On December 8, 2007, Yale Law School’s Information Society Project will be holding a conference about online reputation called Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. I’ll be participating in the symposium and will be talking about my book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. Other participants include Alessandro Acquisti, Michel Bauwens, Danielle […]
Over at The Book Page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the winners for the worst book title have been announced. Nominees include:
Is privacy an issue of concern to voters in the 2008 presidential election? Which candidates do voters think will best protect privacy? These questions are addressed in a new poll by the Ponemon Institute. According to Bob Sullivan’s discussion of the poll in MSNBC’s Red Tape blog:
According to a recent Newsweek story, there are 30 million surveillance cameras in the United States. That’s about 1 camera for every 10 Americans. Next month, an interesting new movie called Look will be released that is filmed entirely with surveillance cameras. From the Newsweek story:
I recently blogged about Facebook’s Beacon, where it adds information to user profiles of their purchases at participating external websites such as Fandango. Beacon is starting to spark a privacy outcry among Facebook users. From the AP:
This post responds to more reviews of my new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, Oct. 2007). I posted Part I of my responses to reviews here. This is Part II.
I previously blogged about the Megan Meier case, where some adults created a fake MySpace account to torment a teenage girl (Megan Meier). The adults pretended to be a boy who befriended Megan online and won her affections, only to viciously dump her and hurl insults at her. The incident led to Megan’s suicide. The […]
Facebook recently rolled out a new advertising program called Social Ads, where Facebook users’ images, names, and words are used to help advertise products and services. I blogged about Facebook’s Social Ads here and here, contending that they are likely a violation of the tort of appropriation of name or likeness as well as the […]
Over at Wired’s Threat Level blog, Kim Zetter discusses a story of cyberbullying that led to a suicide and a newspaper’s decision to not reveal the identities of the responsible parties:
A few days ago, I posted about Facebook’s new Social Ads and I argued that they might give rise to an action under the appropriation of name or likeness tort. The most common formulation of the appropriation tort is defined in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652C: “One who appropriates to his own use […]