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Ethical issues in Language Resources and Language Technology are often invoked, but rarely discussed. This is at least partly because little work has been done to systematize ethical issues and principles applicable in the fields of Language Resources and Language Technology. This paper provides an overview of ethical issues that arise at different stages of Language Resources and Language Technology development, from the conception phase through the construction phase to the use phase. Based on this overview, the authors propose a tentative taxonomy of ethical issues in Language Resources and Language Technology, built around five principles: Privacy, Property, Equality, Transparency and Freedom. The authors hope that this tentative taxonomy will facilitate ethical assessment of projects in the field of Language Resources and Language Technology, and structure the discussion on ethical issues in this domain, which may eventually lead to the adoption of a universally accepted Code of Ethics of the Language Resources and Language Technology community.
Privacy in its many aspects is protected by various legal texts (e.g. the Basic Law, Civil Code, Criminal Code, or even the Law on Copyright in artistic and photographic works (KunstUrhG), which protects image rights). Data protection law, which governs the processing of information about individuals (personal data), also serves to protect their privacy. However, some information referring to the public sphere of an individual’s life (e.g. the fact that X is a mayor of Smallville) may still be considered personal data (see below), and as such fall within the scope of data protection rules. In this sense, data protection laws concern information that is not private.
Therefore, privacy and data protection, although closely related, are distinct notions: one can violate someone else’s privacy without processing his or her personal data (e.g. simply by knocking at one’s door at night, uninvited), and vice versa: one can violate data protection rules without violating privacy.
The following handouts focus exclusively on data protection rules, and specifically on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, please keep in mind that compliance with the GDPR is not the only aspect of protecting privacy of individuals in research projects. Other rules, such as academic ethics and community standards (such as CARE) also need to be observed.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on personal data protection in the European Union entered into application on 25 May 2018. With its 173 recitals and 99 articles, it may be one of the most ambitious pieces of EU legislation to date. Rather than a guide to GDPR compliance for Digital Humanities researchers, this chapter looks at the use of personal data in DH projects from the data subject’s perspective, and examines to what extent the GDPR kept its promise of enabling the data subject to “take control of his data”. The chapter provides an overview of the right to privacy and the right to data protection, a discussion of the relation between the concept of data control and privacy and data protection law, an introduction to the GDPR, and an explanation of its relevance for scientific research in general and DH in particular. The main section of the chapter analyses two types of data control mechanisms (consent and data subject rights) and their impact on DH research.
In order to develop its full potential, global communication needs linguistic support systems such as Machine Translation (MT). In the past decade, free online MT tools have become available to the general public, and the quality of their output is increasing. However, the use of such tools may entail various legal implications, especially as far as processing of personal data is concerned. This is even more evident if we take into account that their business model is largely based on providing translation in exchange for data, which can subsequently be used to improve the translation model, but also for commercial purposes. The purpose of this paper is to examine how free online MT tools fit in the European data protection framework, harmonised by the EU Data Protection Directive. The perspectives of both the user and the MT service provider are taken into account.