CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
Regulating Search?
A Symposium on Search Engines, Law, and Public Policy
December 3, 2005
Yale Law School
New Haven, CT
http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/regulatingsearch.html
Search is big business, and search functionality increasingly shapes
the information society. Yet how the law treats search is still up
for grabs, and with it, the power to dominate the next generation of
the online world. How will this potential to wield control affect
search engine companies, their advertisers, their users, or the
information they index? What will search engines look like in the
future, and what is the role of regulators in this emerging market?
The Information Society Project at Yale Law School is proud to
present "Regulating Search?: A Symposium on Search Engines, Law, and
Public Policy," the first academic conference devoted to search
engines and the law. "Regulating Search?" will take place on
December 3, 2005 at Yale Law School in New Haven, CT.
This event will bring together representatives from the search
industry, government, civil society, and academia to discuss the
emerging intersection of search engines and various forms of
regulation. It is made possible by the generous support of the
Microsoft Corporation, Google, Inc., and the Knight Foundation.
A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of search
engine law & policy in four panels: (1) The Search Space; (2) Search
Engines and Public Regulation; (3) Search Engines and Intellectual
Property; and (4) Search Engines and Individual Rights. A detailed
description of these four panels is included below and the current
list of confirmed speakers will be available on the conference
website.
Registration for the conference and further information are available
at http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/regulatingsearch.html. Early Bird
registration is $35 for students, $75 for academic and nonprofit
participants, and $165 for corporate and law firm participants. Early
Bird registration ends on Nov. 15.
Regulating Search?
A Symposium on Search Engines, Law, and Public Policy
Panel 1: The Search Space
This panel will review the wide range of what search engines do and
their importance in the information ecosystem. It will survey the
pressures search engines face, the technologies they employ, and the
constituencies they must serve. It will frame the question, to be
explored throughout the day, of whether search is a matter that
requires specific regulatory intervention and a special set of legal
rules for its governing. In this panel, industry participants,
computer scientists, and analysts will flag major trends in search
engine technology and try to predict future developments, with the
goal of pointing out those trends that will create new conflicts and
new litigation.
Some questions the panelists may ask include:
How competitive will the search engine market be in five years?
Who will be creating the next generation of search innovations: large
corporate entities or judgment-proof individuals?
Will the rise of geography-based search change our assumptions about
such questions as privacy, jurisdiction, and censorship?
What's next in personalized search?
What's next in decentralized peer-to-peer search?
Will vertical search upend our intuitions about what a search engine does?
Do search companies think of legal risks when they make development decisions?
What kinds of services will search merge with?
Panel 2: Search Engines and Public Regulation
This panel will discuss the possibility of direct government
regulation of search functionality. Such regulation might proceed
under several jurisdictional heads (e.g. antitrust, consumer
protection, or telecommunications) with any of a number of possible
policy goals. Where one or a few search engines achieve dominance
over a particular aspect of search, the possibility of such
regulation seems more imminent. This panel will discuss who might
regulate search, why, and how.
Some questions the panelists may ask include:
Do search engines have First Amendment or Takings Clause rights that
would preclude certain forms of regulation?
Should government regulators intervene to make sure that the search
market stays competitive?
Should search engines be subjected to an informational equivalent of
common-carrier rules?
Is there an obligation to provide evenhanded listing of sites?
Evenhanded listing of results?
Should search engines be required to disclose their commercial
sponsors? Their algorithms?
Should consumers be protected from bad search results? From having
their search results malevolently altered?
Does the recent spate of security breaches at database companies
portend similar trouble for search companies?
Should search engines be afraid of anti-spyware legislation? Of
anti-spam legislation?
Panel 3: Search Engines and Intellectual Property
This panel will review past and present litigation involving search
engines and claims framed in the legal doctrines of copyright,
trademark, patent, and right of publicity. Whether search engines are
innocent intermediaries, heroic crusaders for open access, or
villainous agents of infringement depends on who you ask--as does the
appropriate legal response. The panel will discuss the ways in which
IP law shapes the landscape of permissible and impermissible searches.
Some questions the panelists may ask include:
What does the Grokster decision mean for makers of search engines?
What are the obligations of search engines when responding to
searches on trademarked terms?
What IP rights do and should search engines have available to protect
their algorithms and databases?
What are the obligations of search engines vis-a-vis the copyright
claims of the makers of the content they index?
Do search engines' activities implicate the right of publicity?
Should search engines be liable for their activities in exposing
security holes and spreading data that may include trade secrets?
What are the possibilities for using search engines to promote
authorized use of IP protected content?
Panel 4: Search Engines and Individual Rights
Some say that search engines are engines of free expression; others
see them as vehicles for hate speech. Some think that search enables
large-scale intrusion into the privacy of others; others think that
the search companies themselves are the new surveillers, spying on
their users; still others see anonymous search as a moral necessity
and a real possibility. This panel will look at the role of search
engines in reshaping our experience of basic rights and at the
pressures the desire to protect those rights place on search.
Some questions the panelists may ask include:
Should search engines remove content that some find objectionable?
What kinds of data do search engines collect on the individuals who
use them? What kinds should they be allowed to collect?
Do search engines facilitate stalking and other dangerous activities?
If so, what can be done about it?
How can search engines facilitate the free flow of valuable political
and expressive speech?
In an age when search engines create rankings based on mass opinion
and links, what does this technique mean for individual dissent and
personal liberty?
Do search engines empower individuals by promoting accessibility to
their words and thoughts online, or do they only help today's strong
media players get stronger?
Is there a right to search anonymously?
Is access to search technology a basic human right of access to knowledge?
---------
Eddan Katz
Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
Executive Director, Information Society Project
http://islandia.law.yale.edu/isp/
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