The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

January 23, 2008
Speaker: Daniel J. Solove, Associate Professor, George Washington University Law School
Presented by: the Center for Law, Technology, and the Arts

Summary: Distinguished Lecture in Law and Technology
What information about you is available on the Internet? What if its wrong, humiliating, or true but regrettable? Will it ever go away?

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But theres a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet: a chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—instantly accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look.

Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cyber mobs, and other current trends, Professor Solove will explore the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy as he offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations.

Longstanding notions of privacy need review, and unless we establish a balance among privacy, free speech, and anonymity, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

The Wall Street Journal describes Daniel J. Solove as one of the few [who] truly understands the intersection of law and technology. An internationally-known expert in privacy law, Professor Solove is the author of five books, including Understanding Privacy (Harvard, forthcoming 2008), The Future of Reputation: Gossip and Rumor in the Information Age (Yale 2007), and The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (NYU 2004). Professor Solove is also the author of a textbook, Information Privacy Law (Aspen 2006), now in its second edition, with co-authors Marc Rotenberg and Paul Schwartz. He has published more than 25 articles and essays, which have appeared in leading law reviews such as the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Duke Law Journal.

Professor Solove has contributed to amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court, testified before Congress, and has been interviewed and featured in more than 100 media broadcasts and articles, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Associated Press, Business Week, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and NPR. A graduate of Yale Law School, he clerked for Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Pamela Ann Rymer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He also worked at the law firm Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. Professor Solove teaches information privacy law, criminal procedure, criminal law, and law and literature.

Category:

Education

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• privacy
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• arts
• gossip
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• speech
• slander