Legal, Societal, and Ethical Issues in Crowdsourcing - Case Study Example

?CROWDSOURCING Crowdsourcing Affiliation Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Crowdsourcing: An introduction 3 Threadless 4 iStockphoto 4 History of Crowdsourcing 6 Crowdsourcing in Interface design 8 Advantages of Outsourcing 9 Unlimited Resources 9 Affordability 10 Globalization 10 Disadvantages of Crowdsourcing 11 Questionable Quality 11 Exposure 11 Collaboration Issues 12 Generating interest in your design project from an online community 12 Evaluating the skill set and quality of the code submitted by potentially unknown users. 13 How crowdsourcing may affect the budget and timeline of a design project? 14 Legal, societal, and ethical issues it raises, and suggest methods to alleviate these concerns 14 References 15 Crowdsourcing: An introduction In the past few years, there has emerged an attractive trend known as crowdsourcing, which has caught the attention of a large number of organizations. Basically, the crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving, online and production environment that has appeared in recent years. Some of the well-known instances of this model comprise iStockphoto, Threadless, InnoCentive, the Goldcorp Challenge, and user-generated advertising contests. The term “crowdsourcing” was first time used in the June 2006 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson in an issue of Wired Magazine. Basically, they used this term to outline a modern and innovative online business environment that can be used for the presentation of the innovative solutions of a distributed network of isolated users through what amounts to an open call for proposals. Howe further clarifies this term by providing some details associated with this environment. According to their viewpoint, crowdsourcing refers to the process of an institution or organization getting a task that was previously carried out by its internal team workers or staff members and outsourcing it to an open-ended (and usually huge) group of individuals or teams through an open call. Though, this process can appear in the form of peer-production (where a task is carried out by a team of professionals collaboratively), however it can also be carried out by individuals separately. In this scenario, the key idea is the use of the open call format in order to attract a huge network of possible individuals (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008). Technically, this term can be defined as “an organization takes the design, constructs it in bulk quantity and trades it.” This process works in a smooth and sequential manner in which, an organization first distributes an issue or problem online or via other channels, after that a large number of people provide solutions and ideas to deal with that specific problem, most effective solutions or ideas are granted some kind of a reward, and the organization that distributed those problems makes use of that idea for its own benefit. In their paper (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008) discuss a number of examples to clarify the concept of crowdsourcing. Some of the important cases are outlined below: Threadless The first example that (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008) discussed in their paper is of Threadless.com, which is an internet based t-shirt firm. This firm has successfully utilized the concept of crowdsourcing. This firm basically crowdsources the design method for their shirts by means of a partial online competition. In this competition Jacob DeHart and Jake Nickell took part and Nickell won the competition. The company successfully implemented the designs proposed by contestants. In this scenario, the crowdsourcing model helped the firm in earning considerable revenue. Up till 2006, Threadless was ‘selling more than 60,000 T-shirts per month, and had a profit margin of approximately 35% and was on the right track to gross $18 million, all with only 20 staff members. There are no hard and fast rules for joining the Threadless community and anyone who has an authentic email address can join the community (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008). iStockphoto There is another example of a company ‘iStockphoto’ that makes use of crowdsourcing for the development of its business. Basically, iStockphoto.com is an internet based firm that sells royalty-free stock animations, photography, and video clips. It is easy to become a photographer for iStockphoto. In this scenario, any individual can become the member of this firm by filling out an online form, providing proof of identity, and submitting three photographs in order that company’s judge could identify the photography skills of a person. Additionally, if the judges feel these photographs as precisely sound, irrespective of their concept, candidates are normally granted the permission to become a member of the website. After that, selected candidates are granted the permission to upload their videos, clips, animations or photographs to the website to be stored in the databases under specific category. In this scenario, people looking for images and videos for their web sites or business brochures buy credits (normally 1 USD per credit) and start purchasing the stored photographs or videos they need (Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, 2008). In addition, crowdsourcing is not only used by some of the above discussed industries but it is being extensively used by a large number of industries such as software development, information technology and research and development. In this scenario, research and development is part of almost every industry (Brabham, 2008; Kelemen & Smith, 2001). It is clear from the definition of crowdsourcing, it is highly based on the concept of shared intelligence. In other words, the knowledge is believed to be more correct when it comes from a large number of distributed people. For instance, a large number of people collectively are much smarter than any one individual. On the other hand, the opposite of crowdsourcing is a knowledgeable expert in which collective intelligence depends on the knowledge of single agent (Aitamurto, 2012; Poetz & Schreier, 2010). In the same way this concept also applies in the software development with no distinction. The basic purpose of applying this concept in the software development is to make use of combined intelligence in order to solve a problem. History of Crowdsourcing The history of crowdsourcing can be traced back to 1714 when the British government announced the reward of approximately ?20,000 as a prize to anyone who could help them identify a way to measure a ship’s longitude at sea. In fact, that time this task was believed to be impossible and there was no way to solve this problem. A large number of people proposed solutions based on astronomy, however John Harrision won this prize. John Harrision was a clockmaker and carpenter, who invented the marine chronometer. In addition, the concept of crowdsourcing was also used in writing and compiling the first Oxford English Dictionary. In fact, before the development of this dictionary, there was a lack of information in dictionaries as well as the entries frequently disputed with each other. In addition, hundreds of volunteers actively took part in completing this dictionary. In this scenario, they read hundreds of other books and wrote dictionary entries regarding how each word was used in different books in order to extract the correct meaning. The successful completion of this dictionary demonstrated the success of crowdsourcing concept as it proved that a large number of individuals working collectively can be able to develop high quality and low-cost products. Moreover, one of the most common objects that emerged because of crowdsourcing was preserved food. In the 19th century, when Napoleon was trooping his army all over Europe, the problem of supplying food to the army all the way through the year turned out to be a serious challenge. Hence, in order to deal with this issue, the government of France announced a reward of approximately 12,000 francs to anyone who could identify or develop a way for food preservation. In order to deal with this issue, an individual named ‘Peter Durand’ made considerable changes to already available methods of food preservation into glass jars. In place of using jars of glass he replaced them with wrought iron or tin. Actually, these materials were much lesser breakable than glass and their weight was lesser than glass so it was easy to move them with the troop. Hence, Peter Durand was able to win this prize and as a result of this contest a new term "canned food" appeared in the world. Alongside this issue, in 1869 France had another food crisis that was a sudden shortage of butter. At that time, the king announced a reward prize for anyone who could identify or develop an alternative for the mixed cream or butter. As a result of this announcement, a large number of people started developing ways to solve this problem. However, the actual success came for ‘Hippolyte Mege-Mouries’ who was a chemist. In order to deal with this issue he developed a product known as "oleomargarine. Afterward, this name was replaced with "margarine" a well-known product that is currently used by people all over the world. Another contest was held in 1955 in Australia with the purpose of designing an opera house as a portion of Sydney's Harbour. This time the award prize for winning architect was announced as ?5,000. However, this contest was not limited to the people of Australia as it allowed the people from all over the world to take part in this contest and it was the most important aspect of this contest. More than 233 candidates from approximately 33 countries took part in this competition and the winner of this contest was a Danish architect named Jorn Utzon. In addition, the design developed by Jorn Utzon turned out to be a tourist favorite. In fact, at the present the Sydney Opera House is still one of the must-see places in Australia. The concept of crowdsourcing has always been used in different scenarios for the attainment of different goals. However, the basic attention was same and that was making use of the combined intelligence of a large number of people. In addition, with the passage of time the use of this concept has moved into other industries as well. At the present, the concept of crowdsourcing is being used in software development and is supported by latest collaborative tools and technologies. Additionally, crowdsourcing has now moved to the internet and the use of this concept has exploded. In this scenario, Wikipedia is one of the most commonly seen and used instances of the use of crowdsourcing on the Internet is Wikipedia. Though, it is a huge databank on the web, however as compared to other encyclopedia, the contents of this web based databank are written and continuously edited and updated by the knowledgeable public (Ang, Grant, & Liu, 2010; Brabham, Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning Projects, 2009). Crowdsourcing in Interface design The research has shown that crowdsourcing is an excellent option when it has to be adopted for the accomplishment of small and simple tasks. In this scenario, crowdsourcing is believed to be an excellent option for the development of interface designs as it provides a best platform for interface designers for instance web designers to receive some usability feedback regarding their interface or design before launching it to the public or end-users. In this scenario, there are a variety of options for instance if a company wants to replace its old interface with a new one it hire an expert interface designer, on the other hand a startup company cannot take chances with such expert. In this scenario, they will need to take into consideration the option of launching a competition on the basis of crowdsourcing concept in order to get developed that design with a reasonable charge. In addition, a company that wants to develop an interface or a web site with a large collection of images, products, videos and so on, can definitely take benefit of features offered by crowdsourcing. For instance, if a company is going to develop a new web based shopping or e-commerce site, it can use crowdsourcing to and pay a small amount of money to people for defining, describing, classifying or tagging the inventory. On the other hand, if a company is going to launch a new interface for a web site or a system for instance for Windows operating system, can ask individuals all over the world to complete a survey by filling out a form regarding the new design. In this scenario, this feedback and data can help the company get some inspiration. Hence, crowdsourcing can play a significant role in a very serious tasks for instance developing an interface for mobile game, custom software or corporate e-commerce site which does not only require knowledge but also needs thorough management. In any case, with the crowdsourced interface design or help for interface design which normally appears as an online competition, the quality of the ideas and designs presented by individuals are turning out to be more sophisticated as well as more artistically effective. However, there is an aspect of reward as discussed in the above cases, the greater the amount of reward a company offers to its contestants the better the quality of the designs it gets because this reward catches the attention of more expert designers. In addition, crowdsourcing has minimized or even removed the hole between the amateurs and professional artists, also between the hobbyists and seasoned designers. In fact, it does not matter if a design was made by a 16 year old student or an expert interface designer (Stevens, 2013; Tractinsky, Katz, & Ikar, 2000; Gonzalez, 2010). Advantages of Outsourcing Unlimited Resources In view of the fact that crowdsourcing can engage a large number of people in a specific design project. So with such a huge population as a work force, a company can have almost limitless resource of workers and as many design ideas and solutions to choose the best option. Additionally, as crowdsourcing creates the environment of competition among all of the contestants to a specific design project hence a project will engage those members who are sincerely involved in the project. As a result, the productivity and performance of the project will be improved. Affordability As crowdsourcing creates the environment of competition among all kinds of designers so they will offer a competitive price in order to attain a project. In this scenario, a company can choose one that is affordable from a number of designers. On the other hand, there is another benefit and that is, in place of hiring full time individual team members to develop and implement a design solution for an organization’s specific requirements, the firm can offer a reward to only the attractive solution after advertising the project on a crowdsourcing site. In this scenario, instead of paying higher salaries to their full-time employees, an organization can allocate a reasonable price according to their financial plan towards the reward, building a motivation for the individuals to offer effective output. Globalization Today, the concept of crowdsourcing is completely supported through the unlimited power of the Internet, where millions of people from all over the world come to carry out their desired tasks. In view of the fact that the workforce of crowdsourcing is willingly available and accessible on the Internet, hence a firm that is going to crowdsource its design would have access to a large number of expert designers. With crowdsourcing a company is no longer restricted by their place with respect to gaining valued and skilled designers. In fact, a firm can have access to the talented designers from all over the world. Disadvantages of Crowdsourcing Questionable Quality As the organization is using the Internet to get the design of their required specification so there is a chance that it will lose control over the management of its design project that will have considerable negative effects on the quality of design. In fact, an organization that is crowdsourcing its design cannot judge the qualification of a designer in view of the fact there are not easy ways to test the qualification or proof of qualification or authentication of people. In addition, the workers within the online community may not even be professionals, as a result it can have a negative effect on the quality of code that will be developed on the basis of this design. Additionally, there can be discrepancies and contradictions in their code, and the solution can turn out to be less reliable. In many cases, organizations publicize a project, however instead of a reasonable solution for what they require, they will receive only a reasonable effort based solution that would not address all of their requirements. Exposure Without a doubt, the company that wants a design solution will require advertising its project and information regarding its company. It is clear from the definition of crowdsourcing with the purpose of attracting expert designers, the company would have to promote their project and make it easily accessible to everyone. In fact, to those people who are not interested in this project and everyone with an internet connection would be able to get access to project details. In this scenario, this project will also become accessible to its competitors. Hence, as a result of the exposure, their competitors can see their latest projects and make illegal use of this information. Collaboration Issues In view of the fact that crowdsourcing heavily relies on the availability of the Internet and all the processes are completed through the Internet. Additionally, the management of the firm will lose control over the design part of the project and they will not be able to know what is going on at the other hand. Though, there are many collaborative tools that can be used to support this kind of development but still the collaboration is a serious problem due to which a large number of problems occur. The research has shown that collaboration among the staff members of the online public can be a serious challenge. In fact, crowdsourcing involves working with a large number of workers working in different places, which can be very problematic for all of the workers to meet, communicate, collaborate and work on the same project at the same time. Moreover, as the team members locate at different locations so everyone has their own schedule and finding a time when everyone can communicate and collaborate can be almost impossible. There is another problem in collaboration and that is the method and language for communication. As online community can contain people from all over the world with different culture and languages. So communicating and collaborating with such people can be a serious challenge as well (Ang, Grant, & Liu, 2010). Generating interest in your design project from an online community In the above sections there are several examples of crowdsourcing projects which have proved to be successful due to their reward strategies. Seeing their strategies, one of the best solutions to attract online community towards a design project is the implementation of an attractive reward policy. There can be a various kinds of rewards for instance it can be in the form of cost or some popularity by adding their name in the development project. However, the cost of a design project completely depends on the complexity and overall cost of a project. First of all, software development team must estimate the overall project cost and identify the cost of design. They should also visit a number of crowdsourcing web sites in order to determine and set an attractive price of a design project. For instance, visit a crowdsourcing web site such as Elance.com or Guru.com and see what prices have been offered by other vendors for the development of similar designs. Seeing the complexity and the number of bids on specific design project establish the price of a design project and make it available for the designers. If it does not attract many designers at a defined price within 2-3 days price then the project team must think about increasing the cost of the project and keep repeating this process up to an affordable amount until it finds a suitable designer. Evaluating the skill set and quality of the code submitted by potentially unknown users. Normally, every software development project is unique in nature and requires specific skills and expertise to complete the project. The software development team must understand the complexity of a project and consult with their experts to develop a skill set requires for the completion of a project. Some of these experts might have already worked on similar projects so they would have an idea of the skills required to complete a project. On the other hand, code reviews and inspections can be used to evaluate the quality of code submitted by potentially unknown users. These code reviews and inspections can be conducted by a panel of experts to determine errors and mistakes in the code before their final implementation. In this scenario, the mistakes and errors found in these reviews are sent back to the developer for corrections and revision. These inspections and reviews can be on a weekly basis or monthly basis or according to the complexity of the project (Hundhausen, Agarwal, & Trevisan, 2011). How crowdsourcing may affect the budget and timeline of a design project? Without a doubt, effective crowdsourcing is a time-consuming task, which may also affect the overall budget of a design project. For instance, if you have hired an expert designer on a fixed price he can instantly start working on a design project and his salary can be added in the project. On the other hand, in case of crowdsourcing, first of all a lot of time will be required to decide for the website on which a firm wants to crowdsource. After that they will need to outline their requirement in a way that would be easier to understand for the online community since there is only one medium for the communication. Initiating a competition and waiting for a winning candidate is a time-consuming project. The overall budget will be depending on the fee of finally selected candidate and the process of selection will be time-consuming as well. In addition, there can emerge a variety of communication problems while working with online communities, which can further delay the project (Livingston, 2010). Legal, societal, and ethical issues it raises, and suggest methods to alleviate these concerns Without a doubt, the crowdsourcing has emerged as an attractive trend which has quickly caught the attention of a large number of individuals and organizations. On the other hand, crowdsourcing also brings a variety of social, legal and ethical. Basically, social issues can emerge due to competition. Online community comprises people from all over the world and they can agree to work on minimum prices and organizations searching for cheap workforce can take benefit of this weakness. Crowdsourcing firms should be fair with people and offer them a fair price. In this way, they will put their best effort on the project and as a result the quality of the project will be improved (Wolfson, 2012). In this scenario, some of the legal issues can be related to copyrights. Though, there exists a large number of laws for dealing with theft of physical equipment but there are considerable laws for dealing with intellectual property while working with crowds (Wolfson, 2012). In this scenario, crowdsourced designs involve the maximum risk of incompliance with legal aspects due to a large number of participants and the consequential problems linked with authorization. Through crowdsourcing a firm pays for the work and it is legal and ethically wrong not to display the name and details of its developer. If an organization does not want to display their name they must take the copyrights and permissions from the developer of that part and keep the proof that permission. In addition, some of the well-known websites like that YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have predefined policies, rules and regulations regarding how other firms and individuals can make use of their contents or access information from these websites or even embed the links of these web sites into their web sites. In this scenario, the crowdsourcing firms should decide whether third-party website terms of use and rules and regulations relate to the firm’s designated crowdsourcing mechanism. Additionally, be updated and aware of risks and issues adjacent possession and ownership related to intellectual property in any materials submitted provided along with a crowdsourcing project or received from the developer. Moreover, the crowdsourcing firm should also use a developer’s name, signature, image, likeness, and personally identifying information (Lieberstein, 2012; Martin-Shields). References Aitamurto, T. (2012). The Promise of Idea Crowdsourcing: –Benefits, Contexts, Limitations. Nokia. Ang, N., Grant, L., & Liu, C. (2010, November 10). Software Crowdsourcing Development. Retrieved from http://softwarecrowdsourcingdevelopment.wikispaces.asu.edu/Software+Crowdsourcing+Development Brabham, D. C. (2008). Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases. The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Volume 14 Issue 1, 75-90. Brabham, D. C. (2009). Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning Projects. Sage Publications, Volume 8 Issue 3, 242-262. Gonzalez, P. (2010, November 23). Crowdsourcing Erases Graphic Design as we know it. Retrieved from http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/crowdsourcing-erases-graphic-design-as-we-know-it/ Hundhausen, C. D., Agarwal, P., & Trevisan, M. (2011). Online vs. face-to-face pedagogical code reviews: an empirical comparison. SIGCSE '11 Proceedings of the 42nd ACM technical symposium on Computer science education (pp. 117-122). New York, USA : ACM. Kelemen, M., & Smith, W. (2001). Community and its 'virtual' promises: a critique of cyberlibertarian rhetoric. Information, Communication & Society, Volume 4 Issue 3, 370-387. Lieberstein, M. (2012). Crowdsourcing and Intellectual Property Issues. Retrieved from http://www.acc.com/legalresources/quickcounsel/caipi.cfm Livingston, G. (2010, October 12). 4 Real Challenges to Crowdsourcing for Social Good. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/10/12/social-good-crowdsourcing/ Martin-Shields, C. (n.d.). The Technologist’s Dilemma: Ethical Challenges of Using Crowdsourcing Technology in Conflict and Disaster-Affected Regions. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 135-141. Poetz, M. K., & Schreier, M. (2010). The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas? Journal of Product Innovation Management, 1-37. Stevens, D. (2013, November 10). Crowdsourcing: Pros, Cons, and More. Retrieved from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/what-is-crowdsourcing/ Tractinsky, N., Katz, A. S., & Ikar, D. (2000). What is beautiful is usable. Interacting with Computers, Volume 13 Issue 12, 127-145. Wolfson, S. M. (2012). Crowdsourcing and the Law. Austin: The University of Texas. Read More