Information Privacy as a Function of Facial Recognition Technology and Wearable Computers

As technological advances are made in the design of smart sensors, the issue of privacy in public places, first discussed by Warren and Brandeis in 1890, becomes an important topic for law and policy. This paper examines issues of privacy that are impacted when an individual’s image is recorded by a video-based wearable computer, analyzed using facial recognition software, and uploaded to the internet. While the Constitutional basis of search and seizure law for individual’s placed under video surveillance is reviewed, a particular focus of the paper is on a less investigated but emerging area of concern, the video recording and facial recognition of individuals in public places by non-government actors. The paper presents an overview of the law as applied to the use of video systems for surveillance, reviews facial recognition techniques, and discusses cases arising under state law dealing with video recording of individuals in public places. The paper concludes with recommendations for the protection of privacy calling for the legislation enactment of an information privacy statute to cover the disclosure of private information for individuals filmed by wearable computers equipped with facial recognition software

Intellectual Property Rights in Virtual Environments: Considering the Rights of Owners, Programmers and Virtual Avatars

A virtual environment is a computer-generated world that can be used for training, data visualization, recreation, and commerce. The visitors of virtual environments include not only humans but also virtual avatars. The avatars can take on a range of shapes, characteristics, and personalities, and can perform a variety of tasks within the virtual environment. As the behavior of avatars becomes more realistic, sophisticated and intelligent- and the avatars become more autonomous in their decision making, the question of whether virtual avatars should have legal rights separate from those of their owner, becomes an issue. This paper discusses legal rights associated with the design and use of virtual avatars, commenting on the ownership rights of the creators of virtual avatars and the rights of avatars themselves should they gain intelligence and become independent decision makers and creators of intellectual property

Intellectual Property Rights in Virtual Environments: Considering the Rights of Owners, Programmers and Virtual Avatars

An emerging issue in online role-playing games is whether the licensor or participant owns the virtual property (such as a virtual avatar) created while the game is being played...Such rights have real world consequences for the objects created in the virtual world...Commercial software has been designed to allow people to create their own interactive, emoting 3D avatar using photographs of their individual faces, and their own unique voice as templates...Virtual environments can be designed for single inhabitants, such as a solo flight trainee, or for many, simultaneous participants... Further, people who spend significant amounts of time in virtual environments are doing more than playing video games...A major event in U.S. corporate law was the landmark Supreme Court decision to treat corporations as “persons” entitled to the equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment. Will there also be a similar landmark case for virtual avatars, or, as necessity dictates, will rights for avatars appear slowly without any particular landmark decision paving the way for their emancipation. Many questions remain unanswered, as there is literally no case law on the rights of artificially intelligent entities in general, and intelligent avatars specifically. However, given the increasing intelligence of avatars, significant legal disputes involving their actions very likely will arise in the future. This article provided a framework in which to consider how future litigation may develop, and potential causes of action which may be raised

Quantitative measurement of tool embodiment for virtual reality input alternatives

Funding: Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation and Science and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for funding.Virtual reality (VR) strives to replicate the sensation of the physical environment by mimicking people’s perceptions and experience of being elsewhere. These experiences are often mediated by the objects and tools we interact with in the virtual world (e.g., a controller). Evidence from psychology posits that when using the tool proficiently, it becomes embodied (i.e., an extension of one’s body). There is little work, however, on how to measure this phenomenon in VR, and on how different types of tools and controllers can affect the experience of interaction. In this work, we leverage cognitive psychology and philosophy literature to construct the Locus-of-Attention Index (LAI), a measure of tool embodiment. We designed and conducted a study that measures readiness-to-hand and unreadiness-to-hand for three VR interaction techniques: hands, a physical tool, and a VR controller. The study shows that LAI can measure differences in embodiment with working and broken tools and that using the hand directly results in more embodiment than using controllers.Postprin

COGNITIVE AND PERCEPTUAL ASPECTS OF THREE-DIMENSIONAL FIGURE ROTATIONS FOR COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN (CAD) SYSTEMS (ERGONOMICS, HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION)

This research investigated two competing models of memory organization, analog or propositional, which describe how visual information is represented in memory. The analog model maintains that visual information in memory is represented as images whereas the propositional model maintains that visual information in memory is best represented by network structures. In order to differentiate between the two models three separate experiments were performed. For each experiment a factorial design was used with three levels of figure complexity, three axes of rotation, and four angles of rotation (0, 60, 120, 180) for a three-dimensional wire-frame figure rotation comparison task. For experiment one the hypothesis was proposed that reaction time, errors and percent transmitted information for the figure comparison task would differ according to the level of figure complexity across axes and angles of rotation. The results from experiment one indicated that reaction times, errors and percent transmitted information did vary across levels of figure complexity. These results supported the hypothesis and indicated that neither models for information representation fully described the reaction time data. The hypothesis for experiment two was proposed that decreasing the overall number of task questions would simplify the comparison task and result in faster reaction times than those for experiment one. The results supported the hypothesis as reaction times were significantly faster. The results indicated that task characteristics affected reaction times thus supporting the propositional model. Experiment three investigated the effects of a split-screen display for the figure comparison task. The hypothesis was proposed that use of the split screen would decrease reaction times and errors and result in an increase in information transmitted for the comparison task. The experimental results indicated that reaction time, errors, and transmitted information varied dependent on the level of figure complexity. These results supported the propositional model. In order to more fully describe the reaction time, errors, and information metric results discussed above a hybrid model for the figure comparison task was proposed in which analogical processes occur for simple figures and simple tasks, whereas propositional processes occur for complex figures and complex tasks

Commercial Speech, Intellectual Property Rights, and Advertising Using Virtual Images Inserted in TV, Film, and the Real World

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Law, Cyborgs, and Technologically Enhanced Brains

As we become more and more enhanced with cyborg technology, significant issues of law and policy are raised. For example, as cyborg devices implanted within the body create a class of people with enhanced motor and computational abilities, how should the law and policy respond when the abilities of such people surpass those of the general population? And what basic human and legal rights should be afforded to people equipped with cyborg technology as they become more machine and less biology? As other issues of importance, if a neuroprosthetic device is accessed by a third party and done to edit one’s memory or to plant a new memory in one’s mind, or even to place an ad for a commercial product in one’s consciousness, should there be a law of cognitive liberty or of “neuro-advertising” that applies? This paper discusses laws and statutes enacted across several jurisdictions which apply to cyborg technologies with a particular emphasis on legal doctrine which relates to neuroprosthetic devices

Cyborgs and Enhancement Technology

As we move deeper into the twenty-first century there is a major trend to enhance the body with “cyborg technology”. In fact, due to medical necessity, there are currently millions of people worldwide equipped with prosthetic devices to restore lost functions, and there is a growing DIY movement to self-enhance the body to create new senses or to enhance current senses to “beyond normal” levels of performance. From prosthetic limbs, artificial heart pacers and defibrillators, implants creating brain–computer interfaces, cochlear implants, retinal prosthesis, magnets as implants, exoskeletons, and a host of other enhancement technologies, the human body is becoming more mechanical and computational and thus less biological. This trend will continue to accelerate as the body becomes transformed into an information processing technology, which ultimately will challenge one’s sense of identity and what it means to be human. This paper reviews “cyborg enhancement technologies”, with an emphasis placed on technological enhancements to the brain and the creation of new senses—the benefits of which may allow information to be directly implanted into the brain, memories to be edited, wireless brain-to-brain (i.e., thought-to-thought) communication, and a broad range of sensory information to be explored and experienced. The paper concludes with musings on the future direction of cyborgs and the meaning and implications of becoming more cyborg and less human in an age of rapid advances in the design and use of computing technologies