The current issue of the International Review of Information Ethics on the ethics of sharing, guest-edited by Felix Stalder and Wolfgang Sützl, is available online now. With contributions by Clemens Apprich, Michel Bauwens, Vito Campanelli, Alessandro Delfanti, Marie-Luisa Frick/Andreas Oberprantacher, Mayo Fuster Morell, and Andras Wittel.

"... This issue brings together contributions towards an ethics of sharing that embed the new technological potentialities linking them to their actual social impact. In our understanding, information ethics "deals with ethical questions in the field of digital production and reproduction of phenomena and processes such as the exchange, combination and use of information." So, the task of developing an ethics of sharing is both descriptive - helping us to understand the contemporary complexities of the ethics of exchanging information as it emerges from using digital technologies across a global range of social and cultural contexts - as well as normative - helping us to address blind-spots and clarifying possible ethical frameworks to address unresolved issues regarding these practices. And what do we and should we finally do with the truly impressive contributions gathered here to provide answers to the above named questions and guidelines for the outlined task? We share them with you leaving them to your appropriate use - whatever you may make out of it." (From the editorial by Rafael Capurro and Felix Weil)

Download the complete IRIE issue 15/2011 in pdf format here

Innsbruck Media Studies and the Austrian Knowledge Management Platform are preparing an international conference on "Cultures and Ethics of Sharing". The conference is scheduled for 18-19 November, 2011.

Conference website

International Review of Information Ethics 01/2011

edited by Felix Stalder and Wolfgang Sützl

Sharing has emerged as one of the core cultural and ethical values native to the networked environment. It is built both into the technical protocols that make up the Internet, and holds together distributed, mediated communities and organizations (even if they try to limit sharing to members inside the organizations). In information ethics, sharing has implicitly been discussed in terms of privacy, intellectual property, secrecy, security and freedom of speech, which together define the social character of the information environment. But recent developments such as WikiLeaks have shown that there is a need to go beyond discussing the legitimacy of access or restrictions. We need to address the motivations and ethical positions that compel people to share information, even at considerable risk to themselves. Has sharing of information a special virtue of the information society? How are choices of sharing or withholding information justified? Is sharing subversive of the new global information regime, or an integral aspect of it?

This issue of IRIE brings together contributions towards an ethics of sharing that embeds the technological potentialities in lived social experience. In our understanding, information ethics "deals with ethical questions in the field of digital production and reproduction of phenomena and processes such as the exchange, combination and use of information."

Deadline for extended abstracts: January 31, 2011 Notification of acceptance to authors: February 8, 2011 Deadline for full articles: April 30, 2011 Publication: July, 2011

For the full call, please click here.

For a pdf file of the call, here.