Author Archive for daniel-solove

Introducing Guest Blogger Anita Krishnakumar

posted by Daniel Solove

I’m delighted to introduce Professor Anita S. Krishnakumar (St. John’s School of Law), who will be joining us for a reprise guest visit for the next month.

Anita teaches Legislation, Introduction to Law, and Trusts and Estates. She received her J.D. from Yale University, and her B.A. from the Stanford University. Before joining the St. John’s faculty in 2006, she visited at Touro Law School from 2004-06. Prior to entering law teaching, she worked as an associate in the appellate litigation group at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, and as a litigation associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, & Hamilton. Before that, she was as a law clerk for Jose A. Cabranes of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2009, she received a Dean’s Teaching Award, based on student evaluations.

Anita’s current research focuses on legislative solutions to legislative process dysfunctions, recent trends in the Supreme Court’s statutory interpretation cases, judicial treatment of political parties, and election law.

Her publications include:

* The Hidden Legacy of Holy Trinity Church: The Unique National Institution Canon, 51 William & Mary L. Rev. (forthcoming 2009)

* Representation Reinforcement: A Legislative Solution to a Legislative Process Problem, 46 Harv. J. on Legisl. 1 (2009)

* Towards A Madisonian “Interest-Group” Approach To Lobbying Regulation, 58 Alabama Law Review 513 (2007)

  November 1, 2009 at 8:21 am   Posted in: Administrative Announcements   Print This Post   2 Comments

Consumer Attitudes on Privacy and Behavioral Marketing

posted by Daniel Solove

Joseph Turow, Chris Hoofnagle, Jennifer King, Amy Bleakley, and Michael Hennessy have just issued a very interesting consumer survey on privacy and behavioral marketing entitled, Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It.

Some of the survey’s findings:

* Even when they are told that the act of following them on websites will take place anonymously, Americans’ aversion to it remains: 68% “definitely” would not allow it, and 19% would “probably” not allow it. (p. 2)

* 69% of American adults feel there should be a law that gives people the right to know everything that a website knows about them. (p. 2)

* 92% agree there should be a law that requires “websites and advertising companies to delete all stored information about an individual, if requested to do so.” (p. 2)

* Signaling frustration over privacy issues, Americans are inclined toward strict punishment of information offenders. 70% suggest that a company should be fined more than the maximum amount suggested ($2,500) “if a company purchases or uses someone’s information illegally.” (p. 3)

* Our survey did find that younger American adults are less likely to say no to tailored advertising than are older ones. Still, more than half (55%) of 18- 24 year-olds do not want tailored advertising. And contrary to consistent assertions of marketers, young adults have as strong an aversion to being followed across websites and offline (for example, in stores) as do older adults. 86% of young adults say they don’t want tailored advertising if it is the result of following their behavior on websites other than one they are visiting, and 90% of them reject it if it is the result of following what they do offline. (p. 2)

These are just a few of the many findings in this fascinating survey.  The New York Times has coverage of the survey here.

  September 29, 2009 at 6:28 pm   Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy)   Print This Post   No Comments

Facebook Settles Beacon Lawsuit

posted by Daniel Solove

A while ago, I wrote a lot about Facebook’s Beacon on this blog:

* The Facebook-Fandango Connection: Invasion of Privacy?

* Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again?

* Facebook and the Appropriation of Name or Likeness Tort

* The New Facebook Ads — Starring You: Another Privacy Debacle?

* Facebook — the New DoubleClick?

* Facebook Listens and Responds

* Facebook’s Beacon, Blockbuster, and the Video Privacy Protection Act

A class action suit was initiated against Facebook, and recently, a settlement agreement has been reached.  According to the WSJ:

Facebook Inc. said Friday it settled a class-action lawsuit related to its Beacon Web product, a controversial service that displayed actions that users took on other Web sites back on Facebook.

As part of the settlement, which is pending approval in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, the social-network concern will shut down the Beacon service, which it has been phasing out but which is still being used by a small number of Web sites, according to a Facebook spokesman.

The company will also pay $9.5 million to create a foundation to fund products that promote online privacy, safety and security, the spokesman said. The settlement was submitted to the court late Friday evening.

  September 21, 2009 at 10:00 pm   Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0   Print This Post   No Comments

Understanding Privacy in Paperback

posted by Daniel Solove

I’m pleased to announce that my book, Understanding Privacy, has just come out in paperback from Harvard University Press, with a price that’s much more reasonable and affordable than the hardcover.

Understanding Privacy offers a comprehensive overview of the many difficulties involved in discussions of privacy. Drawing from a broad array of interdisciplinary sources, I set forth a framework for understanding privacy that provides clear practical guidance for engaging with privacy issues.

  September 14, 2009 at 7:36 am   Posted in: Articles and Books, Book Reviews, Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Privacy (ID Theft), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (Medical), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   No Comments

The Art of Renaming

posted by Daniel Solove

If people don’t like something, the solution is often as simple as a name change.  Consider fish.  Some of the most popular fish today are renamed versions of less desirable fish.  Orange Roughy used to be called slimehead.  Chilean sea bass used to be called toothfish.  Monkfish used to be goosefish. The result of these name changes has been a dramatic increase in popularity, so much so that many renamed fish are now overfished and endangered.

The renaming trend is now spreading to academic courses. From the Boston Globe:

Boston College German studies professor Michael Resler went searching for a way to boost flagging interest in his “German Literature of the High Middle Ages’’ class a few years ago, and settled on the idea of simply giving the course a sexier name. The resulting “Knights, Castles, and Dragons’’ nearly tripled enrollment.

Resler then replaced his class on “The Songs of Walter von der Vogelweide,’’ a great German lyric poet, with “Passion, Politics, and Poetry in the Middle Ages.’’ Again, enrollment swelled.

“I suppose the moral of the story is that we live in an age where everything has to be marketed in order to find a willing audience,’’ Resler mused.

Maybe it’s time to rename law school classes:

Torts –> Crashes and Accidents

Criminal Law –> Murder Most Foul and Other Dastardly Crimes

Trusts & Estates –> Dead Hands: Power After Death

Corporate Law –> Gold and Parachutes

Property –> The Story of a Whale and a Fox

Hat tip: Inside Higher Ed

  September 8, 2009 at 7:32 am   Posted in: Culture, Education, Humor, Law School, Law School (Teaching)   Print This Post   10 Comments

Breaching a Child’s Confidentiality

posted by Daniel Solove

Over at the NYT blog is an interesting story about a British writer (Julie Myerson) who has published a memoir about her son’s drug addiction (The Lost Child).  Her 20-year old son has criticized the publication of the book. According to the Telegraph (UK):

The 20-year-old said: “What she has done has taken the very worst years of my life and cleverly blended it into a work of art, and that to me is obscene.

“I was only 17, I was a confused teenager, I was too young really to know who I was or what was happening.

“What she describes in her book are a series of incidents, it’s not who I am and I find it very sad that she feels the need to tar me with the ‘drug addict’ brush.

“She’s been writing about me since I was two, and, quite frankly, I’m not surprised by anything she does any more.

The NYT Blog asks:

Is it inappropriate and even harmful to expose the private lives of minor children, in particular? What privacy lines should be observed, if any, in writing about family members and others?

It contains responses from four people, Alison Gopnik (a psychology professor), David Matthews (author), Melanie Gideon (author0, and Michael Greenberg (author).  For example, Author David Matthews writes:

Nothing is off limits as far as I’m concerned. Whether an author wants to risk fraying familial and social ties in the pursuit of the truth (as they see it) is a question left up to the writer.

Matthews’ response strikes me as rather extreme. In Britain, family members owe each other duties to keep private information confidential. In the US, the breach of confidentiality tort applies to doctors, lawyers, and others, but hasn’t been extended to friends and family.  Perhaps it should be.

According to the Telegraph article, Myerson’s son said:

“I even consulted a lawyer to try to stop it, but was told there wasn’t much I could do, so I made her take out the part where she said I was selling drugs to my 12-year-old brother, which was one of her fantasies.

I’m surprised that he was advised the law didn’t protect him, since the book was published in Britain and he’d likely have a decent case under British precedent.

The Myerson case is increasingly becoming more common.  Numerous bloggers are chronicling the lives of their children online, posting photos and a day-by-day account of their lives.  What happens when these children grow up and resent having their entire childhood permanently recorded for the world to see?

Should family members owe each other a duty of confidentiality?  Should parents write about a child’s life without that child’s consent?

Hat tip: PogoWasRight

  September 1, 2009 at 7:40 am   Posted in: Family Law, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Tort Law   Print This Post   8 Comments

Introducing Guest Blogger Jonathan Siegel

posted by Daniel Solove

I’m delighted to introduce Professor Jonathan Siegel, who will be guest blogging with us this month.  Jonathan is my colleague at George Washington University Law School.  He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. He clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, after which he served for four years as an attorney on the Appellate Staff of the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He became a professor at George Washington Law School in 1995 and was named the Kahan Research Professor in 2008.

Jon’s scholarship focuses on administrative law, federal courts, statutory interpretation, and lawsuits against governments. When not a guest on Concurring Opinions, he blogs at Law Prof on the Loose.

Some of his recent and/or favorite publications include:

* A Theory of Justiciability, 86 Tex. L. Rev. 73 (2007)

* The Polymorphic Principle and the Judicial Role in Statutory Interpretation, 84 Tex. L. Rev. 339 (2005)

* The Use of Legislative History in a System of Separated Powers, 53 Vand. L. Rev. 1457 (2000)

* The Hidden Source of Congress’s Power to Abrogate State Sovereign Immunity, 73 Tex. L. Rev. 539 (1995)

  August 31, 2009 at 11:30 am   Posted in: Administrative Announcements   Print This Post   No Comments

Introducing Guest Blogger John Ip

posted by Daniel Solove

I’m delighted to introduce Professor John Ip (University of Auckland Faculty of Law), who will be guest blogging with us this month.

John joined the law faculty of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005, and specializes in comparative counterterrorism law, and criminal justice. Prior to arriving in Auckland, he worked on Guantánamo Bay and death penalty litigation at an NGO in the United States, and was a Judges’ Clerk at the Auckland High Court. John is a graduate of the University of Auckland and Columbia University Law School.

Some of his publications include:

* Two Narratives of Torture, 7 Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights 35 (2009)

* The Rise and Spread of the Special Advocate, Public Law 171 (Winter 2008)

* Crime, Criminal Justice and the Media, in Criminal Justice in New Zealand (Tolmie & Brookbanks eds. 2007)

* Comparative Perspectives on the Detention of Terrorist Suspects, 16 Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems 773 (2007)

* Debating New Zealand’s Hate Crime Legislation: Theory and Practice, 21 New Zealand Universities Law Review 575 (2005)

  August 31, 2009 at 11:25 am   Posted in: Administrative Announcements   Print This Post   No Comments

Fellowships for Aspiring Law Professors 2009-2010

posted by Daniel Solove

Over at TaxProf, Paul Caron has posted an updated list of fellowships and visiting associate professorships for aspiring law professors.

  August 31, 2009 at 11:24 am   Posted in: Law School, Law School (Hiring & Laterals)   Print This Post   No Comments

The Revenge of College Gossip Websites

posted by Daniel Solove

A while ago, the notorious college gossip website, Juicy Campus, bit the dust.  But according to an article by Jeffrey Young in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

“This is the new JuicyCampus,” says a note at Campus Gossip, which boasts campus-specific message boards for hundreds of colleges and encourages anonymous and racy barbs such as “These Fellas got herpes,” with a list of names attached. Going even further than its predecessor, there’s also a photo section where students can post embarrassing pictures and videos of others.

The site is planning a back-to-school marketing push, including a happy hour near Arizona State University where a rap artist named Sabotage will perform a song about the pleasures of campus gossip.

Another site, CollegeACB (the letters stand for Anonymous Confession Board), paid the defunct JuicyCampus $10,000 to redirect visitors from its Web address to CollegeACB.

For those who want a first-hand look at these sites, the Campus Gossip site is here and the CollegeACB site is here.  I’m quoted in the article, as is co-blogger Danielle Citron:

Internet shaming creates an indelible blemish on a person’s identity,” wrote Daniel J. Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University, in his 2007 book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press). “It’s similar to being forced to wear a digital scarlet letter or being branded or tattooed. People acquire permanent digital baggage. They are unable to escape their past, which is forever etched into Google’s memory.” . . . .

“I don’t see why it has to be that way,” the law professor told me in a recent interview. “Just like when you drive, it’s not a free-for-all,” he added, equating the current laws governing online forums to a road without traffic lights or stop signs. “It’s like if we looked at the roads and said, There’s just nothing to be done—let’s just abolish all rules of the road.” . . . .

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