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Science 5 December 2003:
Vol. 302. no. 5651, pp. 1686 - 1687
DOI: 10.1126/science.1086471
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Essays on Science and Society

Also see the archival list of the Essays on Science and Society.

PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE ESSAY:
Privacy and Property on the Net: Research Questions

William Sims Bainbridge

The Net, which consists of the Internet plus the parallel networks of commercial and military data communication, raises serious issues of personal information vulnerability and ownership of intellectual property. Peer-to-peer sharing of music files over the Internet, for example, challenges the existing system of copyright. Counterterrorism "data mining" systems hunt for signs of suspicious activity across vast databases of information about people who do not wish to be spied upon. This Essay advocates research by social and information scientists to clarify many such issues.

The author is in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22230, USA. E-mail: william.bainbridge{at}verizon.net

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)