[okfn-coord] WhoKnowsWho @ the OKF (confidential)

Mon Dec 14 09:27:32 UTC 2009

I agree entirely with Ian's suggestion that we seek legal advice.
Jordan, are you in aposition to give such advice, and if not, could
you - or any other member of the Board, help us seek some?

The crucial question seems to be to what extent any agreements we
enter into with FOAF/WhoKnowsWho would render us liable to libel and
other actions launched against them.

We should also look at best practice around these sorts of things. For
example, MySociety have received legal threats from MPs who feel they
are misrepresented on TheyWorkForYou. Their strategy for protecting
the organisation from these threats appears to be twofold - first,
they have a strict post-moderation procedure and an organisational
culture which prioritises any legal claims. Second they retain lawyers
able to engage legal teams thrown at their projects by adversaries.

Having said all this, I don't think we should dismiss the Ch4/FOAF
approach - it seems to be the sort of thing OKFN was conceived to help
with. The approach from Channel 4 could be a good opportunity to test
out the structure Rufus is establishing of a Project Committee
reporting to the Board.

2009/12/11 Ian Brown <ian.brown at oii.ox.ac.uk>:
> Sounds like some serious legal advice is required before OKF takes on
> any kind of exposure to this.
>
> On 11 Dec 2009, at 14:13, Rufus Pollock wrote:
>
>> Dear All (sorry to clog up people's inboxes!),
>>
>> I am writing to seek guidance from the Board on an important question.
>> I think we shall need to discuss this at next week's board meeting but
>> any comments in advance would be appreciated.
>>
>> Some background: In a previous email I mentioned that 4IP had some
>> interest in OKF being a home for some (public-interest) projects that
>> did not sit well at Channel 4. They had one particular project in
>> mind: http://whoknowswho.channel4.com/. This was built by people at
>> http://www.tui.co.uk/.
>>
>> On Wednesday I had a call with Neil (Tui's founder) and the main chap
>> behind WKW (seemed incredibly nice on the phone!). They are looking
>> for a home for WKW outside of C4 and outside of TUI and we discussed
>> possibility of coming to OKF. I should emphasize they want to continue
>> actively developing project but want a formal home/website not
>> associated with them or C4 (doesn't fit with their image/brand and is
>> restricted at C4 due to broadcasting regulations).
>>
>> Project would seem to provide an excellent fit with the OKF philosophy
>> and Apache-like structure and model and it appears a) project would be
>> able to fund any associated infrastructure b) would be high-profile
>> and interesting.
>>
>> Only concern is that project is potentially politically controversial
>> and, more seriously, may raise libel issues. More information on this
>> can be found below.
>>
>> ### The question for the board
>>
>> Should we consider accepting this project into the OKF Network? If so
>> should we take steps to insulate it from the Foundation? (A disclaimer
>> along the lines of ISP liability? Having it owned by a separate
>> company limited by guarantee? etc).
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Rufus
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Neil Aberdeen <neil at tui.co.uk>
>> Date: 2009/12/10
>> Subject: FOAF2 - The Map of Power
>> To: rufus.pollock at okfn.org
>> Cc: Matt Robinson <matt at tui.co.uk>, Russ Hendy <russ at tui.co.uk>,
>> Graeme Crowley <graeme at tui.co.uk>
>>
>>
>> Rufus
>> Good to talk last night - hope we get to meet next Wednesday - you
>> should come to lunch. We're at 47 Greek Street, Soho, W1D 4EE
>> I know you asked me to jot down our perceived issues, threats and
>> other concerns relating to FOAF/WhoKnowsWho/ whatever we decide to
>> call it. - here they are in long-winded cinemascope:
>>
>> Facts in FOAF
>> FOAF is built from facts - facts are substantiated and verifiable by
>> reference to sources. Not all sources are equal, which is the start of
>> our problems. Problematising facts has been a post-modern past-time
>> for anyone who has lived through the raging global export success of
>> French theory, but we are comfortable with the crude materialism that
>> some facts are trustworthy and some are less so. We are seeding FOAF
>> with facts from Theyworkforyou and Wikipedia and intend to use (less
>> open) data from Companies House. Another source of facts will be from
>> OpenCalais analysis of news feeds. OpenCalais will help us change news
>> documents into data. A major issue for us in automating the process is
>> disambiguation - how can we be sure that the entity (person,
>> institution event) identified is the right entity for that entry? We
>> intend to use crowd-sourcing (people) to help do this work. We also
>> have some sophisticated proposals about how we might use OpenCalais to
>> help disambiguate. However, clearly things can and will go wrong...
>>
>> When things go wrong we need to be able to act promptly to correct
>> errors or take down false information. We may only plan reactive
>> moderation. This is a risk from the point of view of false even
>> libellous postings especially because the main part of this next
>> iteration will be to open up the database to the public. Registered
>> users will be able to post facts (with substantiations) and also make
>> connections between new and existing entities. Whether or how these
>> posts and connections are moderated is something we are actively
>> considering. Facts will be contested by those who are subject to this
>> involuntary Facebook process. For instance someone might post:
>>
>> In 1987 Tessa Blackstone was made a Life Peer under New Labour
>> http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/rolls/peerage/lifebaronesses.htm
>> Dame Tessa Blackstone became New Labour Secretary of State for
>> Eduction and Employment in the first Blair administration 1997-2001
>> http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peer/baroness_blackstone
>> When she left that post she became Vice Chancellor of Greenwich
>> University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessa_Blackstone,_Baroness_Blackstone
>> http://www.gre.ac.uk/governance/senior_staff/vice-chancellor
>> Greenwich is the historic home of the Navy
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Royal_Naval_College
>> Vosper Thornycroft built the Navy's surface fleet until subsumed into
>> BAE systems in 2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT_Group
>> Vosper Thornycroft plc won the competition to run Education services
>> in Greenwich under the Government's Building Schools for the Future
>> programme http://www.vtplc.com/Media/Pressreleases/VTGROUPSIGNSCONTR1/
>> Dame Tessa Blackstone currently sits on the board of Vosper
>> Thornycroft plc
>> http://www.vtplc.com/Whoweare/Managementteam/BoardofDirectors/
>> Dame Tessa Blackstone is Dame Tessa Vosper Blackstone
>> http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?search=ap&npgno=6157
>>
>> You can see that these are verifiable facts but threading them
>> together produces a narrative with an implication. How far we draw out
>> implications is something that we constantly debate and we're not
>> decided on our strategy but PR companies and lawyers acting on behalf
>> of the rich and powerful may not want these factual connections to be
>> published and may try to use British libel law to gag or otherwise
>> subvert transparency.
>>
>> There is more complexity in the way intend to enable bloggers and
>> others to embed and augment the maps of connections on their sites -
>> we have to consider how those connections contribute the main site -
>> we don't want to restrict use but we need to make sure that
>> unsubstantiated connections and facts do not pollute the public
>> resource.
>>
>> Essentially we believe that facts will be contested, Our response to
>> something that is provably false will be to take it down, it is our
>> response to something more attenuated, or less securely substantiated
>> or just implied that that causes us concern and we are still
>> considering in terms of how to take appropriate action. Threats
>> include:
>>
>> An uneducated but public-spirited user might draw libellous
>> conclusions from a source
>> A vandal might make spurious claims and make their source something
>> inappropriate
>> Spammers could link to their products with real or auto-generated
>> content
>> A group could make actionable claims about people they're opposed to
>> A group could make false claims about people they support
>> A group could overload the site with so much trivia that it drowns out
>> the pertinent facts and drives users away
>> The author of a source may object to its use on the site, particularly
>> if someone uses it to support a fact that they disagree with.
>>
>> Apologies for wittering on at length.
>> Best
>> N
>>
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