The prediction, in brief:

Some are old questions in a new context: What, if any, is the role of the government in regulating electronic communication? As more and more information is recorded and stored automatically, how can the right of privacy be balanced with the right to know? What happens to individual protections when information is a salable commodity? Does the form in which information is kept change the government’s obligation to inform its citizens? Other questions arise from the new technologies: When borders can be breached by a keystroke and texts and images can be reproduced and modified without ever being published, what happens to definitions of intellectual property, scholarship, conversation, publication, community, even knowledge itself?

Predictor: Levinson, Nan

Prediction, in context:

In a 1992 paper about the Internet that is posted on the Electronic Frontier Foundation Internet site, Nan Levinson writes:”While it is axiomatic that these new capabilities can open up faster, easier and more inclusive communication, they also call into question long held assumptions about individual and communal rights. Some are old questions in a new context: What, if any, is the role of the government in regulating electronic communication? As more and more information is recorded and stored automatically, how can the right of privacy be balanced with the right to know? What happens to individual protections when information is a salable commodity? Does the form in which information is kept change the government’s obligation to inform its citizens? Other questions arise from the new technologies: When borders can be breached by a keystroke and texts and images can be reproduced and modified without ever being published, what happens to definitions of intellectual property, scholarship, conversation, publication, community, even knowledge itself?”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1992

Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues

Subtopic: Jurisdiction/Control

Name of publication: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Title, headline, chapter name: Electrifying Speech: New Communications Technologies and Traditional Civil Liberties

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/electrifying_speech.paper

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney