hizmet vermiştir.Kamu hizmeti verilen bu izleyici bugün de aynı izleyicidir. Bir başka deyişle şimdi tecimsel iletilere maruz kalan vatandaş birey, aynı vatandaş bireydir. Medyanın tamamen kamusal amaçlarla hizmet verdiği dönemlerde, belki az miktarda tecimsel reklamlar da vardı, ama medya bugün göründüğü şekilde tecimselleşmemişti. Kamusal medya o zamanlar kamu yararını ön plana alıyordu. Bir vatandaş olarak izleyicinin gereksinimleri ile tüketici izleyicinin gereksinimleri doğrultusunda giderek genişleyen açık, sanırım yeni medyayı açıklamamız konusunda bize yardımcı olacaktır. Ana akım çalışmalar yeni medyayı bir dijital dönüşüm olarak açıklasa da, ben yeni medyayı vatandaş birey ile tüketici birey arasındaki farkın büyümesi olarak görüyorum ve bana göre gerçek dijital uçurum, tüketici birey ile vatandaş birey arasındaki uçurumdur

Consumer Protection in Cyberspace

This critical essay introduces the problem of discrimination enabled through the use of transaction-generated-information derived from the analysis of user behaviors within the network environment. The essay begins by describing how segments of the population that are already vulnerable become further victimized through the strategic use of discriminatory algorithms in support of identification, classification, segmentation, and targeting. In response, it evaluates a set of policy options that might be used to limit the harm and compensate the victims of these inherently dangerous technologies. Traditional approaches that stress the protection of privacy through restrictions on the collection and use of personal information are compared with alternatives based on individual and class actions under tort law, as well as more traditional regulatory approaches developed in the area of consumer products safety and environmental regulation

Wedging Equity and Environmental Justice into the Discourse on Sustainability

This paper examines the problems and prospects for including meaningful indicators of intragenrational equity into the city based regional planning efforts unfolding around the globe. The central focus of the paper is on the challenges that environmental justice (EJ) activists face as they attempt to frame the problem of equity in ways that the general public would see as not only informative, but compelling. After reviewing examples of successful efforts to reframe debates about equity, the paper concludes with a discussion of a set of EJ concerns and indicators that have the greatest potential for capturing public attention and commitment despite mounting resistance to the use of redistributive policies in support of sustainability goals