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This week’s @yaleisp talks by @t_streinz @AndBurt @hartzog are inspiring me to reconsider the connection b/t modern data privacy & traditional intellectual property. Certainly, not all privacy problems are IP problems, but the common threads are still theoretically important.
A few thoughts, in brief:
@t_streinz talked trade agreements, where we often negotiate both privacy & IP rights.
@AndBurt & Dan Geer mentioned a conceptual link b/t data protection & DRM.
@hartzog discussed "public" exceptions to (c) & patent protections.
@t_streinz talked trade agreements, where we often negotiate both privacy & IP rights.
@AndBurt & Dan Geer mentioned a conceptual link b/t data protection & DRM.
@hartzog discussed "public" exceptions to (c) & patent protections.
Have been mulling this over for a while. You know a common (often tongue-in-cheek) refrain at IP conferences is that privacy doesn't really belong. I don't think that's true, but the question is: why does it matter if privacy is an intellectual property issue?
This spins out into questions about the history of privacy, from defamation/ privacy torts to constitutional protections to consumer issues at play. Was privacy before the digital revolution less of an "intellectual" right than it is now? Was it more or less of a property right?
Have our evolving tech & societal norms changed the way we understand privacy rights in the same way that those same shifts have changed the way we understand intellectual property? (E.g., the idea of tangibility changed post-digital. What are similar differences for privacy?)
Of course, whenever I think about changing trends in tech and corresponding changes in law, I go back to @jackbalkin’s thoughts on this, from “Digital Speech and Democratic Culture: A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society” digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewconten… 
