TPAC 2026 Mini Workshop Proposal: AI and Society
Mini-workshop on Data Governance & Ownership
Pierre-Antoine Champin
Why this workshop?
“This is for everyone” or “free-for-all”?
The initial vision of the World Wide Web was one of sharing and openness, to foster knowledge exchange between people and inter-creativity. Almost four decades later, the original optimism (some would say idealism) has gradually lead to concerns, even sometimes disenchantment.
Should everything on the web be open to everyone (or everything)? As more and more people gain access to the web, the dangers of exposing vulnerable populations (children in particular) to inappropriate content are becoming increasingly acute, receiving much attention from regulators all over the world. Additionally, contents pusblished on the open web are used, nowadays, well beyond the initial expectations and intent of their creators, such as training AI models and consumption by AI agents. This creates unprecedented copyright challenges, and endangers the balance that made the open web economically sustainable so far.
Is the web still open anyway? And is it still for everyone? Most people sharing content on the web are doing it on large social media platforms. Recommendation algorithms and opaque terms and conditions mean that they never really know or chose with whom they are sharing their data, despite regulations (such as the EU’s GDPR) meant to require their informed consent. Conversely, they have little visibility on the provenance of the data shared with them. Efforts such as the Data Transfer Initiative, the Fediverse, or the Solid project, aim at breaking data silos or even redefine how web applications are silos.
A goal of this workshop is to identify various activities, in W3C or other SDOs, dealing with new forms of data governance and data ownership. Another goal is to identify gaps that web standards need to fill to address the emerging users’ needs and regulatory constraints in that space.
Topics of interest
- Decentralized and user-centric alternatives to data silos
- Mechanisms for expressing usage preferences and licensing of published content
- Data provenance: knowing where the data we consume comes from
- Regulatory approaches to content access and data protection and their technical implications
- The role of web standards in balancing openness, ownership, and governance
Chairs
Submissions and presentations
Modalities TBD
TPAC 2026 Mini Workshop Proposal: AI and Society
Mini-workshop on Data Governance & Ownership
Pierre-Antoine Champin
Why this workshop?
“This is for everyone” or “free-for-all”?
The initial vision of the World Wide Web was one of sharing and openness, to foster knowledge exchange between people and inter-creativity. Almost four decades later, the original optimism (some would say idealism) has gradually lead to concerns, even sometimes disenchantment.
Should everything on the web be open to everyone (or everything)? As more and more people gain access to the web, the dangers of exposing vulnerable populations (children in particular) to inappropriate content are becoming increasingly acute, receiving much attention from regulators all over the world. Additionally, contents pusblished on the open web are used, nowadays, well beyond the initial expectations and intent of their creators, such as training AI models and consumption by AI agents. This creates unprecedented copyright challenges, and endangers the balance that made the open web economically sustainable so far.
Is the web still open anyway? And is it still for everyone? Most people sharing content on the web are doing it on large social media platforms. Recommendation algorithms and opaque terms and conditions mean that they never really know or chose with whom they are sharing their data, despite regulations (such as the EU’s GDPR) meant to require their informed consent. Conversely, they have little visibility on the provenance of the data shared with them. Efforts such as the Data Transfer Initiative, the Fediverse, or the Solid project, aim at breaking data silos or even redefine how web applications are silos.
A goal of this workshop is to identify various activities, in W3C or other SDOs, dealing with new forms of data governance and data ownership. Another goal is to identify gaps that web standards need to fill to address the emerging users’ needs and regulatory constraints in that space.
Topics of interest
Chairs
Submissions and presentations
Modalities TBD