1. Digital Copyright, Digital Rights Management, Technological Protection Measures
I study access and use regimes - or the complex, multi-level networks of laws, customs, technologies and expectations that shape what information we can access and how we can make use of it.
Within this, I examine how particular regimes (laws/customs/technologies) came to be - how they are developed and how they change over time. I'm also interested in actors mobilize resources within these networks to create change or reinforce the status quo.
I aim to collect empirical data to inform international, national and institutional level IP decisions and IP activism by exposing and critiquing the hidden processes by which access and use norms are developed and changed and the consequences of current access and use regimes.
LibTPM project: This is a three year Institute of Museum and Library Services project to investigate the impacts of digital rights management systems and anti-circumvention laws on academic and research libraries. I'm primarily interested in what types of licensed products contain access or use restrictions and the effect of those restrictions on learning, teaching and scholarship. I'm also very interested in how cultural heritage institutions are using DRM/TPM to control access and use of home grown digital collections.For more information, see the project website
I've written several papers on the phenomenon of DeCSS posting – to what degree DeCSS posting represents e-protest, who posts DeCSS, and why people risk legal action by posting the software.
2. Management of Information on Government Web Sites
I study how organizations manage the content for their public facing web sites. This includes studies of content management work practices, examination of how agencies decide what content to produce and what not to produce, and investigation of digital information retention practices.
I've also written about how we evaluate the "goodness" of the text information provided by government agencies. Most website evaluation studies overlook text content, or focus primarily on the amount of content provided. My work focuses on how different types of content might facilitate different types of citizen oversight of, and participation in, government.
Through this research I seek to increase understanding how insititutional environments affect the types and amount of information made available to the public, and improve the content that government agencies make available to their citizens.
