William H. Dutton

The Guardian today featured two articles that bring home the risks of governmental policies and directives seeking to enforce the ‘right to forget’. One was about Britain (wisely) seeking to opt-out of EU’s data protection regulation that dictates the right for people to delete information from the Internet, such as an embarrassing photo. The other [...]

It is heartening to read Alan Rusbridger’s editorial in The Guardian of 25 March 2013, as he seems to have become more aware of some of the serious weaknesses in the proposed press regulation, which has changed in ways that may have undermined his early support. See: http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rics20/current He calls attention to the private meetings [...]

A classic study of public opinion found that while Americans generally supported abstract principles of freedom of expression, many would not support the application of these principles in concrete cases, such as permitting an extreme group to speak at a local school (McCloskey and Brill 1983). That the public can support concrete actions that undermine [...]

The Economist recently addressed the chilling effect that libel law is likely to have on Twitter, arguing that: ‘Now it [Twitter] seems to fall under the law’s shadow to a greater extent than similar speech does on the offline world’ (November 24, 2012: 37). But it is not simply libel law that could undermine freedom [...]

I had the honor of participating in a launch of Robin Mansell’s new book, Imagining the Internet (Oxford University Press, 2012). Here is a podcast of the launch, featuring an overview by Robin. Download: Audio, Video, Slides – R MansellSpeaker(s): Professor Robin Mansell, Professor William H Dutton, Professor Robert Wade Chair: Professor Sonia Livingstone Recorded [...]

Whichever Estate: Exactly Right Mitt Romney has been accused of a number of gaffes, but one seems a bit unfair, as he spoke of ‘… some in the Fourth Estate, or whichever estate, who are more interested in finding something to write about …’.* Well – Candidate Romney is not the only person to wonder [...]

A recent story based on Ofcom research indicates that fewer people in the UK are concerned or worried about the Internet than you might expect, based on journalistic coverage, and that concern has abated somewhat over the years. Other research, such as the Oxford Internet Surveys (OxIS), supports this observation. There are several reasons for [...]

Andrea Kavanaugh from the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech will be visiting the OII on Monday 5th March and will be giving a talk between 14:00 and 15:00 in the Meeting Room at 1 St Giles. If you would like to attend, please drop an email to: events@oii.ox.ac.uk Andrea’s talk will be entitled: [...]

I’ve run across the promotional material for a new book by David Wright and Paul De Hert, Privacy Impact Assessment, Springer, Dordrecht, 2012. They argue that the book ‘is timely as the European Commission’s proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation would make privacy impact assessments mandatory for any organisation processing “personal data where those [...]

The Advisory Committees to Ofcom have created a blog site to provide useful information of relevance to anyone with a serious interest in communication issues across the communities and nations of the UK and Northern Ireland. It is designed to inform members of the various advisory committees to Ofcom. It will accomplish this by using [...]