the Irish for rights
My friend Misha Angrist, a former geneticist and the author of Here is a Human Being At the Dawn of Personal Genomics, answers some of my questions about DNA research at The Awl.
Holy crap, Misha, you’re making your entire genome public! Are you nervous?
It’s already done. All of my data are here. Frankly I don’t think anything in my DNA could be as embarrassing as this kelly green shirt that continues to taunt me from the interwebs.
Everyone wants to talk about privacy. The recent death of Tyler Clementi, the college student who committed suicide after his roommate streamed his sexual encounter online, has highlighted how vulnerable privacy is and how high the stakes for it are. Christena Nippert-Eng’s Islands of Privacy gives us a rich perspective on this topic and challenges us to ask what, and how, we can keep anything to ourselves.
The book presents the results of Nippert-Eng’s nine-year study on privacy, during which she interviewed 74 people. Nippert-Eng is a professor of sociology, but she ditches scholar-ese in favor of lively, energetic writing free of jargon. (As someone who edits dissertations, I know this is no small feat.) At its most powerful moments, Islands of Privacy does what a work of social science does best: allow a person to connect her individual experience with broader phenomena. I was glad to learn I’m not the only one who forgets secrets in order to avoid blurting them out and who hides lowbrow magazines before company calls. It’s good to discover that some beliefs we hold and worries we have come from shared culture, not personal weirdness.
Concurring Opinions will be hosting an online symposium on Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property this Tuesday to Thursday (Feb. 1 to Feb. 3, 2011). This book, edited by Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski, is available for free download here, and can also be purchased here. Krikorian and Kapczynski will be announcing the contributors on Monday;
Under the safe harbors of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers are encouraged to respond to copyright complaints with content takedowns, assuring their immunity from liability while diminishing the rights of their subscribers and users. … Under the DMCA, process for an accused infringer is limited. … If this takedown procedure took place through the courts, it would trigger First Amendment scrutiny as a prior restraint, silencing speech before an adjudication of lawfulness. Because DMCA takedowns are privately administered through ISPs, however, they have not received such constitutional scrutiny, despite their high risk of error. …
This Article argues for greater constitutional scrutiny. The public is harmed by the loss of speech via indirect chilling effect no less than if the government had wrongly ordered removal of lawful postings directly. Indeed, because DMCA takedown costs less to copyright claimants than a federal complaint and exposes claimants to few risks, it invites more frequent abuse or error than standard copyright law. I describe several of the error cases in detail. The indirect nature of the chill on speech should not shield the legal regime from challenge.
See Wendy Seltzer “Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright’s Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment” 24 (1) Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 172 (2010) (pdf).
A number of medical card holders have brought High Court actions seeking repayment of nursing home fees for which they were allegedly incorrectly charged before a new law was brought in four years ago.
I wrote about this last November:
Have older people in private nursing homes received a fair deal from the State?
… I think that those who were entitled to public care but were denied it and compelled to seek private care have a claim to restitution of unjust enrichment. … (i) the state was enriched, because it was saved the otherwise inevitable expense of meeting its obligations under s52 of the [Health Act,] 1970 … Moreover, (ii) that enrichment was at the expense of the older people who were forced into private nursing homes, as it was this private care which saved the government the expense of meeting its s52 obligations. (iii) There are several possible causes of action in this context. First, many older people made private arrangements because they had no other choice; the acted under a practical compulsion or necessity in the circumstances; and such practical compulsion amounts to a cause of action in the law of restitution of unjust enrichment. Second, many older people made private arrangements in the mistaken belief that they were not entitled to access public care (indeed, that mistaken belief was induced by the state); and such a mistake also amounts to a cause of action in the law of restitution of unjust enrichment.
An important decision of the Paris Court of Appeal was rendered yesterday in a litigation between Google and a French Collective Society for Visual Works (SAIF). The Collective Society claimed that Google was infringing on the copyright of its authors members by reproducing and displaying their works in the form of thumbnails on the pages of Google Image service and also by reproducing their works through Google caching system. Before the Court of First Instance, the Judge considered the applicable law to be the U.S. Copyright Act, and consequently, the court applied the fair use defense in line with the Arriba and Perfect 10 decisions.
The Court of Appeal disagreed and applied French law. Nevertheless, it too rejected plaintiff’s claim and decided that Google benefited from the “safe harbor” provisions of the Loi sur la Confiance dans l’Economie Numérique [the relevant French statute]. It considered Google as being a “neutral” actor and the reproduction of the photos necessary to provide the service. It also refused to consider a sort of contributory infringement liability when Google refers to works available on the Internet without the consent of the rights holder.
Today is international data privacy day, and It’s a shame we do so little to mark the event
WITH THE Seanad passing the data retention – oops, communications – Bill without amendment last week, and Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes warning political parties on Monday that they are not to illegally use (again, for some) unsolicited text messages, calls or emails in the looming election, how ironically appropriate that today is International Data Privacy and Data Protection Day.
27
01
2011
… Bridget O’Rawe v William Trimble Limited … [2010] NIQB 135 … is one of the few libel cases to go to trial in recent times in Northern Ireland and the judgement is not only extremely detailed but provides long awaited clarification from the bench in relation to qualified privilege and particularisation of pleadings.
