The Ethics of Social Networking

The Center for Internet and Society andThe Stanford Center for Ethics
present Thursday, Feb. 14, 200812:00-2:00pm
Stanford University Tressider Union, Cypress Room N-S

Has "online privacy?" become an oxymoron, or are we bound to develop a "new privacy" concept that prioritizes nuanced control of personal information? Is this new concept tenable?

What are the benefits and risks of the standardization of social networking? What impact does social networking technology have on interpersonal virtues? Are we witnessing the flattening of
social landscape by online networks? And can one be a college student without Facebook?

The Stanford Center on Ethics and the Stanford Center for Internet and Society invite you to a discussion of a host of ethical and social concerns generated by the evolving culture of social networking, particularly by Internet users' habits and Web 2.0 sites' practices and strategies ­just in time for Valentine?s Day.

Moderated by Dean Eckles, a research scientist and designer at Nokia Research Center. Panelists include Dr. BJ Fogg, Director of Research and Design at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, and lecturer at the Computer Science Dept; Jia Shen, Co-Founder and CTO of RockYou; and Shannon Vallor, Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University.
Come and add your voice to the discussion.

EU data regulator says Internet addresses are personal information

BRUSSELS, Belgium - IP addresses, string of numbers that identify computers on the Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said Monday.

Germany's data protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, leads the EU group preparing a report on how well the privacy policies of Internet search engines operated by Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others comply with EU privacy law.
He told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address "then it has to be regarded as personal data."
His view differs from that of Google, which insists an IP address merely identifies the location of a computer, not who the individual user is - something strictly true but which does not recognize that many people regularly use the same computer terminal and IP address.
Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. For example, some computers in Internet cafes or offices are used by several people.
But these exceptions have not stopped the emergence of a host of "whois" Internet sites that apply the general rule that typing in an IP address will generate a name for the person or company linked to it.
Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications for how search engines record data.
(Source: Silicon Valley)