Web 2.0 Untangled: Dr Eric Davies, Ethics and Law in Web 2.0

Peter’s talk (http://snipurl.com/web2untangled1) was followed by a talk by Dr Eric Davies (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/lisu/pages/staff/eric.html), introducing a note of caution to the day as he considered the ethical and legal implications of Web 2.0.

He started with an overview of Web 2.0 as an enabler; people collaborating, participating and sharing information; distributed co-creation (wikis etc); and dynamic content. He introduced the idea of Web 2.0 as a mutation, a move in society from mass consumerism to individual creation & consumption, with individuals empowered to publish. But with great power comes great responsibility…

He then got us looking at the many issues Web 2.0 raises:

• Trust. Like Peter’s information literacy, a key question in Web 2.0 is how reliable is the content you can find in a world without peer-review?
• Privacy. Obviously there are always issues about people’s privacy in Web 2.0 applications – look at the Google / Facebook issues that keep arising.
• Identity. Conversely, people don’t like how anonymous Web 2.0 applications can be- how can we know that people are who they say they are? Grooming etc.
• User control of contents. Collaboratively created information like Wikis leads to copyright headaches! Plagiarism is also an issue, it’s so easy to copy & paste with computers…
• Public welfare. Not everyone can access Web 2.0 tools- disabled/dyslexic people may need special equipment, poor people may be the other side of the Digital Divide.
• Unacceptable use. If anyone can publish anything, this can lead to obscenity, blasphemy, race hate, terrorism, leaking official / trade secrets, defamation & libel, advertising, pornography, flame wars, stalking, cyber-bullying, identity theft, DoS attacks, viruses, hacking, file sharing, spam… If your instititution is provide internet access or hosting Web 2.0 platforms, you could be responsible for what your users do!

We then finally looked at how to manage Web 2.0 issues with legislation, codes of practice, good netiquette and acceptable use policies; as well as considering the difficult line to walk between enabling & regulating or content regulation & censorship.

(“Web 2.0 Untangled” was a day-long conference organised by CILIP’s UC&R BBO and CoFHE MidWest Circle, held at Wolfson College on the 24th November 2010. It featured 7 speakers on a variety of topics. I attended thanks to Oxford staff development funding. A condition of this funding is to write-up your experience of the session to pass around your colleagues in Oxford- which is what I'm doing here!)