RegulationRoom: Field-Testing An Online Public Participation Platform During USA Agency Rulemakings

Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government\u27s most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. RegulationRoom, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to alert and effectively engage new voices in rulemaking. Initial results give cause for optimism but also caution that successful use of new technologies to increase participation in complex government policy decisions is more difficult and resource-intensive than many proponents expect

RegulationRoom: Field-Testing An Online Public Participation Platform During USA Agency Rulemakings

Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government\u27s most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. RegulationRoom, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to alert and effectively engage new voices in rulemaking. Initial results give cause for optimism but also caution that successful use of new technologies to increase participation in complex government policy decisions is more difficult and resource-intensive than many proponents expect

Facilitative Moderation for Online Participation in eRulemaking

This paper describes the use of facilitative moderation strategies in an online rulemaking public participation system. Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government\u27s most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. Regulation Room, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to lower potential barriers to broader participation. To encourage effective individual comments and productive group discussion in Regulation Room, we adapt strategies for facilitative human moderation originating from social science research in deliberative democracy and alternative dispute resolution [24, 1, 18, 14] for use in the demanding online participation setting of eRulemaking. We develop a moderation protocol, deploy it in live Department of Transportation (DOT) rulemakings, and provide an initial analysis of its use through a manual coding of all moderator interventions with respect to the protocol. We then investigate the feasibility of automating the moderation protocol: we employ annotated data from the coding project to train machine learning-based classifers to identify places in the online discussion where human moderator intervention is required. Though the trained classifiers only marginally outperform the baseline, the improvement is statistically signifcant in spite of limited data and a very basic feature set, which is a promising result

Facilitative Moderation for Online Participation in eRulemaking

This paper describes the use of facilitative moderation strategies in an online rulemaking public participation system. Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government\u27s most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. Regulation Room, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to lower potential barriers to broader participation. To encourage effective individual comments and productive group discussion in Regulation Room, we adapt strategies for facilitative human moderation originating from social science research in deliberative democracy and alternative dispute resolution [24, 1, 18, 14] for use in the demanding online participation setting of eRulemaking. We develop a moderation protocol, deploy it in live Department of Transportation (DOT) rulemakings, and provide an initial analysis of its use through a manual coding of all moderator interventions with respect to the protocol. We then investigate the feasibility of automating the moderation protocol: we employ annotated data from the coding project to train machine learning-based classifers to identify places in the online discussion where human moderator intervention is required. Though the trained classifiers only marginally outperform the baseline, the improvement is statistically signifcant in spite of limited data and a very basic feature set, which is a promising result

Knocking on Heaven’s door: User preferences on digital cultural distribution

This paper explores the social, demographic and attitudinal basis of consumer support of a Copyright Compensation System (CCS), which, for a small monthly fee would legalise currently infringing online social practices such as private copying from illegal sources and online sharing of copyrighted works. We do this by first identifying how different online and offline, legal and illegal, free and paying content acquisition channels are used in the media market using a cluster-based classification of respondents. Second, we assess the effect of cultural consumption on the support for a shift from the status quo towards alternative, CCS-based forms of digital cultural content distribution. Finally, we link these two analyses to identify the factors that drive the dynamics of change in digital cultural consumption habits. Our study shows significant support to a CCS compared to the status quo by both occasional and frequent buyers of cultural goods, despite the widespread adoption of legal free and paying online services by consumers. The nature of these preferences are also explored with the inclusion of consumer preference intensities regarding certain CCS attributes. Our results have relevant policy implications, for they outline CCS as a reform option. In particular, they point evidence-based copyright reform away from its current direction in the EU of stronger enforcement measures, additional exclusive rights, and increased liability and duties o

Submission to Canadian Government Consultation on a Modern Copyright Framework for AI and the Internet of Things

We are grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Canadian Government’s consultation on a modern copyright framework for AI and the Internet of Things. Below, we present some of our research findings relating to the importance of flexibility in copyright law to permit text and data mining (“TDM”). As the consultation paper recognizes, TDM is a critical element of artificial intelligence. Our research supports the adoption of a specific exception for uses of works in TDM to supplement Canada’s existing general fair dealing exception. Empirical research shows that more publication of citable research takes place in countries with “open” research exceptions -- that is, research exceptions that are open to all uses (e.g. reproduction and communication), to all works, and to all users. Empirical research also shows that text and data mining research is promoted through exceptions that more specifically authorize text and data mining research. While these studies are preliminary and we are still improving on them, they provide evidence that supports the approach of combining a general research exception with a more specific data mining exception

Going means trouble and staying makes it double: the value of licensing recorded music online

This paper discusses whether a copyright compensation system (CCS) for recorded music—endowing private Internet subscribers with the right to download and use works in return for a fee—would be welfare increasing. It reports on the results of a discrete choice experiment conducted with a representative sample of the Dutch population consisting of 4986 participants. Under some conservative assumptions, we find that applied only to recorded music, a mandatory CCS could increase the welfare of rights holders and users in the Netherlands by over €600 million per year (over €35 per capita). This far exceeds current rights holder revenues from the market of recorded music of ca. €144 million per year. A monthly CCS fee of ca. €1.74 as a surcharge on Dutch Internet subscriptions would raise the same amount of revenues to rights holders as the current market for recorded music. With a voluntary CCS, the estimated welfare gains to users and rights holders are even greater for CCS fees below €20 on the user side. A voluntary CCS would also perform better in the long run, as it could retain a greater extent of market coordination. The results of our choice experiment indicate that a well-designed CCS for recorded music would simultaneously make users and rights holders better off. This result holds even if we correct for frequently observed rates of overestimation in contingent valuation studies

Problem Representation on the Fringe of Institutions

Abstract. Measuring the interaction between agents and institutions poses a number of challenges. The paper provides data and results from a project in political science aimed at representing the problem spaces described by organization members in depicting decision situations with high levels of procedural uncertainty

RegulationRoom: Field-Testing An Online Public Participation Platform During USA Agency Rulemakings

Rulemaking is one of the U.S. government\u27s most important policymaking methods. Although broad transparency and participation rights are part of its legal structure, significant barriers prevent effective engagement by many groups of interested citizens. RegulationRoom, an experimental open-government partnership between academic researchers and government agencies, is a socio-technical participation system that uses multiple methods to alert and effectively engage new voices in rulemaking. Initial results give cause for optimism but also caution that successful use of new technologies to increase participation in complex government policy decisions is more difficult and resource-intensive than many proponents expect