Fwd: Data Protection Law & Policy - invitation to write

[Chris Saad]

Would someone like to put their hand up to do this?

Chris

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andy Brown <andrew...@e-comlaw.com>
Date: Fri, May 9, 2008 at 2:25 AM
Subject: Data Protection Law & Policy - invitation to write
To: m...@chrissaad.com

Dear Chris;

I am an associate editor of Data Protection Law & Policy, an international legal journal read by data protection managers at multi-national companies and lawyers. We commission articles from lawyers and companies about issues in Data Protection law. I was wondering if you would be interested in writing a short (1,400 words) article explaining what the DataPortability Project is and how it works?

Please let me know what you think - it would be great to get an article from you.

Best regards;

Andy Brown

Associate Editor
data protection law & policy
Cecile Park Publishing Ltd
Unit 17 The Timber Yard
Drysdale Street
London N1 6ND
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internet: http://www.e-comlaw.com

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--
Chris Saad

FaradayMedia - For Audiences of One
Particls - Are You Paying Attention?
Engagd - The Open Attention Platform
Media 2.0 Workgroup - Social, Democratic, Distributed
APML - Your Attention Profile
DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix

[Elias Bizannes]

They contacted us in January, and I politely said we were not in a
position to write one given our foundation stage[1]. But I think now
is a good time.

I can pump out 1000 words an hour, so could turn this around if
needed. Anyone want to join me?

[1]http://groups.google.com/group/dataportabilityactionpolicy/
browse_thread/thread/646fd84c676a72f1#

[Gordon Rae]

I'm happy to get involved in this. I have written for a variety of
academic and business audiences,

Gordon

> email: andrew.br...@e-comlaw.com

[Elias Bizannes]

Great Gordan.

If anyone else is interested, I'll wait another 24 hours before we
initiaite.

Gordan - let's discuss an approach soon. I'd be good to see you drive
this, and I can instead help you with filling in details and ensuring
statements of claim are reflective of the Project.

If you can propose a skeleton of what the article shoud cover, we can
then agree on that and it will make it easier to write.

Cheers,
Elias

[Brady Brim-DeForest]

Would be happy to help edit the initial drafts and polish the finished version.

Thanks,
Brady

[Robyn Tippins]

I would also be glad to help edit any drafts.  My bandwidth is too stretched to do the writing, but I'm a mean copyeditor :)

--
Robyn Tippins
408-718-0886 office | 510-579-5558 cell
Community Manager, Yahoo! Developer Network
blog: Sleepyblogger.com | vlog: Gamingandtech.com

[Elias Bizannes]

Done.

So Gordan's going to write it, and if he doesn't, I will.
Robyn and Brady to edit it.

This discussion will now be taken elsewhere. Ping me if you still want
to be involved.

[Brady Brim-DeForest]

Sounds like a plan!

[Brett McDowell]

Who approves the final copy?  Is it Elias + Gordon + Robyn + Brady having a consensus agreement on the final copy and then it is published as an official Data Portability positioning paper?

[Brady Brim-DeForest]

And you Brett, and anyone else who wants to approve the final copy.

[Brett McDowell]

Don't misunderstand me.  I'm not asking to be in the decision making process, just trying to nail it down sooner than later so everyone else knows what it is.  I have no problem with the assumed four-person committee having approval authority on this paper.  Until we get a governance process in place this is the best we can do.  I actually do have a problem with approval being infinitely open-ended... if I were one of the folks about to invest precious hours into this deliverable I would *not* want my work to asymptotically approach "approved".

I "vote" for the 4 of you to make this decision.

[Aaron Cheung]

I'm not taking part in this writing, but I think, if it is to be a position paper (which would be great), it should at least address both the portability aspect as well as the privacy aspect (ie., the "Control" bit of the DP tagline).. and it should also be consistent with the Best Practices document up and coming.

 

Or alternatively, in light that we've been telling the press (and other) that we'll be publishing [an official] Best Practices document, and since I'm seeing the most serious group of writers here for this writing invitation, *if* Steering *insists* that we (the Project) do publish a Best Practices document, I'd take this opportunity to invite this group (ie., the few writers to this article) to also produce one official "Best Practices" writeup, but limit it to one or two pages (easier for the press to quote, easier for flexibility, easier for broad interpretation, easier to include dp's other than social graphs, etc.)  That is, more like the *style* (length/level) of say http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/articles/bestprac.html (again, just for example of length/style), and be done with the "Best Practices" "issue".

 

And the Technical Group's Best Practices in the making would be the one [of the potential many] for social networks dp best practices, ie., not effort wasted.

 

Just a suggestion,
Regards, /ac.

[Aaron Cheung]

+1

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Brett McDowell

To: dataportability...@googlegroups.com

[Gordon Rae]

Can I suggest that we begin by deciding what the most interesting
legal and policy aspects of DataPortability are, and what messages we
want to communicate to the readers of the journal. According to the
free sample I got hold of,

"Data Protection Law & Policy is dedicated to making sure that
businesses and public services alike can find their way through the
regulatory maze to win the rewards of effective, well-regulated use of
data."

I imagine their subscribers are mainly lawyers and consultancy active
in the field of data protection and privacy. The 'sister' publication,
E-Commerce Law and Policy, has just published an article about profile
sharing on MySpace and Facebook.

Gordon

On May 21, 6:13 pm, Aaron Cheung <a...@ydrive.com> wrote:
> +1
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brett McDowell
> To: dataportability...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:02 AM
> Subject: [DP.AG.Evangelism] Re: Fwd: Data Protection Law & Policy - invitation to write
>
> Don't misunderstand me. I'm not asking to be in the decision making process, just trying to nail it down sooner than later so everyone else knows what it is. I have no problem with the assumed four-person committee having approval authority on this paper. Until we get a governance process in place this is the best we can do. I actually do have a problem with approval being infinitely open-ended... if I were one of the folks about to invest precious hours into this deliverable I would *not* want my work to asymptotically approach "approved".
>
> I "vote" for the 4 of you to make this decision.
>
> On May 21, 2008, at 12:37 PM, Brady Brim-DeForest wrote:
>
> And you Brett, and anyone else who wants to approve the final copy.
>

> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 9:27 AM, Brett McDowell <brettmcdow...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Who approves the final copy? Is it Elias + Gordon + Robyn + Brady having a consensus agreement on the final copy and then it is published as an official Data Portability positioning paper?
>
> On May 20, 2008, at 8:00 PM, Brady Brim-DeForest wrote:
>
> Sounds like a plan!
>

[Elias Bizannes]

So is there any momentum on this? I haven't heard anything.

Ideas
- Terms of Service with websites: the current landscape and what
consumers are effectively giving up
- Data rights: what rights should a consumer have; what rights should
a vendor have
- Survey of the international landscape and inconsistencies with law
- The concept of privacy, an artice in itself

Pose it as questions, rather than answers (which we still don't have)

[Gordon Rae]

Thanks Elias, and yes - you are the first person to propose an answer
to my question.

I like the first three points. As regards the concept of privacy, I
think we are better off taking one that is already in common use.

Yesterday, the Council of Europe published an opinion on the theme
that "strong data protection rules are needed to prevent the emergence
of a surveillance society". The report was credited to the
Commissioner for Human Rights, rather than anything to do with
business or trade. The original article is at: http://www.neurope.eu/articles/87078.php

Do we have anyone in this list who understands the differences in data
protection law between Europe and the US, or other countries around
the world? I understand the UK and Europe, and know a little bit about
the OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows
of Personal Data.

Since we are the stage of framing questions rather than proposing
answers, I guess it would be helpful to write the article in a way
that motivates lawyers to take an interest and start contributing to
our work.

[Elias Bizannes]

I'm not so sure about privacy. I've spent some time researching it and
I cannot find consistent definitions. In fact, if you type "define
privacy" into Google, my blog is one of the top search results. The
only reason I mention it, is because I get a stupid amount of traffic
from that search term, and I think everyone has a different
interpretation what it is. Even if we don't define it, simply showing
different approaches and implcications.

This whole policy area is so big, that I think this might be a useful
excercise to compile some research to help the Policy group. Can I
sugggest Gordon, you frame a conceptual framework of how we address
this article - and then, we can allocate specific research tasks. I
know Steve Greenberg would be interested to cotribute in this regard,
as he has a brain that not only likes to research this area but
probably has the most extensive background in this area of anyone in
the Project.

Maybe an approach can be

1) Data rights
- what countries around the world have legislated and the gap between
countries
- a survey of what other groups, like the Identity community, have
defined as data rights. Perhaps even some open questions we as the DP
project have about determininig what data rights are. We have to be
careful here to make it look like we are determining what rights
should be, but perhaps by drawing on discussions like the bill of
rights signed by Arrington, Scoble, McCrea et al we can shed some
contrasting lights on views

2) Terms of Service
- pick some of the major companies and show the inconsistencies
- Perhaps pick social computing sites that are in the top of the lists
like facebook, myspace but also other companies that are strong like
Asian social networks that are doing well

3) Data protection
- picking apart what the report states, and helping identify the gap
from current to ideal

Just some ideas to get this moving, happy to be challenged.

I'm cross posting this with the DataPortability Policy group, as they
should be driving research in this area.

[Gordon Rae]

Excellent suggestions, Elias. I'll wait for the debate to bubble, and see if
I can ferret out a journal article or two that might help me frame the
topic.

Gordon

-----Original Message-----
From: dataportability...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:dataportability...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Elias
Bizannes
Sent: 28 May 2008 13:49
To: DataPortability.Action.Evangelism
Cc: dataportabili...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [DP.AG.Evangelism] Re: Fwd: Data Protection Law & Policy -
invitation to write