Jacqueline Lipton, “We, the Paparazzi”: Developing a Privacy Paradigm for Digital Video
Comment by: Patricia Sanchez Abril
PLSC 2009
Published version available here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1367314
Workshop draft abstract:
Digital age privacy law focuses mostly on text files containing personal data. Little attention has been paid to privacy interests in video files that may portray individuals in an unflattering or embarrassing light. As digital video technology, including inexpensive cellphone cameras, is now becoming widespread in the hands of the public, this focus needs to shift. Once a small percentage of online content, digital video is now appearing online at an exponential rate. This is largely due to the growth of online social networking services such as YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook.
The sharing of video online has become a global phenomenon. At the same time, the lack of effective privacy protection for these images has become a global problem. Digital video poses four distinct problems for privacy arising from: de-contextualization, dissemination, aggregation, and permanency of online video information. While video shares some of these attributes with text-based records, this article argues that the unique qualities of video and multi-media files necessitate a place of their own in online privacy discourse. This article both identifies a rationale for, and critiques potential approaches to, digital video privacy. It suggests that legal regulation, without more, is unlikely to provide the solutions we need to protect privacy in digital video. Instead, it advocates a new, more nuanced multi-modal regulatory approach consisting of a matrix of legal rules, social norms, system architecture, market forces, public education, and non-profit institutions.