Conflict (and Dispute Resolution) Is a Growth Industry

Athens.
Next up at WebSci '09 is Ethan Katsh, whose focus is on online dispute resolution. Disputes are a major online phenomenon, and as Fisher and Ury suggested even in 1983, "conflict is a growth industry". Dispute resolution also makes for a very useful case study for Web science, Ethan suggests - and he notes that many of the trends identified at this conference may also cause further disputes.

Last year alone, eBay handled some 40 million disputes (making it 'the largest small claims tribunal in the world'); ICANN handled some 25,000 disputes over its 100 million domain names in ten years, Wikipedia has instituted a broad range of dispute reolution processes and Second Life with its 5.5 billion Linden Dollars in circulation has started to generate a number of virtual property rules to manage its operations. Technology, then, is a great dispute generator, as a byproduct of online transactions and online relationships, but also of the increasing value of information, the brader distribution of information, the growing range of virtual goods and property, the increasing creative activity, the increasing complexity, and the accelerating pace of change.

For many Web 2.0 sites, it is also important to ask what the responsibility of the site operator is - many such operators disavow most of their responsibility (to avoid liability). The law does not really care about dispute resolution here - historically, it has been slow to recognise problems and looks at problems through the lens of traditional legal rules linked to intellectual property, privacy, free expression, etc., and jurisdictional issues also affect the authority and enforcement of laws. There is, in fact, the phenomenon of the 'vanishing trial' - courts are encouraging settlement rather than letting cases go to trial, which also means that fewer legal precedents are set.

Dispute resolution is ultimately about negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. Dispute resolution is therefore an information- and communication-based process, and there are a number of online dispute resolution processes now being offered, some even by commercial operators. Cybersettle offers a blind bidding model to settle monetary disputes, for example, eBay has forms to guide negotiation, a National Mediation Board/University of Massachusetts project provides online brainstorming tools, ICANN has instituted a non-binding arbitration mechanism, Wikipedia has its mediation model, eBay, again, also has virtual juries (which Ethan describes as the only court in which one can imagine a dispute between a refrigerator and a dishwasher), and even the US Army has an online ombudsoffice.

Some disputes are necessary and important, of course, but how many disputes are too many? What processes of dispute resolution are appropriate for what kinds of disputes? Is the authority of the law eroding? Are private law processes (contracts) replacing public law - in the way that Creative Commons as a private contract system is replacing conventional copyright at least in part?

Technorati : WebSci '09, community, conflict, dispute resolution, law, social media
Del.icio.us : WebSci '09, community, conflict, dispute resolution, law, social media