Archive for the ‘Articles and Books’ Category
The Daily You: A Mandatory Read
posted by Danielle Citron
Over at the Business Insider, Doug Weaver has a terrific review of our guest blogger Joe Turow’s new book The Daily You, demonstrating its practical importance to people in the field like Weaver as well as to policymakers and scholars.Here’s the review:
Listening to the insider discussions and industry reporting about online marketing provides a numbing sense of false comfort. But every so often, we go outside the bubble and hear civilians talking about what we do. I’m sure most of us have had someone at a party or family gathering share their ‘creeped out’ moment; that instance where they finally saw clearly that somehow they were being ‘followed’ online. Other times, they offer us largely unformed general concerns about online privacy: they don’t really have a sense of what’s going on but they instinctively know they don’t like it. And once in a great while you’ll hear from someone who’s really done their homework and brings crystal clarity to the issue from the consumer point of view.
That moment came for me when I stumbled on an NPR radio interview with Joseph Turow, author of “The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth.” After using up my ten minute commute, I found myself sitting my car in the parking lot of my office for another 30 minutes just listening to this guy. It was kind of like hearing someone talk about you in a bathroom when they don’t know you’re in one of the stalls. Except they’re totally getting it right. Turow, an associate dean at the Annenberg Communication school at Penn, has done a lot of homework. The book is detailed and rigorous, but also extremely accessible to the curious consumer. While it’s probably not going to sell millions of copies, I believe it’s going to be a hugely influential and important book for several reasons.
- To my knowledge, it’s the first crossover book that’s attempted to explain in great detail our industry’s use of data to the consumer. And while explaining it all to the consumer, Turow also explains it all to the business and consumer press. Perhaps for the first time, they will really understand the digital marketing ecosystem. And that understanding is almost certain to drive a lot more reporting. Expect a lot more stories like the Wall Street Journal’s 2010 “What They Know” series, only better informed.
- “The Daily You” is also clear eyed and inclusive. Turow is not a wild eyed privacy crusader tilting at windmills. A walk through his index and end notes is like thumbing through a digital marketing “who’s who” — you’ll recognize a lot of names, companies and concepts right off the bat.
- And finally, the book builds an intellectual bridge that’s the link to a very powerful idea: that on some level this is not just a privacy issue, but a human rights issue. For Turow, the real issue is the digital caste system that’s being imposed on consumers without their knowledge or consent. Over time, one consumer will enjoy better discounts and better access to quality brands and offers than his less fortunate counterpart. Perhaps more important are the ways in which these two consumers content experiences will diverge as a result of all the profiling that’s been done. Like it or not, each of us is getting an online data version of an invisible credit score. Turow gets this and his readers will too.
For my money, “The Daily You” should be a mandatory read for anyone in our industry. It’s the beginning of an important new conversation about sustainable and inclusive data practices, a conversation that will form much quicker than many of us might imagine.
February 1, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Posted in: Architecture, Articles and Books, Innovation, Political Economy, Privacy, Technology
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Contracts in the Real World: Ready for Pre-Ordering
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
This new book on contracts, regaling readers with stories ripped from the headlines, will be published soon and can be pre-ordered now on amazon.com and other fine booksellers.
Contracts in the Real World: Stories of Popular Contracts is intended to be a fun, fast, reliable read. It is very useful for 1Ls struggling with the subject, perfect for anyone thinking about going to law school, and designed to entertain devotees of pop culture. It will also captivate experts in contract law by connecting current events with venerable principles and classic cases.
Stories feature such notables as Eminem, Lady Gaga, Charlie Sheen, Donald Trump, and Sandra Bullock, as well as examples such as your cell phone contract, lottery sharing partnership, and on-line privacy policy.
List price is $33. The table of contents follows.
January 28, 2012 at 6:08 am
Posted in: Amazon, Articles and Books, Contract Law & Beyond
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Cybersecurity Puzzles
posted by Derek Bambauer
Cybersecurity is in the news: a network intrusion allegedly interfered with railroad signals in the Northwest in December; the Obama administration refused to support the Stop Online Piracy Act due to worries about interfering with DNSSEC; and the GAO concluded that the Department of Homeland Security is making things worse by oversharing. So, I’m fortunate that the Minnesota Law Review has just published the final version of Conundrum (available on SSRN), in which I argue that we should take an information-based approach to cybersecurity:
Cybersecurity is a conundrum. Despite a decade of sustained attention from scholars, legislators, military officials, popular media, and successive presidential administrations, little if any progress has been made in augmenting Internet security. Current scholarship on cybersecurity is bound to ill-fitting doctrinal models. It addresses cybersecurity based upon identification of actors and intent, arguing that inherent defects in the Internet’s architecture must be remedied to enable attribution. These proposals, if adopted, would badly damage the Internet’s generative capacity for innovation. Drawing upon scholarship in economics, animal behavior, and mathematics, this Article takes a radical new path, offering a theoretical model oriented around information, in distinction to the near-obsession with technical infrastructure demonstrated by other models. It posits a regulatory focus on access and alteration of data, and on guaranteeing its integrity. Counterintuitively, it suggests that creating inefficient storage and connectivity best protects user capabilities to access and alter information, but this necessitates difficult tradeoffs with preventing unauthorized interaction with data. The Article outlines how to implement inefficient information storage and connectivity through legislation. Lastly, it describes the stakes in cybersecurity debates: adopting current scholarly approaches jeopardizes not only the Internet’s generative architecture, but also key normative commitments to free expression on-line.
Conundrum, 96 Minn. L. Rev. 584 (2011).
Cross-posted at Info/Law.
January 24, 2012 at 4:13 pm
Posted in: Anonymity, Architecture, Articles and Books, Current Events, Cyberlaw, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Law Rev (Minnesota), Military Law, Politics, Privacy (National Security), Technology, Web 2.0
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The Year in Privacy Books 2011
posted by Daniel Solove
Here’s a list of notable privacy books published in 2011.
Previous lists:
| Saul Levmore & Martha Nussbaum, eds., The Offensive Internet (Harvard 2011)
This is a great collection of essays about the clash of free speech and privacy online. I have a book chapter in this volume along with Martha Nussbaum, Cass Sunstein, Brian Leiter, Danielle Citron, Frank Pasquale, Geoffrey Stone, and many others. |
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| Daniel J. Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security (Yale 2011)
Nothing to Hide “succinctly and persuasively debunks the arguments that have contributed to privacy’s demise, including the canard that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from surveillance. Privacy, he reminds us, is an essential aspect of human existence, and of a healthy liberal democracy—a right that protects the innocent, not just the guilty.” — David Cole, New York Review of Books |
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| Jeff Jarvis, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (Simon & Schuster 2011)
I strongly disagree with a lot of what Jarvis says, but the book is certainly provocative and engaging. |
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| Daniel J. Solove & Paul M. Schwartz, Privacy Law Fundamentals (IAPP 2011)
“A key resource for busy professional practitioners. Solove and Schwartz have succeeded in distilling the fundamentals of privacy law in a manner accessible to a broad audience.” – Jules Polonetsky, Future of Privacy Forum |
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| Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble (Penguin 2011)
An interesting critique of the personalization of the Internet. We often don’t see the Internet directly, but through tinted goggles designed by others who determine what we want to see. |
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| Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (U. California 2011)
A vigorous critique of Google and other companies that shape the Internet. With regard to privacy, Vaidhyanathan explains how social media and other companies encourage people’s sharing of information through their architecture — and often confound people in their ability to control their reputation. |
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| Susan Landau, Surveillance or Security? The Risk Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies (MIT 2011)
A compelling argument for how designing technologies around surveillance capabilities will undermine rather than promote security.
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| Kevin Mitnick, Ghost in the Wires (Little Brown 2011)
A fascinating account of the exploits of Kevin Mitnick, the famous ex-hacker who inspired War Games. His tales are quite engaging, and he demonstrates that hacking is often not just about technical wizardry but old-fashioned con-artistry. |
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| Matt Ivester, lol . . . OMG! (CreateSpace 2011)
Ivester created Juicy Campus, the notorious college gossip website. After the site’s demise, Ivester changed his views about online gossip, recognizing the problems with Juicy Campus and the harms it caused. In this book, he offers thoughtful advice for students about what they post online. |