Morgret Designs

I had the fortune of tuning in to KZSU (Stanford’s radio station) right as an interview began with Frank Pasquale, an associate professor of law at Steton Hall Law School. He interviewed with David Levin on the Hearsay Culture show, and covered topics such as fair use, content licensing, regulations, and the possibility of upstart competitors in the search engine field.

One interesting part of the discussion was looking at the regulations in place in other countries. Finland prohibits employers from using a search engine to find information about their current or potential employees without consent from the individual. As I understand it, the reasoning is that individuals may not even be aware of what information is out there online, and have no easy way to redact the information. I agree that it may be difficult to try to remove such information, but one should be aware of what is out there, be prepared to explain it to the potential employer, and be aware of what information (newsgroup postings, MySpace profiles, etc.) might forever be captured online — or be prepared to change their name to Joe Smith, and be anonymous on the internet but forever subjected to identity confusion at the airport, banks, and during traffic stops.

To listen to the podcast (iTunes required), this posting on the Center for Internet and Society’s page gives a link to the appropriate section in iTunes. The Listen at Hearsay Culture page has links to mp3 files of the show. The show aired on January 24th, and is almost an hour long. Other interesting interviews that I haven’t yet heard include Paul Duguid speaking on his book “The Social Life of Information” and Balasz Bodo on the sociocultural impacts of technology and online communities.

For related work, see Mr. Pasquale’s article on Rankings, Reductionism, and Responsibility (thanks to Bill Slawski for finding this). The article “proposes some minor, non-intrusive legal remedies for those who claim that they are harmed by search engine results.” Pasquale also has a blog entry regarding the show, “Searching for Search Law” on the Concurring Opinions blog.

[edit: added in paragraph breaks after WordPress ate them -- again. Added links to Hearsay Culture and Concurring Opinions blogs.]