Press

CIS in the news.

  • If an AI creates a work of art, who owns the rights to it?

    Date published: 
    August 15, 2017
    Quartz

    "As it stands, AIs in the US cannot be awarded copyright for something they have created. The current policy of the US Copyright Office is to reject claims made for works not authored by humans, but the policy is poorly codified. According to Annemarie Bridy, a professor of law at the University of Idaho and an affiliate scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, there’s no actual requirement for human authorship in the US Copyright Act. Nevertheless, the “courts have always assumed that authorship is a human phenomenon,” she says."

  • Should web-hosting companies restrict who's on their platforms?

    Date published: 
    August 14, 2017
    CNN Tech

    ""Legally, they don't have any responsibility around this, unless it's a federal crime [such as child pornography] or intellectual property," Daphne Keller, the director of intermediary liability at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, told CNN Tech."

  • More U.S. companies push back on foreign must-store-data-here rule

    Date published: 
    August 12, 2017
    USA Today

    "“Part of what made the Internet always great and the reason why it’s blossomed is because it was always decentralized and not subject to heavy-handed regulations,” says Omer Tene, vice president of research and education at International Association of Privacy Professionals. "The concern is that the Internet will be splintered into islands.”"

  • ‘Smart Cities’ of the Future Will Require More than Big Data

    Date published: 
    August 11, 2017
    RealClear Life

    "Embedding sensors into public infrastructure without centralizing and securing the data doesn’t make a city smart or sensible. If anything, it creates more privacy concerns and security risks. “This is kind of like giving everyone an ice cream,” said Albert Gidari, Director of Privacy at Stanford’s Center for Internet & Law. “Before you know it, what sounded like something for the greater good that we all liked, is killing us,” Gidari said."

  • Hacking in Hollywood: Why the Industry Needs to Shore Up Security

    Date published: 
    August 11, 2017
    Knowledge@Wharton

    "When it comes to fighting cyber crimes in Hollywood, it’s a case of pay now or pay later. Matwyshyn said the entertainment industry is a prime target for hackers because the stakes are high, and those who work in the industry may not be paying close attention to internet security practices. It’s relatively easy to send a “phishing” email to a studio executive, advising them to click on a link. And just like that, hackers are in.

  • Can Government Keep Up with Artificial Intelligence?

    Date published: 
    August 10, 2017
    PBS Nova Next

    "“There is no possible way to have some omnibus AI law,” says Ryan Calo, a professor of law and co-director of the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington. “But rather we want to look at the ways in which human experience is being reshaped and start to ask what law and policy assumptions are broken.”"

  • These smart cities in Italy put Silicon Valley to shame

    Date published: 
    August 9, 2017
    CNet

    "Al Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, says cities need to work through such issues before starting these projects. That includes deciding how long to keep data, who has access to it and under what circumstances. And legislators, he says, need to grapple with new questions, like whether you can appeal if a smart parking meter gives you a ticket.

  • Facebook Wins ‘Right of Publicity’ Case Against Country-Rap Singer

    Date published: 
    August 9, 2017
    The Recorder

    ""There are a lot of both statutes and doctrines designed to make it more difficult [for people] to challenge speech online about them that they simply don't like,” said Daniel Nazer, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The lower court’s ruling took the right of publicity and just drove a Mack truck through all of that. It’s good to see it reversed.”"

  • Who Is Marcus Hutchins?: Security Researcher Community Worried?

    Date published: 
    August 4, 2017
    International Business Times

    "Dr. Richard Forno, director of Graduate Cybersecurity Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, offered a similar response, telling IBT bonafide white hat security researchers “have no business developing and then selling malware on dark web sites—let alone launching or managing a malware outbreak” as the indictment against Hutchins alleges.  

  • New VPN Ban in Russia Latest Step in Increasing Cyber Risk for US Companies

    Date published: 
    August 3, 2017
    Law.com

    "Moreover, Scott Shackelford, cybersecurity program chair at Indiana University, said the case in part “illustrates the difficulty of shutting down botnets (given how easy it is to set up new command and control servers), along with the trouble of protecting trademarks online. At a higher level, it helps highlight the difficulty of exercising jurisdiction in an interconnected world.”"

  • Cybersecurity for the travelling scientist

    Date published: 
    August 2, 2017
    Nature

    "It can be tempting to try to hide information or use technological tricks such as 'duress passwords' that, if used instead of the genuine one, unlock the device but keep a portion of the data hidden and encrypted. But Jennifer Granick, who studies cybersecurity law at Stanford University in California, warns against such strategies. “You don't want to lie to a government agent. That can be a crime.” And border guards are not likely to be sympathetic to the argument that a researcher has a legal duty to prevent anyone from seeing confidential data.

  • Senate Crackdown on Online Sex Trafficking Hits Opposition

    Date published: 
    August 2, 2017
    The New York Times

    "For Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland, the bill’s language — in particular phrases like “assist, support or facilitate sex trafficking” and “conduct violates federal criminal law” — are too vague in defining what constitutes facilitation and violation. While she supports modest change to the statute, she said she would rather see the courts re-evaluate their interpretation of the law’s specific language."

  • A white man called her kids the n-word. Facebook stopped her from sharing it.

    Date published: 
    July 31, 2017
    The Washington Post

    "The coalition has gathered 570,000 signatures urging Facebook to acknowledge discriminatory censorship exists on its platform, that it harbors white supremacist pages even though it says it forbids hate speech in all forms, and that black and Muslim communities are especially in danger because the hate ­directed against them translates into violence in the streets, said Malkia Cyril, a Black Lives Matter activist in Oakland, Calif., who was part of a group that first met with Facebook about their concerns in 2014."

  • That R. Kelly ‘cult’ story almost never ran. Thank Hulk Hogan for that.

    Date published: 
    July 30, 2017
    The Washington Post

    "There’s a lot of uncertainty and fear out there, post-Gawker, said Nabiha Syed, BuzzFeed’s assistant general counsel, who vetted the story before publication.

    “The answer to uncertainty in the environment is certainty in our mission,” she said. And in making sure that a story is accurate, that it can be backed up and that it serves a purpose."

  • How an online wedding registry in my name appeared out of thin air

    Date published: 
    July 29, 2017
    MarketWatch

    "Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University and an expert on internet privacy, correctly captured my angst when he told me that privacy “is not so much secrecy, but the ability to control how we present ourselves in the world.”

    The whole thing is creepy, but it also serves as a stark reminder that our personal information is floating around the ether for companies to use. “There are a million different ways in which different aspects of your activities are observed and put into databases,” Narayanan said."

  • ‘Textalyzer’ May Bust Distracted Drivers — But at What Cost to Privacy?

    Date published: 
    July 28, 2017
    NBC News

    ""We can't give the government the power to peer into everybody's digital lives indiscriminately, because that might create a bigger problem than the one we're trying to solve in the first place," said Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who's an expert in privacy and civil liberties. "The way to do it is if the police suspect a case of distracting driving, they go and they get a warrant and they compel the records from the service provider.""

  • To thwart the trolls, social-media sites should require users' real names

    Date published: 
    July 28, 2017
    Los Angeles Times

    "“Trolling is a terrible problem,” acknowledged Ryan Calo, an assistant law professor at the University of Washington who specializes in technology issues. “Are companies doing enough? I don’t think they are.”

    He quickly added, however, that “we shouldn’t live in a world where if you don’t show utmost civility, you get erased from the Internet.”"

Pages