Consent Community Group: Motivation; Mission and Objectives; Workshop and Plans for Action

Hello All,

Hope all is well and you are enjoying your summer.

We appreciate your interest in creating a ‘Consent Community Group’ (Consent-CG). This (first) email to the mailing list reiterates the motivation and mission for creating the CG, and invites participants to an informal workshop (planned for October end) to understand the diverse expertise within the group and chart its impactful journey ahead. You can see more details about the event, an invitation for submitting action statements, and logistics in the last section of this email.
 

# Motivation for creating a Consent-CG
 
We started this group with the philosophy that consent, as part of the broader right to privacy (and freedom), is an essential part of being human and thus part of our agency. As we delve deeper into a digital society, the tools and technologies we use have increasingly taken over the mediation of our ‘agency’—resulting in a disconnect between what we, as individuals and as society, expect and want regarding our privacy.

Regardless of what philosophy or ideals we hold or which jurisdiction we may be in, it is clear that consent is a part of our society and that our laws try to reflect it as they move forward. Yet, there is a distinct lack of collective action regarding consenting on the web (and the internet)—despite it being a prime motivator of our social and technological progress.

This group was thus formed to create a collective force of people and organisations who want to change the way consent and consenting works today—particularly the aspects of malpractices, user empowerment, technical implementations, and legal enforceability.


# Mission and Objectives

Our mission: to improve the experience of digital consenting while ensuring it remains adherent to relevant standards and laws.

Our objectives: (i) provide a space for people and stakeholders to come together, (ii) highlight and analyse concepts, issues and problems about digital consenting, (iii) propose and develop solutions.

Some concrete areas for the working of this group are: (a) developing interdisciplinary solutions; (b) documenting and achieving legal compliance; (c) improving the user experience; and (d) utilising existing and developing new concepts and standards for digital consent.
 

# Workshop and Plans for Action

We started the group with the aim of working on providing a collective space to discuss issues, solutions, and innovations around consent based on our own knowledge and expertise. In time, the group of participants has come to include a diverse range of expertise, and we welcome such participation and rely on its experience and wisdom to make this an impactful community.

We are thus kickstarting the consent community through an informal workshop, where we can discuss the mission and chart activities and objectives for the coming year. The event will also allow us and everyone to be better understand the diversity in perspectives, thoughts, and proposals for actions present between us.

We invite statements of action outlining your thoughts on how consent and consenting can be improved in terms of issues, solutions, and innovations that the group can work towards. As a suggestion, you can tell us what comes to mind when using the phrase “We can improve consent and consenting by …”.

We will utilise the statements to draft the agenda for the event by identifying topics and actions for discussion. These will be put up on the group’s website (to be created). Participation in the event is open and does not require submissions.

To submit, send your content (email, HTML, PDF, ODT DOCX, TXT, MD, whatever) using the email associated with your w3 account and the subject line: “Statement of Action”.

1) public mailing list: public-consent@w3.org

2) private members-only mailing list: internal-consent@w3.org

3) private not-shared: email chairs at soheil.human@wu.ac.at or/and me@harshp.com

We plan to have the workshop on: either Wed. 27.October.2021 or Sat. 30.October.2021 from 17:00 to 19:30 CEST. Would you please specify your availability in your statements or through this non-invasive preference poll: https://www.termino.gv.at/meet/en/p/d6caede8c139dbef76650ee9d2afc438-83792

Participation in the workshop is free of charge, open to the public, and not limited to group members (so as to invite further participation). However, the workshop agenda will be based on received statements from the group. We hope to utilise the workshop as a launching point for coming together and co-creating an impactful group.

Looking forward to it,
Best,
Soheil (and Harsh)

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Director
Sustainable Computing Lab
https://www.sustainablecomputing.eu <https://www.sustainablecomputing.eu/>
Institute for Information Systems and New Media,
Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien)
https://nm.wu.ac.at/human <https://nm.wu.ac.at/human>
Lecturer
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna