I’m quite pleased to learn that Facebook has come to a privacy epiphany. I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the privacy problems with Facebook’s new features — Beacon and Social Ads: * Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again? * The Facebook-Fandango Connection: Invasion of Privacy? * Facebook and the Appropriation of Name or […]
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Yale Law School Conference on Online Reputation
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 […]
Privacy and the 2008 Election
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:
Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again?
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:
Responses to Blog Reviews of The Future of Reputation: Part II
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.
Should Megan Meier’s Tormentors Be Shamed Online?
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 […]
The Facebook-Fandango Connection: Invasion of Privacy?
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 […]
Anonymity and Cyberbullies
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:
Facebook and the Appropriation of Name or Likeness Tort
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 […]
The New FISA Amendments and Immunity for Telecommunications Companies
For the past several months, Congress has been wrangling over how to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow for the NSA warrantless surveillance program. The fact that the NSA surveillance program was clearly illegal — even under charitable creative dubiously-plausible fantastical interpretations of the law — seems to have quickly been forgotten. The […]