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KIM-Kommunikasjon, IKT og medier

Convergence, Control, and Communications (C3)

Awarded: NOK 6.0 mill.

Convergence and control may be said to be central features of modernisation processes. With this as a background the project will focus on the study of: issues of human and citizens’s rights such as freedom of expression, access to free information, and t he right to privacy; the challenges to the principle of providing for equal access to information for all groups in society; the challenge to avoid the misuse of the net in terms of breaking rights holders’ legitimate requirement of protecting their mater ial; the interest of society as a whole to be able to weigh the interests of individual citizens to the interests of users and consumers. Theoretically the project will be based in the work of Giddens, Beck, Winner on risk society and technology, and in p articular on the work of Lessig on rights management, as well as Dworkin and Habermas on freedom of expression. The basic objective of the project is to identify the conditions need to be met in order to produce regulation of all kinds that meets the crit eria of transparency, accountability and participation. The issue of copyright legislation and technological support serves as the point of departure for the other principled issues. Two aspects will be focused: the standardisation of technologies, which covers major aspects of the definition as well as implementation of regulatory regimes related to technology; and the definition and implementation of standards. Regulatory Ecologies is related to the emergence of a series of organisations that are involv ed in the production of regulation or the influencing of it in a variety of ways. Competing regulatory ecologies, competing standards and battles of systems are investigated in relation to the struggle between proponents for open sources on the one hand a nd commercial interests on the other (. The research is an interdisciplinary and collaborative enterprise where the participants will have a background in law, media studies, andcomputer scince/information systems.)

Funding scheme:

KIM-Kommunikasjon, IKT og medier